RED LIGHT BYTES: The Red Light Roundup (4-3-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
Overview
True to Monday’s post we’re racing ahead into Part 2 of our three-part format. I type this very newsletter surrounded on all sides by what can only be described as a private cultural Library of Alexandria. Fat-n-happy shelves chock full of books and films galore, hours of music on disc, wax and tape. Personal mixes of rare songs, short films and odd ephemera curated on DVD-Rs. And of course, by the powers vested in the Information Superhighway, access to millions, and dare I say, billions more.
If The Red Light Roundup should be successful at anything, it is at gifting you, dear reader, a handy guide to what’s worth hunting to ends of the Earth, and better yet, ways it won’t cost you an arm and a leg!
We’ll start with a rather specific appreciation of someone who I have managed to grow even more fond of in the past six months than when I’d followed his journey for the length of three years. A special, silly, stupendous mind, careening around space and time in a cobalt-blue police box.
Doctor Who: The Time Lord Impervious
While it’s easy (and often just) to grow outraged over “moderndayism” infiltrating long-standing franchises, regardless the reason, what few appreciate is when a series can withstand such a barrage of contemporary impositions.
For all the fear-mongering about the erasure of the past at the hands of moneymen and creatives who put activism and ill-fitting interests ahead of their crafts, it is worth mention that so long as the old works still exist and are available in any capacity, that death will be a long time coming. And in spite of the thousand cuts kicking off sometime in 2017, that’s precisely what’s happened to a certain British institution of science fiction; Doctor Who.
My introduction to the eccentric Time Lord happened around 2014 via BBC America, at the end of Matt Smith’s time as the 11th Doctor and the dawn of Peter Capaldi’s 12th. I had enjoyed repeats of both Christopher Eccleston’s 9th and the world-famous run of David Tennant’s 10th, and like many, fell in love with episodes destined for modern classic status like “Blink.”
However, it would be in 2017 that I took a diving roll out of the Whomobile. The otherwise innocuous sendoff Christmas special “Twice Upon A Time” left a rather odd taste in my mouth, mainly because of a poorly written take on William Hartnell’s original, brought to otherwise excellent life by David Bradley. I hadn’t even seen a classic-era story at that point, and my teenaged mind could already tell something was wrong.
Fortunately, that semi-sour note was all she wrote, for the fiasco surrounding Jodie Whittaker’s 13th passed me by in college, and it wouldn’t be until the series celebrated its 60th anniversary that I regained interest. The shock of Tennant’s return, on top of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th receiving a most unorthodox regeneration, caught my attention alongside many others. A fine actor with a great enthusiasm, it seems as though Gatwa’s Doctor aims to solve the self-imposed problem of the revived series always foisting the character onto the center of the universe and hammering him with permanent and perpetual traumas, the Time War casting a massive shadow over series lore. With any luck, he and returning showrunner Russell T. Davies may bring the series back to that sense of teatime fun the classic era had, fleshed out with the thoughtfulness of the revival.
And it is just that classic era that has helped me fall in love with the series all over again. At a time where fandoms and nerd culture are more interested in culture wars than genuine custodianship of their own franchises, those 26 special years, ones currently represented by four living legends (Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker & Sylvester McCoy), have made Doctor Who bulletproof in the face of the agendas and failings of mainstream entertainment.
Not since my mother’s side of the family hooked me on Star Trek at the ripe old age of 7 have I been this crack-addle addicted to a series as I have been with Doctor Who. I first enjoyed broadcasts on Retro TV last year (my first serial being late-era Hartnell gem The Ark), I currently own nine serials (with Davison-era classic Earthshock soon to make 10), my first Target novelization (McCoy-era favorite The Happiness Patrol), and I’ve been plowing thru the BBC and Big Finish audio dramas with ravenous abandon. The Barry Letts duology of Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space starring Pertwee’s 3rd (my favorite Doctor) have become crown jewels in my experience of the franchise.
The appeal is that simple, rare thrust of a compelling character who knows what’s right (at least 95% of the time), and when faced with insurmountable danger, always manages to make it all right in the end. With so many different actors having played the role, and its abstract perspective on time being a core concept, hopping from Doctor to Doctor is a breeze, and allows you to see the many different sides of this eternally fascinating figure. Blissfully unburdened by 21st century demands for prestige drama and other ancillary nonsense, it makes for straight-and-true fantasist adventure like no other in all the universe.
And I thought this series was supposed to be dying!
The classic series is a vibrant beast, and when combined with the expanded media empire it birthed, could literally last a thousand years. Should Gatwa and RTD fail, and the Wilderness Years be upon us once more, Doctor Who is built to weather that storm with adamantium infrastructure. No greater testament to this wellspring of pulp entertainment than my first time watching the incomparable Patrick Troughton in The Tomb of the Cybermen. A half-century old, black-and-white serial, pulled together on a pauper’s budget as is BBC custom, and there are two jump scares in its latex-tight runtime that got me. Not to mention Troughton’s 2nd making for a humorful, yet calculating guide through this unsettling yarn of intrigue, subterfuge, and cybernetic horror.
I hope that Doctor Who can stand as an example of what’s best in all cases where contemporary sensibilities seem intent on riding a franchise you love into the ground: it only dies if YOU let it, and the only way you let it is if you give up on it wholesale. I’ve stopped cutting myself up over the latest “Beloved X Gets Y For Modern Audience” nonsense, because I’m having too much fun with an entire world I had yet to explore. I’ve done it here, I’ve done so with Star Trek and Star Wars, the mechwarriors in Battletech are finding out how to shuffle around the nonsense involving Catalyst, the list goes on.
There is no need to wallow in a self-induced misery when there are so many exciting ways to experience a series worth your time and attention. So if you love the idea of Doctor Who, but wish to bypass all the noise, cancel your Disney+ subscriptions, quit twisting yourself in knots, and try out a thrill-ride like the Pertwee-era classic Inferno on Tubi. It’s cheap as free, and you only have to suffer thru one ad during the breaks, two if you’re unlucky! As for me, with so many adventures yet to enjoy, you’ll find me in a quiet corner of the TARDIS, savoring every second of this most marvelous and magnificent series.
Indie Spotlight: Wulf & Batsy #10—12
EMERGENCY BULLETIN: To fans of ghoulish EC Comics horror with an even greater sense of humor, TODAY IS YOUR LAST CHANCE! Get in on the latest issues of Wulf & Batsy, Bryan Baugh’s electrifyingly old-fashioned series of funnybooks fresh off of the funny farm.
Baugh’s exit from Alterna Comics sent me sprinting for the back issues, and God bless him, the Ohio-based artist kept his crypts jam-packed and at those irresistibly low prices, as you’ll find here in this scream of a campaign. The wandering vampire and werewolf’s latest adventures are shaping up to be real killers, set to conclude their “Fall of the House of Zag-Zog” arc and plumbing the vault’s depths for three short tales of terror.
I implore you all not just because of the wolf thing (kindred spirits and all that crap) but because I haven’t finished my ahem “sample pack” of the fangtastic duo’s past outings. That, combined with the money belt being pulled tight due to top-secret operations here at HQ, I’ll be abstaining from the physicals with hope of seeing them in mass market or available via his website. Fortunately, $3 for the eBooks should tide me over until then, that way I won’t miss the thrilling conclusion of a storyline I have yet to read!
With striking B&W art, a classic premise, and the promise of so much more ghoulish fun yet to be had, Wulf & Batsy is one of my favorite indie discoveries of the past few years. A genuine joy from a true talent in the space. You have until 10 PM EDT, so let’s make it a howling mad finale to a successful campaign!
The Force’s Top Ten
Ah yes, the music part of the heavy metal-themed pulp project! Normally, I’d call this Streetwise Caviar, but I want to prove that there are also some killer new records being made today, be they by old hands or exciting new voices. From here on out, we shall be calling this The Force’s Top Ten. The odd exception may get made if I can’t find anything that really knocks me out, and have to fall back on the old favorites. Only then will the Caviar be served.
Either way, it’s a challenge to my archaic-ass to listen to music that isn’t old enough to be my parents, with a few cheats here and there to spotlight songs that drilled deep into my head City of the Living Dead-style. Fortunately for this week’s Top 10, the #1 slot manages to do literally everything listed.
“Don’t Come Running To Me” by Blue Öyster Cult is the kind of radio-ready rock the Cult were dishing up back in the days of “Burnin’ For You,” and that’s because it precisely is! The new album Ghost Stories unearths previously vaulted cuts, uses A.I. demixing to break the analogue tapes down into multitrack stems, and features new parts and overdubs from the current lineup. The results are hauntological hard rock that kicks all kinds of ass. Has not left hot rotation in my playlists, and with a chorus like that, and Eric Bloom still delivering the goods, decade be damned, it won’t leave yours either!
Also in the lineup is John Carpenter’s infectious electronic rock single “My Name is Death,” the recipient of a god-tier music video that lives up to the forthcoming album’s title Lost Themes IV: Noir.
Following that are killer cuts from metal gods Judas Priest, Joe Lynn Turner, and Accept, hard rock legends Black Country Communion (with Glenn “The Voice of Rock” Hughes back in the band!), Portuguese mad lads Toxikull, and vaporwave maestro FM Skyline.
Rounding it out are throwbacks “Anno Mundi” by Black Sabbath, in honor of the monstrous Tony Martin boxset due out at the end of May, and classic rock staple “The Logical Song” by Supertramp.
That’s all for the roundup! As always, May God Bless You and This Force. Keep rocking hard and riding free, soldiers!
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