Doctor Who Season 3 (1965/6): More Change

Before we begin, I would like to remind people that this obviously contains spoilers. However, since many of these events took place over 20 years ago, one can safely say that the statute of limitations on these are long expired. Won’t reveal too much though.

Season 3 saw that further changes in the production team and cast. Verity Lambert left the show. Her replacement, John Wiles, getting unhappy at Hartnell’s failing health and high salary, wanted to recast the lead actor and was even preparing an explanation that wouldn’t have involved regeneration in “The Celestial Toymaker”. The higher-ups renewed Hartnell’s contract anyway and vetoed another suggestion for a Cockney companion. Wiles walked and script editor Donald Tosh followed him.

The new production team of Innes Lloyd as producer and Gerry Davis as script editor got on better with the BBC execs, starting to develop an alternative way of writing out Hartnell…

The cast also changed a lot – there are no less than seven companions during the course of this season and no-one is there for the entire run… Some of them go out in interesting ways, as we shall see.

45 episodes in this season – most of them (28) not available. In fact, only three of the ten serials of this season are complete. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Galaxy 4 (4 episodes, only Part Three available and that was only recently discovered)

The crew arrive on an arid planet, where two spaceships have crashed and are being fixed. One is crewed by the beautiful Drahvins, the other by the hideous Rills and their robot drones called “Chumblies”[1]. Things are not what they seem…

Mission to the Unknown (1 episode, lost)

The only serial that doesn’t feature the Doctor or any companion, this is basically an extended trailer/prequel for “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, in which a Space Security Service agent and his two comrades stumbles upon a Dalek-led plan to conquer the Milky Way. Naturally, it does not end for them.

The Myth Makers (4 episodes, all missing)

A trip to the siege of Troy that sees the Doctor come up with the wooden horse idea and Vicki fall in love with a Trojan prince and leave, being replaced by handmaiden Katarina…

The Daleks’ Master Plan (12 episodes, only 2, 5 and 10 available)

Who ends up going out of an airlock in episode 4, becoming the first companion to die in the show’s run. In this twelve-episode epic, Team TARDIS have to stop the Daleks from using a “Time Destructor” to implement their evil plan. With Katarina dead, the team are joined by one-shot companion Sara Kingdom, who also snuffs it.

Containing the show’s first Christmas episode, the comedic stand-alone “The Feast of Steven” that ends with the Doctor toasting the audience, this also features the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney, who would later play the much loved Brigadier, as Bret Vyon.

The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve (4 episodes, all lost)

The 1572 massacre of five to thirty thousand Huguenot Protestants in France probably qualifies as the most obscure historical event to feature in Doctor Who by some margin – I’m only aware of it through the fact this story was made.

The best known feature of this story that is only available on audio is William Hartnell playing two roles – the Doctor and his physical doppelganger the Abbot of Amboise. The two never meet, but Steven certainly gets confused.  Difficult to imagine something like this today, but it could happen.

At the end, the Doctor and Steven land in 1966 London and encounter a new companion, Dorothy “Dodo” Chaplet, who enters the TARDIS while looking for a real police box to report a child being run over[2].

The Police Box

The initial idea had been to have the TARDIS change shape in each story to blend in with its surroundings, but that swiftly fell afoul of budget problems. The distinctive design would have been common on the streets of the UK at the time when the show began, although most of them have now gone. Also most of them never quite looked like the TARDIS – which is based on a 1920s design. Since the boxes have gone, the blue police box has become so associated with the show that the BBC won a trademark dispute with the Metropolitan Police on the essential grounds of ‘squatter’s rights’.

The exterior prop has changed over the years – subtle changes like the writing on the panel, height and exact shade. There have even been jokes about it.

The interior is more interesting, but we’ll cover that another time.

The Ark (4 episodes, all available)

Not to be confused with Season 12’s “The Ark in Space”, although the concept of humans leaving Earth is similar, this one features the Doctor, Steven and Dodo landing on a spaceship carrying Earth’s surviving life on a 700-year journey to a new world, travelling with a one-eyed servant race called the Monoids. Dodo has a cold, which causes problems. Once that’s sorted out, the crew leave – and arrive back on the ship at the end of its journey (remember the story lengths were not advertised in advance), where the Monoids are now in charge.

An interesting story with good production values, but probably too rushed.

The Celestial Toymaker (4 episodes, only 4 exists in full)

Entering a strange domain presided over by the immortal Celestial Toymaker (played by the late Michael Gough, best known for his portrayal of Alfred in four Batman movies), the Doctor is forced to play a 10-piece Tower of Hanoi game called the Trilogic game, which he must complete in exactly 1023 moves. Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo have to play a series of deadly childhood games to find the TARDIS.

Must read the novelisation or get the audio of this someday. Speaking of the audio, this story contains the old politically incorrect version of “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”, containing a racial slur instead of the word “tiger”. Said word is talked over by the narration in the audio release.

The Gunfighters (4 episodes, all available)

The last story with individual episode titles of the classic era, this sees Team TARDIS arrive in the Wild West. Tombstone in fact. Containing a specially-written song and generally a comedic serial, it’s one of the lowest rated in the show’s history.

Can’t remember much of this – probably best as it’s not popular with the fans.

The Savages (4 episodes, all lost)

Steven’s final story is another “things aren’t what they seem” story involving an apparently idyllic world and the draining of life force. Steven is in fact asked to become the leader of the planet at the end, which means the Doctor leaves the planet alone with Dodo – the first time that the Doctor has travelled on his own with a female non-blood relative (he’s only travelled with two – Susan, his granddaughter and his mother-in-law Amy Pond).

The War Machines (4 episodes, all available)

An interesting, reasonable story that involves a computer called WOTAN trying to take over the world from the BT Tower[3]. Dodo leaves (via note!) at the end of the story and two new companions enter the TARDIS – Ben Jackson and Polly something.

This is the first serial set in the present day (or close to it) entirely – something that would happen a lot more in the future. For in these stories, the Doctor is beginning to ail. Soon, the show will change entirely…

[1]No, not Chumlees. I can hear The Old Man from Pawn Stars commenting right now that would be truly disturbing.

[2]What happened to the kid?

[3]Which at the time was – I am not making this up – not included on official maps as it was technically a state secret.

Iran, nuclear weapons and an Israeli strike

There is no direct evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but there is a lot of indirect evidence:

• The construction of ballistic missiles that are useless for anything bar attacking cities and employing WMDs
• Enriching uranium far beyond the levels needed for a civilian nuclear programme.
• Building underground nuclear facilities
• Generally unpleasant rhetoric towards a state that is in no position to attack it directly and has never done so.
• Support of terrorism against said state
• Refusal of a perfectly decent offer for enrichment outside the country.

There's generally no smoke without fire and the UN is right to order Iran to stop enrichment until safeguards are in place. None of us want a regime like that with nuclear weapons. If they were to use them against Israel (it would only take two or three nukes getting through Israeli missile defences to effectively destroy that country), the consequences would be devastating for Iran as well - but you bet the leadership won't be taking any of them.

That said, a unilateral Israeli strike could cause serious consequences of their own.

As you may or may not be aware, I am currently running an RP revolving around the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran. While I have made some slight tweaks to the scenario for gaming purposes and allowing for the 2015 setting, the scenario is based on real and projected capabilities of both sides.

So here are some of my thoughts on what might happen:

• An Israeli strike might not destroy all the facilities, but hitting the right ones could slow the regime down considerably.
• There is extremely little Iran can do to stop an Israeli strike from succeeding with its air defences.
• A strike may well eliminate any support for the reform movement in Iran, but that movement seems, sadly, to have largely stalled. I may be wrong on this and I'm sure Jams can help here.
• Any attempt by Iran to mine the Straits of Hormuz not only gets the US involved, it gets Oman, the UAE and the GCC involved.
• Iran cannot close the Straits long-term - any attempt to do so will result in the loss of the bulk of its naval and air forces.
• The best Iran can hope for is a few symbolic losses of Western assets, say a destroyer or two.
• Iran's ballistic missiles at the moment will not do serious long-term damage to a nation used to rocket attack. Witness the lack of impact that the V2s had on Britain - and Iran has less missiles.
• In fact, Iran poses no threat to the continued existence of Israel without nukes.
• While a war may drive Iran to develop a nuclear weapon - it will never be allowed to actually develop one by the United States and other Western powers. A full-scale invasion might well follow.
• The economic damage of Iranian strikes against the GCC would be considerable, particularly in terms of oil prices.
• Israel will need to present very strong evidence of an Iranian nuclear programme to win over a global public opinion that is hostile to it.

I don't want a war with Iran, but I don't want an Iranian bomb. What is needed is for both sides to come to the table and talk. The US and Israel should make statements that an attack will not take place unless clear red-lines are crossed - such as actual moves towards constructing a nuclear device.

Otherwise, either way, a lot of people are going to die.

'Castle' 4.1: "Rise"

This is not a review.

While the resolution to the cliffhanger was as expected as the result of a Russian presidential election, this was a highly enjoyable episode. Not exactly typical of the show, but still just as good for it.

By the way, Mr Moffat, if you could get just one of the stars of this show guest starring in Doctor Who, I would be very happy.

A nice slice of pizza (Review: 'Leverage' 3.5 "The Double-Blind Job")

A good varied television diet consists of a variety of food. Solid dramatic peas, nice fresh comedy juice - and pizza.

Leverage, a show that can essentially be described as an American version of Hustle albeit with more safe-cracking and hacking, is one of my pizza shows. The plots aren't too demanding and the characters are vibrant with a hint of spice, even if Parker's brain works in mysterious ways.

In this episode, the team have to bring down a corrupt corporate executive who is trying to launch a new drug that is an exact copy of a...

[Edited to remove spoilers - Ed.]

All in all, this is an enjoyable episode. The characterisation continues to be great, the plot is clever and the twists are enjoyable. Wasn't too keen on the end, where [Spoiler]. Also, some of the stuff mentioned, if true, is ever so slightly alarming.

Glad that FX are now showing this - I've been waiting ages for Season 3.

8/10.

PS Won't be reviewing the Castle season opener on tonight - will be doing an episode later in the season though.

TOAW III: A nice little diversion.

Turn 13 in my Korean War game. I've been hardening up my defensive line SE of Seoul, but have taken offensive action elsewhere. Particularly down in the SW of the map, where my forces have made a thrust for a city and triggered a flood of refugees. I doubt I'll be able to help them out and they will inevitably crumble, but I've still got plenty of VPs at the moment.

TacOps AAR Part 12: the other well-known Abrams

0920 to 0929

 

Red split his forces into two at this point – to disguise the primary northern thrust.

 

The southern force was now running into my armour and an infantry squad bit the dust as a result. At 0922, a BTR unit drove next to an infantry squad and suffered death by LAAW. There was little fighting during the first few minutes.

 

At 0925, one of my tank units got taken out by AT-7 Saxhorn ATGMs  – I’m sure M1s are better than that. I know Challenger IIs certainly are (one got pounded by RPGs during Operation Iraqi Freedom and survived intact, with the only injury one broken wrist). The advance tank and infantry units certainly did some damage to Coyote’s forces, although probably not enough.

 

During this time, I was also trying to kill the northern force, but lack of a firm location on the units meant my artillery mostly missed or just suppressed a vehicle. HE ammo isn’t very good at handling armour at all.

 

At 0929, a 122mm howitzer and ZSU-23-4 arrived with the southern force. The latter of those would become a pain in the neck.

 

Cairo: A story by Silent Hunter

This short work is set in the universe of my sim Fighter Ops. For those of you not familiar with the RP, it revolves around the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran. This and other stories will attempt to capture some of the background of the war, focussing on elements that might not be immediately obvious.

 

****

Ibrahim was going to make a killing, his brother thought as he watched some of the produce that the guy had probably sold earlier this morning start to burn. From his office in El-Mogamma, an Egyptian government complex looking out onto Tahrir Square – that one – he regularly had a ringside seat for the regular protests that occurred there. He himself had been in one himself, back in the heady days of February 2011, where he had faced off against the security forces representing the government. El-Mogamma, a building given by the Soviet Union and built in classic imposing Communist style, had been a symbol of the hated Mubarak regime and also bureaucracy in general.

 

For his contributions to the revolution, he’d found himself Director of the Passport Office, where he was responsible for renewing visas of tourists, issuing passports and so on, which meant he was working in this place. Speaking of tourists… he hoped that this latest protest wouldn’t harm the country’s tourist industry more than some of the decisions of this government had already.

 

After the military had handed over power, the Muslim Brotherhood had formed a government – and then immediately started fighting among themselves. Two distinct factions had emerged – what might be called the moderates and the hardliners. The moderates wanted to maintain the links with America and the peace treaty with Israel, while the hardliners didn’t – some of the hotheads actually advocating open war against the Jewish state. The ministerial carve-up had kept the hardliners out of defence and also security – but given them the justice ministry. Where they’d started to implement sharia law in a rather haphazard way that in his mind was wrecking the tourist trade.

 

The attacks on Coptic Christian organisations that Social Solidarity and Justice were widely accused of turning a blind eye to were raising hackles in Washington. The ban on alcohol sales entirely was starting a growing bootlegging industry and Egypt already had a suspected “Nucky Thompson”. The imposition of spot fines on tourists wearing overly revealing clothing, even on beaches, was in danger of turning the country into a laughing stock.

 

What was happening now was probably something minor that would be largely forgotten in a week, but it wasn’t going to help. Following the Israeli attack on Iran last night, a large group of protestors had gathered in Tahrir Square, where they were burning American and Israeli flags. These were one of the things that Ibrahim sold and he knew that they would be heavily discounted today..

 

As the man watched, his intercom buzzed. He turned and pressed the button.

 

“What is it?” he asked. Another male voice replied, sounding annoyed.

 

“We’ve got one of the new guys. He’s refusing to process an Israeli man”.

 

The Director shook his head. There were always people like this who took exception to Israelis, particularly those with Palestinian ancestry. You usually just dealt with them by moving them to another queue or giving them a verbal slapping.

 

“I’m on my way”, he said.

 

The Director left his office, closing the door behind him and walking slowly, but surely towards the main processing area, briefly stopping to use the lavatory. He heard a faint pop, which sounded like a firecracker. When he heard five more, he sprinted towards the processing area, just as another shot rang out.

 

The area was one of panic as people either fled for their lives or cowered in terror. Four bodies lay on the floor bleeding, one of which had a pistol by his side. Another woman was screaming in Egyptian, blood running down her arm.  A security guard had his weapon still drawn, staring in horror at what had just happened – and what he had ultimately had to do.

 

“What happened?!” the Director yelled, “What happened?”

 

“He just pulled out a pistol and started shooting”, the guard said as he lowered his weapon, “Yelling something about death to apostates…”

 

The Director saw who one of the dead bodies was – the same guy he’d come out to see. If he’d been just a few seconds earlier – he might also be dead. As other police officers arrived on the scene, the Director had a strong suspicion of who was behind this attack. He cursed Israel – and Iran. He suspected that this was only the first of these attacks. He looked down at the body of the gunman and wished him an unpleasant time in hell.

 

He took a seat and pulled out his mobile phone to tell Ibrahim he was OK.

 

Lent

Been a while since I did a Christianity post, so here we go:

If you take a look at any news site or paper, you will see countless examples of man's inhumanity to man. In fact, it's surprising that God doesn't just decide to wipe us all out and start over.

It's even more surprising that he sent his Son down to us and allowed him to be killed by us - then use said act to allow everyone who sincerely wishes it to forgiven of their sins, regardless of how heinous they are.

That, my friends, is true love.

History of Doctor Who: Season 2 (1964/5)

The second season of a show is often where it starts getting good. The actors have settled in, the writers all have an idea of what is going on and what works is clear.

Unless, you’re dealing with a show like Doctor Who, where the cast chops and changes frequently. In Season 2, all three original companions left and the show changed script editors (a role just as important as producer back then) twice. So, it is fair to say that things are a bit uneven.

This 39-episode season (in fact, the first two stories were filmed in the first production block and held back) is the best survivor of the six black-and-white seasons, with 37 episodes surviving intact.

Planet of Giants (3 episodes, all available)

The first story set on modern Earth, this one involves an error on landing and the crew becoming miniaturised. This idea was one of those considered for the first story and rejected – perhaps it should have stayed that way, because no-one really likes this one. In fact, it was originally recorded as four episodes and the last two parts edited down to one, with the other material totally junked.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth (6 episodes, all available)

The late Jon Pertwee, who played the Third Doctor[1], once remarked that a Yeti in Tibet is less scary on one “sitting on the loo in Tooting Bec”. That is to say that bringing an alien menace into the everyday world can be more effective than the affairs of a bunch of aliens far from Earth. Some of the best stories and scenes have taken place in ordinary surroundings.

The title of the story is a bit of a misnomer – when the characters arrive, sometime after 2164, the Daleks, who yell “Exterminate” for the first time here, have already conquered Earth. In a story that sees Daleks roaming London streets and doing Hitler salutes (remember the Second World War was still in many people's memories), the sink-plunger crew hit the big time.

The story ends with Susan falling in love with a resistance fighter and not sure whether to stay with him or look after her grandfather the Doctor, has the latter make the decision for her, locking her out of the TARDIS and taking off. The last part doesn’t really happen after this, but Susan is not the first companion to fall in love with someone she’s just met and leave as a result.

Dalekmania

The arrival of the pepper-pots was just what the show needed to turn it from interesting into a smash hit. After “The Daleks”, an encore was inevitable and the creatures would appear in two stories a season for the next three (but then take a break until Season 9).

The wave of popularity was massive. Comic strips, toys galore, a stage play and two colour feature films would follow  - remakes of the first two stories starring Peter Cushing as a human Doctor, which are not considered canonical. Terry Nation went to America and attempted to get a Dalek-based TV series going, but it fell through for various reasons before even reaching the pilot stage.

The craze eventually ended around 1967 and the ratings would not go back up to the 1964/5 levels until we got into the Tom Baker era.

The Rescue (2 episodes, all available)

A two-part character piece that is rather well done, involving a crashed spaceship whose survivors are terrorised by a monster. This one introduces Vicki (last name not given on screen, Pallister in the spin-off media) who joins Team TARDIS here.

This appears to be the first time the Doctor leaves the parking brake on – the ship is seen “materialising” (first use of that term too) with the distinctive sound effect.  That effect, BTW, was realised by scraping a key on a piano string and looping it over itself a few dozen times.

The Romans (4 episodes, all available)

The crew go on holiday in Rome in 64 AD. You can guess what’s going to happen. A story that combines high farce (including a scene where the Doctor convinces an audience of his lyre playing skills without playing a single note), low puns and some quite serious stuff about life in the Roman Empire, this one is well remembered and liked.

The Web Planet (6 episodes, all available)

Someone randomly chancing on a re-run of this one might wonder if they’d taken something illegal by mistake – this is trippier than some of Moffat’s stuff. A tale where every character bar the regulars is a giant creepy-crawly of some form[2], this is what Top Gear calls “ambitious but rubbish” – especially by modern standards with the costumes involved.

The Crusade (4 episodes, only 1 and 3 available)

A 12^th century set historical set in Palestine and revolving around one of the “holy wars” that Christianity and Islam fought around that time over the possession of Jerusalem. Haven’t experienced this work.

The Space Museum (4 episodes, all available)

A story that opens timey-wimey style with the TARDIS “jumping a time track” and the crew seeing themselves as exhibits in a futuristic museum, which they then realise they have to prevent by engineering a revolt.. It’s an intriguing idea, which then fails utterly in the execution, although there are some amusing moments

The Chase (6 episodes, all available)

The second Dalek appearance of the season, in which the Daleks develop time travel and chase after the team in another multi-location story. It’s a run-around and a curate’s egg[3] of a story, notable for three things:

1.       The departure of Ian and Barbara, who ultimately use the Dalek time machine to get home.

2.       The arrival of Steven Taylor, a stranded astronaut, who stows away on the TARDIS (along with his toy panda, Hi-Fi). Taylor was played by Peter Purves, who would later become a Blue Peter presenter

3.       A clip of The Beatles appearing (due to licensing issues, this is not on the Region 1 DVD release).

The Time Meddler (4 episodes, all available)

The show’s first “pseudo-historical” and the first time we encounter a Time Lord not the Doctor or Susan – the Meddling Monk. Arriving in 1066, the team discover that said Monk wants to change the course of British (and by extension human) history.

[1]With a show nearly fifty years old, it is the case that a few of the key figures are no longer with us. Every week or so, Doctor Who news sites post the obituary of one guest star or another. The first three Doctors have all died – Hartnell passed away in 1975.

[2]Insects only applies to segmented creatures with six legs.

[3]Mixture of good and bad.

Battlefield 3: A tale of a UH-1Y

After getting pestering emails from EA, I went back on Battlefield 3 multi-player and had a go at Rush.

So, there I was, playing Caspian Border on the US side. I hop into a UH-1 as a gunner and after I take someone out with the Gatling gun, the pilot lands at the Russian defender deployment and runs off. I decide to stay in the chopper to act as a gun platform lest anyone else spawn on me...

Then this guy RPGs me in the face and steals the helicopter for the Russians. Said helicopter flies around and the pilot kills me a couple of times.

A while later, I'm playing Engineer, armed with a Stinger missile when I spot the Venom. I line up and get a lock, then fire.

The heat-seeker barrelled into the chopper and blew it up. Even I was surprised at the points I got. 400 for killing the four people on board, 90 for a "comeback" and 100 for a multi-kill. Later on, I grabbed a weapons unlock for the M4...

Must do this more often.

TacOps AAR Part 11: Contact!

0910 to 0919

 

0910 saw some further vehicular destruction from a red airstrike, but Coyote was gradually running out of aircraft. The following turn saw Red eliminate a few units in 0701 and a Hummer put an anti-tank missile straight into a BMP’s face. His forces started to make their way through the gap at the top of the map and then ran into an M1 unit I’d cunningly concealed for such an eventuality – although one tank had been spotted earlier and taken out. Better positioning needed next time.

 

I dropped a lot of artillery on the map around this time, but it is very difficult to take out a moving target just by shelling it (especially when you lack the experience to calculate ahead and shifting the target resets the accuracy that you’ve built up. Most of my shells just rearranged the landscape.

 

In square 1102, an infantry unit fought against a moving BMP squad and lost. Not a good idea to take on something like that when you’re out of anti-tank weapons. We did have a few armoured-on-armoured fires, which resulted in a number of successes for me (120mm main gun on the Abrams – lovely) and I had a couple of successful airstrikes as well.

 

As 0919 finished, the initial part of Red’s main force was hitting my lines in the south. Or so I thought.

 

 

 

Syrian "referendum"

So Bashir al-Assad's regime is holding a referendum for a new constitution it has drawn up and probably will ignore anyway.

The sooner this guy is in a prison cell, the better for all humanity.

Another Chuck Norris fact

Chuck Norris gets Slovaks to vote to name a bridge after him.

The History of 'Doctor Who': Season 1 - Wanderers in Time

As the 50^th anniversary of the time-travel show is approaching next year (23 November 2013), I’ve decided to do a roughly fortnightly series on the history of the show, going season by season until the present day i.e. Season 34 as it will be in 2013. I’ll be briefly discussing each story, going onto some other topics and hopefully getting some of my readers interested in the classic era. Entire books have been written on just individual aspects of the show’s history, so I won’t go on too long.

So, let’s begin at the beginning. The classic era of Who consists of multi-episode serials, with numbers in each ranging from one to fourteen, but typically four or six. Runtime was usually c.25 minutes. However, when discussing the first three seasons of this show, we need to point out that what you got were individually titled episodes with the viewer not being able to guess in advance where one serial ended and another began. The titles for these serials are therefore sometimes educated guesswork, gleaned from the BBC paperwork – this particularly applies to the first season. Not all fans agree on the titles, so I've gone with the DVD titles the BBC uses.

Also, I’d better beginning by mentioning the missing episodes. Of the 784 episodes of DW produced to date, 106 are missing from the archives (it was 108 until two turned up late last year). All from the era of the first two Doctors (when the show was in black and white), the reason these episodes are missing was simply that the BBC had a policy until the late 1970s of junking master copies when it felt there was no more value from them in a pre-VCR era. It’s only through the hard work of fans (whose off-air audio recordings ensure that we have everything in at least audio form) and various episodes turning up among private collections or in foreign TV vaults that we have just over half of the black-and-white era available to us. I’ll mention episode status in brackets for each story where relevant.

The Creation

If you remember “Human Nature” and the comment about “John Smith” having parents called Sydney and Verity, you may know that this is a reference to two of the show’s key creators

The “father” of Doctor Who was Sydney Newman (1917-1997), a Canadian who also created The Avengers, a classic British spy series. The BBC needed something to fill the slot between sports show Grandstand and music show Juke Box Jury, so he came up with the original concept for the show. He intended it to be educational as well as entertaining, although the former fell by the wayside.

The “mother” was Verity Lambert (1935-2007), the show’s first producer and actually the first woman producer at the BBC – before she’d even turned 30. There is a great drama about the creation of this show just waiting to be made and I wouldn’t be too surprised if we got one next year.

Present at the birth were Ron Grainer (the composer of the original theme music), Delia Derbyshire (who arranged it) and Waris Hussein, the first South Asian BBC drama director, among others.

An Unearthly Child (four episodes, all available)

[A pilot version of the first episode was made first, but another version was ordered as the BBC weren’t happy with it. The original version is available on video]

Our story begins with two schoolteachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, wondering why one of their pupils, one Susan Foreman, is acting strangely and being very bright (as well as talking about decimalisation of the currency). They visit her home at 76 Totter’s Lane, which is a junkyard and encounter her grandfather – the First Doctor. After the two teachers push their way into the TARDIS, the Doctor the reveals he and Susan are aliens (although the name “Time Lords” does not appear at this time) essentially kidnaps the pair of them.

After the first episode, Team TARDIS (as I shall refer to the TARDIS crew at any given time or in any given grouping) arrive in pre-history and enter a plot involving a tribe who have lost the secret of making fire. At the time, most of the past setting stories did not involve aliens in any way and so these stories are called “pure historicals” among fans.

Episode one is a wonderful piece of sci-fi. Most people don’t really bother too much about the other three.

The First Doctor

Played by William Hartnell, the first Doctor was a crotchety old man, with a marked tendency to go “Hmmmmm…” and mangle his words, a feature of early 1960s TV production when things were basically recorded “as live” and going for a retake wasn’t done unless you absolutely had to. Possessed a great sense of cunning though. Hartnell’s portrayal has been somewhat overshadowed by the other ten – it’s a somewhat different portrayal from the rest.

The Daleks (7 episodes, all available)

Arriving on a dead alien world with high radiation levels, the team enter a futuristic city – where Barbara has a memorable encounter with a sink plunger. When a vital TARDIS component is left behind, they must get it back by persuading a pacifist tribe to fight the Daleks.

The Daleks

Nobody had seen anything like the Daleks before – in fact we might not have got them at all. Terry Nation’s creations (his estate still co-owns the rights) were vetoed by Newman, who did not want a procession of “bug-eyed monsters” in his educational show. Lambert overruled him – a correct decision for the longevity of the show.

The Edge of Destruction (2 episodes, all available)

Set entirely in the TARDIS and only featuring the four regulars, the ship is heading back towards the Big Bang and the crew must figure out why. This was originally meant to be a two-episode filler of a thirteen episode season  - in the end Season 1 got 42 episodes – but it’s good filler at that.

Marco Polo (7 episodes, none available)

The team take a road trip across 1289 China with Marco Polo. I haven’t seen (or heard) this one. Plan to get the audio version at some point though.

The Keys of Marinus (6 episodes, all available)

An alien world is threatened by another lot of aliens, so the team have to find the keys to a machine that makes evil actions impossible, hoping around the planet with ‘travel dials’. Essentially a bunch of fairly good mini-adventures penned by Terry Nation.

The Aztecs (4 episodes, all available)

Arriving in 15^th century Mexico, Barbara gets mistaken for a god and knowing the unpleasant end of Aztec civilisation, decides to try and make it better, while the Doctor gets engaged. A rather fondly-remembered story, this one.

The Sensorites (7 episodes, all available)

Arriving on a spaceship, the crew find humans terrified of a race called the Sensorites. When they encounter the latter, they find that the Sensorites are just as scared of the humans… An early example of the clever writing and playing with conventions that this show is so at.

The Reign of Terror (6 episodes, 4 and 5 are missing but are being recreated through animation for the DVD release later this year)

A pure historical set during the latter part of the French Revolution, this was the show’s first go at location filming. I haven’t seen this, but I certainly am going to get the DVD.

The end of 'Hustle'

Tonight sees the broadcast of the final episode of Hustle, the BBC con-artist drama that has run eight seasons, after a decision by the production to end it before it became stale. It’s been a highly enjoyable show, but I think it’s best to end it before it’s forced to end by declining ratings. I just hope the grifters actually pay their tab.

 

For this who will miss this show (what has happened to all the good Kudos shows), at least grifter fans will still have Leverage. J

TacOps AAR Part 10: Ambitious but Rubbish

0850 to 0910

The first few minutes passed quietly, with limited artillery fire and an airstrike by me that found nothing, so didn’t even bother to drop a bomb. At 0854, 155mm killed a couple of my guys. Watching this period back, all that really happens was Red moving forward slowly but steadily.

At 0900, things changed. My Marine reinforcements arrived and they were packing M-1s. My plan was to have this come in around 06 Easting, which I figure would be far enough to meet up with the incoming Red Force that was due at around the same time, with some of the force reinforcing my main line and the other blocking map exit. The initial Hummer units arrived at 085945 at in the next turn, one blasted an IFV who had poked his head out of a forest for the final time.

Red promptly countered with an airstrike (Coyote had his units pre-plotted to interdict my movement) and took out said Hummer. Oh well. I dropped artillery in the area where the smoking IFV had been, to no effect and made a second Red air attack miss due to Stinger fire.

No less than three Hummers were hit by ICM fire at 0905 and the battle turned into one with more vehicular destruction than an episode of Top Gear as missiles flew across and up. Two minutes later, a Red airstrike followed by an artillery barrage hit a mechanised company and did some noticeable casualties, while an infantry squad took out a BRDM2.

I suffered a further blow at 0908 as a Red MRLS ICM strike followed by a smaller artillery strike took out a number of vehicles and squads, inflicting 3% casualties in one turn. Clearly my point of ingress was not a good one at all.

The next turn saw some infantry death on both sides, but things were definitely not going my way.

TacOps PBEM Part 9: Moving into place

0830 to 0849

We had four minutes of artillery exchanges that mostly missed – I came out the worst, losing that anti-tank squad that I mentioned before it had even fired a shot.

A couple of minutes of quiet followed by the same thing happening to another Javelin squad. Red was moving his forces into observation positions, allowing him to better direct his artillery fire and make things easier for the main assault. Some more artillery followed, along with my elimination of a BTR squad by an airstrike at 084215.

In fact, much of this turn was quiet, but little did I know, Red had found the gap in my lines and was starting to send some of his units through. A gap he would later use for his main assault (see circled).

60 Years on the throne

60 years ago today, Elizabeth II became the British monarch. Not that I can remember anyone else, but I'd say she's not been all that bad, has she?

The Queen of the Castle (Grand Review: 'Borgen')

DR, the people who brought you a sweater-clad woman trying to solve murders, now bring you a suit-clad woman trying to run a small European country.

Borgen ("The Castle", the BBC deciding not to use the English-language title of Government that DR uses) is the tale of Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the leader of a small party who finds herself, through a combination of her own skill and a spin doctor dying while in possession of compromising information about the incumbent, becoming Prime Minister of Denmark. A morally upright politician, we see the corrosive effects of power and government on her morals, along with her family life.

At the same time, we follow the work of a TV news team for the fictional TV1 channel, as they report on the goings-on with this administration. The key character is journalist and anchor Katrine Fønsmark, who used to have a relationship with Kasper Juul, the Prime Minister's spin doctor.

Borgen is definitely a dramatic show - the deterioration of the Christensen family relationship is uncomfortable to watch and there's some big stakes at play. However, it's also funny. The dialogue sparkles and the whole thing reminds one of The West Wing - something the writers did deliberately (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, who plays Fønsmark, has said that she based her line delivery on CJ Cregg's - it's pretty obvious now that she's mentioned it).

In fact, it is the best contemporary political drama I have seen since The West Wing. In comparison with The Killing, it actually surpasses it in a number of key aspects. In particular, its lead character is far more interesting than the rather dour Sarah Lund (could you see her playing with children?). Considering she speaks "better" English than some Brits, Knudsen would be highly welcome in any BBC drama.

This is not to say that this is a perfect show - Episode 4, involving CIA rendition flights, is a bit too heavy handed and rests on the premise of an essentially out of control PET (rendered "Special Branch" in the subtitles, this is the Danish equivalent to MI5). The season ending is also a bit weak.

However, none of these detract too much from what is a wonderful achievement for any network, especially DR, who has a tiny drama budget that an American show could blow through in four or five episodes. It's witty, it's meaningful and it's clever.

Well done, BBC4, you've surpassed yourself again in buying this.

9/10

PS One final thing - there are quite a few alumni from The Killing here, including both of Sarah Lund's previous detective partners and Theis Birk Larsen as the Defence Minister. So, you've got another reason to watch.

TacOps AAR Part 8: Never bring a Hummer to an IFV fight

0820 to 0829

To try and get a view of the enemy forces, I sped a section of HMMMVs forward. Unfortunately, Hummers cannot stand up to RPG fire and by 0824, the entire force had been wiped out. Learnt that lesson the hard way.

Another plan went wrong as well. Red detected the anti-tank Javelin unit dug in on the road and starting dropping 152mm shells on them, which knocked the size of the unit down considerably.  While I did knock out a squad with an airstrike at 0827, Red’s forces (which I can see from the playback) were rapidly spreading out and so were a lot harder to localise. A lot of them were dismounted and were able to see me, whereas I couldn’t see them.

Things, to use the technical term, were all going Pete Tong.

A little project I've been doing in Google SketchUp

Can’t really say it’s all that much. Still early days.

 

This is Rostock, a spaceship owned by a mercenary group and used as a carrier, that features in one of the sims that I play one at Phoenix Roleplaying. I’ve added a model of Serenity (done by Abraham Katase) to provide some scale.

 

TacOps AAR Part 7: Sound and Fury

0810 to 0819

This bit opened with another helicopter going down to an airstrike and some artillery fire that either missed or did little damage.

I lost my final Chinook at 0813 and so I had very little idea of where Red, who was spreading out, actually was. I did think that he would drive down the road at the bottom of the map and had an anti-tank unit hidden in the wooded area in grid square 1100, just waiting to get LOS on some BTRs and ruin their day.

Three Blue Airstrikes at 0816 knocked out a few troops and another BTR, but very little happened in three turns after that – certainly no casualties. In summary, one could call this period, to quote Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Well, except for the loss of the final helicopter in this battle.

When they arrive, they arrive... TOAW III

A large number of high-skilled US units are starting to carve a deep salient in my flank. While I'm still winning, I might not be for much longer...

After Pearl Harbor - Part Seven: So Near To Defeat

Part One

I've done six previous posts on the subject of the Japanese campaigns in the six months or so after Pearl Harbor and learned quite a bit in the process. So I'm going to list a few thoughts and reflections that have come to mind during all of this.

1. The forces of the Allies were seriously under-prepared and ill-equipped. The British had already been fighting a war for two years thousands of miles away. Not only were their resources and attention focussed there, it would take a couple of months to get reinforcements into theatre in any significant numbers - remember that most Allied convoys to Egypt would have to go the long way round Africa due to the Axis naval threat in the Mediterranean and that's just part of the journey. However, none of this excuses the multi-level disaster that was Singapore.
2. The Japanese got seriously far in their empire acquisition in a relatively period of time. Berlin to the outskirts of Baku is just shy of 2,000 miles as the crow flies. Tokyo to Singapore, not even the furthest the Japanese went, is about 3,300 and it's almost 600 from south Vietnam to the latter. Japan got from Indochina to Singapore in under two months - through pretty thick jungle. This says something about Japanese martial skill.
3. It was only really luck and good intelligence that stopped the Japanese assault in its tracks. If Nimitz hadn't found out that the Japanese were going to target Midway - or Yorktown had gone up earlier than it actually did, it is hard to see the Japanese not taking that island. The United States at worst would have sued for peace.
4. The Japanese were just as barbarous as the Germans in the way that they fought their wars. Some of the things that I read during the course of the research for this shocked me. The Nazis generally did not leave dead British soldiers hanging on the sides of roads or force them to engage in brutal manual labour. Of course, the Japanese did not exterminate ten million people in concentration camps and ghettoes, but some of their other stuff was just as brutal i.e. using prisoners for chemical warfare experiments. The world is well rid of both of those regimes.
5. The environs in the Pacific were worse in many ways than in Europe. I watched The Pacific a while back and the unpleasant environments that war was fought in are clear to see - hot, sweaty and damp. Sanitation was a real problem - especially for Americans and Brits who weren't necessarily used to it.
6. Morale must have been pretty bad for the Allies in the early months of 1942. How many Allied victories were there from 1939 to mid-1942? A couple at best. In the meantime, the Axis powers won victory after victory. With the U-boats wreaking havoc on Allied shipping, I can see why some people were thinking about a negotiated peace.

I hope that you have found this series as interesting and enlightening as I did while I've researched it. I also hope that you've got a deeper appreciation of what the men and women in that conflict went through - because at the end of the day, we're the ones who have to pass the stories and ensure something like this never happens again.

I know I have.

TacOps PBEM AAR Part Six: Big Targets for Rotor-wings

0800 to 0809

The BTR series of armoured personnel carriers are designed to be “battle taxis”, bringing soldiers to the battlefield or transporting them long distance. While they provide good protection against helicopter fire, they are not tanks. As was about to be demonstrated.

At 0800, my choppers unleashed a large salvo of Hellfires and nearly all of them struck home. A Red aircraft did kill one of the helicopters, but the losses were pretty much all Coyote’s. I scored just under 496 attrition points just in that turn and nearly another 650 the following one as three ICM (that’s armour-penetrating) artillery strikes went dead on target, followed by more Hellfires, although I did lose an AH-1 to an SA-16 MANPADS when I got too close.

I was deliberately targeting those BTRs – I knew that if they were destroyed, there were infantry units that were either dead or unable to cross the map as they bailed out (in fact they were coming out to further fire, which cut some of them down – in a way, I feel sorry for the poor guys). In fact, four red units (two BTRs and their AT4 teams inside) actually fled the map at 0803 – I don’t know why Coyote did that.

If the whole battle carried on like this, I would have won easily. I was nailing Red with artillery fire and he wasn’t getting any on me. I even pulled off a successful airstrike. Watching the replay, the devastation I was causing is all too clear. Red’s force was reduced by over half in nine minutes, from a brigade of APCs and Motor Rifle Troops to a few of APCs with some scattered (and probably bewildered) foot-sloggers. I eliminated no less than 46 of the BTR-60s. The situation can be seen below.

But all this came at a price. I lost all but two of my helicopters in the process – losing transport and observation capability I wasn’t going to get back. I’d actually conducted much of the artillery bombardment semi-blind; I was going to have to go the rest of the battle like this.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

One would like to think that, sixty-seven years after the liberation of Auschwitz, prejudice and hatred on the basis of religion were a thing of the past.

Sadly, it isn't. Many people still haven't learned.

Nope. Still don't believe it. (Grand Review: 'Above Suspicion: Silent Scream')

My review of the previous Above Suspicion can be found here. Most of it still remains true a year later - although having seen Kelly Reilly in the first Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie, I don't think bad acting is the cause.

It's quite simply the fact that DI Anna Travis is so bad a character that even a RSC alumni (are there many good female roles in Shakespeare apart from Lady Macbeth?) couldn't lift her from the dregs of woefully bad. In the world of Above Suspicion, she is being considered for accelerated promotion. Quite frankly, I wouldn't trust this woman with a Safer Neighbourhoods Team. This is quite frankly one of the few shows that is better when its lead isn't in the scene. Again, the make-up is awful - way too much mascara [Your only qualification on the subject of good make-up is the possession of a Y chromosome, Silent, although some might say that's enough - Ed.]

Shall we discuss the way in Travis makes an idiot out of herself in this one? How about the one where she goes to the house of a murder suspect alone and so gets beaten up as a result - then waltzes straight back into work while still on painkillers? What part of "go home" does this woman not understand?

Silent Scream's plot isn't that brilliant either. Film star gets murdered and dark secrets come out. Same old, same old. Been done a thousand times and mostly far better. There's a subplot about DCS Langton finding out who told his superiors about the big error last time (where the main suspect got into the incident room by pretending to be an FBI agent), which resulted in him being passed over for promotion. Quite frankly, it's derivative and clichéd - I'd prefer not to discuss this. It's a shame as it was promising to begin with.

So, we've got another poor ITV crime drama with an appalling lead character and a bargain basement plot. No change there then, which is a deep pity.



4/10. Please don't waste any more money on this, ITV.

TacOps PBEM Part Five: Completing Phase One

0740 to 0759

The reason that I’m doing these two posts together is that not a massive amount happened here – in terms of volume of fire at any rate.

At 0742, I found the last Red Unit on Objective E and attacked it with a helicopter, a mortar and airstrike – only the former doing any good. REDFOR dropped a load of artillery on an area with nothing actually in it and an MLRS strike on an area that actually did. Finally, three helicopters and an infantry squad from one of those finished off the final infantry squad.

REDFOR now had “Nothing to do for the next 14 minutes except pre-plot artillery and use harassing fires to slow [my] redeployment”. I spent that time preparing for the reinforcements for Red that would come from the eastern edge of the map, moving my Cobras to cover the main roads that Coyote would likely use to ingress his forces.

The turns moved rapidly, with only my movement – the remaining Red forces on the map stayed put and lowered their engagement ranges down to 110 metres to avoid being detected by me. A Red airstrike at 0755 killed a few helicopters and I lost a mortar unit at 0759.

At the same time, some of Red’s BTR units arrived on the map and got a taste of Hellfire. A taste they would never forget.

Press TV loses UK licence

Good riddance.

After Pearl Harbor Part Six - The Second Battle: Midway

The Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu maneuvers to avoid bombs dropped by USAAF Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress bombers

Part One

The Battle of Midway from 4 June to 7 June 1942 is arguably the most important naval battle in the Pacific War. With one fell swoop from the forces of two US carriers, Japan lost three of its aircraft carriers - a fourth would follow later. The United States only lost one. Japan's naval supremacy in the Pacific entered a downward path that they would never recover from.

As the story of Midway is well known, I'm going to take a different tack on this post. I'm going to discuss carrier operations c. 1942 with some of my computer game experiences helping in the analysis of this. I find that war games can be very educational in this regard.

Pre-launch

I don't imagine the air conditioning on US Navy warships was all that good back in 1942. I guess key components could be kept cool, but for many you're basically in a large metal can that has the sun shining on it the whole time. In the Pacific in mid-summer it wouldn't be pleasant.

It'd also be cramped. Sailors have long faced a lack of privacy and a tiny living area - sometimes having to "hot-bunk", which I really wouldn't want to do.

Take off

Launching from an aircraft carrier wouldn't be all that hard. Just push the throttle forward to maximum power and use the wind speed generated by a combination of the carrier's own engines and the prevailing wind to get airborne. Of course, if your engine didn't work properly, you could drop into the sea, facing the chance of either being run over by your own carrier or drowning trapped in your aircraft.

I've never had any particular problems with carrier take-off in the Battlefield games at all (it's a bit harder in Il-2) - in fact it's easy in all walks of life to "take off". The question is staying airborne and landing safely.

Transit and return from target

The ocean is a big place and finding a small ship is not easy, especially when you don't have radar. Even then, you might misidentify your target in some form.

In addition, a spotter plane that found an aircraft carrier would need to call the report in. You couldn't do it like today with an encrypted satellite phone and your own voice. I may be wrong, but for distance transmissions you were having to rely on Morse - which takes time to send. It was not unheard of for a spotting aircraft to be destroyed before it get a contact report off.

Navigation was a lot harder back then as well. You were basically relying on a compass, a stopwatch and sometimes the stars - no real landmarks at sea. A small error could quickly mount up and result in you missing your target by miles. Or even worse, failing to find your carrier before you ran out of fuel. This can be demonstrated in particular by the early performance of Bomber Command over Germany where the vast majority of bombs didn't even get within five miles of their target. That's a big miss.

Attacking the target

No fancy stand-off weaponry back then. There were two basic ways to attack a carrier - dive-bombing or torpedoing.

Dive-bombing basically involves swooping down on the carrier and releasing your bombs so that they hit the deck. This is harder than it sounds. I've had enough problems in Battlefield trying to get bombs to drop accurately onto target - I usually just do lay-down and hope, with little success so far.

You've got to come in at a steep angle against a moving ship that is shooting at you. With a lot of guns - US carriers had a large number of AAA guns on board up until the missile age. One hit in the right place and you're either going to explode or not be able to pull out of the dive.

Torpedo attacks involved coming in straight and low, so the torpedo (which ran straight) would not go straight down when it hit the water. Again, you've got flak coming at you from the ship, with some small arms fire for added "effect". A hit here and you have little room for manoeuvre before plunging into the sea.

Landing

"Trapping" on a carrier is regarded as one of the most scary things to do in aviation, especially at night. You have to find the carrier in the first place and then come in at the right angle and approach to catch one of the four arrestor wires on a deck moving in three dimensions, which will bring you to a screeching halt. There were none of the optical landing systems back then - they would be invented after the war. You were reliant on eyesight and the landing officers waving you in. Come in too low and a "ramp strike" was a distinct possibility or having your landing gear collapse on you.

If you miss the wires today, you just slam the engines on afterburner and go around - as the landing area is at an angle to the rest of the ship to prevent a "bolter" from hitting aircraft parked forward and allowing for a safe fly-off. Back during the war, you'd either hit the aircraft, hit a safety net and have your aircraft badly damaged, or go off the side.

I've never made an arrested carrier landing in any game, so I can't comment on this.

Leaving your aircraft

Ditching from an aircraft over the sea is not something that any pilot would ever want to do. If you landed close to an enemy carrier, you were going to end up a POW or dead - considering the Japanese, some might have preferred the latter. If you landed in the open ocean and managed to avoid drowning by being pulled under by your own chute if you failed to release it on landing (a distinct possibility if you were injured), you had to hope someone found you...

Conclusion

It's a simple one really - it takes skill and bravery to be a carrier aviator. I don't think I could do it.

SOPA and PIPA shelved

Good. They were badly written and too vague.

Now I would suggest that media companies, both Internet and mainstream, work together on a better bill. Online piracy is a real problem and needs handling - but not at the expense of freedom of speech.

Sherlock - "The Reichenbach Fall"

I don't think this is a spoiler, so here we go.

How on earth did he do that?

TacOps PBEM Part Four - Hide and Seek

0730 to 0739

If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.

One of my favourite web comics, Schlock Mercenary, revealed another maxim from its “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective” – number 20, the above mentioned gem (my calendar for this year is the Schlock one featuring the first 12). There was a fair bit of that going on in this battle, even if it wasn’t intentional.

I cleared Objective B at 0732, thanks to the Hummers arriving and dealing with the foot sloggers rather than the helicopter. In that same term, a Red MLRS attack killed three of my soldiers and cost me another unit. Nasty things – have been since the Second World War…

I cleared C two minutes later, leaving Coyote with only three squads on the entire map, only one of which was actually parked in an objective – Objective E. To try and find the remaining holdout, my choppers circled around over E and then two (one not over E) were bagged by a pair of Floggers conducting airstrikes [So they’re good for something – Ed.]

Somehow I managed to miss a unit less than three hundred metres away from me from a helicopter…

SOPA and PIPA

So, Wikipedia are doing this "blackout" tomorrow in protest against PIPA (SOPA being pretty much dead now), a piece of proposed legislation in the US Senate that, they argue, will severely damage the freedom of the internet.

I support efforts to stop online piracy - it does damage the incomes of a lot of decent people who deserve to profit from their creativity. PIPA however seems to be going a bit far - shutting down a site solely based on an accusation isn't justice and the proprietors need to have the right to defend themselves. I trust that these media companies will at least ask for the removal of offending content first - it will ultimately damage them otherwise - and courts will be sensible in this. The United States government, of whatever political hue, is a strong guardian of freedom of speech - there are a lot of things they could have done pretty easily in the last twenty years and haven't, whereas many other states would do them without blinking.

Speaking of "freedom of speech" (which will still exist on the internet), I wonder if people are going to protest against DNS shutdowns in Iran and China? A violation is a violation regardless of jurisdiction.

Plans for 2012

Much later than planned, here is what I intend to blog about for 2012:

• Something for the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War - not a massive series though.
• A Grand Review of Borgen. Also with Doctor Who scheduled for autumn, I'll be doing an odd TV episode - whatever takes my fancy.
• I'll be doing Above Suspicion: Silent Scream, just like I did Deadly Intent last year. No, I still can't take Detective Inspector Anna Travis seriously.
• I'll definitely be reviewing Skyfall. I may also get one or two DVDs out and review some of the older Bond films.
• One big series this year - the North African campaign, focussing on El Alamein.
• The US presidential election naturally.
• Pentecost or another Christian festival.

These may all change, of course.

TOAW III - eventually you run into a problem

So, I'm eight turns in to my invasion of South Korea.

 So, the forces of Kim il-Sung have run a considerable way into South Korea, but have now run into problems.

Firstly, the Americans are starting to arrive in numbers and have managed to halt my advance to a certain extent, throwing me back in others.

Secondly, I lack decent air coverage.

Thirdly, with the main railway line to the west of the country broken and only one lot of rail engineers, I can't bring massive lots of reinforcements down and my supplies are naturally effected.

Finally, that's a dangerous looking weak bit of my line to the east.

So, I guess this - or slightly further back - is going to be my temporary stop line.

D'ni sim now open at Phoenix Roleplaying!

D’ni sim* now open! If you’re as big a fan as I am of the Myst series of games and books, then you’re sure to love this sim!

D’ni: Infinite Ages is not one sim, but a collection of active and prospective sims based in the Myst Multiverse on Phoenix Roleplaying.

Currently D’ni: Infinite Ages – Prison Break is open and accepting new character applications (for a list of all proposed D’ni: Infinite Ages sims to date, please visit this thread)

Prison Break

Criminals, undesirables, and other evil sorts were often imprisoned by the D'ni in Prison Books - books designed to hold an individual indefinitely, giving them no ability to leave. Suddenly and inexplicably the D'ni vault containing all of its prison books was found open, books scattered across the floor, and their occupants no longer visible in the Linking Panel. Where did they go? How did they escape? What will they do now that they're free?

Phoenix Roleplaying is a multi-genre, international simming community. We welcome new players and invite you to play a part of our growing community. Want to see a genre or sim we don’t yet have? We welcome your ideas! Sign up now!

*Sim/Simming: See Simming League

Disclaimer: Content on Phoenix Roleplaying may include adult themes. View our rules here

TacOps PBEM Part 3: The Lull

0720-0729

Things got a little quitter – we had two minutes of non-lethal artillery fire from Red as I held off my own artillery until I got better target data (i.e. actually found someone). When I did start, I dropped 155mm shells on a part of Objective E that I now realise was completely empty.

Much of REDFOR’s initial force was gone – all he had were a few squads of straight-leg infantry. To quote Gary’s own notes at 0728, when ¾ of his force had gone:

I've been getting good artillery resupply but I'm unable to see large sections of the map now to spot the most lucrative targets.  Have to target some likely locations now so the ammo does not go to waste, especially the multiple rocket launchers.

Lack of ability to see key parts of the map was a key feature in this game for both of us. Of course, it is a key feature for much of warfare – remember pre-Overlord that the Germans were completely unable to get reconnaissance photos of the area where the real invasion force was forming up because their aircraft kept not making it back – so were duped by the fake force.

At 0728, I lost two Hummers to RPG fire as I found the remaining two man unit in Objective D. It barely lasted 90 seconds as an AH-1 finished it off. Two down, three to go.

TacOps 4 AAR - Part 2

Part One

0710 to 0719

This was a time filled with artillery, cannon and machine gun fire. It is surprising how much the accuracy of small arms fire falls off at distance – I remember the reason why the Russians developed the Dragunov support rifle as opposed to a full-blown sniper rifle is that most of their Second World War engagements were at distances of under 400 metres.

An airstrike at 071145 finished off a couple of the infantry units in square 1004 – it was one of the few successful airstrikes I would have in this battle. ZSU-23-4s: nightmares on six legs. I also lost some of my Hummers to RPG fire – it’s clear why the Americans are moving away from them as they were never meant to operate in an urban environment. While the artillery was a nuisance as it kept suppressing some of my units, it didn’t do a lot of damage.

The cannon fire and machine gun fire from my helicopters slowly began to take its toll on the OPFOR infantry – perhaps I should have gotten a bit closer. The rocket pods made a lot of noise but did little to the foot soldier. These and the artillery focussed on Objective E, getting the enemy presence down there to a mere six soldiers by close of 0719. Objective D actually only had two soldiers, but I had difficulty even finding them.

The casualty level was still a bit lopsided – 27% to 3% - but it was getting better.

TOAW III - Korean advance

Bought TOAW III this week and am currently playing the Communist forces in the tutorial scenario. That's me in Red. While most of the UN forces aren't visible, I can see why at this point (16 July 1950), the UN got thrown back so far. It's not often remembered that the DPRK controlled 90% of South Korea at one point in the war.

Borgen initial thoughts

Have watched the first two episodes of this and am rather impressed - it reminds me of The West Wing only with more jokes. Got to extend a warm thank you to the BBC for buying this - it's another reason for the licence fee.

After Pearl Harbor Part 5: The First Battle - Coral Sea

Lexington explodes

The series starts here.

[Change of plan - I'm doing Coral Sea and Midway as separate posts and doing a final concluding post]

One of my favourite war novels is called The Sixth Battle by Barrett Tillman. Published in 1993, it revolves around a war in Southern Africa and features a supercarrier battle between US and Russian Eurasian forces. Early in the book, some of the characters are discussing how many battles between carrier groups there have been. Using the definition of a mutual exchange of air strikes, they come up with five, the first two being Coral Sea and Midway.

These two battles would prove pivotal in the war in the Pacific, as well as a much smaller, but no less audacious operation.

The Doolittle Raid

The Americans badly needed a morale boost and they got it on 18 April 1942 via the Doolittle Raid, where 16 B-25 bombers launched off the deck of USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo - a city that the Japanese had previously thought untouchable. It didn't do a lot of damage, but the psychological impact of the raid was immense - on both sides. All of the aircraft were lost - 15 crash-landed in China or ditched in the sea and the other one landed in the Soviet Union (which would remain neutral vis-a-vis Japan until August 1945), where it and its crew were interned. Three aircrew died during the raid, while eight of the others were captured - three being executed and one later dying of disease. Everybody else eventually made it back into operational service - James Doolittle, commanding the raid, ended up getting promoted two ranks to Brigadier General (he would eventually end up a full General) and getting the Medal of Honor.

The raid forced Japan to recall a raiding force from the Indian Ocean and delayed the launch of a new carrier that could have played a role in later events.

Target New Guinea

The Japanese were planning three major operations - against the Aleutian Islands, Midway and Port Moresby, New Guinea (now capital of Papua New Guinea).

The reason for Port Moresby (the offensive was codenamed Operation Mo) was simple - firstly it would provide a base for land-based aircraft to support any invasion of Australia and secondly, it would allow access to phosphate for Japanese agriculture. With the bulk of the carrier forces tasked for the other two, only modest forces were allocated for this particular operation. The invasion force sailed on 1 May, with two fleet carriers (Zuikaku and Shokaku) and an light carrier (Shoho) providing the key part of the strike force, escorting 11 transports that would make the main invasion.

The Americans knew that an attack was coming - they were reading the Japanese naval ciphers and so began to position their forces to counter the attack, two carrier task forces centered around Lexington (TF11) and Yorktown (TF17). They were still taken somewhat by surprise - as they were refuelling on 3 May, the Japanese started to land on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, which was undefended as the local forces had been evacuated. TF17 heard the news and rapidly turned for Guadalcanal, where it would launch an air strike the following day against the landing force.

42 aircraft struck at the Tulagi landing force, sinking four vessels. It didn't stop the invasion (Japan would hold Tulagi until August)

The IJN promptly sent their two fleet carriers  south and recce planes into the area where they thought that the carriers were, failing to find anything. Each side spent the next three days looking for each other, mostly without success - American B-17s found Shoho but failed to hit it. Japan bombed Port Moresby in readiness for the invasion.

Day One - 7 May 1942

Early in the morning, Japanese patrol planes found something.

Misidentification of enemy vessels is something war games don't simulate enough. This is not just getting the ship name or class - this is completely misidentifying the type of vessel or its side. Easy to do in the dark or at a distance in a time with limited availability of radar (limited to large ships) where most scouts relied on Mark One Eyeball aided by binoculars. In addition, both fleets were 30 miles from each other and neither knew it.

So the Japanese scouts called in a light carrier and so the two fleet carriers launched against it... only it turned out to be a tanker and a destroyer. They disabled the former and sunk the latter, then, after dark started to come into land on what they thought was one of their carriers - only to discover they were trying to land on Yorktown. The Americans didn't realise the situation themselves until the aircraft were on their final approach.

That same day, American planes from TF17 found what they thought were Japanese carriers - but were in fact merchant ships. The Americans launched a strike at it and ran into the Shoho group, sinking the light carrier after a long dogfight, although most of that carrier's aircraft were able to recover to the other two carriers or dry land.

Both sides then held off for further attacks for the rest of the night.


Day Two - 8 May 1942

The second day of the battle began with both sides launching roughly 120 aircraft a piece. The Americans found Shokaku and damaged it at the cost of 43 aircraft. While they didn't sink the carrier, the damage caused made both fleet carriers turn back and resulted in neither being available for Midway.

The Japanese attack was more successful - their strike damaged Yorktown (although that damage was quickly fixed on return to Pearl Harbor) and wrecked Lexington's fuel lines. A chain of secondary explosions led to a conflagration and the second carrier was scuttled.

Both sides broke off at this point - the Japanese no longer had air cover for their invasion fleet and recalled it, while Yorktown made for Pearl.

The Japanese could at least claim a tactical victory here - but it was a pyrrhic one as they would never get near Port Moresby again.

They certainly could not call the next one a victory.