Feeling fucked up is what makes us human… though marine biologists are increasingly convinced that dolphins and whales have complex emotional lives [mammals, babies, mating, yeah yeah—but more than that. The emotional and societal intelligence of elephants, for example, has been well documented]. Side note: I think EVERY life form possess complex emotional lives: dogs, cats, bugs, whatever. Yeah. Even bugs. Even if it’s mere sensory input: “Food! GOOD! Time to burrow, GOOD! GIANT HUMAN THUMB DESCENDING TO SQUASH ME, BAD! BAD! BA—”
The image above is THE SEER from VIKINGS.
He can’t face the mirror every morning and say “Hello, beautiful,” yet, he can tell the future. [Yeah, I know, the Blind Seer is a horrid cliché. But his presence in the story of VIKINGS is vital.]
Because we are looking back through the lens of history.
The Seer is an easy, fun character. Maybe too fun, too easy. Just look at the toy they made out of him, FFS!
This post is a bonus to the forthcoming edition of HEXES, wherein I really babble uncontrollably about VIKINGS. Sneak peek:
The past will always catch us. The future, too. Because we’re fucked-up humans. Tragically aware of the inescapable web of time.
In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed fourteen women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft. The sorcery materialized in January. The first hanging took place in June, the last in September; a stark, stunned silence followed. Although we will never know the exact number of those formally charged with having “wickedly, maliciously, and feloniously” engaged in sorcery, somewhere between a hundred and forty-four and a hundred and eighty-five witches and wizards were named in twenty-five villages and towns. The youngest was five; the eldest nearly eighty. Husbands implicated wives; nephews their aunts; daughters their mothers; siblings each other. One minister discovered that he was related to no fewer than twenty witches.
The population of New England at that time would fit into Yankee Stadium today. Nearly to a person, they were Puritans. Having suffered for their faith, they had sailed to North America to worship “with more purity and less peril than they could do in the country where they were,” as a clergyman at the center of the crisis later explained. On a providential mission, they hoped to begin history anew; they had the advantage of building a civilization from scratch. Like any oppressed people, they defined themselves by what offended them, which would give New England its gritty flavor and, it has been argued, America its independence…
Meticulously researched and dynamically presented with the precision of a laser, Stacy Schiff’s article is a must-read. Click and enjoy. Your responses will be graded.
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PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (full movie)
Ridley Scott’s ALIEN would arrive 14 years after this creeper by the great Mario Bava, and Scott swears up and down that he never ever ever EVER saw Planet of the Vampires. Okay, that may very well be; Ridley’s a strange chap, after all. He might take two months to shoot a fifteen second battle scene and neglect to call his mother or brush his teeth for the duration of the shoot. (Total hearsay, by the way. The Creep swears he heard this story from the cousin of a friend he met in a detoxification unit for nitroglycerin withdrawal.) But hey, man, just look at what’s onscreen: somebody in the ALIEN camp saw POTV, Giger or the screenwriters or somebody, because the coincidences aren’t just visual riffs, they’re plot details, too, details that would resurface in 2012’s PROMETHEUS. Whatever the origin, there’s something lurking in the shadows. If you’re never seen PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES this is your lucky night. Because this film is so much more than a curious forerunner in the ALIEN mee-thös, it’s so original and filled with real dread. The landscape is one of the best purgatories ever exposed to film. And everybody is passable in semi skin-tight black leather.
PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES is mandatory viewing and yes your comments will be graded.
Vögguvísa, a commissioned work of art by Becky Munich
Mlleghoul writes:
Many years ago, when my sister and I were very young, my mother would sing us bedtime songs as she tucked us in for the evening. Well, my sister really. The little lullabye wasn’t for meant me, but I listened from the twin bed on my side of the room and was comforted by it anyway.
As my younger sibling lay sleepily, clutching a faded pink crocheted afghan in one small hand and a red wooden rooster named “Wolf” in the other, my mother crooned to her in soft, low tones:
“Well, a-hee hee hee and a-ha ha ha, and a couple of ho ho hos…”
Not much of a lullaby really. Who knows what it meant? Harmless nonsense that she made up to send a fussy child off to dreams, most likely.
Older now, and having a lifetime of observing my mother (and yet still not really knowing the woman at all), I found myself growing vaguely uneasy the other evening, wondering what exactly she might have been thinking about as a young single mother – and a very troubled woman -singing her children to sleep on a moonless night in the suburbs.
Bíum, bíum, bambaló, Bambaló og dillidillidó. Vini mínum vagga ég í ró, en úti bídur andlit á glugga.
“Beeum, beeum, bambalow, Bambalow and dillidillidow. I rock my friend to sleep, but outside there’s a face in the window.”
Mlleghoul has outdone herself with this remarkable and compelling post. Inconstant reader, you are urged to to explore the full fathom of this piece here.Your responses will account for 1/3 of your final grade.
I remember the first time a piece of fiction left me haunted. It was one of the stories in William Hope Hodgson’s collection Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. I won’t say which story, so as not to spoil it for you, and you should read the entire, wonderful book. All the stories have as their protagonist Thomas Carnacki, a Sherlock Holmesian detective who investigates supernatural manifestations. If you think your manor house is haunted, you can hire Carnacki to investigate and, if there’s a ghost, to try to get rid of it.
Sometimes the haunting turns out to be real, and Carnacki battles the supernatural entity from his “Electric Pentacle.” Other times, he discovers and reveals that it’s a hoax. The stories in the former category are vivid and scary, and the ones in the latter category are intriguing mystery yarns. But there is another, more powerful category…
In one story, Carnacki investigates what seems to be a haunted house, and he proves that it’s a scam by debunking and explaining all the supposedly supernatural events—except for one. It’s in keeping with the rest of the manifestations, but it’s not part of the hoax. So what is it?
Carnacki doesn’t know. It remains a mystery.
When I first read that book as a kid, some of the stories scared me while I read them, but afterward I was unscathed. But that story, with one mystery left unsolved, wouldn’t leave me alone, especially after the lights were switched off at night. There was the relief of knowing that there wasn’t really a ghost… but, if there was no ghost, what could have been the cause of that one thing?
To celebrate the October 13th release of my forthcoming debut novel, King of Shards, I will be featuring one new blog entry a day about a different Judaic myth for 36 days. Today’s entry is on Lilith, Adam’s first wife. — MK
“Lady Lilith” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(The author has graciously allowed HEXES to repost his LILITH post in toto.)
Lilith was Adam’s first wife. As you can guess, it wasn’t a long marriage. They argued a lot. Adam desired Lilith to lie beneath him, but Lilith refused and said, “No, Adam, you shall lie beneath me!” They argued and fought for a long while, until one day Lilith had had enough. She uttered God’s Name, which has great powers, and she flew off into the air. Adam grew upset and cried out to God, “Lord, the woman you gave me has just fled! What gives?” God, hearing Adam’s cry, called upon three angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, and told them to bring Lilith back, whether by her own free will or by force.
Lilith meanwhile had been living in a cave by the Red Sea, the same sea where Pharaoh’s army would drown centuries later. The angels found her and demanded she come back to Adam. “God commands you to go back to him! If you come with us, all will be swell. If not, we’ll drown a hundred of your demon offspring every day.”
And Lilith replied, “Do what you will. Did you know I already slept with the Great Demon, Samael? Also, don’t you know I was created to strangle newborn infants in the crib, boys before their eighth day and girls before their twentieth?” She made a pact with the angels: if in the future she ever saw the angels’ names on an amulet, she would have no power over the person near where the amulet hangs. The angels tried to bargain with her further, but this was the best they were going to get from her. And so they agreed, but with one addendum: one hundred of her demon children would have to perish every day. Lilith said, “No sweat!”
This is why one hundred of Lilith’s demon children die every day and why the names of the three angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, written on an amulet, protect people from her evil influence.
The Myth’s Origins
In the book of Genesis 1:27 it says, “Male and female, He created them.” But to the ancient rabbis who interpreted this text, this passage seemed to contradict the sequential creation story of Adam and Eve later in Genesis 2:21-22. So in order to rectify this contradiction of two creations, the myth of Lilith arose. The name “Lilith” itself originates in Isaiah 34:14, where the passage reads, “Yea, Lilith shall repose there.” Lilith here is generally understood to be a reference to ancient and pre-existing Babylonian demons. The Babylonians feared “Lilitu,” a succubus who seduced men in their sleep. They also feared a demon called “Lamashtu” who slew newborns in their cradles. These singular demons in turn came from the myth of the “lilû,” a class of demons who were hungry for victims because they themselves were the spirits of young men and women who had died young. These demons snuck into people’s homes looking for victims to take the place of husbands and wives they never had. It’s also interesting to note that originally these “lilith” demons came in both male and female forms, and only later does “Lilith” become singular and female. It is likely that the demons Lilitu and Lamashtu were blurred together into one being, and the demon references in Isaiah and later in the rabbinical commentary came from these existing Babylonian sources.
However, another possible source of the myth comes from the first century text, The Testament of Solomon. The text recounts how King Solomon uses a magic ring to call demons before him in a quest to get them to aid on his construction of the ancient temple in Jerusalem. One of the demons is called Obyzouth. She is a strangler of children, but she can be thwarted by the angel Raphael and by women who write her name on an amulet.
Scholars surmise that Lilith became such a large mythic figure that she absorbed the roles of many of these lesser-known demons. A full history of Lilith was eventually written out in the ninth-century text, Alpha Beta de-Ben.
Lilith was said to have long red hair, a face white and pink. In some depictions, she has wings. She adorns herself in all manner of decorations. Six pendants from Egypt hang from her ears, her neck is circled with all the ornaments of the East. Her words are smooth and seductive, causing a man to let down his guard. Only then will she reveal her true self, a fierce warrior, her garments flaming, her eyes burning and horrible. She slays men and casts them down into the lowest hell.
People feared Lilith so much that men were advised not to sleep alone in a house, lest her spirit seize him. It is said she dangles her long hair in a man’s face, causing him to have lustful dreams. While asleep, she will steal his seed and use it to make cambion children (half demon, half human) who will be outcasts from both the human and demon worlds for being neither fully human nor fully demon.
The Spell to Banish Lilith
The following text is found inside amulets or inscribed on their surface and then placed near pregnant mothers or newborns to protect them from Lilith’s influence.
“Out Lilith! I adjure you in the Name of God, and in the names of the three angels sent after you, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Samengelof, to remember the vow you made that when you find their names you will cause no harm, neither you nor your cohorts; and in their names and in the names of the seals set down here, I adjure you, Queen of Demons, and all your multitudes, to cause no harm to a woman while she carries a child nor when she gives birth, nor to the children born to her, neither during the day nor during the night, neither through their food nor through their drink, neither in their heads nor in their hearts. By the strength of these names and seals I so adjure you, Lilith, and all your offspring, to obey this command.”
An amulet to protect mothers from Lilith
Lilith and Feminism
Beginning in the 1960s with the rise of the feminist movement, women began to recognize Lilith as a model of a strong and independent woman. Lilith would not submit to Adam’s request for the missionary position and instead demanded Adam lie beneath her. When he refused, she said, “Pshaw! I don’t need you.” And she flew off, making a home by herself, sleeping with whomever she wanted, where she was perfectly happy to dwell without Adam or the patriarchal God. She didn’t need a man to complete her. Women recast Lilith not as a killer of children and night demoness, but as a symbol of feminine power and independence.
In 1972, in the feminist magazine Ms., Lilly Rivlin published an article aiming to reclaim Lilith as a symbol for modern women, and the idea quickly spread. In a 1998 book, Whose Lilith?, Lilly Rivlin said, “In the late twentieth century, self-sufficient women, inspired by the women’s movement, have adopted the Lilith myth as their own. They have transformed her into a female symbol for autonomy, sexual choice, and control of one’s own destiny.”
Lilith continues to be a powerful symbol of feminism and the independent woman today, spreading far outside of her ancient Jewish origins.
Lilith Today
While Lilith continues to be a powerful symbol among feminists as a strong, independent female figure, among many ultra-Orthodox communities around the world, amulets protecting newborn children from evil Lilith are considered essential. The habit of tying a red ribbon around a child’s bed is also connected to the Lilith myth. One can, in certain sections of Jerusalem, purchase protective amulets against Lilith.
While one part of the globe fears her influence, another embraces her power. Her mythology is rich and long and diverse, and all because of one extra sentence in the bible!
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What an ambitious, original, and IRRESISTIBLE project! Hats off to the Kressel dude! Matt’s currently up to Day 23, The Seven Shepherds of Sukkot. It is our passionate hope that all of these entries will be assembled in book form. We’d buy it, and you would, too! Otherwise you would receive a big fat EFF MINUS LOVE DRAX on your final grade.
Gates is a new mixtape series from Om Unit. While drawing on elements familiar to Om Units regular fans and listeners, the series focuses on sonic architecture and listener experience.
There will be seven “Gates”, each exploring a unique and concisely expressed theme and containing music and sounds chosen without the constraints of genre or style.
Gate #1 is “Sleep/Surrender”
Listen & Enjoy… and this is OPTIONAL. Who says we’re mean and evil teachers?
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And finally
HELL’S CLUB
There are mashup videos, and there are mashup videos. And then there’s the Nobel Prize worthy HELL’S CLUB.
This is your final test. SKIP IT AT YOUR PERIL, PUNY HUMANS.
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— breathes a sigh of relief that’s been a month in coming —
Comp C by a hair. Note corrected/improved setting of features.
The runner up was…
Comp B. A favorite of many, including me. Rest assured, this will be a HEXES cover sometime in the future.
Some notes.
The features “Echo and The Bunnymen LIVE” and “Sexy Girls” will be dropped from this issue and replaced by a shout-out for the new BIG CLICK featuring an essay by Barry Graham and a new exciting daily blog post by Matthew Kressel, 36 Days of Judaic Myth; Day 1 features Lilith. “Sexy Girls” will no longer appear in HEXES but move instead to that “other” webzine we infrequently pub, ANGRY MORON, a much more appropriate space to squat. HEXES is a zine of class (we hope); a feature like “Sexy Girls,” an unashamedly borderline misogynistic gallery that caters to The Male Gaze has no real place in HEXES. Unlike all the other “respectful” pics of sexy witches and shit, right?
The Echo concert and the intended Sexy Girls gallery will run as separate stand-alone posts later today.
Thanks again for voting, thanks to everybody who got the word out!
And that is all for this hour. Carry on. To Arms. Up the Irons. Keep Calm and Kill Zombies, etc.
Huh. Guess wordpress took away that nifty little voting tool. Anyway, email your choices to draxsimon@gmail.com at WBRI FM before midnight Tuesday 9/8 EST. Or make your preference known in comments, below. You can also get my attention on twitter. Vote A, B, or C.
The ideas and arguments are bigger than my puny brain, but this is the very short version of what I wanted to say.
Many of us ally ourselves with a symbol because we feel small, because the symbol is both macrocosm and religion, bigger and wider and purer than ourselves. Whether it is the cross or the swastika, the peace symbol or the confederate flag, the symbol becomes absolution. There is great discord in our consciousness, there is great disconnect between our heads and hearts and hands. The symbol solves all of that (seemingly) because it is at once abstract and simple yet all-encompassing, and there resides the symbol’s power: it becomes potent for both believers and non-believers, as if the symbol itself is a living force, an idea and presence beyond humanity. Which is of course total bullshit. Humankind scrawled all these symbols, all of them, every one. Someone somewhere possessed the graphical genius to come up with and differentiate between MEN’S ROOM and WOMEN’S ROOM, someone somewhere designed flags for countries, symbols for computers, brands for corporations. People made these symbols, not the other way around; symbols do not dictate our thoughts and actions.
This is beyond obvious, but it needs to be said: the confederate flag didn’t inspire Dylan Storm Roof AKA sociopathic asshole to walk into a church and blow away 9 people during a fucking prayer meeting. If he didn’t have the confederate flag to identify with, why, he would have found another symbol: maybe a burning cross, or a severed goat’s head, or some bullshit drawing he scrawled on his napkin. It doesn’t matter. The hate started in his heart, not in a flag. Any flag. Any symbol. Any word.
Taking down the confederate flag on Friday morning will accomplish absolute zilch, save fuel the fires of mind-cracked racists who will breathe deep and check their ammo.
I’m something of an optimist. I still want to believe that human beings are capable of looking beyond the simple scrawl of a symbol and look instead to their own hearts—even their own hate. The biggest racist asshole in the world is still worth more to me than a graphic I could redesign in thirty seconds. They, us, WE are worth so much more than a fucking symbol.
Because we should be capable of clicking past a symbol, a flag, and move on.
Ceres is seen from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on March 1, just a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored dwarf planet. The image was taken at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers).
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.“Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. “Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home.”In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.The most recent images received from the spacecraft, taken on March 1 show Ceres as a crescent, mostly in shadow because the spacecraft’s trajectory put it on a side of Ceres that faces away from the sun until mid-April. When Dawn emerges from Ceres’ dark side, it will deliver ever-sharper images as it spirals to lower orbits around the planet.“We feel exhilarated,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “We have much to do over the next year and a half, but we are now on station with ample reserves, and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives.”Dawn’s mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.Follow Dawn’s progress and discoveries.
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NIGHT GALLERY
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•In the last six months I’ve suffered from intense insomnia soI’m usually awake at 2:30 in the morning—which is when retro-minded local channel METV unspools episodes of Rod Serling’s ultra-dark anthology series, Night Gallery, a show I hadn’t seen since I was a child and at the time scared the living shit out of me. The opening theme used to terrify! If you haven’t clicked the youtube link above, do it. Right now. Man, that music? The images? Even the type design! Then again, I was a frail child. Anyway. There’s something really strange and fascinating about Night Gallery 40 years after the fact: the curator of The Gallery, Mr Serling, wrote a mere a handful of original and adapted scripts that are jaw-droppingly b-a-d. Which is fairly bizarre. Serling was arguably a true and passionate visionary in television, his Twilight Zone episodes still play surprisingly well. Yet a mere decade later his meager Night Gallery scripts are—at best—less than compelling and—at worst—head-scratchingly laughable. (In fairness: Night Gallery was at the end of Mr Serling’s career, and on camera he is visibly in poor health. But that doesn’t change the fact that the scripts he provided for the show truly sucked.) MOVING FORWARD. I wanted to include Night Gallery in this edition of HEXES because of the mega-creepy paintings in each episode by Tom Wright.
was easily the most influential comic book writer and artist to me when I was growing up, more than Lee, Kirby, Matsumoto, Tezuka, Nakazawa, Okazaki, Moore, Ellis, Ennis, Gerber, anybody.
YAH. See what I’m talking about?
The early to mid-seventies was a fabulous time for Marvel Comics. DEATHLOK, KILLRAVEN, HOWARD THE DUCK, TOMB OF DRACULA— it’s like the entire editorial department were all stoned! But my favorite was easily
JIM STARLIN’S WARLOCK
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“For I am the SAVIOR, The GODSLAYER, The DEMON,
The AVENGING HAND OF LIGHT…
ADAM WARLOCK!”
Um, yeah. This was not Spider-Man. This was trippy, strange, experimental—even existential. Adam Warlock had to commit suicide to prevent himself from becoming the arch-villain whom he would ultimately become thousands of years in the future. It was weird and strange and heartfelt, and beautifully drawn.
On the morning of March 11, I lost more than three thousand words I had written for both Jim Starlin’s Warlock and the following segment, Porn. They were complex sentences hard-fought for complex ideas, and I find myself so dispirited by this loss that I just can’t return to the mental battlefield in an effort to recapture/rewrite them. I guess I’m just a big wimp. I’m sorry. But I’ve other shit to attend to, and I must move forward.
The remainder of this edition of HEXES will be purely visual. Apologies.
I received an early (and lovely) birthday gift from a beloved sister:
American Grotesque is a lavish retrospective of grotesque, occult, and erotic images by the forgotten Hollywood photographer William Mortensen (1897–1965), an innovative pictorialist visionary whom Ansel Adams called the “Antichrist” and to whom Anton LaVey dedicated The Satanic Bible.
Mortensen’s countless technical innovations and inspired use of special effects prefigures the development of digital manipulation and Photoshop. Includes a gallery of more than one hundred striking photographs in duotone and color, many of them previously unseen, and accompanying essays by Mortensen and others on his life, work, techniques, and influence.
Nah, doubtful. There’s an old maxim about erotic photography: if it’s out of focus, it’s art. If it’s in focus, it’s porn. And all the shit I shoot is tightly, tightly in focus.
Mortensen’s images are gloriously out of focus, blurred, distorted, like snapshots of dreams.
Painterly, surreal, sinister, sexy… It’s no wonder hardcore realists like Ansel Adams hated Mortensen’s guts. He depicted a strange inner world that unsurprisingly shook up a lot of people in the first half of the 20th century. Maybe artists like Adams took offense that Mortensen’s images resembled the fake ghost photographs so rampant in the spiritualist movement that seized the imagination of both America and Europe decades earlier. It’s possible. Realists are notoriously uptight. Mortensen, while perhaps obsessed, was anything other than uptight.
Explore and enjoy his work, his world. It’s worth the trip. But send me no letters of complaints regarding the nightmares, nor the nocturnal emissions.
Britain, 1142 AD. We begin in a torture chamber, mid-interrogation of a “witch/pagan,” a female follower of the mysterious “Iron God of the Wood.” Two characters are introduced: Witchfinder Koenig, a young man, cold and efficient but NOT cruel and sadistic: Koenig is almost clinical in his pursuit of “evil;” and Counsel Carter, also young, supposedly poly-sci but really a fool ruled and spooked by his own libido. The two men have been friends since childhood.
Carter and Koenig trade quick notes on the situation: the growing menace/fear of the Iron God Cult, as well as the ever-weirder habits of Lord Jagged [Koenig’s direct boss, Master of “West London,” and the story’s number 2 villain].
As Carter and Koenig focus on the interrogation of the witch, Carter is feebishly aroused by the witch’s torment, but Koenig just wants to get to the bottom of things, directing the torturer to continue the questions: “Who is your god?! What does he tell you, what does he say?!” The torture is ratcheted up, disturbing Carter and even causing the usually cool Koenig discomfit as the question is repeated, “What does he say?!” and the witch finally gasps, “He says…” she lifts her bloody face and it is horrifying. “The Iron God says EXTERMINATE!” An energy beam belches from her mouth and there is gore and death in the chamber! “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”
The TARDIS: The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith have a disagreement about the nature of fame, funny rapid-fire dialogue which escalates into a heated match: which of them will be more famous, the Doctor or Sarah? The match ends w/ the Doctor “winning” and Sarah going away in a huff. The Doctor feels bad. He goes to his [special] bookshelf to find something to cheer Sarah, and comes across something extraordinary: a book from Sarah’s future, a beautiful book w/ glowing reviews, etc, a book Sarah herself will write in just a few short years! How wonderful—
But the Doctor realizes the book shouldn’t exist. Something’s wrong.
He consults the timestream. Something is very wrong! There is a Dalek manifestation when and where one did not exist “previously” on pre-industrial Earth! [By “previously,” this story takes place after the events chronicled in Genesis of the Daleks wherein the Doctor failed to halt the birth of the Daleks yet managed to slow their progress by “at least a thousand years.”] But now—! Has the Doctor’s “failure” on Skaro somehow made matters even worse? This is a question that will haunt him throughout the story.
Oh, the Doctor is not pleased. He flies with wrath to the control console. “But what’s this?” Sarah plucks the book jutting sloppily from the Doctor’s pocket—her book. She is delighted, of course. “Take a good look,” the Doctor snarls, “by the time I’m finished, that book will never exist!” Sarah wails “But noooo!” as the Doctor throws the TARDIS in gear and they are bound for 12th century England.
London is a pit! Mud, rain, miserable. The Doctor fiercely drags Sarah along. She complains only a little; she has secreted her future book under her coat. Soon they are at the dungeon seen in the prologue [the doctor having traced the burst of Dalek emissions], and the Doctor demands to interview the Dalek Pagan Lady (who has supposedly been executed, and many whispered utterances are quickly offered to affirm this) so the Doctor has to settle for Carter and Koenig; words/threats/demands ensue between the Doctor and Koenig; the Doctor learns all he thinks he needs to know and has nearly word-danced Sarah and himself out the door but are stopped by the sudden arrival of Lord Jagged [statuesque, always in shadow, cloak, very Christopher Lee]. Straight away Jagged knows the Doctor is an enemy, “Search them!” Out comes Sarah’s book, the dealbreaker! (“I told you to leave that in the TARDIS.”) Jagged seizes the book and orders the Doctor and Sarah taken to some dreadful place, but there is a break for freedom, a fight/chase/fight culminating in the Doctor being hauled away and Sarah free, but alone. She knows she must rescue the Doctor—but she also wants her book.
Sarah navigates the scary streets to Lord Jagged’s looming tower. [At this point in the story it will have been firmly-hinted/established that Jagged is, A: somehow connected to The Iron God of the Wood, and B: involved with the disappearance of many persons (especially young women) from the village; and, C: He is evil and scary and bad]. Sarah befriends a grubby street urchin (who will very intentionally channel Billie Piper as Rose Taylor, so let’s call her Lilly); the girl promises Sarah a way into Jagged’s tower, and together they infiltrate the gloomy fortress.
But Lilly the street girl is a lure: it begins as a scary adventure in dark subterranean rooms, and initially Sarah trusts/feels for Lilly. Then Lilly turns weird. Increasingly strange in the dark. And they are not alone: Suddenly, the street girl has found her best friend, just behind the curtain! They embrace with laughter. White teeth. Sarah feels genuine creeps and attempts to abort, but just like that she’s surrounded by a cluster of street urchin teenagers ala Brides of Dracula (except it’s the 12th century—they are filthy and grubby and by no means ethereal) and they drag/drive Sarah up into the tower, through doors and up stairs, shrieking, laughing at her, pulling at her hair and her clothes and ripping them a little as they bind Sarah’s hands behind her back, driving her into Lord Jagged’s WICKER DALEK THRONE ROOM where Lord Jagged stands statuesque, Sarah’s book clutched in his hand, and behind him—THE DALEK!
Meanwhile, the Doctor is also a prisoner and facing a supposedly terrifying torturer. “For the last time, WOT is THIS?” Not the Sonic Screwdriver but a different gizmo, the “TARDIS-FETCH” gizmo, and there is fun w/ wordplay and gizmos for a bit: the Doctor torments the would-be tormentor by ridiculing him, mimicking his voice, making the big idiot cry, but the Doctor has no time for such nonsense! He knows this Jagged bloke is very bad news and a key player in the “Dalek Presence,” and he knows Koenig knows it, too. Koenig is torn: he has sworn allegiance to Jagged (etc), but at the end of the day Koenig wants to know what the hell is really going on—the truth, the big score. “I don’t believe in God, Doctor,” Koenig will say at some point, “but I would very much like to have a word with The Devil.” [Must also insert K’s “fear/appreciation” of the woods, the mysterious cult, the Iron God; it’s not just Lord Jagged.] Koenig needs answers. So boom, he springs the Doctor, who rather nastily retrieves his all of his gizmos from the leather-masked big baby. Koenig has a confession: he has secreted the Pagan Dalek Lady away, she still lives! Koenig will allow the Doctor to examine her, and off they go. “Oh, and there was a young woman with me…”
Quick inter-scene with spooky, minimum detail: Sarah, captive in Lord Jagged’s Wicker Dalek Throne Room, her blood and brain pulsing, waiting for the moment to attempt her escape/strike. There is the ominous and silent presence of the Dalek, which is lit from behind by a constant and flickering red glow. The vampiric ragamuffin Lilly coos and paws over the bound but defiant Sarah as the other “Brides” swirl about. And there is Sarah’s book. Jagged is mad for Sarah’s book! “Oh,” he breathes, whispering of vengeance and freedom, “Oh, the blood will flow!”
The Dalek shrieks, “THE-BLOOD-WILL-FLOW.”
Carter has kept watch over the Pagan Dalek Lady in the burned-out ruins of a castle by the sea. She is pretty much a zombie, head tilted, repeating The god says exterminate. The Doctor examines her. No higher brain function. Worse, she’s some kind of low-tech cyborg puppet. Koenig doesn’t believe it. The Doctor slices her open to prove it. Carter vomits. But there is no gore, no blood: the Pagan Dalek Lady’s internal organs are all shriveled, and there new bones fashioned from plant stems and pulleys and gears made of wood, batteries fueled by chloro-something-acid, all wonders pointed out by the Doctor to the fascinated Koenig while Carter is endlessly sick in the background. It’s weird tech, but the Doctor’s seen the basic bio-mech interface before—on Skaro! He snaps the Pagan Dalek Lady back together, zaps her with the sonic screwdriver. She shudders, marches off. “Basic function: return to point of origin (or something).” Soon she’s a shadow rapidly disappearing down the spooky tunnels of the ruined castle. The Doctor + K + C follow. Koenig knows where the tunnels will eventually lead: Lord Jagged’s tower.
Jagged’s eyes blaze. “Leave us,” he says to the vampire babes and they split, leaving Jagged to spin some scary shit for Sarah, some it bullshit, some of it truthful [“The Schism Manifest”], with the Dalek repeating certain scary words and phrases for emphasis in ALL CAPS but the whole time Sarah’s working her way free as Jagged leans in real close and creepy, he’s got Sarah’s Book open and he’s jabbing at a Dalek-centric illustration and just as he reaches a scary climax, BOOM, Sarah lets Jagged have it. The Dalek is silent during what should be a gripping sequence of “real violence.” Sarah wins! She dashes away, book in hand, as Jagged asserts loudly (to the reader, the vampire girls, the universe) that she will never escape the tower! And he must have that book!
“JA-RED…” says a distinctly different Dalek voice, and Jagged freezes.
Meanwhile, deep underground, the Doctor says, “But we’re already here!” to Koenig. “Why not confront this Jagged bastard now?” They are at the end of the tunnel, directly beneath Jagged’s tower. Koenig and Carter are about to lose their nerve, warning of Jagged’s strange powers, when the shit hits the fan, they are attacked by the vampire girls. The Doctor sidesteps the melee, letting the two buffoons deal with it [there can be a funny hiss/snarl fight w/ the Doctor defeating one of the vamps w/ the Sonic used as if the gizmo were a cross in a Hammer film], and the Doctor slips away, still following the Pagan Dalek Lady.
Throne Room: “JA-RED.” Jagged’s caught. He turns to the red glow behind the silent Dalek. It is the voice of The Iron God of the Wood, aka The Wicker Dalek, itself. It is elsewhere. [Important: the designation “Wicker Dalek” is never used at any time, it is always TIGOTW, and later, “the Dalek.”] Their dialogue will reflect their dynamic: Jagged has long been a thrall of the Wicker Dalek, he wishes to usurp him. But the Wicker Dalek is well aware of Jagged’s puny human ambitions! “YOUR BETRAYAL WAS PREDICTED! CALCULATED! COUNTER MEASURES HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED!”
Throughout London, dozens of people go “Urk!” and start to twitch. Folk are transformed into creatures similar to the Pagan Dalek Lady, and as a gathering mob, they advance on Lord Jagged’s tower. In the tunnel, the Pagan Dalek lady springs to life and tries to zap the Doctor. We see a glimpse of Koenig and Carter losing ground to the vampire girls. Sarah’s in total absolute blind darkness (faulty scary staircase), but the black of the Tower about her thunders with crazy voices far and near as the Wicker Dalek proclaims to Jagged that “All-will-fear-the-Iron-God-of-the-Wood-as-never-before, all-will-believe-that THE BLOOD WILL FLOW! BELIEF WILL BE THE FUEL AND THE SCHISM MANIFEST WILL CONSUME THIS PLANET!!!”
Sarah saves the Doctor from the PDL. “You found the Dalek? Before me?!” And from here until they are separated again (page 9 of this synopsis), it will be full-out Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in high-form as these two old and ready friends trade notes [important lead-ins to later reveals: Jagged, Book, S’s doubts about the Dalek], they trade insults and even one or two laughs as they batter a path through the dark scary tower, a gallop that concludes with the big showdown in the throne room.
Vgrrrls + Lord Jagged are defeated/forced back. The horde of Dalek people are pounding, scratching on the locked doors of throne room, screaming EXTERMINATE and trying to gain egress any way they can (windows, walls, death beams shooting off, it’s total chaos). The Doctor descends on the silent black Dalek and rips it apart. It is rusted and rotted and empty. [Yes it is empty.]
“This is your Iron God of the Wood!” the Doctor booms to everybody. “A puppet controlled by Jagged!” Some of Jagged’s secrets will be revealed, his ingenious manipulation of scavenged technology from the long dead Dalek (only partially correct) and the Doctor will go on for a bit about the folly of mankind’s love of superstition and fear; the Doctor thinks he’s won. He hasn’t.
“DOK-TOR,” says the Iron God, aka the Wicker Dalek, communicating via the previously unseen weird terminal, and it is a mirror or a pool, an arch perhaps, a “low-tech/ supernatural” device in the Throne Room. We “see” only a flickering image on the other side, a blur of trees.
The Wicker Dalek (i.e., the living organism that was once inside the Dalek armored carrier) is physically elsewhere, deep in its fortress of forest and shielded by thousands of worshipers. Jagged has served the Wicker Dalek for decades, providing a “big city” chapter of the cult of the Iron God where a steady stream of followers literally gave their Blood and Belief—which fuels the Wicker Dalek. It has been collecting human “belief” for centuries and converting it into a weirdo form of energy that will power a terrible weapon, The Schism Manifest, which the Wicker Dalek intends to use to destroy the Earth.
Jagged hisses at the Doctor, “Let us fight the Iron God together!” (Note: they do not. Jagged is a very bad man.) “The book,” he insists, “contains the secret!”
The terminal becomes a weapon. A giant flat beam blasts out, narrowly missing the Doctor, slices through the throne room wall, shoots across the London sky. More blasts. The terminal goes berserk with blasts of light, worse than a disco. They’ve got to get out of there. The Doctor summons the TARDIS w/ gizmo seen earlier but as the T materializes it is struck by a random beam and damaged. Doctor and Sarah jump inside but the Old Girl really didn’t like taking that hit: lights flash, the T is sick. No matter! The Doctor forces her to warp in ways she shouldn’t, because he has a fix on the exact physical coordinates of the Wicker Dalek, he’s found it, he’s going to kill it.
But the TARDIS is too damaged. It is struck again in “mid-flight,” either by Jagged’s tower, or by a new, direct assault from the Wicker Dalek itself, using a fraction of the Schism Manifest energy. Anyway, ZAP.
The TARDIS is ripped in half. Pieces literally fly apart across the sky. Sarah and the Doctor are separated. Dramatic exciting free-fall stuff, hundreds of feet up. Sarah’s book is torn in two.
We stick w/ Sarah following her ejection from the sundered TARDIS at a height of several hundred feet. She survives, but suffers a debilitating injury, a dislocated shoulder. Also, she’s been flung miles away across the countryside, landing deep in “pagan country,” w/ warring, roaming tribes. Without overdoing it, Sarah’s injury will add realistic gravitas to a few minimal but gripping pages of material similar to an episode of “I Survived” wherein the harsh realities of staying alive in the wilderness alone while hurt is revealed as (obviously) no picnic. Her frame of mind becomes understandably challenged. The Doctor’s dead, she’s going to die alone, she’s going to be eaten by animals, etc. On the verge of giving up, Sarah is found by members of a tribe at war with the Cult of the Iron God of the Wood. She understands their words! And she realizes that the Doctor must still be alive (the Time Lord’s gift of understanding all language) and this realization gives Sarah hope. A hunky member (Cameron) of the newcomers [whom we will call the Grey Elk Tribe, both names placeholders], forces her shoulder back into joint (ouch). There is debate as to what to do w/ Sarah— she fell from the sky (perhaps they saw the TARDIS explode a day or so earlier?). The Grey Elk folk aren’t sure how the pretty sky lady fits into the weird big picture, and as they are making war on the Iron God cult, they can’t take any chances. Sarah is forced to march with them as their prisoner. The Doctor is alive, Sarah tells herself; he will find her.
Of course the Doctor’s alive. But he thinks Sarah’s dead.
The Doctor easily survived his fall from the broken TARDIS, his long scarf barely aflutter. The Doctor lands not too far from civilization, i.e., London, where he reconnects w/ both Carter and Koenig. The situation w/ the horde of Dalek people has been resolved. No sign of Jagged, whose tower has been completely destroyed and fallen to rubble; Jagged is gone, presumed dead; yes, we will see him later.
But what does it matter?! The TARDIS is destroyed, and the Dalek he came to kill not only still lives but thrives in a way the Doctor could never have imagined: Earth is in dire, imminent danger! And Sarah—oh, Sarah Jane. He will deal with that grief soon enough. He has to kill the Dalek.
The Doctor: “I have gravely misjudged the situation, and now matters are worse. Deep in the woods, the Dalek has been worshiped as a deviant God for countless years, perhaps even centuries, and it has channeled that worship, stored it as a form of energy. Belief is power. And even now the Iron God’s power grows! [Koenig confirms that Iron God hysteria is at an all time high.] You see? Fear is belief. Belief is power. And the power of belief can split a world in half! Which is exactly what the Dalek intends to do!”
The Doctor knows there is an upcoming astronomical event, harmless but spectacular; rumors swirl of an über Iron God festival/orgy/ritual; the Doctor reckons the Dalek will capitalize on the sky-show to whip its followers into a frenzied climax! He’s extrapolating, but this gives the Doctor’s quest to find/kill the Dalek a deadline.
His tools/arms are not much. Screwdriver, a few other gizmos, a newly adopted impressive walking stick, and the first half of Sarah’s damn book. Koenig reminds the Doctor of the intensity of Jagged’s conviction that the book is somehow vital to defeating the Iron God. “Hmm. Yes,” the Doctor replies. Sarah’s once-beautiful book is, for the record, A Collection of Lesser Known Folk Tales of the BritishPeople. “I read it. Skimmed the second half, and indeed, there was a bit of nonsense that might very well be relevant to our predicament. I would very much like to read those pages again! Pity, that’s the part of the book that’s missing.” [The “relevant” part of Sarah’s Book will remain missing until the end.]
The Doctor embarks on his quest, and the inherent tropes will be played up w/out going crackers about it: the Doctor striding forth, kind of shaggy and beat up, big staff in hand, leading his charges into the dark forest. Along for the jaunt are Carter and Koenig and a gang of expendable footsoldiers (including a new supporting character, a young woman, a tracker/ranger hired by K). There will be traveling bits: on the trek the Doctor says, “No, we are not going to Stonehenge. Out of the question. No Stonehenge!” Time will pass (compressed; and it might be interesting to mirror the construction/pattern of Sarah’s hellish first days in the wilderness), and there will be minor adventures, all built around key sequences for this section of the story:
The Doctor finds various components of the broken TARDIS, each fragment a weirdo object of some kind, broken memories of shapes and vehicles (helicoptor, alien craft, crazy stuff) the poor old girl had once been. The Doctor collects each piece as he finds it, “compressing the file” on a molecular level and storing it in one of his gizmos.
We check in w/ Sarah, and via her hunky attentive captor we learn more about clans rising up against the Iron God; the difference of philosophies is touched upon; there is a nighttime raid by enemies on the Grey Elk camp; Sarah proves her worth.
As the Doctor marches, he will (seemingly unintentionally) raise an army of his own followers: folk he’s dazzled, folk who hate the Iron God of the Wood.
They sight the lair of the IGOTW. The Doctor and crew make plans to attack and infiltrate. Perhaps they even throw an initial “punch” then withdraw.
That night, The Doctor wakes to the sound of the Dalek calling him. He rises, follows the voice. It has all the markings of a dream sequence. It is not. The Doctor moves through the forest and is soon surrounded by legions, thousands of the Dalek’s followers (their appearance should be savage, unique), gathering out of the darkness in ever increasing numbers to peer at the Doctor as he passes, leading finally to…
The big reveal: “The Iron God of the Wood was not made iron; it was made of wood. Some stone too, but mostly wood.” The Wicker Dalek resembles the basic “Dalek model” except it is “rough hewn” and constructed of wood (see above) and it is approx five times bigger, the height of the trees, and it is really, really old. A verbal pissing match between the Doctor & the Dalek ensues. [They have a lot of ground to cover in the course of this conversation: the origin of the Wicker Dalek, how it became a figure of worship, the decay + failure of its original armored chassis and the how/why of its current wooden housing, the building of the Schism Manifest and the WD’s intention to set it off like a bomb and destroy all life on Earth.] Their conversation deploys the usual weapons of intent/philosophy/history; the Dalek really rubs the Doctor’s face in the reality of his situation—Time machine destroyed! Best human friend DEAD! Time Lords are pathetic, etc. The clincher: “YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST, DOCTOR! THE FUTURE HAS BEEN REVEALED!” The Wicker Dalek has seen the conclusion of Sarah’s damn book, witnessed through the com-portal w/ Jagged in the Throne Room! And the Dalek zaps the Doctor w/ a scary vision of inevitable defeat: flames, the Doctor screaming, pain, ruin. [The specific visual details will be seen again for showdown at the end, but with an additional conclusion, of course.] The Dalek gloats, sends the Doctor away; after all, it is not time to die, not yet. When the Doctor doesn’t split, the IGOTW followers pick him up and cart him back to his camp. The next day, the camp/fortress/lair of the IGOTW is just gone.
Despair.
They find the biggest chunk of the TARDIS yet, the part containing the core. Cool visuals required. Yes, the Doctor can fix everything from here, but not easily and not quickly, it’s too messed up. And there is no sign of the second half of the book.
Then the mood begins to brighten, just a bit, not too much: the tracker reports that the woods are filled with loyal supporters of the Doctor, many clans strong. And Sarah is alive! [“One clan brings a strange lady who fell from the sky…”] The Doctor and Sarah are just on the verge of being reunited; so the mood isn’t so much “we’re going to win,” as one of cautious, refueled determination, perhaps there is a chance of victory—
When they are betrayed. By Koenig!
The Doctor is suddenly, shockingly laid low—by Lord Jagged!
For Koenig has met The Devil in the Woods, the Devil is Jagged, and Jagged has seen the future, because Jagged has the 2nd half of Sarah’s damn Book.
Koenig regrets betraying the Doc, but here the young witchfinder reveals his true nature: pragmatism. He’s hitched his wagon to the side that’s going to win: the future.
Captured, the Doctor spits venom and rains scorn at Jagged’s notion of the future, with his genetically engineered vampire babes (now hissing under their heavy cloaks and hoods, not liking the daylight at all, their skin bruised and mottled with sores and burns), and Jagged himself, patched together w/ some artificial apparatus following the injuries suffered in his tower—he’s pathetic, yet triumphant, as well as horrific: Jagged and his new goons are torturing and killing the Doctor’s immediate party (the Doctor’s big armies being a day’s travel behind them).
The following sequence should be brutal, scary, graphic. Jagged’s completely lost it, they are killing people left and right, and the Vampire chicks are lapping the blood up from the mud.
They kill Sarah’s hunky friend. They execute poor Carter. Boom, dead.
And the big celestial event is fast approaching. Jagged’s a fool and screwing everything up; the Wicker Dalek will destroy the planet.
Desperate, the Doctor cunningly tricks Jagged into a duel of some sort, a challenge. (The bait TBD, something Jagged can’t resist). He accepts the Doctor’s challenge, ups the ante w/ something really dreadful—Sarah’s life will hang in the balance, and if the Doctor loses, her death will be MEGA dreadful. Anyway, the challenge/duel is very physical and taxing and scary—perhaps with strange weapons or tech—the Doctor nearly loses but he does not, he comes from behind to win it like Rocky. [Perhaps Koenig intervenes/assists? Chance of redemption?] Triumphant and bloody, the Doctor drags the defeated Jagged close and he breathes, “I know I will truly lose Sarah, someday. But not today.” Pause. “Not after the day I’ve had.” BAM!
With Jagged defeated (finally) and both halves of the damn book in his possession, the Doctor gives the second part a careful read.
He is nonplussed!
“What is it, Doctor?!’
“It would appear that I must die!”
The Doctor goes to face the Wicker Dalek and its legions of crazed believers—so many thousands they cover the horizon! It’s twilight, and weird colors are swirling across the sky, the big event is starting. A hush falls over everything, the trees, the land.
The giant wooden Dalek looms above the Doctor. They fight first with insults. “MY FOLLOWERS FEAR ME FAR MORE THAN YOUR FOLLOWERS LOVE YOU,” etc, and views are exchanged regarding the truth about human nature (a personal favorite of this author’s), as well as “belief” and “the future.”
“Oh, I believe in the future!” the Doctor cries, “but this” he holds up the book “is not the future!” He scoffs. “The details of the future, written down in a book, pre-posterous!” And he appears to torch the book, very dramatic. Shock ripples across the Dalek followers, as the book carried very real street cred. “IT MATTERS NOT!” the Wicker Dalek booms. “OBSERVE!” And the sky starts its super big show, it’s time! A big column of light shoots down from above, blasts the Doctor, he’s on fire! He screams. The crowd goes wild!
“THE DOCTOR DIES!!!”
The sky rumbles! The whine of the Schism Manifest begins!
But it is really a lightshow concocted by the Doctor, utilizing harmless particles and streams and stardust from the very real astronomical event. He needs to swing the barometers of belief in his favor, he needs thousands of witnesses to see him as “the Wise Man, the Doctor” die in battle against his foe, the Iron God of the Wood, die in a blaze of fire—then rise again. In victory.
The whine of the big Schism Manifest machine reaches a crescendo then fades, replaced by a new roar, the thunder of the Doctor’s army, rising out of the hills behind him, as the Doctor stands and gives the signal to attack.
“Your followers might fear you more than mine love me—but my ARMY is BIGGER than YOURS.”
There is the clash of bodies and armor and swords and such. Perhaps the Doctor fights his way to the Dalek, perhaps he smashes his way inside the ancient wooden mechanism and tears out the living Dalek lifeform itself; perhaps final words are spoken before the Doctor crushes the sad creature to a pulp with his bare hands.
Or perhaps he tries to save it. And perhaps we’ll never know. Because those big fight scenes with thousands of combatants? All sorts of things can happen.
But however the above elements are arranged and sequenced, it ends with the Wicker Dalek defeated, it ends with this visual: the giant wooden structure of the Wicker Dalek on fire against the sky.
There will be an epilogue with the Doctor and Sarah, both parts of her battered book on her lap. [He torched a fake, so easy, yet so potent, even the Dalek probably bought it.] The Doctor couldn’t destroy Sarah’s book. Not after all that.
“That damn book,” the Doctor will rumble. “You know, when I found it, I meant to show it to you as a way to make you happy.”
“I am happy,” Sarah will tell him. “It’s still a beautiful book, and I’m happy I’ll write it.”
The epilogue will serve as a chance to answer any lingering questions if they need answering, as well the secret of the chapter that had Jagged and the Dalek so excited… an essay about a myth that went missing, a myth about the wise mage who defeated a false god, and how all records of that myth seems to have been systematically erased. As if someone had a time machine, plucking all trace of the story from history. “Hmm. Imagine,” the Doctor will grunt. So there is a chapter in Sarah’s book that attempts to reconstruct the myth, with drawings and woodcuts, which led Jagged and the Dalek to form excitable but inaccurate conclusions.
The epilogue will also (ideally, quickly and elegantly) allow the Doctor some interior brooding as he repairs the TARDIS, questioning the forces that drove him, obsessing about the corners he cut, the way he cheated, how he manipulated many persons to spill their blood for his cause. He comes to no conclusions, of course. But he will think about it. He can’t help it; he steals tech and ideas from the trashed Wicker Dalek in order to rebuild the TARDIS.
But not too much hand wringing, though.
The real swell of the epilogue is to have the Doctor and Sarah sitting together, enjoying the other’s company. They will revisit their thoughts on the nature of fame, “Who will be more famous?” Myth and legend has some new resonance, now, the persistence of ego, of vanity, and that which survives.
Love, we’re going home now, Where the vines clamber over the trellis: Even before you, the summer will arrive, On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom. — Pablo Neruda
Giorgio Moroder releases first new song in 20 years
There may be no name more closely associated with electronic dance music than Giorgio Moroder, and it’s amazing to see that even at 74 years old, perhaps the most important pioneer of the sound can still deliver sounds that easily stand alongside the best of the modern scene. Though he has been working with a number of other artists over the last few years, he has finally released his first new effort on his own in the better part of twenty years. It’s somehow fitting that the song in question was done for Cartoon Network’s always fantastic Adult Swim Singles Series.
The song, called “Giorgio’s Theme” runs a gorgeous eight minutes, and as he has mastered over the past four decades, it presents a magnificent blend of future feels alongside a classic tone. It’s the way the pulsing rhythm moves alongside the keys that really makes the track move, and there’s no question that age has nothing to do with the ability to make quality music.
In recent years, Moroder has done remix work for a wide range of artists like Donna Summer and Coldplay, along with working on one of the most impressive tracks from Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories.” However, his solo efforts have been few and far between since the mid 80’s, and yet the moment you hear the new track, it’s clear he hasn’t lost a step.
The Adult Swim singles series began a few years back, with the similarly named label having released singles from the likes of Death Grips, Thee Oh Sees and LCD Soundsystem over the years. Releasing a new track every week through the end of September, this years’ series will feature the likes of Run The Jewels, Mastodon and Sleep among many others. Alongside the new songs, the Adult Swim website usually has some sort of interview with the artist in question, and in the case of Moroder, he showed that just because you’re an elder of the scene doesn’t mean you have to look down on the new acts.
Perfectly summing up his passion and love for the genre he played a vital role in creating, Moroder told Adult Swim, “I like the sounds of [contemporary] EDM, the guys create new sounds, beautiful sounds.”
Hopefully, this new single is a sign of more fresh sounds to come from one of the true living music visionaries.
Listen to “Giorgio’s Theme” above and then go download it for free from the Adult Swim website.
Joel Freimark hosts a daily music-related webseries HERE and you can follow his daily music musings and suggestions HERE as well.
And just because I love you: Here’s the Moroder cut of fucking METROPOLIS.
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THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE FILES, PART ONE
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THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE is my favorite episode of ST:TOS, and this is the second time they’ve remastered the effects. It’s all well and good; this version is better than the first remastered version. But the kid inside me still thinks there was nothing wrong with the first version aired in the sixties. I have a short essay inside me in which I will recount how I betrayed The Doomsday Machine, James Blish, Norman Spinrad, Captain Ahab, Captain Nemo, Commodore Decker, Captain Kirk— fucking all of them. I betrayed them all, and I still won the won the writing competition.
A short doc on The Doomsday Machine is below, and it features Norman Spinrad, the author of this episode. My essay, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE FILES PART 2, will follow in a few days.
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and finally
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MY STUPID VIDEOS
I had intended to write intros to each of these, but fuck it, you can see for yourself: I’m an idiot.
My beloved and ancient black cat Flood died in June. He was about 18 years old, the longest-lived cat that I ever knew. Flood’s death was hardly unexpected, but it was still pretty sad. I had spent more than a third of my life with that damn cat. Flood and I had lived together in five separate locations—four apartments and one house—and he had shared his feline dominion of those various homes with a total of 8 other cats. (Human total, 6.) And through it all Flood had been a steadfast familiar, staring out at danger and terror and uncertainty from the safety of the shadow he always found, his eyes wild and huge and unblinking, his poor coward’s heart pounding and pounding in the dark, my poor Flood. The killer black cat that slew all the human women and rattled every nervous child who crossed his path was in reality just a big pussy, he was a real ‘fraidy cat, my Flood.
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It was okay. I kept his secret for the most part, I played down his cowardice. I nodded to the slain women who affectionately stroked him and told the hesitant children that yes, Flood is wonderful and friendly and so good with people but often I wished he were just a bit more Black Panther than Cowardly Lion. The fucking Black Cat was afraid of the dark.
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“So what’s so terrifying?” I asked him. “What’s out there in the dark?” Everything Flood purred bugs ghosts sounds wind birds smells and other cats, mostly. He purred, he slept. Fucking cat. Some sidekick he was.
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So I taught Flood a trick so he would always have a safe perch. I would hoist him to one shoulder and he would grab hold, catch his balance, and sort of sling-grip himself across my shoulders. I could get up, walk across the room, take a piss, come back, light a cigarette, etc, and Flood would still be sitting on my shoulders, digging in with his claws, sure, but purring loudly, oh yeah, he was getting to ride the smokey giant. This started when Flood was a kitten and continued for many years; I hadn’t performed this “trick” with Flood all that much in the last five, and in the final months of his life I had begun to lament that I did not have easy access to a photograph of Flood on my shoulders. (By the time he was 18 years old I would be damned if I would stage one with his old bones.) Anyway, this is a panel by Bernie Wrightson from Poe’s THE BLACK CAT, and Flood and I looked something like this:
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Flood wasn’t a total wimp. He got turned on by spectacular escapes for purposes of exploration. In his prime he could leap like a goddamn mountain lion, long black flash sailing through the air. And he could charm everyone, the fuzzy black bastard. All except one person! My son, Damien. He was not crazy about Flood, oh no. Damien was not.
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Flood stands guard over Damien
Damien didn’t like being rubbed or touched by Flood. Poor kid. The smallest and youngest need someone to kick. Anyway. As Flood grew weak in his final weeks, Damien often asked me what Flood would look like in the ground, once he was dead, as Damien was aware via my gently shared plans that we would take care of Flood until he was gone, and then we would have a funeral for him in the woods, with a grave so he and Dakota might visit Flood whenever they wished. “But what will he look like in the ground?” This satisfied him, sort of:
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Then, Flood died.
Three Feet Down, Maybe
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So Long, Buddy
† † †
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So it’s all done, and the kids and the Warrior Woman go back to the house but I am hanging graveside for a bit, hanging with Flood, now a true ghost and shadow cat. The cross thing was a happy accident from the pieces of broken paving donated by my neighbor, THE CROSS was a touch the kids appreciated. I was more concerned about the stones preventing animals from digging up my poor cat. And speak of the devil, there came the crunch of an animal in the woods as I stood by Flood’s grave. It was a deer, circling around. Deer are very common where I live, so the moment didn’t bowl me over with “magic,” as in, “and oh, the animals of the forest came to pay their respect to noble Flood,” or some such nonsense. No, it was a goddamn deer crunching around in the woods, and I stood by my dead cat’s grave and smoked my cigarette and waited for the deer to go away.
It didn’t go away. It kept circling closer, closer. So I thought, Fuck it, take a picture.
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Nothing, not even close, except for that last one. That little bright spot is the doe’s eye, looking at me. She kept nosing closer and closer and so yeah finally, it was weird. “Is this the spirit that has been chasing my poor cat his whole life?” I said out loud. “Is this it?” I asked Flood. “This the creep?”
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Flood didn’t seem to think so. He had been so tired. It seemed ok. The black cat was finally not afraid.
Cover Illustration by Audrey May Erickson | Black Cat posters and Bernie Wrightson illustration via Golden Age Comic Book Stories | Cat Skeleton by Alisongrl | All other photographs by the author
