SATURDAY COMICS - OUR MAN IN RIVERDALE

Well.... here it is, the first Saturday of the new year and I thought we'd do something a little bit different for "Saturday Comics".  Not completely different, just a little bit.

Instead of looking at a few TV characters as how they look in the Comic Book Universe, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a community of comic book characters and how they looked in several TV dimensions.  And since they're about to return to the airwaves in a few weeks on the CW, this seemed like as good a reason as any to look at Archie Andrews and the gang in Riverdale......

I think when most people picture Archie, Betty & Veronica etc. on the Toob, it's how they looked in the Tooniverse.  It's the TV dimension that most resembles their home in the Comic Book Universe.  I'm cool with that, because that's where we got one of my guilty pleasure musical numbers:

Never get tired of that; a reminder of simpler days when I first really started listening to the radio hits of the day....

It also is a good example of the Rule of Three in comedy, as Reggie, Archie, and that dog all got kisses from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Now, the Archies are coming back to TV in January in a show called 'Riverdale'.  But it won't be situated in Earth Prime-Time as that spot was usurped by a single pilot episode back in 1964.  Here's a scene from it:

Roland Winters, perhaps best known for playing Charlie Chan in five movies, played the principal Mr. Wetherby.  And the hardest-working man in Television, the late great William Schallert who passed away this year, was cast as Archie's father.

This isn't the full episode, but you get pretty much all the basics in this chapter from an interesting YouTube documentary on the translation of comic books to the screen, presented by Derek Crabbe:

So that's the official televersion for Archie in Toobworld, even though it was a one-and-done.  The Riverdale gang would then go on to several permutations in the Tooniverse before becoming live action again in 1990.

And this time they wuz all growed up!

But if you don't want to slog through all of that, at least watch this clip of the "adult" Jughead and Junior:

That TV movie, which was also a pilot for a TV show which never materialized will be relegated to The Land O' Remakes.

So now we have this new version on the CW.....

This looks like the Archie Comics have been molded in the likeness of 'Twin Peaks'.  I have no problem with that radical reboot as 1: I don't have a horse in this dog race, and 2: they've been playing with the basic concept of "Archie" for a few years now - giving it a zombie makeover and even encountering the "Predator", [I think.]

Since this will be broadcast on the CW, I'm placing 'Riverdale' in the Comix Toobworld.  I mean, how long are the Powers That Be going to resist the temptation to cross this show over with their other comic book related shows, even if they are from DC Comics?

And even if they don't.... Heck, the show had to go somewhere, am I right?

BCnU!

TALES FROM THE CINEVERSE: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND "THEM!"

It's not Toobworld, but sometimes I find myself applying my televisiological theories to other realms of Mankind's imagination.

Last January, Wold Newton researcher Greg Gick made this observation on Facebook - while watching the movie "Them!", he came to the scene where an autopsy was being conducted on the first body found to have been killed by the ants.  The medical examiner said, "And here's one for Sherlock Holmes...."

Mr. Gick wanted to know: "Think this adds 'Them!'?"

In my opinion, "Them!" could be taking place in an alternate Cineverse in which Sherlock Holmes would still have been alive in the 1950s.  Therefore, I think "Them!" shares the same world as those movies in which Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the franchise of movies that were set during the World War II years.

So, like I said, it's not Toobworld.  But it makes a nice blog post for the birthday of Sherlock Holmes.....

BCnU!

A HAT SQUAD MEMORY - GIVE ME LIBERTINIS!

One year ago this Saturday, Richard Libertini passed away.  He was a great character actor, a trade i fear is fast disappearing in the new millennium.  He provided so many great roles to the citizenry of Toobworld, but I'm not certain that any of them could provide links to other TV series.

Among my favorites:

• Big Chicken - 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
• The Godfather - 'Soap'
• Sheik Yarami - 'Columbo'
• Joe Sutommi - 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman'
• Fingers Wachevsky - 'Bret Maverick'
• Lt. Phil Corelli - 'Murder, She Wrote'

Got a Super Six List out of that......

But as I said, nothing that jumps out for connections in other shows.

However he did contribute three characters to one series which I think I can link together, using plot devices from two other shows.

'Barney Miller' is one of the top five sitcoms from the 1970s.  I'm watching it on a daily basis again (on COZI-TV) because it feeds my nostalgia and longing for the City That Never Sleeps At Night, which I made my home for 40 years.  It may take place in a police station - future TVXOHOF member the 12th Precinct - but it suggests the life I led the last 36 years working the overnight shift at a Times Square hotel (which in itself was a member of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.)

Besides boasting a top notch starring cast, 'Barney Miller' had a rich stable of guest actors drawn from Hollywood and the New York theatre scene, each of them feeling like they really belonged in the Big Apple.  And many of those actors appeared many times over - some in recurring roles (like Ralph Manza as blind Mr. Roth and Stanley Brock as Mr. Binder) and others as multiple characters (the recently deceased Don Calfa in seven different roles, for example.)

Richard Libertini appeared as three different men who were arrested and brought in to the 12th Precinct:

"Evaluation"

Mr. 1223 aka Ira Grubb

Harris arrests a numerologist who will only give his name as "1223," after causing an altercation while trying to open a bank account. Harris learns that the man's given name is 'Ira Grubb,' pronouncing him 'a lousy stinking 5'. ("I've been called worse numbers than that!")

"Middle Age" 
Richard Perito
Richard Libertini plays a 43 year old Olympic trainee who nearly hits an elderly woman with his javelin.

"The Child Stealers"
Adam Boyer

A call about a suicidal jumper turns out to be Adam Boyer (Richard Libertini, last of three), claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2037 AD, a historian doing research into the late 1900s.

[All descriptions by Kevin Olzak for the IMDb]

The connections are sort of a triangle.  Not all three are linked to each other: I have a theory of relateeveety between Mr. 1223 and Richard Perlito and a Wild Card for Perlito and Adam Boyer, that cultural historian from Columbia University in 2037.

We'll start with the theory of relateeveety......

One of the TV shows that I consider an "essential" is 'The Patty Duke Show', because of the concept of identical cousins.  And that's the situation we have here: 1223 and Perlito were first cousins who looked exactly alike.  They laughed alike; they walked alike; and at times they even talked alike.  With Patty and Cathy Lane, their fathers were also identical twins.  That could be the case here.  Maybe Perlito's mother was a Grubb by birth.  Or it could be that either Grubb Senior or Perlito Senior catted around.  (I won't be so crass as to suggest that the Grubbs and Perlitos engaged in some wife-swapping back in the 1930s, but then again, I guess I just did.)

Here's another theory of relateeveety for Ira Grubb - he could be cousins - or even the younger brother! - of Eva Grubb.  Eva was a drab, moousy woman who proved to have her own look-alike.  With the right application of make-up, a new wardrobe, and a boost of self-confidence, she resembled glamorous movie star Ginger Grant, who was trapped on 'Gilligan's Island'.

Anyhoo, Perlito and 1223 were related by blood.  The relationship between Perlito and Dr. Boyer was one of occupancy.

Boyer claimed to be a time traveler from the future of 2037.  By the end of the episode he was being taken by Sgt, Harris to Bellevue Hospital for observation.  As Boyer claimed his co-workers would soon be retrieving him, I was hoping the episode would end with Harris reporting back to Barney and the other detectives that Boyer had vanished.  He may have escaped, but what if...?

Since that episode aired thirty seven years ago this month, a show debuted which can provide a splainin for Boyer's claim of being a time traveler - 'Quantum Leap'.

Dr. Sam Beckett was making his jumps at random and out of his control beginning around 1997.  Forty years on, the technology would have improved and there would more than likely be competitors in the market.  We know as much that there were Leapers in Sam's future from the 'Quantum Leap' series itself.  So Boyer may have been such a leaper, using the quantum tech to conduct his research into the late 1900s.

Now, Dr. Boyer was found sitting on the top of the Washington Arch down in the Village.  This would mean that the body he was occupying, allegedly Richard Perlito, was already up there on top of the arch.  Not exactly the conduct to be expected from an Olympian javelin aspirant.

  

But his wife seemingly convinced him to give up on his crazy dream of making the Olympic team at his age by the end of the episode.  That doesn't mean he had to give up his fitness regimen.  Perhaps he refocused his training to include rock climbing.  Nowadays plenty of fitness centers have artificial facades with which to practice, but it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Perlito went looking for a bigger challenge to climb.  And that's why he was on top of the Washington Arch when Dr. Boyer leapt into his personal space.

As I said earlier, the Quantum Leap technology would have improved in the forty years since the government's Star Bright project began.  It had reached the point where even though the Leaper would look like the person he or she had replaced, they would now have the ability to carry forms of iD so that their associates in the Future could keep tabs on them in the past - like bank cards which would leave a cyber trail.  These forms of ID would also be encrypted with the return trip programming in case of emergency retrievals.

So instead of just vanishing, I think Harris would have "lost" Adam Broyer on the way to Bellevue and found himself escorting Richard Perlito to "the enchanted kingdom".  (Rarely did the detective actually call Bellevue by its true name.)  

Not that it mattered - when Perlito started ranting that there had to be some kind of mistake, Harris would have just shrugged it off as the rantings of a madman.

There's also the question of why none of the detectives back in the squad room recognize Dr. Boyer as Perlito when he was first brought in by Harris and Wojo.  When it comes to that, how come nobody noticed the resemblance between Perlito and Mr. 1223?  The splainin for that is simple: as seen in the episode "People's Court", it is inferred that due to the volume of people that visit the squad room they just don't register as long-term memory candidates (unless it's somebody like Bruno Binder.)  Even a frequent visitor like Mr. Roth, with as distinctive a memory trigger as being blind, didn't register with Captain Miller until prodded with the details of his previous visits.

So there you have it, three guest characters from 'Barney Miller' played by the same actor who can be considered linked - and thanks to other TV shows.  This theory, although conjecture, serves as good a reason as any for connections between 'Barney Miller', 'Quantum Leap', and 'The Patty Duke Show'.  I should just make this trio of "Libertinians" honorary members of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.....

So that's my tribute to the memory of Richard Libertini, one year after his passing.  

Good night and may God bless......

MY FRIENDS IN TOOBWORLD: SILENT PHILL

My friend Philip Escobedo is facing a serious medical procedure in the coming days.  By all accounts, there is optimism that everything will go smoothly - Phil is in good spirits about it all and - speaking from experience - that goes a long way towards recovery.

Hopefully today's post will give him a boost in that regard.  Humor is supposed to be good medicine.  Can't hurt, anyway.....

Every so often I like to take a look at my friends' lives on Earth Prime and imagine what their fictional televersions must be like living on Earth Prime-Time.  We all have a televersion, thanks to home movies shared on YouTube.  Some become more pronounced because those then end up on shows like 'America's Funniest Home Videos'.  (My televersion has even been inducted into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  But then, that was on a milestone birthday and I am, after all, the Curator.)

For Phil Escobedo, his televersion is similar to one of my Toobworld characters, Wayde Arngrim, in that he's a computer whiz kid.  In the TV Universe, Phil has a nickname - Silent Phill.  The reason there is because he doesn't talk very much (hardly an exact copy of the original!)  That's okay, because his partner in life and business, Michael "Loudon" Cleary, more than makes up for that with his verbosity. Sort of a Toody and Muldoon dynamic.

In Toobworld, Silent Phill employs his skills in creating computerized scenarios as a consultant to the NYPD, down in the Village at the new 12th Precinct.  (The old 12th is now a museum dedicated to the Police Commissioner career of Teddy Roosevelt,)  But he and his partner Michael Cleary also have a side business for themselves in which those skills come in handy - they fight crime!  As private detectives, they help their clients find justice.

Silent Phil recreates crime scenes and plays out the variations on what might have happened.  Somewhat like Nero Wolfe, he doesn't even have to leave their apartment to do so.  In that regard, Cleary proves most indispensable as the "legman" in the investigation.  (And legman is right!  The guy's a very lanky beanpole!)  A former actor and something of a con artist, Cleary would rather be puttering about in his gourmet kitchen and sampling fine wines.  But during a case, he's all business as he takes on a variety of dramatis personae to tail the true criminal.

This picture is a good example of Loudon Cleary and Silent Phill at work. Here they are meeting one of their clients, Merle Jeeter, former mayor of Fernwood, Ohio.  No stranger himself to being on the shady side of the Law, Mayor Jeeter finds that for once he is innocent of the charges against him.  And only the boys can help prove his innocence.

A detective show needs a good title.  The name of the private eye is usually good enough to be the choice.  But I don't want to give prominence to one over the other when it comes to billing.  So I'm thinking along the lines of.....

"A COUPLE OF DICKS"

That is a slang reference to them being private detectives, you understand.  But even so, I think this show could only be on a cabler or even a premium channel.....

All the best, Phil.  I hope you enjoyed this little bit o' Toobworld imagineering on my part.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman'
• 'Fernwood Tonight'
• 'Barney Miller'
• 'Car 54, Where Are You?'
• 'Nero Wolfe'

BCnU!

SUPER SIX LIST - SIX TV CHARACTERS ON TV

1) Andy Dwyer, 'Parks And Recreation'

2) Archie Bunker, 'All In The Family'

3) Ted Baxter, 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'

4) Laura Richards & Millie Helper, 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'

5) Joey Barnes (with Jack Paar & Cindy the Chimp), 'The Joey Bishop Show'

6) Kathy Williams, 'Make Room For Daddy'

BCnU!

CROSSING ZONE - FERRIS DEAL

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE'
"WHERE IS EVERYBODY?"

Earl Holliman - Mike Ferris

Mike Ferris finds himself alone in the small Oakwood town and without recollection about his name, where he is or who he is. Mike wanders through the town trying to find a living soul. The tension increases and Mike has a breakdown.

'COLUMBO'
"MURDER BY THE BOOK"

Martin Milner - Jim Ferris

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

[The synopses courtesy of the IMDb]

Theory of Relateeveety:
Mike and Jim were brothers. In both moments of their lives shown to the Trueniverse audience, there was no reason either of them should have mentioned their sibling.

Whenever a TV character's age is not mentioned, I make the assumption that they are the same age as the actors who played them. So Mike the astronaut is two years older than his brother Jim the novelist. 

Can't be proved nor disproved........

WINDING DOWN.....

Probably the best 'Doctor Who' meme I saw all year.....

SUPER SIX LIST - "OUTER LIMITS" ALIENS WHO SHOULD ENCOUNTER THE DOCTOR

An idealized Toobworld would have no borders; characters could cross freely from one show to another.

For me, the most exciting of these possibilities would be in the realm of science fiction.  Think of all the fantastic aliens that were merely one-shot appearances in TV shows like 'Lost In Space', 'Babylon 5', 'The Twilight Zone', 'The Outer Limits', and even 'Star Trek', despite the prevalence of basic humanoids with a few bumps and ridges on their foreheads.  I would have loved to see a Minbari priest serving as the chaplain on board the starship Voyager - that's always my go-to example.

But today, we're celebrating my favorite TV show, 'Doctor Who', so I thought: why not a Super Six list of aliens from 'The Outer Limits' who could make an appearance in episodes of 'Doctor Who'?  They wouldn't have to be the same characters, merely of the same race.  And they don't have to be focused on the same causes espoused by the original versions of those aliens.  Not everybody on Earth is dedicated to the same raison d'etre, after all.

Here are the six aliens from 'The Outer Limits' who should return in 'Doctor Who':

1]  The Andromedans, "The Galaxy Being"

Transported to Earth by accident. "The Galaxy Being" inadvertently kills several people with its natural radiation, and is met with violence and hysteria from the people of Earth. 

This is one case where the plot line could be repeated, with another Andromedan coming to Earth Prime-Time and accidentally causing several humans to get severe radiation burns.  But this time, let there be a happy ending where the Doctor intervenes as saves the alien from his new galaxy being.  I could see this being the annual Christmas episode, in fact.  And to make it perhaps even more saccharine - er, Christmasy, why not let the Andromedan be a child.  Perhaps an energy being that was a little girl.

2]  The Empyrians, "Second Chance"

An alien from the planet Empyria offers a group of misfits, each of whom is refusing to confront unpleasant realities in his/her life, a second chance to better themselves - an opportunity to colonize a small planetoid called Tythra that, paradoxically, will threaten both the alien's home world and Earth, just 82 years down the line; and which, if inhabited, will have its orbital path controlled to avert the disaster.

This is a case in which I wish we could see the Doctor interact with this original Empyrian, if only because it would be nice to hear the voice of the late character actor Simon Oakland spouting new dialogue.  But the storyline would be pertinent still: it's now only 30 years until Tythra destroys both Earth Prime-Time and Empyria.  And that could be something a race like the Daleks would want to happen to both planets since they hate anyone who is not a Dalek.

In the fifty-two years since that first Empyrian took his ship full of volunteers to settle on Tythra, there have been at least two generations of Terrans living in harmony with Empyrian settlers.  But the Daleks could be working behind the scenes to scuttle their progress in altering Tythra's orbit.

3]  The Kybens, "Demon With A Glass Hand"

Trent (Robert Culp) is a man with no memory of his life before the past ten days. His left hand has been replaced by an advanced computer shaped like his missing hand and protected by some transparent material. Three fingers are missing; the computer tells him they must be reattached before it can tell Trent what is going on. Trent is being hunted by a handful of humanoid aliens called the Kyben; they have the missing appendages. The action takes place in a large rundown office building which the Kyben have sealed off from the world.

For reasons unknown to him, Trent was sent into the past via a "time mirror", located in the building. A captured Kyben tells Trent that both of them are from a thousand years in the future. In that future, Earth has been conquered by the Kyben, but all the surviving humans except Trent have mysteriously vanished. The aliens are being obliterated by a "radioactive plague" that is killing all intelligent life on the planet, apparently unleashed by the humans in a last-ditch effort to repel the invasion. In a desperate attempt to find a cure for the plague and to extract whatever knowledge is stored in the hand/computer, the Kyben have followed him back in time with the missing fingers.

This is my all-time favorite episode of the series.  And one of my top ten episodes of any genre of all time.....

Harlan Ellison has written other stories set in the world of the Earth-Kyba War, but most of them have never been adapted for television, or at the very least are only tangentially connected.  There was a time when it looked like there might be a "sequel" set on 'Babylon 5' while Ellison was a consultant for the series.  But it never came to be.

For me, the Kyben were evolved from lemur-like creatures perhaps transported to Kyba by human explorers.  The Earth-Kyba war 1,000 years in the future would make for a great backdrop for the Doctor to mediate a peace between the two warring factions.  

4]  Ikar's species from the Hive World, "Keeper Of The Purple Twilight"

Scientist Eric Plummer comes under the sinister influence of a creature from outer space, capable of materializing in human form, but lacking human emotions. As a prelude for the invasion of Earth by his kind, the extraterrestrial being Ikar studies the human race. The one thing he cannot comprehend is emotion. Meanwhile, obsessed scientist Plummer is nearing a nervous breakdown trying to complete a magnetic disintegrator that will convert matter into pure energy. As Plummer's weapon would aid Ikar's invasion force if completed, Ikar makes a deal with Plummer (who is not aware of this fact). He will help Plummer complete the invention by offering his technical knowledge, in exchange for the scientist's ability to feel emotions for a "test drive".

It is revealed that Ikar comes from a hive world with strictly defined roles, divorced from emotion and personal identity: big brains (like himself) that do the thinking; soldiers that do the fighting; and females that produce the offspring.

And then along comes Plummer's girlfriend to gum up the works.  

Ikar begins to feel emotions such as anger, and desire for Janet, eventually returning the scientist's emotions to him. Ikar is now being pursued by his own species, as a threat to the planned invasion. It is revealed the aliens' homeworld is overpopulated, and they have chosen Earth to be their new home. In the end, out of sympathy for Plummer (and possibly also because he now knows what emotions are), Ikar kills two of the soldiers, but is disintegrated himself before Plummer destroys the last soldier. In disgust, Doctor Plummer himself destroys his weapon, erasing all traces of his work and evidence of the aliens.

I think even without the weapon, the Hive World would still make an effort to take over Earth.  Since they never did, we can only assume the Doctor prevented it.  Or, if not him, the Time Lords in a way - That Hive World could have been trapped in the Time-Lock of the Gallifreyan-Dalek War like the Gelth.  And the Doctor - maybe even the War Doctor - could have helped them find a planet that suited their needs but which wasn't already populated with sentient life.  

Being a Hive-mind like the Borg, they might have tried to force their combined will upon the Doctor, but he could have been saved by a manifestation of the TARDIS out of lover for her thief/love.

5]  The Ebonites, "Nightmare"

After being attacked by the planet Ebon, a group of Earth soldiers are sent to fight the enemy on their own soil. Captured en route to Ebon, the soldiers undergo physical and psychological torture and interrogation at the hands of the Ebonites. The prisoners become paranoid when their captors claim they have received cooperation. This is further complicated by the appearance of high-ranking Earth officers among the hostile aliens. In the end, it is revealed that this was only a military test, organized by Earth to test their troops' loyalty. Unexpected accidents having occurred during the test, the Ebonites, in actuality a peaceful and honorable alien race, eventually ask for the immoral experimentation to end, but fail to prevent one last man from being killed.

I can see the Doctor struggling to prevent a hate group from hunting down and killing an innocent Ebonite.  I'm not a fan of allegories, most times they're too heavy-handed.  But I can see this as being symbolic of the growing hatred towards Muslims by emboldened Trumpeters.

6]  The Zanti, "The Zanti Misfits"

Military forces have cordoned off a ghost town, aptly named Morgue, located in a remote section in the deserts of California while awaiting the arrival of a spacecraft from the planet Zanti. The perfectionist rulers of that planet, after making radio contact with our government, have decided that the Earth is the "perfect place" to exile their undesirables and criminals in exchange for sharing technological advances with Earth. They threaten total destruction if their penal ship is attacked, or if their privacy is not maintained. 

The Zanti are revealed to be grotesque oversized antlike beings with malicious human-like faces. The Zanti regent pursues Ben's now-terrified accomplice. Believing that their privacy was violated, the remaining Zanti prisoners commandeer the penal ship and land it atop the roof of the military command post. When the Zanti prisoners attack Earth's nervous soldiers, a brutal firefight ensues, and all of the aliens are massacred.

The soldiers and airmen anxiously await the expected reprisals, but, instead, they receive a message of thanks from the Zanti leader who explains that they were incapable of executing members of their own species so they sent them into the hands of a race who possessed no qualms about killing — the human race, referring to us as "practiced executioners".

My favorite alien race on the show!

This could easily fall into the trap of just rehashing the original plot.  In fact, the showrunner could capitalize on that to make a truly memorable episode.  Remember that 'Deep Space Nine' episode, "Trials And Tribbilations", which wove a new storyline into the events which played out in the original 'Star Trek' episode "The Trouble With Tribbles".  The same could be done here, in glorious black & white, showing how the Doctor and his companion worked behind the scenes to prevent the deaths of any more humans. But of course they would have been unable to prevent the massacre of the Zantis.

I'm in the process of watching the animated restoration of the 'Doctor Who' episode "Power Of The Daleks" and I think this would be the perfect story to animate.  That way audio from the Second incarnation of the Doctor, whose adventures were mostly - and criminally! - wiped out of existence, could be re-used to build this new story.  And it wouldn't have to be dialogue just from one particulary adventure.   A producer with carte blanche from the BBC (and the copyright holders for 'The Outer Limits' of course) could cherry-pick the necessary dialogue from all of Patrick Troughton's past adventures.  And to make the story seamless, they could add in new dialogue from whoever was playing the current Doctor.

Anyhoo, it's just an idea......

(All of the above episode descriptions were adapted from their Wikipedia entries.)

FANFICCERS' FRIEND - A PIECE OF THE ACTION FOR THE DOCTOR

The USS Enterprise arrives at Sigma Iotia II. This remote planet had been visited by the Horizon in 2168, before the establishment of the non-interference directive. The Horizonwas lost shortly after leaving Sigma Iotia II and Starfleet only managed to receive her radio reports nearly a century later, as the Horizon was only equipped with conventional radio.

After planet-fall, Uhura informs Captain Kirk that she is in contact with an Iotian named Bela Okmyx who describes himself as "Boss". Okmyx invites Kirk to come down to the planet's surface saying that a "reception committee" will be waiting for him upon arrival. Since the Horizon's visit was before the Federation's Prime Directive against non-interference, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are concerned about what effects the Horizon's crew may have had on the Iotian culture which was just beginning industrialization at the time and have a knack for imitation. The three beam down to find a culture resembling that of Chicago in the 1920s. They are immediately greeted by two men dressed as gangsters who threaten them with Tommy guns.

[from Memory Alpha]

In that intervening century since the Discovery left and the Enterprise arrived, Sigma Iotia II could have been visited by two other aliens... two aliens who normally couldn't be seen together.

Here is the picture that sparked this idea for fanfic:

It's a screencap from the 1953 movie "Will Any Gentlemen....?" which starred George Cole.......

"About a henpecked bank clerk who lives a dreary existence in suburban London. After a mix-up at a music hall, he finds himself onstage with ambiguously foreign magician Mendoza, who hypnotizes him into losing all of his inhibitions."

(IMDb)

Jon Pertwee, on the left, and William Hartnell played Charlie Sterling and Detective Inspector Martin, respectively.

But that's in the Cineverse.

For the purposes of the Toobworld Dynamic, they're playing the Third and First Incarnations of the Doctor, respectively,  Somehow their paths crossed each other's timestream and caused them to land on Sigma Iotia II.  For their own safety, they have to disguise themselves as native Iotians and blend in, just as the First Doctor had to do when he found himself trapped in that Melkotian simulation of the Shootout at the OK Corral soon after the Enterprise crew had left.  (But this time, they got to a 'Star Trek' location before the Starfleet officers.)

How the two Doctors ran into each other, what happened to them on Sigma Iotia, and which companions were traveling with each of them would be up to the fanficcer.

If you do take a stab at the story, send me a copy.  I'd like to read it.

Geronimo!

FANFICCERS' FRIEND - THE DOCTOR MEETS RHYMIN' SIMON

From Wikipedia:
"America" is a song by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel from their fourth studio album, "Bookends" (1968). Produced by the duo and Roy Halee, the song was later issued as a single in 1972 to promote the release of Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

The song was written by Paul Simon and concerns young lovers hitchhiking their way across the United States, in search of "America", in both a literal and figurative sense. It was inspired by a 1964 road trip that Simon took with his girlfriend Kathy Chitty.  The song has been regarded as one of Simon's strongest songwriting efforts and one of the duo's best songs. A 2014 Rolling Stone reader's poll ranked it the group's fourth best song.

"America" was inspired by a five-day road excursion Simon undertook in September 1964 with his girlfriend Kathy Chitty. Producer Tom Wilson had called Simon back to the United States to finalize mixes and artwork for their debut studio album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.  Simon, living in London at the time, was reluctant to leave Chitty, and invited her to come with him, forgetting the album and spending five days driving the country together.  Several years later, "America" was among the last songs recorded for "Bookends", when production assistant John Simon left Columbia Records, forcing Simon, Garfunkel, and producer Roy Halee to complete the record themselves.  In 2004, Bob Dyer, a former disc jockey from Saginaw, Michigan, explained the song's genesis in an interview with The Saginaw News. According to Dyer, Simon wrote the song while visiting the town in 1966, when he booked him for Y-A-Go-Go, a concert series hosted by the Saginaw YMCA:

I asked Paul Simon if they were still charging the $1,250 we paid them to play and he said they were getting about four times that much then. Then I asked him why he hadn't pulled out, and he said he had to see what a city named Saginaw looked like. Apparently, he liked it; he wrote 'America' while he was here, including that line about taking four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.

The song opens, on "Bookends", with a cross-fade from "Save the Life of My Child" (this effect is not present on single versions, which begin with a "clean" open). The song follows two young lovers — "an apparently impromptu romantic traveling alliance" — who set out "to look for America".  The song makes reference to the town of Saginaw, Michigan, with the protagonist seemingly hailing from the town, but "[seeking] his fortunes elsewhere". The narrator's companion Kathy is a reference to Chitty, linking the song autobiographically to the earlier Simon and Garfunkel hit "Homeward Bound", and to "Kathy's Song", a love song from a previous album, "Sounds of Silence".

The narrator spends four days hitchhiking from Saginaw, Michigan, to join Kathy in Pittsburgh, where together they board a Greyhound bus to continue the journey. The narrator begins with a lighthearted and optimistic outlook ("Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together") that fades over the course of the song. To pass time, he and Kathy play games and try to guess the backgrounds of their fellow passengers. Over the course of their journey, they smoke all of their cigarettes. Kathy reads a magazine before falling asleep, leaving the narrator awake to reflect on the meaning of the journey alone. In the final verse, the narrator is able to speak his true emotions to Kathy, now that she is sleeping and cannot hear or answer. "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why" captures the longing and angst of the 1960s in nine simple words. The narrator then stares out the window "counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike". So many other empty and aching and lost souls traveling down the highway, each on their own journey alone, even if someone is traveling with them.

You're probably thinking I've had a stroke after posting about 'Doctor Who' all day, haven't you?

Well, it says it all in that title - every so often I've posted suggestions (usually based on screencaps from movies) for fanfic about two TV characters played by those actors seen in the movie snapshot.  I'm always hoping somebody will pick up my suggestion and run with it.  Maybe they have but never let me know so I could read it.

I would do it myself except my talent for writing tends to be too technical (even though I have come up with great scenarios in my Toobworld adventures.)  But there's an even better reason as to why I'm not writing it: I'm lazy.

Laughing on the bus

Playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said "Be careful his bow-tie is really a camera"

As any Whovian could easily figure it out, this is the stanza which inspired me to think of the autobiographical song as hiding a secret encounter which the Doctor had with the fictional version of Paul Simon.  One of those "faces" traveling on the bus with Simon and Kathy Chitty could have been the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor.  And I would think that he was riding the bus instead of darting about in the TARDIS was because he was tailing a potential foe, or at least someone who piqued his interest or aroused his suspicions.  

I'm thinking it might have been a Raxacoricofallapatorian wearing a human skin-suit.....

As for the gabardine suit, it sounds like the Doctor was finally wearing something other than the two outfits we saw over the course of his tenure in that incarnation.  

We know when this happened - September of 1964.  As to when in the Doctor's personal timeline it occurred, I'm going to say it was during that period after the Christmas special "The Snowmen".  That was when a newly energized Doctor began his quest to find another facet of the Impossible Girl, Clara Oswin Oswald.

I think that's where I should leave it; after all, this is supposed to be your fanfic if you should so choose to write it.  But if I may, I do have some ideas on what could happen during their road trip to find America.....

• When they introduce themselves, it surprises Paul Simon that the Doctor is more excited to meet Kathleen Chitty.  "Chitty?  What a splendid name!  Like 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'!"  They both think he's crazy because he seems to be speaking gibberish.  Remember, the bus trip was in September of 1964 and the first third of Ian Fleming's children's story would not be released for another month.

• The bus stops at a secluded roadside diner where the Doctor mentions that he once intervened in a confrontation between a three-armed Martian and a three-eyed alien who claimed to be Venusian but was in actuality a Traskin.  And he was able to prevent both their races from invading Earth, but unfortunately he was unable to save the travelers from their deadly fate on that rickety bridge.

• As Paul Simon and Kathy Chitty play their private little game of devising new back-stories for their traveling companions, their descriptions could identify the other passengers as recognizable TV characters of that era who might have had reason to be riding that Greyhound bus.

• While playing their game, they decide that the Doctor's real name is Julio.  After that, Simon keeps calling the Doctor "Julio".  And the main confrontation with the alien foe should be in a schoolyard.  More inspiration for the future.....

• The fifth verse should take place after their adventure with the Doctor and they have resumed their bus trip.  At some point in the team-up, both Paul and Kathy realize that their relationship is doomed.  According to a 2014 article in the Daily Mail, "But with his initial success, the shy and sensitive Kathy became frightened of the huge attention from fans and returned home from the US in the mid-1960s."  Maybe that was the cover story.  Or maybe the alien foe had the ability to show them their future.  Maybe she was traumatized by dealing with aliens and so fled back to Essex (unfortunately just in time for the Cybermen invasion of London!)

• There should be more to the team-up between the Doctor and Paul Simon, something that made their time together more fateful than a chance encounter.  Perhaps it is Paul Simon who comes up with the way to defeat the alien... and have it be something that would get referenced in some later Paul Simon lyrics.  Those wild songs from the album "Graceland" perhaps?

• (Maybe this is when Paul first came up with the line: "Don't want to be a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard"?)

• When her boyfriend is finally reunited with Art Garfunkel to finish their debut album, Kathy remembers what the Doctor said about aliens living on Earth - that "Some of them look just like you; take me, for instance.  There's the occasional Tenza, of course.  And some of them have been here for years, decades!  They've raised families and blended in with their neighbors.  There are quite a few second-generation aliens out there...."  Kathy begins to look at the gawky Garfunkel with his puffy hair in a whole new light.....

• Once you finished that story, how about a prequel in which you tell us why the Doctor was in Pittsburgh in the first place?

The Doctor has met so many writers in the past - HG Wells, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Agatha Christie.  Why not a song-writer?  Of course, being an English show, the trend seems to favor English writers.  Lennon and McCarthy would be the obvious choice there.  But when has 'Doctor Who' ever gone for the obvious?  Some photoshopper out there already thought of the Doctor meeting Bowie......

(One year for the Fourth of July, I had the Doctor inspire Maxfield Parrish and his painting "With Trumpet And Drum".  So why not Paul Simon this time out?  Maybe next time it'll be Jim Henson!)

So there you have it.  More than enough inspiration for you to create a story in which the Doctor meets Paul Simon.  Have a go!

And if you do write one, PLEASE share it and send me the link!

I liked that idea of the Doctor inspiring the lyrics to a famous song.  Maybe one day the Second Incarnation of the Doctor, "The Cosmic Hobo", could meet Leo Sayer........

"I am a man of the road

A hobo by name"

"So good-bye, good-bye
I’m gonna leave you now...."