Peter Cushing – Mark Bould

This episode is based on ‘Time in Advance’ (Galaxy 1956) by William Tenn, the pseudonym of Philip Klass, UK-born but US-resident since childhood. He published only one novel, Of Men and Monsters (magazine version 1963; book version 1968), but around fifty short stories in the second half of the 1940s and the 1950s. ‘Time in Advance’ was reprinted as the title story of a 1958 collection of his work by Bantam in the US and in the UK by Gollancz in 1963 and the Science Fiction Book Club in 1964; Brian Aldiss also included it in Introducing SF: A Science Fiction Anthology for Faber and Faber in 1964. It has been anthologised a handful of times since then, though the reasons for its early prominence rather elude me.

The premise of the story is neatly ironic. In the future, in order to reduce crime and also to provide labour for the arduous colonisation of other worlds, murder is made legal – sort of. If you announce your intention to kill, you can serve a halved sentence breaking alien rocks in perilous circumstances, and if you survive, you return to Earth and receive a license permitting you to commit the murder (or equivalent crimes, the sentences of which equal that which you have already served; and you do not have to identify your intended victim). Often, just a short stint off-world is enough to dissuade people from murder, and they return home chastened; those determined to see it through rarely survive. (Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Minority Report’ introduced a rather different notion of pre-crime earlier the same year, in the January 1956 Fantastic Universe.)

The story opens with Nicholas Crandall and Otto Henck, who have kept each other alive through countless dangers, returning aboard the convict ship Jean Valjean, their sentences completed, their desire to kill unchanged. And then, in rather a schematic manner, Nick encounters an array of people who either assume they are his intended victim or wish him to use his immunity from prosecution to other ends. He learns that everyone is kind of shitty and that he does not have the will to kill even his worst enemy, while Otto is denied the possibility of revenge upon his unfaithful wife.

It is entertaining enough in its jadedness, but rather poorly constructed. Nick tends to meet other characters just once, with each exchange being wrapped up and effectively forgotten before the next commences, and a number of passages – such as Nick’s explanation of his grievance – seem very first draft, not so much in the quality of their prose as in their off the cuff rationalisation. According to Tenn, the story was written in one night, after a friend, Calder Willingham was mugged on his way over to visit. The seed of the story was Willingham’s sense that he would never again feel safe in Greenwich Village:

‘That’s the worst thing about these rotten criminals – not what they do to you at the moment, but what they do to you in the future, when they’re not even around’. (370)

Tenn took the completed story to Horace Gold the next morning, who promptly bought it without requiring any changes.

The episode is the first of three directed by Peter Sasdy, the others being ‘The Midas Plague’ (20 December 1965) and ‘The Eye’ (24 November 1966). A prolific director of serial and standalone television drama since 1959, he had previously directed the Terry Nation-scripted, Peter Cushing-starring, Irene Shubik-script-edited adaptation of Asimov’s ‘The Caves of Steel’ (5 June 1964) for Story Parade (1964). He graduated to films with Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Countess Dracula (1971), written by Jeremy Paul, author of ‘The Dead Past’, and Hands of the Ripper (1971), all made for Hammer, and the 1972 Doomwatch spin-off movie, written by Cybermen creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, made for Tigon. He directed a few more films, including the horror movies Nothing but the Night (1973) and I Don’t Want to Be Born (1975) and the Canadian sf-western Welcome to Blood City (1977). But the remainder of his career was spent primarily in television, directing Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape (1972), as well as episodes of Arthur of the Britons (1972-73), Great Mysteries (1973-74), Supernatural (1977), 1990 (1977-78), Return of the Saint (1978-79), Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-80), Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984-85) and Imaginary Friends (1987). Which means I saw an awful lot of his work while growing up, albeit without knowing it.

The script by Peter Erickson, who would next year co-write Doctor Who’s ‘The Ark’ four-parter, does the best it can to make the story less schematic. It also, thankfully, omits the wealthy and strikingly beautiful woman who tries to persuade Tenn’s Crandall not to commit murder but instead to rape her in as brutal and degrading a manner as possible – since it carries the same sentence, he couldn’t be prosecuted for it. And Erickson changes the conclusion of the story – while Tenn cannot quite maintain his misanthropy to the end, Erickson introduces one more betrayal:

I was his best friend. It was my turn to make a profit out of him.

Erickson works hard to create a more distinctive future world than the one Tenn sketches in, albeit from familiar enough building blocks. Scarcity has been banished, and most people live lives of leisure. Redevelopment projects turn massive apartment blocks into nature parks (!), and automation is widespread (in a nice touch, which plays a little clunkily now, it is implied that revolutionary power source behind Crandall’s desire for revenge has lead to sufficient changes in his and Otto’s seven year absence that they have to figure out and explain to each other – i.e., the audience – how things work). The existence of voluntary euthanasia suggests a certain ambivalence about this future, as does the fact that pretty much the entire cast sport similar white-blond/e wigs. On the one hand, this merely suggests alterity, a kind of Thal-like premature glam-rock; on the other, some kind of Aryan uniformity. The skin make-up on some characters anticipates the gold-skinned cast of Kneale’s The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), and it remains unclear whether the excessive eyeliner worn by some of the male characters signifies, along with the psychedelic wall displays, the perpetuation of a youthful culture or queasiness about so much leisure and its potential for decadence. Certainly, as Crandall, Edward Judd’s trademark ability – exercised so well in the Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), First Men in the Moon (1964), Invasion (1966), Island of Terror (1966) and The Vengeance of She (1968) – to play sympathetic but unlikeable characters allows a kind of manly robustness to be let loose in this queer future.

Other things to look out for:
— Judy Parfitt as Marie, and Mike Pratt (y’know Randall, from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969-71)) as Otto
–Numerous reflections of the microphone boom and sometimes the entire crew in the metallic walls – one of the real problems when shininess signifies futurity.

Last episode, ‘The Dead Past’

Next episode, ‘Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come…‘

Sources
William Tenn, ‘Time in Advance’, Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, volume 1. Framingham: NESFA, 2000. 349–70.

Out of the Unknown DVD boxset. BFI, 2014.

This was the year we lost Big Jim.

A couple of weeks ago, on the way back from work, it suddenly struck me that I had forgotten that he had died. I even went online when I got home to check that I hadn’t misremembered (or misforgotten, or whatever). Saddened once more, I resolved to finish watching Nichols (1971-72), his western TV series just prior to The Rockford Files (1974-80), before heading overseas for the holidays. The final episode, ‘All in the Family’, produced another affective flip-flop as, in the opening sequence, Nichols is suddenly gunned down by Quinn (Anthony Zerbe); there is a brief passage of what-the-fuck? as the funeral proceeds and it doesn’t all turn out to be one of Nichols’ scams; and then Garner turns up, admirably moustachioed, playing Nichols’ brother, who cons the town into bringing Quinn to justice. You can only imagine my delight when, a few days later in Tucson, we sat down to start watching season three of Maverick (1957-62), and in the opening episode, ‘Pappy’, Garner plays not only Bret Maverick, but also his father, Beau Maverick, and Bret pretending to be Beau. I hope he picked up three pay cheques, because he is always worth that much. (I have no idea what I am going to do about the final two seasons – in season four, Garner is replaced by Roger Moore, playing the Mavericks’ English cousin, Beauregarde; and in five, Jack Kelly carried on alone as Bart, interspersed with reruns of old Garner/Bret episodes. My inner completist is at war with my inner loyalist.)

I am curious, though, about the sensation of missing a celebrity, someone I never actually knew.

Like all right-minded people, I was appalled by the massive manipulation of public sentiment when Princess Diana died,* and scoffed at the miserable attempts to whip up a lacrimae rerum rerun when that vile, gin-swilling elitist, the Queen Mother, finally choked (I guess from having her greedy snout so deep into the public trough).** And despite being washed up alone in a Californian one horse dorp the day Thatcher died, I still managed to find myself partying into the small hours in the one gay bar in town.

On the other hand, but also like all right-minded people, I was bereft for months when Elisabeth Sladen died. Part early object-cathexis, I know; and partly because just as so many of us have a ‘my Doctor’ – mine would definitely be Tom Baker were it not for Peter Cushing – she was always ‘my companion’.

Maybe it was that unexpected feeling of loss that prepared me for Jim’s passing. And the fact that he had always been there – without ever actually being there –since I was a child. (A friend recently caught a late episode of 8 Simple Rules (2002-05) and said how much it made her long for a big living room centred around an open fire. Me, my wishes are simpler: a battered old armchair, from which James Garner comments wrily on my everyday foibles and mishaps.)

Garner was a big, handsome man, with an easy-going and amiable persona, and good liberal politics. He was not hard to like, even when playing an arrogant shit of a corporate CEO in Barbarians at the Gate (1993). But his real appeal, especially when playing Maverick and Rockford (both created by the equally admirable Roy Huggins), was his performance of human frailty. He played heroes who were cowards, gunmen who eschewed guns, a private dick who took plenty of lickings because he couldn’t always avoid a fight, no matter how hard he tried, and was not much good at fighting anyway. He played a cardsharp who did not cheat, except when he did. He pursued money but could not get hold of it. He fell for women he knew were trouble, and was suckered every time, because despite his mercenary instincts he also tended to trust people. Everyone jokes about how The Great Escape (1963) has a claustrophobic tunneller (Charles Bronson) and a blind forger (Donald Pleasence), but they forget that James Garner plays a scrounger with a heart of gold. He refuses to leave the forger behind when the POWs break out of Stalag Luft III en masse, and is finally captured when he refuses once more to abandon his friend.

So if you are looking for some kind of moral compass that understands our weaknesses, don’t ask yourself what Jesus would do.

Ask what Big Jim would do.

* The only good thing to come of it was the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, and then only because it inspired Stewart Lee’s Princess Diana Memorial Fountain Memorial Fountain Fountain routine.

** Despite constant media whitewashing and the vague resemblance, she was no more Paddington Bear’s Great Aunt Lucy than I am.

Tag: Peter Cushing

Out of the Unknown: ‘Time in Advance’ (BBC2 1 November 1965)

James Garner, 1928-2014