Wasn't Ford Prefect, the late, lamented Compo's buddy in "Last of the Summer Wine" (otherwise known as "Dark Shadows Comes to Yorkshire")?

Dunno, never saw that show.  However, the one I was thinking of was the one in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the answer to life, the universe and everything is said to be FORTY TWO.

The Concordances are great.  The artwork alone (by the late, great Warren Oddsson) is worth the price of purchase, not to mention all the detailed synsopses of DS episodes, trivia, photos, essays and other cool stuff.  Unfortunately Kathleen stopped using the slick-looking vanity press binding style she employed a few years back, I'd assume due to cost, but if you can overlook of the ringbound style you'll most certainly enjoy the contents I'm sure.

I would double triple and quadruple all the good words said about the Concordances.  Excellent references when you are writing fanfiction!  And the artwork is up to the best quality standards in any fandom I can think of.

Alas the cost is not the only reason a lot of zine publishers have stopped using the perfect bound method you refer to. What a lot of them have found (especially in this age of cheap copyshops taking the place of offset print shops) is that unless you have a printer who does a good thorough job  with good quality glue, (read $$$)  the perfect bound doesn't hold up too well.  The other one you mention, the GBC binding, tends to be more durable and is more forgiving when you reread zines a lot.  Easier to read, too when you can turn back the pages on themselves without risk of damaging the zine.

I've contributed to a lot of zines (even put one out long ago, as well as a quarterly letterzine) and have nothing but the greatest respect for the product Kathy Resch puts out.

I just wish her WODS came out a LOT more often.  New, high quality DS fanfiction is getting harder and harder to find out here on the net.....

I seem to remember that Barnabas once told Carolyn (his new "assistant") that that warlock (or witch doctor?) on one of those Caribbean islands, HAD told Mr. B. the "secret, magic number of the universe."

You can tell its been one of THOSE weeks at work.  I just got the mental image of Ford Prefect whispering "42" in Barnabas' ear.

    Hope you have a great one!

 

Got one even stranger than that one about your ex coworker, Buzz.

Was talking to a friend of mine on the phone a couple days ago.  This is someone who mostly does Regional SF cons, media cons, SCA events and the occasional Worldcon.  She went to a couple of the Fests when they first started up in Newark, but NOTHING in over 15 years, nor has she ordered anything from MPI. (By the way it didn't surprise me to hear that they probably are using MPIs lists for mailings.  It makes perfect sense to me, given MPIs big presence at the Fests, as a way to contact an audience with a demonstrated interest in DS.)

Bottom line is Toni  got a flyer for the fest.  Makes you wonder whether for the 40th they are culling from every membership list they ever had, or where they are buying their mailing lists.  She and I were scratching our heads trying to figure out how, if not from the old Fest list, they got her name.  (She's seriously considering coming for at least one day, by the way.  IF she's not too dead from Pennsic, which is only a couple weeks before the Fest.  I LOVE contaminating people!  )

Just to interject my pet bete-noire about the stories set in "the PAWSSST" (I do adore how Joan pronounced that word)--namely, that a family with the standing of the Collins' in the 1790s, 1840s and 1890s would have had a full staff of servants (in the 1790s and 1840s, this would have been very necessary due to all the hard physical labor necessary to perform simple tasks of household maintenance).  Instead, we get Riggs and Stokes holding down the fort in 1795, and poor Beth (whom Judith keeps trying to fire) the only servant seen onscreen in 1897.  I can't remember any servants in 1840 apart from Hortense the Hapless.

The only time the house seemed to be properly staffed was in the 1940s, judging from the list of people Liz fired in '49.

Nice to see such great responses to this! 

I was wondering whether someone would bring up the servant thing.  Have to admit, it's a pet peeve of mine too.  But -- and I admit being unusual in this -- I tend to think of DS as more of a play than a tv show.  I take it for granted with servants  that there are far more than we see "on stage"; we just don't see them because they aren't essential to the action.

Add to that DC's tendency to use as few actors as possible and you get such weirdnesses as Beth -- who was Jenny's LADIES MAID -- doing everthing from the household dusting to the toting and hauling as well as caring for the kids.  Taking care of Grandmamma as the cover story for caring for Jenny made sense for a ladies maid; the other stuff didn't really.  Not to mention wondering , between the long hours of a Victorian servant, running around on the various adventures   and then working for Petofi full time, when the HECK the woman got any sleep.

Anyway, as to the lack of the proper servant population in the various periods, I just give them the right number and kind of staff for the time in my minds eye.  Just one more thing for that list my friend AngeliqueWins and I often discuss, of scenes that you KNOW had to have happened, but we never saw. 

I find it interesting how they handled the Collins' wealth through the various RT storylines.  Interestingly enough, being a history wonk, I find that what they show parallels how things progressed in society in the real world.

In Barnabas' time, Joshua is a wealthy shipbuilder, apparently with shipping interests in various parts of the world.  The connection with the West Indies makes me think of the song Molassses to Rum to Slaves from 1776 (in which Virginia Vestoff -- Samantha  in 1840 -- starred on Broadway).  The song WAS based on a truism of the time, and that trade was the basis of a LOT of the extreme wealth of the time.

1840s we have Quentin the head of the household as the Captain of what sounds like a Clipper Trade Ship, and the implication is that the family has a large fleet, and, though my memory is rusty on this, it sounds like they also have a major shipbuilding business.

The 1897 family is implied to have vast wealth.  They show Gilded age extravagance and its inferred even more by Edward being good friends with British nobility  - and you needed SERIOUS money to run in those circles in Victorian times.  This fits with a time when shipping and trade were at its height and anyone involved with them could increase even the biggest fortune many times over.

But then we come to 1966. This is a time when shipping is dying, planes are taking away most of the passenger trade and a lot of the cargo trade.  There has not been a big call for shipbuilding for many decades. The family business seems to consist mostly of a cannery.  We see Elizabeth is trying to keep Collins Enterprises afloat, and negotiating with the town to lower her property taxes on teh grounds that most of the property is unused.   A far cry from the family who had enough spare assets that Naomi';s jewels disappearing didn't even rate a hiccup on the family's style of living.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Quote from: Pansity on June 14, 2006, 12:05:40 AM

Seemed to me that it was better than average Sciffi fare -- watchable, with a standard SF -plot with some inspiration from Forbidden Planet and various and sundry disaster movies.

Oh, I agree that it wasn't the worst premise of a SF channel movie, and actually I thought it showed some originality, even though the creature itself seemed like a composite of familiar monsters.  What I was ridiculing was the script, which was predictable (can you say "redshirts"?) and trite.  The scientific explanations showed promise but were abruptly dropped.  I also mentioned the SFX; SciFi has done much, much better.  And as for Kristy Swanson's performance, well, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she studied Rachel Hunter's acting in SF's "Larva."  

I do look forward to reading your review when it's available, Pansity. 

I think we're really on the same page with opinions . Its just that I have such a low opinion of so much of what I've seen of their in house productions  - especially the insulting to the point of infuriating Sci Fi Buzz most thankfully of late memory! (I posted somewhere else about the bad experiences of years past and general contempt with which the SciFI Channel types treated fans even when they wanted to woo them) that anything even adequate looks really good to me.  The actors of course do the best they can with what they're given (and how many DS eps can we rationalize with THAT comment <G>), but wouldn't plausible, coherent scripts be NICE?

The creature itself reminded me somewhat of the ID monster from Forbidden Planet, with bits and pieces from various Alfred Hitchcocks and Twilight Zones.

Again I only saw not quite to the middle due to a phone call (and I do feel a bit cheated - I realized that means I only got HALF my birthday present ). So, I will have to watch the whole thing to have a better idea how they handled the whole thing. Last thing I remember was when the place imploded and of course the geeky guy bought the farm; as you said, typical redshirt.  NO clue yet what happened after that.

Hopefully I can shake this cold and have enough brain cells to do a review after a rewatch.  (Thanks for the kind words on the potential review, btw.  It's been downright embarrassing how long the site has gone without updates. Before the thing I put up in April, I'd not been able to shake REAL LIFE long enough to do anything since SEPTEMBER.   ).