Trollheart

It happens every Christmas of course. They trot out every festive episode of every show they can, from “Friends” (one assumes, never watched it: don't hate myself that much) to “Only fools and horses”. Some are good, some are bad. Here I'll be trying to focus on the good. Mostly. Some of these shows will be ones I already feature, some will be shows I will be looking at in the future, and some will be shows that will never otherwise grace these pages. But the Christmas shows are worth writing about. In the cases of the latter two, I'll give a brief introduction for those who have not seen these shows. As in this first one...

Focussing on the character of John Becker, a doctor who is so miserable, angry, intolerant and selfish that he makes Mister Burns seem like a real sweetie, “Becker” starred “Cheers” mainman Ted Danson who, ably assisted by his long-suffering assistant Margaret, his dizzy receptionist Linda and his blind friend Jake, tries to make it through the next day without murdering someone. Sometimes he succeeds. As a doctor, his bedside manner is not the greatest, but he takes what he does seriously. It's when he's outside his surgery, trying to deal with the real world, that things really take a turn for the worse.

Becker hates Christmas. It's just an excuse for people to spend money, and to encourage you to spend money. People you haven't seen all year turn up on your doorstep, act as if they're happy to see you and you're supposed to be happy to see them. They eat all your food, drink all your booze and then fuck off a day later to return to wherever the hell it is they come from, and good riddance to them. And family ain't the worst of it! Out on the streets there's a sense of wonder in the air, shop Santas stand on every corner, ringing their goddamn bells and bellowing about toys, people you don't even know and care less for accost you and wish you a Happy Christmas. It's cold, it's usually snowing, the sidewalks are slippery and every shop seems to be enticing you into spending your hard-earned cash on people you don't care about.

Yes, a real-life Scrooge indeed. For Becker, the thought of goodwill to all men involves locking himself in his room with enough booze to knock out a small-sized army, and waiting out the hated holiday season, not emerging again until January, after the equally annoying New Year's Eve. So you can imagine he's not exactly best pleased when, on a reluctant foray into a department store his back suddenly goes, and he is forced to remain in the festively bedecked, holly-covered shop for hours. He must feel like all his Christmases have come at once, which, while it would be normally considered a good thing, is for Becker the equivalent of Hell.

Becker: “Dr. Angry head”

Becker has reached an agreement with Christmas: no expectations, no disappointments. Seems to be working for him. Everyone else around him though seem to be getting affected by his hatred of Christmas. Jake is annoyed he can't go spend the festive season at his grandma's, as he does every year, since she is going to Atlantic City with her friend. (”Between them they have a walker, a wheelchair and an oxygen tank, and they think I'll be the one in the way!") Reggie's Christmas tree falls over, crushing her hand-painted Christmas bauble, with an angel blowing a trumpet which Becker opines is more like Liberace drinking a martini, a precious keepsake from her childhood, and Bob has not got one Christmas card from any of his tenants. To make things worse, Reggie's arch-rival, Sally from the bakery, has collected the most toys for the Christmas Toy Drive seven years in a row, and Reggie now intends to beat her at her own game.

While passing through a store, Becker notices that a Christmas tree in the display happens to contain a decoration just like the one that broke on Reggie. In an uncharacteristic gesture of kindness, he decides to buy it but the store manager will not sell it to him. Frustrated and angry, and determined to get the ball, Becker stands on the display and tries to take the thing off the tree, whereupon his back goes out and he collapses on to the display. Unable to move him, the staff have to leave him there, and every child that comes by presses the button to activate the display, until he thinks he will be hearing the cute little song in his nightmares for months.

Meanwhile, Reggie's plans to beat Sally have come to nothing. Despite going to such lengths as having Bob take toys from the lost-and-found at his building and putting a sign on Jake's back which says I'm blind, please give me toys she is still well behind in the count. Then she hears with delight the news that Sally's bakery has burned down, taking with it all the toys she had assembled for the Toy Drive. “Miracles can happen”, she says. “God bless us, every one!”


QUOTES
Jake (on hearing Becker enter, shouting at a woman about her dog): “Merry Christmas? Or should I just go screw myself?”

Margaret (listing the patients): “In two, there's a Santa with a black eye.”
Becker: “I don't care who he's with: what's wrong with him?”
Margaret: “Not a black guy! A black eye!”

Becker: “Look Santa, the traditional greeting is “Ho ho ho!” If a pretty girl walks by and you just say “ho” she has every right to deck you!”

Becker (after tripping in the store and activating a cute, animated display complete with chipmunk voices): “I'm in Hell!”

Manager: “You're going to have to get up.”
Becker: “I can't get up. I can't move my legs, I can barely move my arms. You're going to have to move me. But do it gently.”
Manager: “I'm sorry, but the lawyers tell us we can't help anyone. Train.”
Becker: “What the hell are you talking about, train?”
(A small train that is making a circuit around the display hits into his head)
Manager: “As I said, train.”

Kid: “Momma I don't like that toy! It's mean Mr. Angry Head!”
Becker: “That's Doctor Angry Head!”

Becker (to kid about to push the activation button for the display): “No no kid! Don't push that button! If you do, I swear to God Santa won't bring you a single present! All right, all right! I'll give you a dollar, no no! Five dollars not to push the button! All right: twenty dollars. I can't move though, you'll have to reach into my pocket to get my wallet.”
Kid: “Oh no! We saw a film in school about men like you!”

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Dear God! Say it ain't so!!!!

Hasn't this fucker got enough money by now??? Is nothing sacred?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Ahem. Now that I've got that off my chest, back to


If someone were to ask you, what is the movie that epitomises Christmas for you, what would your answer be? “It's a wonderful life”? “Oliver”? “Die hard”? Seriously? Well, they're all decent movies but to me, and I suspect a whole lot of other people, when I think of Christmas the film that springs to mind is Charles Dickens' “A Christmas carol”. Call it by the name of its principle character if you want, but nothing for me surpasses the elegance of this story. Mixing pathos, redemption, fantasy, cautionary tale, a little horror and good old human kindness and the triumph of the human spirit, this timeless classic shows us that even the most mean-spirited and miserable among us can come to learn the true meaning of Christmas. Granted, most of us would not need to be visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve for that to happen, but though it may have become something of a cliche in these cynical days of the boom-and-bust, grab-all-you-can-while-you-can mindset, you would have to be very hard-hearted indeed not to be moved by the classic tale of a man who turns from a hateful old miser into one of the nicest men in the world.

And of course, like many successful stories, it's been played out again and again, in various forms and formats, from early silent movies to musicals and puppetry, animation and, no doubt, in many languages across the world. One thing that is pretty universal --- I suspect even in countries that profess not to espouse Christianity or celebrate Christmas --- is the desire for a happy ending and the joy of seeing a bad man turn good. But which is the best version of this classic? When I look at the Wiki entry I can see over twenty movies, stretching from the turn of the century right up to 2009. although for some reason which escapes me they've failed to include Bill Murray's “Scrooged”, something I will be rectifying as we introduce

If we discount the silent movies --- we may not; it depends on whether or not I can find them --- we're left with about twenty-odd different versions of the story committed to the big screen. My intention is to try to watch all of them, or as many as I can, and make a determination as to which one is the outstanding adaptation. You would think, with cinematic techniques having taken a giant leap forward in the last ten or twenty years, that more recent ones would take the prize (and maybe one will) but often it's not just about effects, CGI and major stars: in a case like this, the way the story is handled is also crucial to whether or not the film has a chance of beating its rivals. There are also “updates” and movies based on the framework --- Ms. Scrooge comes to mind --- and I may try to include them, but hey: there's only twenty-two days of journal writing left, and while I probably won't get the actual results before Christmas, I don't want this to be like the turkey: pigging out so much that I start to go glassy-eyed and feel a little queasy. So I won't say when the result will be published, but it will obviously have to be before New Year's Day.

As in other such face-offs I've run, various factors will be taken into consideration and movies balanced and rated against each other under these criteria. Obviously, some may not apply: should I manage to find the silent ones, for instance, a category like “soundtrack” will be meaningless, as will be “effects”, mostly. But insofar as I can, I will try to make sure each movie gets the same treatment as the next. Quite obviously, I won't be reviewing them (who doesn't know the story after all, and even with tweaks and twists, it's always still the basic idea of the miser who learns to love Christmas and his fellow man) but will publish the face-offs as I do them, perhaps two or three at a time, and eliminating one or two until I have whittled it down to a final four, six or whatever, which will then be pitted against each other.

Yeah. Like so much I do, I have yet to work out the details. But we'll get there. Eventually.

Anyone who wants to throw in their comments, suggestions or views is welcome. Let's see which of the many movies made since Dickens first put pen to paper comes out on top.

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Trollheart

Created by two alumni from the anarchic classic sitcom “The Young Ones”, the series stars Adrian “Ade” Edmondson as Eddie Hitler and the late Rik Mayall as Richard Richard (usually referred to as Ritchie) in a carryover from a previous comedy starring them both and using the same names though different surnames, “Filthy, Rich and Catflap”. Eddie and Ritchie are two ne'er-do-well wasters who spend their days moping about their flat, moaning about why they never get girls and devising ever more complicated and outlandish ways to fill the boredom between waking to another day on the dole and heading to bed.

Showing the stunning creativity and acting talent of the pair, one of the episodes takes place entirely aboard a giant ferris wheel, which is due to be demolished later. Many comics can do a solo stand-up routine but it is quite another to do that on TV, deprived of props, distractions or a straight man. This is something Richard Wilson found to his cost when he starred alone in one episode of the hugely popular “One foot in the grave”, one which most people agree was the least funny of the entire series.

Though both are hilariously funny in a “God-they-didn't-did-they?” kind of way, in general Mayall was seen more as the straight man (though paradoxically was the most funny --- the guy who's hilarious because he doesn't get the joke) and Edmondson the witty one. But each worked extremely well off each other, which is why with the sudden passing of Mayall it is almost certain there will be no more of this series, which ran from 1991 to 1995, and the future of Ade Edmondson is, at this moment, uncertain.

But back in 1992 they were at their creative peak, Mayall had yet to experience the horrific quad accident which would later lead to his untimely death, and moving into the last few episodes of the second season of their wildly successful show. As October gave way to November and the nights began getting both colder and darker, the bumbling duo decided to take on the fast-approaching Christmas, in their own inimical way.

Bottom: "Holy"


Ritchie is like a child, waiting for Christmas with joy and excitement, though also playing the role of Santa Claus to them both. Little does he know, though, as he steals into Eddie's bedroom, that his friend has set a most complicated trap for Santa, and he is soon dangling from a noose. As he kicks his feet and struggles for breath, Eddie cuts him down (after first telling him “It'll cost ya ten quid!”) and Santa/Ritchie hobbles, bloody and limping, out of the bedroom. Returning a moment later (just as Ritchie this time) he pretends excitement --- (“I thought I heard sleighbells, Eddie! Has he been?”) --- he proceeds to open all the presents that have been left, while Eddie tries to sleep. It is, after all, only 3:30 AM!

After the present opening, it's time to get ready to make the Christmas dinner, so while Ritchie gets the turkey ready Eddie decorates the place, which basically involves him spraying “Eddie is great” in spray snow on the walls. Unfortunately there's a traditional Christmas accident, as Ritchie chops off one of his fingers with a cleaver. Eddie staples it back on, and by the time Ritchie recovers consciousness it's almost time for dinner, and the guests, such as they are, are arriving. These end up being Eddie's dodgy mates, Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog, who are less than impressed with the meal they are served up. Well, they would be, wouldn't they? The potatoes are so hard they break the plates when dropped on them, the sprouts are as crunchy as hell, and due to a miscalculation on the timings, the turkey has been reduced to a tiny, crisped husk. They're also drinking gravy, as “somebody” has polished off all the sherry!

As Ritchie tries unsuccessfully to engage the guys in games, there is a ring at the door and Ritchie discovers that someone has left a baby on their doorstep. Taking it indoors, he is somehow unaccountably seized by the notion that this is the Second Coming, and that he is the Virgin Mary! He quickly begins to plan revenge on all those who offended him, now that he has been revealed as the mother of God, but all too soon their landlord knocks, declaring that the child is his daughter's and that he just left him there as it was too much hassle to take him with them to the bedside of his wife, who has very selfishly started to die on Christmas Day.

QUOTES
Eddie: “Did you post my letter to Santa Claus? Cos I can't seem to find the “Starbird” that I asked for. Or me Batman cape. Or the ticket to the Bahamas!”

Ritchie: “I thought you said you were going to get me something sun-kissed and exotic?”
Eddie: “And I have! Just open it.” (Ritchie does)
Ritchie: “It's a miniature bottle of Malibu. Correction: it's an empty miniature bottle of Malibu.”
Eddie: “Correct. Merry Christmas, Ritchie!”
Ritchie: “Well, what use is that?”
Eddie: “You can use it to keep Malibu in. Just keep it away from me!” (Hiccups)

(Through a complicated set of circumstances I'm not going to write about, and which you'll only understand if you watch the episode, Ritchie is looking into a “play telescope” at a drawing of Sue Carpenter. Uh-huh.)
Ritchie: “Why's she got only one knocker?”
Eddie: “No, that's not a knocker. It's a speech bubble. She's talking to you, look!”
Ritchie: “Oh yeah! Fik off ... you sad ... pathic ... winker! Ooh! I wonder what she means?”

Eddie: “Oh no! Not sprouts! I hate sprouts!”
Ritchie: “Will you stop whinging, Eddie? Everyone hates sprouts!”
Eddie: “Then why are we having them?”
Ritchie: “Because it's Christmas!”

Eddie (looking at the turkey): “What you going to do with it?”
Ritchie: “Well, it's the season of goodwill and peace on Earth, so I thought I'd chop off both its feet, rips its innards out, strip it, shove an onion up its arse and stick it in a very hot place for four hours till it's completely burned!”

Ritchie: “Oh god! What's the procedure for someone who's chopped off their finger?”
Eddie: “I think .... they bleed to death in about half an hour!”

Ritchie: “Come ye! Come ye! God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay. Remember ....” (Looks confused, unable to remember the rest)

Dave Hedgehog: “Is it Christmas? Today? Oh well, Merry Christmas then. Must be why that woman gave me that aftershave this morning.”
Eddie: “What woman?”
Dave: “Oh you know, that woman who's always hanging around the house. What's her name? My wife. Andrea. No, Avril. No, what am I thinking of? Susan! That's the one.!”

Spudgun: “See they changed the titles to Emmerdale Farm. Just called Emmerdale now. Doesn't take so long to read. Gives them a lot more time to do other things, pack more story in.”

Ritchie: “I've got a baby.”
Eddie: “We don't want a baby. Get rid of it. We're happy as we are. Why spoil everything? We'll drift apart. I mean, it's bound to come between us!”
Ritchie: “Well, I think it already has. Come on Eddie! It's time we faced up to our responsibilities! We can't go around being playboys forever! Besides, it's a fact now. We have to deal with it.”
Eddie: “Why couldn't you have been more careful? ”
Spudgun: “Poor little mite. What a way to spend your first Christmas.”
Eddie: “What? Lying on your back with a bottle in your mouth? Sounds pretty good to me!”

Spudgun: “Poor little blighter. No family, no friends, no Christmas presents.”
Ritchie: “Well, he's got us now.”
Spudgun: “Yeah. Look, he can have my present, a box of Terry's All-Gold. We'll have to wait till his little teeth come through before he can manage the chewy ones.”
Eddie: “Yeah, he can have this Frankenstein mask I was gonna scare the shit out of Ritchie with later.”
Dave: “And he can have my bottle of aftershave. It's a new one. It's called “Grr!”
Ritchie: “Gold, Frankenstein, and “Grrr!” (Looks up at the three of them kneeling before the cot, with their paper hats on) “And you're all wearing crowns!” (And notices the blue shawl he has been entertaining the baby with, now wrapped around his head like a scarf.) “And I'm a virgin! Guys, if I was you I'd stay on my knees! This is it: this is the Second Coming!”

Eddie: “I'm not gonna allow the arrival of the son of God spoil my Christmas!”

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Trollheart

Every country and culture has its own sacred cows, untouchable tenets of their faith or history that you do not mess with. England has the Queen. You can say anything you like but don’t slag off Her Majesty! America, basically, has patriotism. It’s “God bless America” if you know what’s good for you, and of course Islam has Mohammed, whose image must never be seen and who may not be lampooned or denigrated in any way. And Ireland has the Catholic Church.

For a very long period, right up to about the 1970s, priests were the real power in Ireland, especially in the rural communities. They were sacrosanct: God’s messengers on Earth, and virtually infallible. They did not lie. They did not womanise. They did not cheat. In all honesty, if you had to choose between the word of a Garda (police officer) and a priest, you would go for that of the clergyman every time. They were the real power behind the throne, and nothing got done without their tacit or explicit approval. They could even bring down governments, or at least encourage/order their flock to do so.

Of course, it was all bull as we now know. As report after report of clerical sexual abuse filters out through the news and more and more priests appear on the sex offenders’ list, and scandal spreads across Ireland like a dark stormcloud, we can see how truly evil and mortal some of these men were. Not all, by any means, but some, and the clerical abuse scandals prove that one thing these men were, and are, is fallible, tragically and horribly so, and the last thing any of them should be doing is telling us how to live our lives.

But back then as I say the Church was the law, and you dared not go up against it. Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, two writers for the Irish music magazine “Hot Press”, aimed to change all that. In all the history of Irish TV there had never been an unsympathetic, much less satirical depiction of priests and the Church, but that time was coming to an end. Set on the remote and fictional island of Craggy Island, said to be off the west coast of Ireland, Father Ted Crilly lived with his two fellow priests in virtual disgrace, exiled to the forbidding island for “financial improprieties” which had embarrassed the Catholic Church, and in particular the bishop in charge of his diocese.

Really unsuited for the clergy, Ted spends his days dreaming about being a rock star or a TV heart-throb, and gets by as best he can, while basically babysitting his younger curate, Father Dougal Maguire, and enduring the abuse of the old retired priest, Father Jack Hackett. As in such sitcoms, unlikely events conspire to produce hilarity, the writers all the while taking sharp and sometimes unkind pot-shots at the Catholic Church and its assumed superiority in Ireland. Although commissioned for Channel 4 and first shown there, RTE, the Irish national television channel, had no problem showing it and it quickly became the favourite comedy show in Ireland, the moreso because we Irish could so easily relate to what the three priests were living through, and were finally, after hundreds of years, free to laugh at the priest without looking over our shoulder in fear of a vengeful thunderbolt. It was quite a liberating experience.

Father Ted ran for three seasons, and also included a Christmas Special, before the untimely death of star Dermot Morgan, though he had already decided not to pursue a fourth season, should it be commissioned, as he did not want to get typecast. It regularly crops up as one of the most innovative comedies of the last twenty years, and is constantly repeated on the TV on various channels. In ways, the show probably quit while it was ahead, ending on a high note, and will always be remembered for finally opening the last forbidden door of comedy in Ireland. It also made a star and household name of Morgan, who had hitherto been a well-known comedian in Ireland but had not been in the public eye for decades.

CAST
The main cast of the show is restricted to basically four people, with the odd intervention from peripheral characters, but these are the core ones:

DERMOT MORGAN as Father Ted Crilly: Exiled to the lonely and desolate Craggy Island for the sin of taking money that had been collected to send a sick child to Lourdes and instead using it to go on a holiday to Las Vegas, as well as other financial irregularities, Ted is a man who has not so much a crisis of faith, but who was never all that bothered in the first place. It’s likely he was pushed into the priesthood, as was the custom in Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century. When Ted points out “Normally the brainy ones (brother) would be doctors and the eejit brother would go into the priesthood”, Father Dougal remarks “Yeah. Your brother is a doctor, isn’t he Ted?” leaving us in no doubt as to where Ted came in the family pecking order!

ARDAN O’HANLON as Father Dougal Maguire: Best and most kindly described as a child in a man’s body, Dougal is much younger than Ted and very impressionable. He seems to live in his own private world, only occasionally visiting the real one. Much of the comedy in the show stems from Dougal’s inability to grasp simple concepts and ideas, leading Ted in exasperation one night to ask “How did you get into the priesthood, Dougal? Was it, like, collect ten crisp packets and you become a priest?” It certainly seems like it; Dougal has no idea what being a priest entails, as he sniggers to Ted “Sure it’s no more likely than that stuff we learned in the seminary, the crucifixion, the resurrection and all that. Sure who’d believe that?”

FRANK KELLY as Father Jack Hackett: One of Ireland’s most respected actors, Frank Kelly dumped the trappings of fame to play the alcoholic, rude Father Jack whose favourite --- indeed, at times it seems only --- words are “Feck! Drink! Arse!” and “Girls!” He spends every day in a stupor of drink, does no work and is rude and abusive to anyone unlucky enough to come near him. He thinks Ted is an eejit and Dougal a gobshite. And he’s right.

PAULINE MC LYNN as Mrs Doyle: The long-suffering housekeeper for the three priests, the one passion in Mrs Doyle’s life is tea. If she’s not offering it she’s making it, and if you don’t want any she’ll persist until you agree to accept a cup. She is the workhorse of the parochial house, from mending broken roof tiles to digging ditches and washing, cleaning and ironing. In all respects, she functions as a mother to the three priests, who seem unable or unwilling to do anything themselves.

There are other characters, as I say, such as the eternally fighting couple John and Mary, Bishop Len Brennan and Father Larry Duff, as well as Ted’s nemesis and arch-enemy, Father Dick Byrne, who lives on the opposing Rugged Island, but as these drift in and out of the series I will mention them when they’re relevant. There are of course also a host of other priests, all of whom have some interesting story, and again these will be introduced as and when.

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Trollheart

Hah! I bet you'd thought I'd forgotten this, didn't you? What do you mean, what is it? You've never seen it before? You've never been in my journal before? Of all the .... all right then, this is where I pick holes in movies, and occasionally TV series episodes, but only ones which really annoy me because without being addressed they ruin the film or episode, and call into question the creative skills of the writer(s). They are, in short,


Everyone is aware that I am planning to review all of the Star Trek movies later on, when the USS Nerdtopia sets sail across the stars, and I would have to say that generally the series, and the films, are basically very well written. But there are plot holes in at least two of the movies that I know of, and this is the one that stands out the most to me, so it's the one I'm going to deal with first.


Movie title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Year: 1991
Genre: Science-Fiction
Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley
Directed by: Nicholas Meyer
Written by: Nicholas Meyer, Denny Martin Flinn

Basic storyline: As the traditional enemies, humans and Klingons, sue for peace and try to come to an agreement, the USS Enterprise appears to fire at the ship bearing their chancellor, and though Kirk and McCoy try to save him he dies. The two are then accused of murder and stand trial. Found guilty by the Klingons they are sentenced to life imprisonment on a penal asteroid. I'll be going into this in much more detail of course when I get to reviewing the film, but for now this sets the basic scene.

When I started this section I was not, I believe, unkind to “Flightplan” (the only thing unkind about that movie was letting it be released!) but I was perhaps a little overambitious in the amount of plot holes I saw in it. Well, that's not even correct: there are that many plotholes in the movie. But to expect that such would be the case with other films would be stretching it, and so, like most films, the ones that follow will all probably have just the one plothole, but it will be a major one.

Thus it is, with “Star Trek VI”, that the plot hole really unhinges the whole concept and causes me to call into question the means by which the Enterprise saves the day. Oddly, I see nobody else marking it, as Star Trek nuts are usually very finickedy when it comes to plot holes, but I've just now rewatched the relevant part of the movie and I can't see any reason to change my mind. There is a plot hole, and it is so big you could comfortably navigate a Constitution-Class starship through it.

To make it easier for those of you who are not interested in Trek, basically the Enterprise is trying to locate a Klingon Bird of Prey, a cloaked ship that is about to launch an attack on the peace conference, hopefully scuppering all chance of reconciliation between the two races. A cloaked ship is one which uses a force field that bends light around it, basically rendering it invisible. Normally, this consumes so much of the power of the ship (in the Trek universe anyway) that all power has to be diverted to the cloaking device, leaving the ship unable to fire its weapons while cloaked. However this ship appears to be a prototype that has managed to get around that problem.

The upshot is that it is cloaked and can fire while remaining so, and therefore is a hard target not only to locate, but to defend against, as it's the only ship that enjoys the advantage of being invisible while still able to fight. Uhura comes up with the idea of targeting the ship's ionic gas emissions (like the fumes from the exhaust of a car) and they modify a photon torpedo to home in on those traces, enabling it to track the ship and blow it to kingdom come.

So there you have it. Simple idea, nothing wrong with that. Old-world tech, to a degree, beats new-fangled super tech. Only one problem, and it's this: the emissions can only be traced with specialised equipment, originally intended to catalogue gaseous anomalies --- this is mentioned in the first scenes BUT not by Kirk, commanding the Enterprise. The equipment that they now intend to use is on board another ship, the USS Excelsior, speeding at the moment to rendezvous with the Enterprise.

So the Enterprise does not have the requisite equipment to catalogue the gaseous anomalies, and so cannot in effect locate the Bird of Prey, thus the whole plan has a huge, major, undeniable flaw. It simply would not work.

But my plotholes are always open to challenge. I'll challenge this one myself. Let's look at the various explanations, workarounds or reasons why this could perhaps not be a plothole.

Answer 1: The Excelsior moved its equipment on to the Enterprise.
Challenge 1: Why? And how? (Well, how is probably not at issue: starships transport material and personnel between them all the time, but they need to be in range of each other to do so.) But the first question remains. The Excelsior is, when we meet it, engaged in scientific research, and there is no, at the time, crisis. Later it becomes involved in the search for the Bird of Prey, and indeed in its destruction alongside the Enterprise. But the Enterprise is not, and was not in this movie ever, a scientific vessel. First, it was a diplomatic one, to ensure the safe passage of the Klingon chancellor to Federation space. Secondly, it is a battleship. Though its stated main mission is to explore, it doesn't generally carry out scientific missions, and indeed is due for decommissioning soon. So why, what reason can anyone give, why this equipment would be transferred to the Enterprise, which neither at the time needs it or can use it?

Not to mention that Sulu, in command of the Excelsior, has been in the Beta Quadrant and is only on the way home when this incident occurs. He races to rendezvous with the Enterprise but by the time they meet battle is already joined. Transporation cannot be carried out with shields up, as would be needed in a battle situtation, especially one where your enemy is invisible, so the transfer --- had it taken place at all --- could not have occurred at this time. Add to that the very real possibility that such equipment is likely not just “plug-and-play”, and would have to be integrated into the Enterprise's computers, and it just seems so unlikely that such a thing could be engineered, given the high-risk, red alert situation both ships are in, as to make it next to impossible to conceive.

Answer 2: The Enterprise also carries such equipment as standard.
Challenge 2: No it doesn't, not to my knowledge. And it is never alluded to in the movie. I have known the Enterprise to carry out stellar cartography, (although we are talking NextGen here to be fair) and while it is, I concede, possible that it also has that equipment, this point, which would be a very important one to the plot were it the case, is not mentioned, so it can't simply be assumed that they “must have had the equipment too”. That's lazy thinking.

Answer 3: At some point prior to this, the Enterprise had been fitted with that equipment.
Challenge 3: We're back to why? But more importantly this time, how? To our knowledge, the Enterprise has not been home since Kirk and McCoy were found guilty, and Spock has been heading towards the penal colony, hoping to clear his captain's name. He has been specifically avoiding returning to spacedock, pretending that their engines are malfunctioning, in order to give them time to hunt down the assassins and prove their crewmates' innocence. And again, why would he be interested in such a thing? He has much more important matters on his mind.

If anyone can come up with an explanation for this, or has any credible reasons why it should not be seen as a plothole --- and cares --- let me know. As I said, I find it odd that I seem to be the only one who has caught this, and I'm not so arrogant as to think that's because I'm smarter (or more of a nitpicker) than everyone else. Maybe I'm wrong, and there's a reasonable explanation for how this could happen, but I can't see any. When I went to see this movie the first time in the cinema, it jumped out at me like a big red flag, and when we left the movie complex I said to the girl I had gone to see it with --- what? I used to go see movies with girls, occasionally! Why are you so surprised? ---- I blabbed on about it for some minutes, trying to get her to see what I was talking about, but she wasn't as hardcore as me and didn't really care.

Probably why I didn't get laid that night...

But it annoys me. Meyer was the one who got it right the second time with “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, and for him to miss such a huge hole in the plot is to me just unbelievable. Surely someone proofread this and, at the very least, thought of a way to make it work? I mean, the Excelsior was coming to join the Enterprise: couldn't it have detected the Klingon ship instead of the Enterprise? That would have made sense, even if it meant taking some of the limelight away from Kirk. Surely the cohesion of the story is more important than the egos of actors?

Hmm. I guess not. Still a great movie, and I'll be reviewing it in full later in the coming year. But for now, it remains a huge plothole that, while it doesn't ruin the movie for me, certainly makes it that little bit less enjoyable.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Here's a Star Trek plothole for you: why does the Federation consistently send out it's most advanced and powerful capital ships on scouting missions? That **** has got to be expensive. I know Star Trek is a commie paradise where everyone works for kudos, but somewhere along the line, someone's life is being made harder cause the Enterprise needs more Dilithium crystals.

And perhaps you might say that they want to make sure that ships all on their own in the vastness of space are capable of defending themselves. Okay, so why doesn't the Enterprise have support vessels? A modern capital ship can't even sneeze without being supported by at least five hundred other ships. If exploration is so important that it requires the use of ships that any navy I can think of would be more concerned with using for actual military purposes, then why do they send them out basically naked? They're willing to shell out the *insert closest approximation of Federation currency* to send the Enterprise in the first place, so I don't see why they shouldn't do the job right.

Perhaps they don't want other races to think they're sending armed invasion forces to conquer the unknown reaches of the galaxy. Okay, they're still sending what amounts to an aircraft carrier, or a battleship. Just because the Enterprise isn't as threatening as an entire fleet, it's still a pretty ****ing terrifying weapon of war to just pop up into your system.

So, someone please explain to me why Captain Kirk isn't in command of a relatively well-armed science vessel?

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Trollheart

Yeah, you're right. But it's all about Roddenberry's rose-tinted vision of the future, where the military only intervene where they needed. Yeah. fuck that. I can't even count the number of civilisations Kirk, Picard and Janeway screwed up --- sometimes in violation of the PD but sometimes by invoking it --- and I only don't mention Sisko cos he didn't get a chance, stuck there on his station, but he certainly tried.

The idea that the Federation is, as Khan once put it, "one big happy fleet" is so laughable as to be, well, laughable. I guess you could say that a) starships have the longest range and therefore are best for exploration and b) in any voyage of exploration you're bound to come across some badasses, and then it would be best to have something to defend yourself better than a bunsen burner. But sure, it makes no sense, but then, it wouldn't make good TV (or movies) either would it?

I propose a new start for whenever they get around to rebooting the franchise on TV:

"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship [insert name]. Its mission, to seek out new life and new civilisations. To bring them forcibly under the control of the United Federation of Planets. To make them see things our way, and if they don't, to cripple them with weaponry like no man has seen before."

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Pet_Sounds

Looking forward to hearing more about the different Christmas Carol versions. Of the ones I've seen, the Muppet version is my favourite. It's also one of two films that have ever made me cry.

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Everybody's dying just to get the disease

Trollheart

Bah! Humbug! Oh very well then: throw another coal onto the fire if you must --- think I'm made of money do ye? --- and let's get this party started!

A brief note on my scoring system (brief. Yeah... ) In this faceoff I'm not too concerned with things like box-office returns, budgets or what year each came out, unlike in the “Battle of the Classic Christs” last year. I will be taking into account the acting ability of the cast, but will also be looking at how the character is written, within the confines of the fact that they can't step too far out of the original Dickens model, or they'll certainly lose points. Bill Murray, I'm looking at you! I'll be grading the main characters and also any other supporting ones who impress me, how well the film sticks to the novel, and also how it made me feel in terms of horror, raw emotion and what I'm calling the Puke Level. I don't need to explain that, do I? Areas or scenes of the movie where you just want to chuck. Cratchits, step forward!

If something is original I will award it points, but if it's copied in a later version it may lose points. The ghosts, from the third movie on, will be graded separately and their scores added, as some of the movies only concentrate really on one of them. Any other criteria will be noted and added, with bonus points given for things like innovative twists that work (Kermit) or future stars who play bit parts. There'll be a short (and I mean short. No, I really do this time!) comments section before the score just to give you a basic idea of what I thought of the movie, any interesting, humourous or low points I picked out of it, and how, if at all, it compares to the previous versions I've watched up to that point.

Year: 1910
Medium: Black-and-white
Starring: Marc McDermott, Charls S. Ogle
Directed by: J. Searle Dawley
Length: 20 mins

Brief comments: For an early (the earliest) silent version of the tale, this is a lot better than you would expect. To be able to compress the main storyline (minus Tiny Tim) into such a short space of time is really quite impressive, and the music used really complements the movie (carols and hymns: “God rest ye merry gentlemen” etc) and is the perfect backdrop. I'm also impressed that there are few of those “cards” used --- you know the ones: when the characters speak or when a scene is not obvious and they had to explain, like “Mister Beadle goes into the tea shop”. They only use three or four, and only to explain the basics of the story. There is in fact no speech (I know it's a silent movie: I mean no speech on cards) and the acting talent needed to convey the various emotions Scrooge goes through over the course of the twenty minutes, especially his epiphany, is nothing short of inspired. A really good start and something of a revelation.

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Marc McDermott is perfect in the part. Score of 10, due to the fact that he has to act everything without speaking, and does so very well indeed.
Marley: n/a
Cratchit: A decent performance from Charles S. Ogle, but Scrooge steals the show. Rated at 6.
Tiny Tim: n/a
Others: n/a
The Ghosts: Poor, as you would expect: mostly faintly-glimpsed shadows and suggestions. Compared to the depictions in later movies, even the next one, I'd give this a very low 2.

Faithful to the novel: Very much so, except for the exclusion of Tiny Tim: 9

Emotion level: For a silent movie, yeah, not bad. There were a few tears in your reviewer's eyes. 6

Puke level: Zero really. Without any overly dramatic dialogue it's easier to just get lost in the story.

Horror level: Kind of zero really too. Nothing about this could horrify anyone.

Soundtrack: Even though a silent film it had a decent and well-chosen backdrop of music, so I'd give it a generous 8.

So then, total is 32
Not a terribly high score, but I must award extra points for a) it being the first Scrooge movie and b) conveying the story so well without words. An extra 10 points for each so that makes a total of 52, a much better and more representative score.

Year: 1935
Medium: Black-and-white
Starring: Seymour Hicks, Donald Halthrop, Robert Cochran, Mary Glynne, Garry Marsh
Directed by:Henry Edwards
Length: 63 mins

Brief comments:For the first version with sound this is pretty damn good. Seymour Hicks is a different sort of Scrooge --- small, hunched over, with to me a rather uncanny resemblance to Edmund Callon from “The Onedin Line”, but that's just me: this is way too early for it to be him and anyway it's a different actor. The setting of the scene is a little unnecessarily long, the ghosts are poor at best but the emotional level is decent. Bob Cratchit is most decidedly gay (!) as is Tiny Tim (but I always hated that little bastard anyway) and the ending seems for some reason quite rushed, with a lot of things said literally --- “I'll be a second father to Tiny Tim” etc. Overall though, not bad.

I do like how the butcher's shop is closed when he sends the boy to buy the big turkey: well it would be, wouldn't it? It is after all Christmas Day! A lot of versions gloss over this. There's also an unintentionally (I assume) funny scene where the Lord Mayor is throwing a party and his aide asks him, quite straight-faced: “Would Your Honour like to make his speech now, or would you allow the ladies and gentlemen to continue enjoying themselves?” Zing! New aide, please!

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Seymour Hicks is good in the role: crotchety, mean, twisted and miserable, and also plays the “new” Scrooge well, capering and dancing and grinning like a schoolboy. Scores a good 8
Marley: n/a; never really seen except as a bad reflection in Scrooge's door knocker.
Cratchit: Played well by Donald Calthrop, but his effeminate manner and his almost unreasonable acceptance of Tiny Tim's death in the future sequence annoys me, so I'm only giving him a 7.
Tiny Tim: Gaaah! How I hate him! Still, he's there and he plays his role well, does Philip Frost. AND we get to see him dead. So ... meh alright ... a grudging 6 for him.
Others: Not really. The gentlemen who look for a donation are okay but nothing more, the kid who gets the turkey, the butcher, all ok and Scrooge's nephew is a pain. So as a group I'll give ;em a 4, as nobody really stands out that well.
The Ghosts: Only one ghost really, he of Christmas Present, and he's annoying and in fact the blueprint for many of the future movies for that ghost. For that reason I'll have to give him a 6. The other two are not really seen at all.

Faithful to the novel: Pretty much, yes, so this gets an 8

Emotion level: Yeah, again I teared up a little. 7

Puke level: Quite high, mostly due to Cratchit and his annoying family. The puke level, if awarded, is a minus figure, so here we get -7

Horror level: I was quite chilled by the trio dividing up Scrooge's belongings; they were evil incarnate, but casual evil, which made it worse. Taking his bedsheets from the corpse's bed? And his shirt? Brrr! A big 10 here for the horror level!

Soundtrack: Kind of copies the silent movie, so though it's okay I'll have to take points away for originality and give it a 5

So what have we got then?
Total = 54
Must award points for being the first sound version, another 10
So a total then of 64

Note: I wanted to do these in chronological order --- all I could find anyway ---- but the next one up is the first Hollywood version, very important, released in 1938. It's proved hard to track down and I've had to buy it, so while I wait for the DVD to arrive I'm going to move on (Christmas post, you know?) and I'll come back to it when I can. For now, the next one up is...

Year: 1951
Medium: Black-and-white
Starring: Alastair Sim, Kathleeen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley
Directed by: Brian Desmond Hurst
Length: 86 mins

Brief comments: A decent version, follows the story well but I think gets a little bogged down, both in Scrooge's dealings with his company and a hitherto-unnamed character who was never in the book, and with the Ghost of Christmas Past; his past experiences take up nearly half the movie! Also, at the end for some reason, Tiny bloody Tim is walking! Don't think that was ever explained: even with all Scrooge's money I don't think he could invent a cure for polio, or whatever it was the kid was suffering from that made him lame. Bit overkill maybe?

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Good portrayal by Sim, but a better one by a young George Cole (Arfur Daley) as the young Ebeneezer. Give him a 7
Marley: Awful. Hammy overacting and much moaning and wailing. To think this man would go on to become super-suave Steed in “the Avengers!” Visually, just a faded man. A very poor 3
Cratchit: Annoying and crawly as ever; not quite as gay as in the previous film. Give him a 7
Tiny Tim: Very annoying and smug. Irritating to the nth degree. 3
Others: Hattie Jacques shines as Fan, Ebeneezer's sister, and Kathleen Harrison is excellent in an expanded role for his housekeeper. Both get a solid 7 for their role.
The Ghosts: Ghost of Christmas Past: Terrible, just a shadow. 3
Ghost of Christmas Present: A rip-off from the previous film. Another 3. Nothing new.
Ghost of Christmas to Come: A bony hand/hooded silent figure. Sigh. 3
Ghosts total: 9

Faithful to the novel: Yeah, pretty much so though the addition of Jorkin is annoying and serves no real purpose, plus he's a prick. So lose points for that. Say 6

Emotion level: Teared up a little but not much. 3

Puke level: Extended scenes with the Cratchits and in Scrooge's past earn this a healthy -8

Horror level: None. Zero. Even the "dividing-up" scene here can't compare to the pure dread and chilling horror of the 1938 version.

Soundtrack: Again, nothing special. Your basic hymns and carols. Yawn. Another 5.

Total = 39
Lowest score yet. But add in a plus 5 for each well-known names, or names that would become well-known in Cole, Jacques, MacNee (even if he did ham the role up more than a bacon sandwich!) and Jack Warner, later to be Dixon of Dock Green gives an additional 20
Making the total a much more respectable 59

The way it will work then is that three movies are faced off against each other, and the winner from each trio goes through to the "quarter finals" as it were. Then later, the five/six best are faced off in two groups until finally we have two Scrooge movies who will go head-to-head, the best of the best, to decide which of them I consider to be the top of all the versions of this magical tale.

So in this round the clear winner in the 1935 version with Seymour Hicks, with a grand total of 64. This movie will then go through to face whichever wins the next round, coming up as soon as I've had a chance to watch three more movies!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018