Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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Who out there likes breathing?
I like breathing.
And that's good news for us all because there was a lot of it going on when it came to music in November 1986.
For instance, the first half of that month saw the UK singles chart's Number One slot being gripped by Berlin with their track Take My Breath Away. However, in the second half of the month, they soon had to make way for Europe and The Final Countdown.
I suppose that makes sense. After all, Europe is indeed bigger than Berlin.
But while Berlin were failing to breathe atop the singles chart, the corresponding album listings saw the month launch with the Police in pole position, thanks to their Best Of collection Every Breath You Take.
Like Berlin, the Police soon found that lung power alone wasn't enough to keep them aloft indefinitely and they too were soon robbed of their crown. This time, by Various Artists with their latest platter that shattered Hits 5.
However, Various Artists turned out to be no match for Various Artists who quickly deposed them with their brand new album Now That's What I Call Music! Vol 8.
And what of the cinema? What was tickling our widescreen taste buds?
There wasn't a lot going on that could be called memorable but it was, at least, a month which saw the unleashing of Sid and Nancy, An American Tail and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Having seen just one of those movies, I shall nominate the Star Trek offering as my Film of the Month.
And it was doing it in a way that would go on to make history because November 1986 saw Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson appointed as the new manager of Manchester United, replacing Ron Atkinson and launching what would turn out to be a legendary epoch in that club's annals.
But what of the galaxy's greatest comic? What was it up to?
It was, as so often, giving us a concentrated diet of Sláine, Ace Trucking Co, Sooner or Later, Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper. Sadly, I have little else to offer, in terms of analysis of those issues but here are their covers in which we can, I have no doubt, find much to treasure and to delight us.
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41 comments:
Very little to treasure here, though the Kev O’Neill is quite daring in its ugliness. In a good way.
But Robinson, Higgins and Smith aren’t up to much, are they? Dredd looks like a spiteful old lady in that top cover.
It’s good of you to carry on with the progs though, Steve.
I’ve never really been into the Sex Pistols, or early Gary Oldman or Alex Cox so I haven’t seen Sid & Nancy. Is it good?
I haven’t seen An American Tail either, though I might have done at one point as I do like James Horner soundtracks from the 80s. But I think that moment has passed now.
Star Trek IV, then.
I still don’t associate that one with 1986. I completely missed it at the time: I’d loved the first three movies and seen each several times, but adolescence meant a complete swerve from all those sorts of films for a few years. I don’t think I actually saw it until 1988?
I used to quite like it. I still like the first 45 minutes, but the sitcom stuff has not aged well.
I watched Andor recently and it set me to thinking about how I hate SF when it gets too close to present day life. So club music in Star Wars and fish-out-of -water laughs in contemporary California in Star Trek… it gives me a Galactica 80 shudder.
Matthew, Sid & Nancy is a truly awful film. I cannot understand how it got any decent reviews.
Steve, I was a bit surprised to see this feature appear again after your vital editor's message last month. But then the first couple of Atlas titles with a December cover date in I974 weren't comics, and hardly anyone's read them. I mean, what would you write about Gothic Romances #1?
Mind you, if this is the last of the 2000ad posts it seems a shame not to end on prog 500. Although I suppose concluding with 498 is a very Steve Does Comics way of doing things, you crazy diamond.
-sean
Sean, as regards Atlas, all I'll say is make sure to be here on December 22nd.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
The O’Neill is definitely the best of the batch. But I kinda like that top Dredd cover, even if he does look like a spiteful old lady :D
I saw SID AND NANCY at the theatre but don’t remember much about it. Don’t think I liked it much.
A few years ago, I re-watched STAR TREKs 2, 3 and 4 over the course of a few days. I liked SEARCH FOR SPOCK a tiny bit better than I used to but thought it was still pretty by-the-numbers and predictable. My opinion on WRATH OF KHAN and VOYAGE HOME hadn’t changed much over the years — thought they were both still very enjoyable.
Matthew, I didn’t find the juxtaposition of the Enterprise crew in “present day” California as egregious as you did (and I actually kinda liked GALACTICA 1980 more than the original series) but I generally agree with your point about the settings of SF movies and TV series feeling too much like our own place and time. I haven’t seen ANDOR (or ANY of the STAR WARS tv series) but there was a sequence in DUNE PROPHECY where two of the characters went clubbing and everything about it — the clothes, the lighting, the music — felt way too “2024”. It very much ruined the “futuristic” ambience that the rest of the episode had done such a good job establishing.
b.t.
I think the problem with these Dredd covers is they’re riffing on the iconic Bolland style but, aren’t Bolland. If you compare these with the covers he did for the Eagle US Dredd reprint series, they’re night and day. Being fair to Robinson, Higgins and Smith, no one really got close to Bolland. O’Neil is, at least, doing O’Neil (it’s this type of cutting edge criticism that has got me where I am ;-).
I think the Berlin single received a massive boost from the Top Gun video clip. The Final Countdown could have been a spoof song on Harry Enfield. Aren’t the Housemartins about to hit #1 with Caravan of Love?
DW
DW, Caravan Of Love did indeed hit #1 for one week followed by Jackie Wilson's Reet Petite which was the Christmas #1 for 1986, a whopping 29 years after it was first released in 1957. Unfortunately Jackie Wilson didn't live to see Reet Petite hit #1 in the UK.
DW -
You’re spot-on with the Bolland comparison - I used to think the same at the time. Cliff Robinson had nailed Bolland’s fine-line inking style but had absolutely none of his skills in composition / draughtsmanship etc.
Two characters go clubbing in Dune: Prophecy? Clubbing?!!?!
I thought Dune was all austere, hybrid Islamic / Catholic religiosity, which had been in place for thousands of years…? Certainly seemed that way to me in the books.
Nightclubs?!
Star Trek IV's juxtaposition of the Enterprise crew with present day/contemporary America is nothing new. It also happened in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' ( the episode in which Starfighter pilot, Captain John Christopher, intercepted the Enterprise.) The same thing, with a typical, contemporary American, initially expressing disbelief, but by the end of the episode addressing senior officers by their professional titles/ranks - e.g. 'Mr.Spock' ( Tomorrow is Yesterday' ) & 'Admiral Kirk' ( Star Trek IV ) happens in both. The Joan Collins episode (albeit a few decades before contemporary America) isn't that far off, either. Then there's that episode with Terri Garr, introducing a possible spin-off series that never happened. Garr was a bit of an 'everyman' - or everywoman - character ( even if her time-travelling? male partner was far more than that! ) It's a while since I've watched that one, so I'm a bit vague on the details. Returning to Star Trek IV, back in the day, I never realized the whales, George & Gracie, were named for George Burns and his wife.
Phillip
Phillip, there was a two-part story in Star Trek: Voyager in which the crew arrive in modern-day (well, 1996) California. I can't fully recall the plot but it involved an Elon Musk-type billionaire who'd become rich and famous by exploiting the futuristic technology he'd discovered in a crashed alien spaceship.
Colin -
How did they wangle that on Voyager? Wasn’t the premise that they were stranded far far away from Earth and making their way back slowly?
Matthew, according to Wikipedia the two episodes were called Future's End Parts 1 and 2 which involved a 29th Century timeship sending Voyager back to 20th Century Earth.
DUNE PROPHECY supposedly takes place 10,000 years before the events of the first book. Theoretically, before the Islamic / Catholic / Imperial stuff was set in stone. Problem is, the technology level and societal customs don’t seem all that different from what they are in the first of the Villeneuve movies. There is an Emperor and Lansraad , tensions between the feuding Great Houses, etc. Ten thousand years is a LONG time!
And the night club in the first episode still feels really wrong.
b.t.
Colin - I remember one with the Voyager gang fighting Nazis (?)
Phillip
Wasn't there a Galactica 1980 2-parter in which they went back in time to the 1940s and fought Nazis?
Was there not a post here from a Rikita discussing Steve’s “playfulness” especially in context of Berlin? Where’d it go?
Phillip:
I finally got around to watching the “Assignment: Earth” episode of Star Trek a few years ago. I have three takeaways:
1) Super-cute Teri Garr is wasted in the episode. The script doesn’t really give her much to do, and the wardrobe and hair they gave her did her no favors.
2) Time traveler Gary Seven seems very much like a blatant rip-off of Dr. Who. He basically has a TARDIS in his apartment closet!
3) I can totally see why no one wanted to turn it into a series. It’s just not very good.
b.t.
Steve - I stopped watching Galactica 1980, after they replaced Apollo & Face from the A-Team, with Dick Van Dyke's son & another different actor (so I don't remember that story, but it might have been in the final series. ) Incidentally, Dick Van Dyke's son (replacing Jan Michael Vincent) is also associated with Airwolf's inferior final ( Canadian made ) series.
Even Galactica 1980's first series was OK, but with standard sci-fi plots you'd see in SPACE: 1999, etc. For example, that Galactica episode with Count Iblis/Satan ( played by Patrick MacNee ), is very similar to the Peter Bowles ( as Baal? I forget ) episode of SPACE:1999. I suppose the 'sleeper awakes' plot's also in Star Trek, what with Khan (even if his powers aren't as extensive. )
Phillip
b.t. Gary Seven is familiar. Was he Robert Lansing, who later played 'Control' on the Equalizer? I'll have to check!
Phillip
Yes - Gary Seven's Robert Lansing!
Phillip
Phillip:
Yes, Robert Lansing. He was a very good actor, with an intense screen presence. Unfortunately, I think he was all wrong for Gary Seven. The part called for someone with a bit more joie de vivre.
b.t.
b.t. - Maybe 'Time Trax' was similar to that potential spin-off. That being said, Time Trax's protagonist (playing Darian Lambert) lacked joie de vivre too, being a bit wooden!
Phillip
Sean, Rikita's idiosyncratic use of language, and link leading to a website renting office space, seems to have set off the site's spam detector...
The actor playing Time Trax's protagonist, Darian Lambert.... (ungarbled mode!)
Phillip
Full disclosure: I don’t think I ever actually watched Galalctica 80 on TV. But I did go see the cobbled-together cinema release of three episodes called ‘Conquest Of The Earth’ in 1980.
I clearly remember it was one of the first films I very much wanted to walk out of, and I came out thinking it was one of the worst films I’d ever seen. Apart from the bit where they composited Cylob raider spacecraft into footage from ‘Earthquake’ to make it look like LA was under attack, which the trailer leaned into heavily.
I mean in retrospect, after sitting through the previous two shitty cobbled together Galactica movies, I’m not sure I had any right to expect anything better. But still.
Matthew - Since childhood (when I vaguely remember the show - I've got a Battlestar Galactica annual somewhere) I've only fairy recently watched the series again. As a kid, I did watch the movie at a small cinema in Sheffield, finding it very disappointing compared with Star Wars. The special effects for the Cylon ships were good, but that didn't compensate for a bad film. Battlestar Galactica's main spin-off, for me, was the BBC Micro game, 'Cylon Attack', which based one of its space stations/targets, on the design of the Cylons' space station.
Phillip
Rikita wrote a wonderful opinion piece on your post Steve. I didn’t even notice the link. And what’s more, though Rikita’s post was SPAM, one wonders about the time involved to create such SPAM because it read so well. Playfully, I would say!
Playfully yours fella! ;)
Matthew:
My GALACTICA true confession: I only watched the first few GALACTICA 1980 episodes before losing interest. It’s not like I actively disliked it or anything, I just didn’t make a point of watching it, forgot what night it was on, missed a few episodes and realized with a shrug that i was fine with that.
I saw the first BATTLESTAR GALACTICA “movie” in the theatre , but none of the follow-up GALACTICA movies. I’m not sure the GALACTICA 1980 compilation thing even played theatrically in the U.S. but it might have.
I did see the BUCK ROGERS pilot film in the theatre — IIRC, that one actually debuted in theatres before airing on TV. It was pretty bad….but I probably ended up watching more episodes of BUCK ROGERS than GALACTICA, for some reason.
b.t.
Battlestar Galactica's Moses-like patriarch (Adama)was from either the High Chaparral or Bonanza - so maybe they hoped to get Western & Star Wars fans to buy into the series.
Phillip
I think the subsequent Galactica movies were just for overseas audiences, who likely wouldn’t get the TV series for quite a while.
I dragged my poor Dad to see both BSG and the Buck Rogers TV movie back in 1979. I’m actually writing this in a hotel across the road from the site of the cinema we saw them in (which was demolished in 1984).
I think when BSG eventually made it to UK TV quite some time later (on BBC2…?), I watched a bit and quickly lost interest too. I remember some terrible High Noon-type episode with a Cylon gunman.
Lorne Greene was the star of the long-running Western TV series BONANZA, Phillip. I remember TV critics scornfully calling BSG “Cattle-Car Galactica”.
Fun fact : for a number of years, there was a chain of licensed Bonanza Family Restaurants. There was one a few miles from our house. My brothers and I loved it because they had unlimited side dishes: mac ‘n’ cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, baked beans, fruit salad, cornbread, jello and pudding for dessert. Veggies too, of course but we didn’t bother with those ;)
b.t.
b.t. - As a kid, I used to mix up the High Chaparral & BONANZA. I thought cowboys only ate beans & sausages ; )
Phillip
Geeze… the old steakhouses…. Me and the missus would go to one for the lunch buffet. Mind you, not for steak which ws
As not on offer but the fried chicken, pizza, and god knows what else for sides, desserts, drinks. Excellent.
Charles
Phillip, those Nazis were aliens who had captured Voyager and then brainwashed the crew into believing they were living in World War 2 for some reason that I can't recall.
Charlie:
Yeah the Bonanza Steakhouse was the first place I ever saw a self-serve soda fountain with endless refills — this was like ‘69/70 — we would make hideous Coke/Root Beer/7Up combos — came home with tummy aches quite often!
According to Google, there are still 29 Bonanza restaurants still operating. I’m honestly amazed. Ours went belly up decades ago.
b.t.
Charlie:
Up until about ten years ago, there was a Sizzler near my work — I would go at least once a week for the “endless” salad bar which included soup, chicken wings, taco fixins, garlic toast, soft-serve ice cream. Probably a good thing for my blood pressure and waistline that they went out of business.
b.t.
They always find a way to do time travel to (then) contemporary Earth in Star Trek, even when it doesn't make a whole lot of sense given the basic premise of a series like Voyager. Or Deep Space 9 - you forgot to mention the one when Quark went to Roswell, Phillip!
A variation on that is when a Star Trek crew travel back in time to the near future of when the episode was made, but its now the present. Like the DS9 two parter about the Bell Riots of 2024. What happened to them?
For that matter, where is the Irish reunification of 2024 Data went on about in TNG?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbSGp4WIBsQ
If it doesn't happen in the next couple of weeks I shall be very disappointed!
-sean
Sean, there's an alternate universe where Mary Lou McDonald is PM of a united Ireland.
But fair play to the Fianna Fail/Fine Gael coalition - they are certainly standing up to Netanyahu.
Clearly we live in the mirror universe (to continue the Star Trek theme) Colin.
Although actually I think its more that the prediction was just a few years off. Give it tíl around 2030...
-sean
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