Nick Brown
Bio
I've embarked upon an open ended mission, pretending to travel back in time and watch classic television on (or close to) the fiftieth anniversary of original broadcast date; getting a sense of the context, the magic of that first viewing.
Stories (45/0)
Rewatching... Star Trek: Errand Of Mercy
"...we Klingons play to win" Thursday 23 March 1967 There's this race of aliens called the Klingons, and Kirk doesn't like them. They're warlike and brutal; Starfleet has just advised that negotiations with them have broken down, and ordered the Enterprise to fly to a planet called Organia and protect the inhabitants.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... The Avengers: Never, Never Say Die
"I've killed him again!" Friday 17 March 1967 Ah, one of my all time favourite episodes. A close up of a pair of smart shoes. They are soon muddy shoes and we see a tall man walking towards a main road. It's only Christopher blimmin' Lee! He steps in front of a car, is killed and in-hospital pronounced dead on arrival. Gosh, what an opening! But the prologue isn't over yet: as the medics walk away the man's feet start to twitch, and suddenly he gets up and marches out of the hospital. Zombies...on The Avengers??! That was a superb pre-title scene, and also one of my favourite episode titles.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Star Trek: The Devil In The Dark
"I'm a doctor not a bricklayer" Thursday 9 March 1967 As far as boldly going and seeking out of new life and civilisations goes, mankind seems to have been doing a pretty good job of it already, judging by the number of Earth colonies we see in Star Trek. This week the Enterprise crew have been beaten to a 'new life' discovery by a colony of miners who've discovered something lurking in the caves they're working in.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Doctor Who: The Moonbase – Part 4
“…we’ve got enough madmen here already.” Saturday 4 March 1967 There are really impressive numbers of Cybermen in this. They march across the lunar landscape and begin to assemble a weapon. I count eleven onscreen at the same time. With others inside their ship you really believe they are a credible threat.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Star Trek: This Side Of Paradise
Thursday 2 March 1967 "Who wants to counteract paradise, Jim boy?" There are two things I especially like in Star Trek. One is when the crew all start going out of their minds, and the other is when it's set on a familiar Earth type planet. So I enjoyed this week's episode.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Doctor Who: The Moonbase – Part 3
Saturday 25 February 1967 "Clever. Clever. Clever." I like the Cybermen’s new voices. Perhaps not as easy to understand as the old ones but much scarier and more emotionless and robotic. Emotionless in tone mind you, but the dialogue still gives away emotional oddities. I’m not sure if “Clever. Clever. Clever.” is sarcasm at Hobson’s realisation of what the drops in air pressure indicated when the Cybermen got in, or self-congratulation. They also come out with words and phrases such as “excellent” and “stupid Earth brains”!
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Star Trek: Space Seed
Thursday 16 February 1967 The Enterprise encounters an old 1990s spaceship drifting and sending out a Morse code message. Apparently, in the mid 1990s we had our last World War, a “Eugenics War” where we tried to perfect our race with “selective breeding”. As Spock says, “a strange and violent period” in our history. Thank goodness those days are over, eh?
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... Doctor Who: The Moonbase – Part 2
Saturday 18 February 1967 Polly seems to be setting the template of the screaming companion. There hasn’t been an awful lot of screaming up till now, but since the new Doctor took over the horror content seems to be on the increase.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Rewatching... The Avengers: The Living Dead
Friday 24 February 1967 So this man walks into a pub… It’s a boozy old tramp, and he staggers out of the pub again into the adjacent graveyard. He clearly has a brilliant sense of humour as he laughs about absolutely everything, including when he falls over. There was a rather more hollow sounding ‘thud’ than expected at this point for a leafy cemetery. And his voice reverberates oddly for outdoors…and there’s not a hint of a breeze… Perhaps he’s laughing at the absurdity, but the smile is soon wiped off his face when the lid of a stone sarcophagus slides open and a ghostly man rises upright from within.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Geeks
Re-watching... Doctor Who: The Moonbase – Part 1
Saturday 11 February 1967 The fish-based shenanigans in the Atlantis-set The Underwater Menacewere fun but not really my idea of Doctor Who. Now this is more like it. After the cliffhanger last week the out-of-control TARDIS is buffeted around before hovering above a familiar rocky, crater filled surface before landing. Polly’s all set to congratulate the Doctor for an accurate landing on Mars, except it’s not Mars. They’ve landed on the moon. The moon is a bit of a hot topic here in 1967. NASA has been sending out probes recently, searching for a suitable landing site for the first manned expedition. And just two weeks ago a launch rehearsal ended in tragedy when a cabin fire killed the three crew members of Apollo 1. Tonight though, the moon is positively bustling with activity, with no less than (spoiler alert) three parties at the same landing spot.
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism
Re-watching... Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace – Part 4
Saturday 4 February 1967 “…my ultimate moment of triumph.” So, it's the last episode of this unusual story. It’s a race against time before the whole of the Earth blows up. The Doctor and Ben are separated from Jamie and Polly. The Doctor’s plan is to flood Atlantis but first they have to get past the guard and into the generating station. The Doctor’s confident they’ll get past the guard, Ben less so (“What, in those trousers?”).
By Nick Brown7 years ago in Futurism