That Wacky Redhead

[Thande]

It's interesting reading about these Christmas Tapes. They date back to films made in the 1950s for the Christmas party with technical staff imitating real performers and performing sketches. Gradually these became less refined and started including bloopers. They also switched from film to video tape.

As you say, it took a while for the BBC to follow ITV's lead in producing a programme based on blooper tapes. It could be because of a controversy involving the 1978 Christmas tape. That tape included a section where an interview with Princess Anne was editted to make it look like she was talking about sex. That fell into the hands of the Sunday People newspaper who did a shock-horror story about it. It's quite possible that mudied the waters on the subject of bloobers in general as far as BBC management were concerned, hence the delay in producing their own bloopers show.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Interesting point there.

Of course there is also the infamous Rainbow "playing with your twanger and balls" spoof episode (which a lot of people still seem to think was an actual broadcast episode rather than a Christmas tape parody for internal consumption only).

Although not made for a Christmas tape, apparently the scene where the Goodies blow up the BBC Television Centre was also a popular one for them to play for the BBC staff at Christmas parties.

 

[ryu238]

I suppose Mario might be altered to how we know them... but don't kill off fanfiction!

 

[Brainbin]

I've been thinking that the different situation in Iran ITTL is going to butterfly away the Iranian Embassy Siege in May 1980. The end of the siege raised the profile of the SAS, leading to a number of popular culture references (for example on Not the Nine O'Clock News). In particular, without that ending of the siege, the film Who Dares Wins won't be made.

Not to mention the Canadian Caper - one of the very few times in history that the United States has ever really noticed us - which was of course "corrected" by the release of the recent film Argo, in which our role was downplayed into irrelevance. And who was partly responsible for that travesty? Clooney

I definitely knew YOU would not do a sequel, why can't you allow someone else. Is it because they would need your approval and you don't see it?

I'm far too controlling over my own creation - I wouldn't want anyone else to play around with it unless I were looking over their shoulder, basically. And that would take a lot of time and effort on my part. I admire writers who can take a more hands-off approach to spinoffs and collaborations, but I can't emulate them.

We were socialist state (at least that was what we were tought at school, the only communist contry in the world was USSR). We could understand that: we were much poorer than capitalists but not as dirt-poor as Russkies (that was a reasoning of common people, something that propaganda tried to deny in vain). Our Party was United Workers' Party, not communist. The official name of our state was Polish People's Republic. So when I found out that we are known abroad as "communists" I was wery suprised and slightly hurt ("What??? We are not THAT bad!")

Ah, yes. Well, it is true that the "Workers' Party" isn't necessarily a communist name... in fact I'm a little surprised that they actually got away with calling it that when you're right next to Germany. And of course we've all heard the old chestnut about any state with the word "People" in the name never having a popular government.

I haven't read the latest update yet, but I was thinking of a butterfly flap that may have no consequence until much later down the line that would kind of make me sad. It seems Fantasy/Sci-Fi is a more acceptable medium on TV ITTL, which means George R. R. Martin will probably get much more work, which probably means no Song of Ice and Fire. *sigh*

Well, those books were themselves adapted to the small screen through Game of Thrones - perhaps if Martin went into television we could cut the middleman.

Love the writing, I'll read that latest update when I find some free time.

Thank you, and I'm glad you're still reading! Please take your time - I know the latest update is a long one

Ummm, with the trial of the century... that would not butterfly away so much the King Kong right trials(who the same universal lost in all regards, having only rescticted rights and the rest is in public domain), but something interesting was conversation with the both Howard Lincoln and Howard Philips about that the original defense was the derivate characther(ie all characther can be derivated without being the same) and that animal characthers are not under the same traits as human characther(that would mean someone can copyright tiger for his use and force to lincesed and that is not possible, both in artistic and legal sense), that would be interesting, OTL plan b was remplacin Donkey kong of being necessary.

I remind you that Donkey Kong was released 15 years after the POD, by a company that in the 1960s was not involved in electronics (and would not be until 1974, IOTL).

About the Famicom the thing would be interesting, OTL Masayuki Uemura(Nintendo Hardware Engineer alongside Yokoi) plans called for an advanced 16-bit system which would function as a full-fledged computer with a keyboard and floppy disk drive but because following the sucessful Colecovision(that was optional the computer), they decided to created what was OTL, here the thing would be pretty different

Now, that said, this is a most intriguing suggestion. Thanks for sharing

I guess that we shouldn't even suggest trying to change Polish TV dubbing ? For those who haven't experienced it, foreign films shown on Polish TV were (or maybe still are) dubbed by one person for all the parts, speaking in a monotone.

Wow... no wonder people used to make fun of Warsaw Pact media. That sounds dreadful.

Only a bad lektor reads the roles in monotone. Earlier, when I used to watch more TV, I actually preferred lektor over dubbing - the dubbed speaches sounded artificially to my ears. With lektor I could hear the original woices and intonation and understand what the actors have said.

I wouldn't be able to concentrate on them over the droning of the announcer - even if he wasn't speaking in a monotone.

And I think that hiring one person to read all the text is much cheaper than hiring as many persons as actual actors in the dubbed show.

True, but subtitles would likely be cheaper still - and to be honest, I think I would prefer that, as it allows me to hear all the voices clearly.

Ah, this is the update you mentioned when we met - interesting stuff.

Thank you, Thande!

The Mission: Impossible travails remind me somewhat of Star Trek: A Final Unity, a graphically impressive adventure game which was timed incredibly badly - designed for DOS at a time when Windows 95 was coming out, and designed for the final versions of DOS, so it will only run on very specific machines and often not run particularly well (for example, it won't work on the DOSBox emulator). I actually still own a computer from the exact moment of time where it would work, and even then I had to call Packard Bell's helpline (which at the time, bizarrely, was based in the Netherlands) to find out how to import drivers for my mouse and the sound card from a completely unrelated programme through DOS.

Yes, a lot of mid-1990s games had that problem. Obviously those are great examples of overspecialization in programming, even though they're counter-intuitive (why would more modern computers be worse at running older games?). Since there isn't that kind of precedent ITTL, these programmers are therefore more logical.

I see the whole "as good as arcade graphics on your home console" spiel is appearing earlier in TTL (or maybe it was in OTL and I'm just not familiar with it being used that early).

Probably because I'd say that home console graphics weren't truly comparable to what was available in the arcade until the fourth generation - and not demonstrably better until the sixth (which, not coincidentally, is when the arcades began to close - the one in my local mall shuttered in the early 2000s). The advertisers, to be fair, are stretching the truth - I'd say that the VCS II has the raw capability to be as good as the arcade cabinets graphically, but obviously that has yet to be realized.

I have an inbuilt dislike for Mattel, mainly because of what they did in OTL to Bluebird Toys.

Well, would you look at that! Yes, I can see why you would dislike them after they pulled an EA on poor Bluebird.

About the "Morecambe and Wise doing Atari 2600 adverts" thing I mentioned: see here. OTL really is stranger than fiction...

I think what took me aback about that was their massive popularity - but thinking about it, Bill Cosby basically filled the same role as they did, only in reverse (hitting it big with The Cosby Show only after becoming known for his pitches) - although of course he advertised for Texas Instruments IOTL as opposed to Atari or Commodore.

Once again, Brainbin is focusing almost exclusively on the pop culture of the English-speaking world for the purposes of this timeline, except in cases where non-Anglophone media directly impacts the former (for instance, anime in OTL 2013).

Indeed. In revisions I might devote some coverage to non-English speaking markets, but inversely from how I'm being asked to do so - for example, I might talk about how Japan is reacting to English-language media rather than how the West is absorbing anime (No-Prize for guessing which media, obviously).

Well what I want to know is what's happening in other countries and how it's how it affects the entertainment industry.

What's happening in other countries is going to affect geopolitics, primarily. Remember, it's still the Cold War era, and there's still no Internet.

I tend to think of that as a problem with MS-DOS in general - the whole driver system was very flawed, and I was very glad to see some degree of plug-and-play compatibility when I started using Windows 95 - even if it wasn't at all perfect. I've been re-exploring Windows 3.1 recently, and it strikes me that you had to have a driver disc for nearly every peripheral short of the keyboard, the mouse (if you had a PS/2 mouse) and a few select printers and sound cards. I don't think I noticed at the time since I had a bog-standard hardware setup, although I do recall the serial mouse drivers quite well.

Welcome aboard, RAK! I'm just a bit too young to fully appreciate the vagaries of gaming before Windows 95, so thank you for sharing your experiences

Good point, and one I would have made myself; I would have thought that this would add quite a bit of expense in manufacturing, even considering that the VCS's processor was a cheaper version of an already inexpensive CPU. That said, the OTL Game Boy Advance wasn't that expensive, nor were the OTL PlayStation 2 or Wii, all of which had near-perfect compatibility with their predecessors.

Although the Game Boy Advance, the Wii, and that other system which I will not name all came much later, of course. Still, I really like the idea of there being room in the VCS II for the original chip, in order for it to serve as "training wheels" for designers and programmers with new ideas, which they can elaborate upon using the new processor.

Only slightly off-topic, I found this interesting factoid:
Not sure how true it is, but it sure sounds plausible...

The gist of it is true, although a POD in 1946 would very likely butterfly the birth of both Jeri Ryan and Barack Obama, let alone the creation of Star Trek.

"Star Trek turned out to be highly successful and spawned numerous spin-offs, one of which starred an actress named Jeri Ryan who was the wife of an Illinois politician. After they divorced, numerous scandalous accusations she made against him became public just as he was running for Senate. The accusations killed his candidacy and allowed Barrack Obama to win the election with no real opposition, launching a political career that would culminate in the White House."

This is basically right, but horrendously truncated. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ryan and scroll down to the "Personal life" section.

Welcome aboard, HOI_guy! Thank you for bestowing your very first post upon this thread, and for helping to clarify the issue for Mr Teufel

Of course there is also the infamous Rainbow "playing with your twanger and balls" spoof episode (which a lot of people still seem to think was an actual broadcast episode rather than a Christmas tape parody for internal consumption only).

Yes, that one's been linked on this thread before (probably by you or Nigel, in fact), although sadly Fremantle apparently keeps taking it down from YouTube. Spoilsports

I suppose Mario might be altered to how we know them... but don't kill off fanfiction!

Well, depending on how you define fan fiction, it could be as old as "original" fiction itself... it certainly existed long before the era of my POD. William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, basically wrote fan fiction. But I suppose you're referring to "modern" fan fiction, in this age of copyright, and in which Star Trek fandom did play a major part. In that case, worry not, because I've already written about that, and I plan to devote yet more coverage to the subject in the future.

 

[THE OBSERVER]

How long until the next update?

 

[Maltaran]

And of course we've all heard the old chestnut about any state with the word "People" in the name never having a popular government.

Sir Humphrey: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?
Foreign Office Official: Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

I'm far too controlling over my own creation - I wouldn't want anyone else to play around with it unless I were looking over their shoulder, basically. And that would take a lot of time and effort on my part. I admire writers who can take a more hands-off approach to spinoffs and collaborations, but I can't emulate them.

Same here, when i write it's almsot as if my characters are imaginary friends and I'm a kid living in their universe; it's impossible to chagne them. I have enough trouble with my own fan fiction once I come up with ideas on how stuff runs, though I can understand some different interprettions of characters if they're within reason.

It's really not much different from the America from 1983-1783 ISOT where some of my friends and I are characters. (We need more writers now that it's 1994 to cover their POV of the ISOT, too; I've come up with a lot that's canon now with Glen's approval but others can post their own stuff, eitehr as Americans born before the Event who were int he U.S. or after; or of course anyone who can post as an ancestor they know of who was born in the rest of the world before 1783.)

We don't post in chronological order al the time, though we try to; as long as it's between 9/3/1983 and where Glen has us up to.

Wow... no wonder people used to make fun of Warsaw Pact media. That sounds dreadful.

And not even trying to do different voices or emphasizing anything, that's the worst part. How can one person do the same voice in a monotone? It would sound like when Rainman was rattling off the "Who's on First" routine, jsut a bunch of words together.

 

[vultan]

Hey Brainbin, given any thought as to the different Time Persons of the Year ITTL? Everything should be fine up to 1968, but I'm skeptical that Time would still name the Silent Majority ("Middle America") the title in 1969 with a Hubert Humphrey victory. I could see Humphrey himself being chosen for 1969 for rolling back... the conflict.

After that, there's pretty much no chance anything else is going to be the same for the rest of the TL. So what are your thoughts?

Here's a list of the recipients.

 

[NCW8]

And not even trying to do different voices or emphasizing anything, that's the worst part. How can one person do the same voice in a monotone? It would sound like when Rainman was rattling off the "Who's on First" routine, jsut a bunch of words together.

As Mefisto says, many Poles actually prefer it to a complete dub or sub-titles. I can understand the latter - on a small screen, sub-titles can be either very obtrusive or too small to read clearly. Here's an item showing a Polish lector in action.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[Space Oddity]

For my mind the worst is exported version of With Fire and Sword. A brilliant miniseries, a great introduction to the works of Jerzy Hoffman and through him the writings of Henryk Sienkiewicz--but you've got a lector speaking over the Ukrainian characters. So that while you're listening to people speaking Ukrainian, you're hearing a guy talk in a monotone in a language very similar to Ukrainian...

It's kind of surreal.

 

[ryu238]

Well, depending on how you define fan fiction, it could be as old as "original" fiction itself... it certainly existed long before the era of my POD. William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, basically wrote fan fiction. But I suppose you're referring to "modern" fan fiction, in this age of copyright, and in which Star Trek fandom did play a major part. In that case, worry not, because I've already written about that, and I plan to devote yet more coverage to the subject in the future.

Thanks, in this day and age thanks to SOPA years back, I've gotten parananoid about it staying around. Reading the stuff is my favorite thing to do.

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

As Mefisto says, many Poles actually prefer it to a complete dub or sub-titles. I can understand the latter - on a small screen, sub-titles can be either very obtrusive or too small to read clearly. Here's an item showing a Polish lector in action.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Interesting, not as bad as I'd thought. Although it sounds like there are 2 voices there, and the OP made it sound like it was one person doing all of it.

 

[NCW8]

Interesting, not as bad as I'd thought. Although it sounds like there are 2 voices there, and the OP made it sound like it was one person doing all of it.

There is only one Polish voice there - a man who's voicing both the male and female parts. The original English dialog is audible in the background.

Here's a Wall Street Journal report on the subject.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

There is only one Polish voice there - a man who's voicing both the male and female parts. The original English dialog is audible in the background.

Here's a Wall Street Journal report on the subject.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Ah, okay; yeah, the background voice was distracting me. Interesting; and you can get more fro the visual part than I thought you could. Thanks.

 

[Brainbin]

How long until the next update?

The next update will be ready by the end of this month.

Sir Humphrey: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?
Foreign Office Official: Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.

Good old Yes, Minister. You can always count on them to say it so much better than any of us ever could

Same here, when i write it's almsot as if my characters are imaginary friends and I'm a kid living in their universe; it's impossible to chagne them. I have enough trouble with my own fan fiction once I come up with ideas on how stuff runs, though I can understand some different interprettions of characters if they're within reason.

The sad thing is that I would love to read fan fiction of my works, assuming any of them ever became popular enough for me to have the opportunity to do so; however, and most depressingly, the informal "truce" between creators and fans stipulates that authors never read fan fiction so as to not contaminate their thoughts with foreign ideas. So I would have to wait until whatever I was writing would reach a conclusion - and everybody knows the best fan fiction is always written while the basis for it is still active.

Hey Brainbin, given any thought as to the different Time Persons of the Year ITTL? Everything should be fine up to 1968, but I'm skeptical that Time would still name the Silent Majority ("Middle America") the title in 1969 with a Hubert Humphrey victory. I could see Humphrey himself being chosen for 1969 for rolling back... the conflict.

After that, there's pretty much no chance anything else is going to be the same for the rest of the TL. So what are your thoughts?

Here's a list of the recipients.

A truly superb question, vultan - one which I think should be integrated properly into my timeline, actually, when the time comes to do revisions - but I will answer a few of them now. As you predict, President Humphrey was indeed chosen as Man of the Year in 1969. Another "gimme" is the selection of Governor (and President-Elect) Reagan in 1976. And, as gratitude for continued patience and understanding of all my readers, I will announce that the Man of the Year for 1980 will be the winner of that year's presidential election (which, granted, has always been a fallback choice for Time) - whether that person is President Reagan himself, or his (yes, male) opponent.

A complete list of all 20 Persons of the Year from 1966 to 1985 (none for 1986, since this timeline ends in September) will be included at the end of this timeline.

As Mefisto says, many Poles actually prefer it to a complete dub or sub-titles. I can understand the latter - on a small screen, sub-titles can be either very obtrusive or too small to read clearly. Here's an item showing a Polish lector in action.

That sounded about as unappealing as I expected, but thank you for providing that example, Nigel.

For my mind the worst is exported version of With Fire and Sword. A brilliant miniseries, a great introduction to the works of Jerzy Hoffman and through him the writings of Henryk Sienkiewicz--but you've got a lector speaking over the Ukrainian characters. So that while you're listening to people speaking Ukrainian, you're hearing a guy talk in a monotone in a language very similar to Ukrainian...

It's kind of surreal.

Thanks for that perfect demonstration of the format's pitfalls, Space Oddity - my question is, how and why did you get your hands on a Polish dub of a Ukrainian miniseries?

Thanks, in this day and age thanks to SOPA years back, I've gotten parananoid about it staying around. Reading the stuff is my favorite thing to do.

Well, that certainly won't be a problem in a timeline where there isn't even an Internet yet, now would it?

 

[Space Oddity]

Thanks for that perfect demonstration of the format's pitfalls, Space Oddity - my question is, how and why did you get your hands on a Polish dub of a Ukrainian miniseries?

The miniseries is Polish. Ukrainian characters in it speak Ukrainian.

And now that I've clarified--it was on Netflix.

 

[ryu238]

Well, that certainly won't be a problem in a timeline where there isn't even an Internet yet, now would it?

That leads into a good question, will we be taking a look at a proto-internet here?

 

[nixonshead]

That leads into a good question, will we be taking a look at a proto-internet here?

Oooh! Maybe with an alternate War Games?

 

[Dan1988]

That leads into a good question, will we be taking a look at a proto-internet here?

Well, not so much a proto-Internet (as I'm assuming ARPANET remains only used for educational and defence purposes), but if you lived in the 1980s in OTL you would have been familiar with what was known as "telecomputing" and the two providers of the service - CompuServe and The Source. Of course, one of those survived in OTL to be an ISP. I don't have to tell you which one that is.

 

[Brainbin]

One last round of responses before the update at the end of the month! I've been typing like mad all day

The miniseries is Polish. Ukrainian characters in it speak Ukrainian.

Wow, and they're still dubbed over, even in a Polish production? Well, give them points for consistency, if not for style.

And now that I've clarified--it was on Netflix.

This is obviously one of the many reasons that Blockbuster went under

That leads into a good question, will we be taking a look at a proto-internet here?

Though I will not answer that question, I'd like to note that the first OTL mention of what would become the internet (more specifically ARPANET) on any fictional series was in Benson (set in the office of a state governor, which would logically avail itself of the technology) on February 22, 1985, in the episode "Scenario".

Oooh! Maybe with an alternate War Games?

A strange game... the only way to win is not to spoil

Well, not so much a proto-Internet (as I'm assuming ARPANET remains only used for educational and defence purposes), but if you lived in the 1980s in OTL you would have been familiar with what was known as "telecomputing" and the two providers of the service - CompuServe and The Source. Of course, one of those survived in OTL to be an ISP. I don't have to tell you which one that is.

Dan, you forget how young and/or foreign some of my readers are. The correct answer is CompuServe, one of the dominant ISPs of the 1990s in the US market (which is not shared with Canada in this instance). They were based in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and don't ask me how I know that, because it's a long story.

 

[Lizzie_Harrison]

Dan, you forget how young and/or foreign some of my readers are.

This amused me. I cannot even remember a time before internet.