Thank you all for your responses to my latest update! The time has come for me to respond to them - and where else but on this thread would I be making my
1,000th official post? It's taken me two-and-a-half years of active contribution, but now I've crossed the final threshold to be considered an Established Member of the Board!
You know, just because there's a minimum of ten characters doesn't mean you
have to use netspeak to make it fit. Typing out "You're" (or "You are", though I understand that's one character extra and you may not be able to commit an additional 20% of the time it takes to write "You're") wouldn't have taken you
that much longer
Presumably Wales would have its own provincial council, possibly with a bit more power, and similar unitaries to the OTL counties (Not South Glamorgan though, that was explicitly designed to be one the Tories would have a shot at winning).
You're probably right about Wales being a
de facto province, although I suspect they'll take great pains to avoid actually
calling it that. I do wonder if Monmouthshire might be formally admitted to Welsh administration as a unitary county in its entirety (or nearly so - apparently Cardiff absorbed some of the county IOTL, and I see no reason why that wouldn't happen ITTL), weakening the rural Tory heartlands with the concentration of urban Labour areas in the southwest.
Her specific working district is Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Essex.
Ah, and Google has been very illuminating as to her likely vocation - which just goes to show how unusual that particular grouping of counties is.
Interesting structure. I'm not sure that the label "Metropolitan" would be applied though, as the structure would be applied to rural areas as well as metropolitan ones - that is, assuming that I'm reading "metropolitan area councils" as the equivalent of county councils and "metropolitan district councils" as, well, district councils.
Even if he was making radical reforms, I think Wilson would have kept traditional labels - in fact the more radical the reform, the more traditional the label. As an example, during decimalisation, the currency remained the Pound rather than following the Australian and New Zealand example of changing to the Dollar. Introducing a new currency unit equal to ten shillings would have made the transition somewhat easier - maybe there wouldn't have been films
like this one.
The plan called for metropolitan areas to be divided into metropolitan districts - I imagine the media would report it as being similar to the existing situation in Greater London. I really don't see what alternate name could be used instead - other than
regional (county) municipality, as Dan suggests, which were introduced in Canada in the early-1970s.
The rest of the Commonwealth has the solution to the problem.
Au Quebec, nous avons
les MRCs. The regional county municipality I could see as an alternate name for the metropolitan area councils - and it would be concurrent with the same change going on in Quebec around this time in OTL, where the RCM replaced the traditional county/riding/township/parish division. The metropolitan district councils, in turn, could be renamed boroughs, similar to (but different from) Greater London. (Now comes the problem of translating the RCM and borough into Welsh, but that's non-essential to this.)
One problem is that Quebec didn't introduce CRMs/RCMs until 1979, IOTL - clearly they were a product of the PQ (and we all know how much they love to reorganize local area governments). A better model would be the Ontario PCs, who introduced the regional municipality system in
1954, over ten years before the creation of Greater London, for Toronto and the surrounding townships (formally the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto). These former townships were indeed created
boroughs (though many later gained city status as they continued to grow). The Tories then created several more regional municipalities between 1969 and 1974, which might inspire civic planners in England.
As far as the definition of
boroughs, and the use of
municipal over
metropolitan, Wikipedia has this to say about municipalities:
Wikipedia said:
In the United Kingdom, the term was used until 1974 in England and Wales, and until 1975 in Scotland and 1976 in Northern Ireland, "both for a city or town which is organized for self-government under a municipal corporation, and also for the governing body itself. Such a corporation in Great Britain consists of a head as a mayor or provost, and of superior members, as aldermen and councillors". Since local government reorganisation, the unit in England, Northern Ireland and Wales is known as a district, and in Scotland as a council area. A district may be awarded borough or city status, or can retain its district title.
In other words, using "borough" to refer to districts seems logical (which is borne out by modern-day usage of the term IOTL - even many rural jurisdictions are called boroughs now) However,
municipality would have originally referred to the borough or district area, as opposed to the county- or metropolitan-level authority. Still, it
is a term used in local government, unlike
metropolitan (which appears to have seen use primarily in the ecclesiastical sphere up to this point - and which apparently is not used in
any civic capacity in the United Kingdom IOTL, even to this day). Therefore, I shall put your suggestion to my readers: how would
regional municipalities divided into
boroughs sound?
And now we have TTL's version of Cheers and Airplane. Similar to what we have IOTL, but something completely different. In my opinion, I definitely prefer OTL versions. No offense though, good update.
Well, considering that
Airplane! is one of the funniest films ever made, and that
Cheers is one of the greatest television series ever made, I can't say I'm surprised that my alternate versions would fall short. Bear in mind, though, especially with
Catastrophe!, that the movie
is intended to be funnier than my relatively dry description might seem to indicate - if I either
e of pi or I were
that good at writing comedy, I'm pretty sure we'd be doing it professionally
And it's here that I absolutely lose it.
Glad you're still reading, CobiWann! The hamster-gerbil confusion started out as an homage to the running gag where you can hear the
propellers on the
jetliner -
e of pi then made the suggestion to have the inciting incident (every 1970s disaster movie has one) be the confusion between the two of them, making it a plot point.
So The Patriot is seen as being more closely based upon Fawlty Towers than Cheers was OTL.
Yes, as
Cheers was intended as a straight American remake of
Fawlty Towers in the early going (set in Boston, of course, as there was no failed
Are You Being Served? remake to taint the city IOTL), before the Charles Brothers discovered that most of the action was happening in the hotel bar. That still happens here - only the bar is a full restaurant (thanks to Terry having a more prominent role on the original ITTL). Carlota, the chambermaid, even doubles a second waitress/busgirl/dishwasher ("
How come I oughta do everything around here?!") to get her in on the action. But there's still the opportunity for plenty of hotel guest/tourism gags.
NCW8 said:
I wonder what the theme tune would be like. "My Kind of People" (Gary Portnoy's first attempt at the Cheers theme) might actually fit this show quite well.
Except that Portnoy actually name-checks
Cheers in "My Kind of People", which would have to be changed
In all seriousness, as much as I
love "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (which is not only my favourite theme song of all time, but one which I feel perfectly encapsulates the appeal of television as a medium), I really don't see Portnoy (and his co-writer, Judy Hart Angelo) having anything to do with the series ITTL. They only started writing together on a whim, for a Broadway play which bombed - it was practically a miracle that the Charles Brothers heard "People Like Us" in the first place. (For anyone who hasn't heard "People Like Us", it's actually quite a cynical song - it certainly wouldn't work as the theme for the heartwarming, sentimental show that
Cheers evolved into).
My thinking for the theme of
The Patriot is a 1980s-style rearrangement of a patriotic American song with new lyrics. "Yankee Doodle" immediately jumps to mind.
NCW8 said:
"Don't see this film - it's going to be a ..."
"Calamity"
"Setback"
"Debacle"
"Fiasco"
"... Catastrophe".
That's about what we had in mind, yes
NCW8 said:
I remember watching that show as a child - or, rather, the 1990s remake. I had no idea it was British - probably because it was dubbed (yes, even in Canada
)
NCW8 said:
So at least one full season ! I'd like to see Nielson crashing his car into 26 trash cans in the last episode of the season.
22, alas - the days of 26-episode seasons are over. (Would you believe the season finale is about a crime ring based out of the city dump?
)
An actual sensible and measured approach to a rebrand? ASB, I tell you! ASB!
This is what happens when you have the same person running a company for a long time - especially someone terribly sentimental, who actually cares about its history
Thande said:
Interestingly enough,
Giant Gerbils have a long and proud heritage on this website. I don't know if it was deliberate, but that scene reminded me of
The Goodies' Kitten Kong; I can't remember if
The Goodies still exists in TTL or not.
It wasn't deliberate on my part, although if that sketch is the ultimate origin of the "cute animal ravaging the city" subversion of the King Kong/Godzilla/etc. trope, then you can assume that ZAZ saw that episode (somehow) and decided to borrow the idea for the climax of
Catastrophe!. The
staging is definitely a ripoff of the original
King Kong.
I dunno, two full seasons of "Police Squad!" (In Color?) sounds pretty close to utopia to me
Is it too early for me to say "be careful what you wish for"?
nixonshead said:
But will we still get my favourite Abrahams-Zucker-Zucker film (and certainly my favourite Val Kilmer movie), "Top Secret!"?
I suppose that depends on how long
Police Squad! runs ITTL, now doesn't it?
Hmm, pretty interesting for an update, Brainbin. Of course, the Desilu logo would never change - do we really want something like the Viacom V of Doom on TWR's watch?
Thank you, Dan! And as far as the logo is concerned...
I've been thinking about how the Desilu logo might change. For those of you who aren't familiar with the original,
here is a video link. The visual aspect of the logo (the "handwritten" cursive font) dates all the way back to 1952, when it began to appear at the end of
I Love Lucy. It is, of course, the exact same font later used for the
opening titles of the show which were created for syndication in 1958. The font, therefore, can be considered a direct homage to the studio's most popular, successful, and influential production, and would not be changed. The animation of "writing" it out, however, is more negotiable. It was done going all the way back to
I Love Lucy (as can be seen
here), but the animation
is both cheesy and rather low-quality. The video logo, broadcast at the end of the program, was only introduced in 1966, when that sting was introduced; it was composed, arranged, and conducted, as TWR says, by Wilbur Hatch, the musical director of the studio from its inception in 1950 to his death in 1969 (IOTL, he was one of the few Desilu employees retained by Paramount Television, which speaks to his talent and skill). But that arrangement of the simple melody (especially the swelling strings in the beginning) couldn't sound more 1960s, unless perhaps there was a sitar playing. However, I like the triad of notes at the end:
De-si-lu! I think that should be the cornerstone of any rearrangement, assuming that basic melody is kept. But the all-black background has to go - so my suggestion, and it's the only one I'm sold on at this juncture, is that it should be replaced by a starfield, at least in part to represent the studio's
second-most popular, successful, and influential production. The question then becomes what to do with the "merging circles". Having it be a "star" that gradually grows brighter as the "Desilu" is written below it seems like a decent basic idea, although I'd obviously want to avoid aping
this famously scary logo too closely. Of course, if CGI is used, it wouldn't be that advanced - it would be
Tron-level, if that. (Imagine something like the Genesis simulation in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) I think I would prefer traditional animation, though - the only question is where Desilu would farm it out. They have a history with Hanna-Barbera, but the
best television animation at that time was made in Japan, and I know that several of my readers are Japanophiles, so I'm sure they'd approve of TMS or Toei (I haven't decided which, assuming that I go ahead with a Japanese studio) animating the logo.
Would Benson still go on as OTL? If not, we could deprive the world of a greater knowledge of the Heimlich maneuver, plus we wouldn't have the conflict between Clayton Endicott and Pete Downey (which sadly was not able to be carried over into a later setting...)
Endicott wasn't introduced until the second season of
Benson IOTL
anyway, so it's doubtful that he'd appear on
Benson ITTL. To be honest, I don't see any characters other than Benson and the Governor who employs him remaining mostly the same. Interestingly enough, in addition to the Heimlich maneuver,
Benson was the first television series to feature the internet (technically, the ARPANET), which the characters accessed in a 1985 episode. That'll probably be butterflied ITTL.
I guess that Sledge Hammer! (The Show, not the song) ends up on ABC.
Fortunately for me,
Sledge Hammer! premiered on September 23, 1986, IOTL. Therefore, I'm not obliged to answer your question
With the number of good shows on I can't imagine that the knowledge of the Heimlich wouldn't come to American TV. Humphrey's administration was big on increasing health care, after all, and some initiative could have caused the idea to come in the late '70s, for instance.
Thinking along those same lines, children's shows on PBS could well teach children about it. The only problem is, I'm not sure
which children's show would do it - the act of performing the Heimlich seems
way too violent for
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and I'm not sure how they'd be able to fit it into
The Electric Company.
DTF955Baseballfan said:
Great to see Catastrophe! - so glad something akin to Airplane! exists in TTL.
Basically, a movie like
Airplane! was probably inevitable - the 1970s disaster movie genre had become so bloated and fatuous that it
needed someone to send it up.
DTF955Baseballfan said:
I had no idea about the ex-NFL player who almost got the role on Cheers. If the actor who has the role of Coach doesn't die TTL after only a few seasons, this butterflies Woody Harrelson's career - though i don't know, he might have had other parts before.
By most accounts, Fred Dryer was the first runner-up for the role of Sam Malone. As ITTL, Sams and Dianes tested together - his Diane was Julia Duffy, who would play Diane's friend Rebecca - yes, I know - in a single first-season episode before leaving to play Stephanie on
Newhart. I got the idea for Ed O'Neill because he did (almost) have a professional football career IOTL and, accordingly, tested for the role of Sam, though he never made it past initial auditions. I paired him with Long partly because nobody could have played a character like Diane Chambers better than she did, and partly because O'Neill and Long play exes on
Modern Family, so I couldn't resist.
DTF955Baseballfan said:
(I heard of one in the '90s where it was... was it "Hey, Arnold!" Might have been I only heard about it and didn't see it.)
I used to watch
Hey Arnold! as a kid, and I've heard about that episode. Apparently some kid who had seen it used it on a friend and saved his life, IIRC. Funnily enough, I don't remember that particular episode, but I didn't watch the show to learn about the Heimlich maneuver, so that's probably why.
