Doctor Who and pulp fiction

Good evening America. This is Gabriel with a secret communique broadcasting live from the Flying Reaper's radio room.

Doctor Who may be British sci-fi (there is a distinct FEEL to British sci-fi but that's another article for another day)but it's obviously been influenced by the great pulp novels/comics of yesteryear. Super science, horror, space opera, mystery... It's all there people.

Take the following TV episodes for example

• The Talons of Weng Chiang is quite entertaining. You have murderous crime syndicates, a time-displaced mad scientist, giant rats, an animated doll filled with murderous intent. All of which set during Victorian Era England!
• Mask of Mandragora, set in 15th century Italy involves a violent cult, courtly backstabbings and an alien entity.
  
• Pyramid of Mars is a real cracker of a story. Robot mummies, otherworldly entities which were worshipped as Egyptian gods and madman with the power to destroy worlds.
  
• The Daemons has the hero facing down apparent demonic creatures which seek to lay waste to the planet if Earth fails to pass judgement.
  
• Horror of Fang Rock is a chilling story of an alien creature stranded on Earth with plans of making it into a base of operations against another alien race. Set during the Edwardian Era, the dialogue is engaging and delightful.
  
• Ghost Light, back once more to the Victorian period, the intrepid hero races to find out what is causing the madness in a decaying mansion filled with evil.
  
• Image of the Fendahl has a scientist studying an ancient skull with a pentagram on its crown which is apparently the remains of a monstrous entity from an alien culture's mythology. It's not a coincidence that the Fendahl and the Fendahleen look something straight out H.P. Lovecraft's writings.
• The War Games A gentlemanly war is more than it seems as the hero discovers soldiers from other eras.
  
• Black Orchid, another Edwardian Era story this time involving a dark family secret which is hidden in the secret passages of a sprawling mansion.
• The Abominable Snowmen 1920s Tibet is the backdrop for a dangerous mission investigating the strange occurrence of the Yeti.
• The Green Death has a supercomputer gone insane in a bid to take over the world by any means necessary.
• The Android Invasion pits the hero against robotic duplicates running among in an English countryside
  

See the obvious influences? Supercomputers, robots, bizarre mysteries, science run amok!

Something else that's quite interesting is Doctor Who & the Invaders from Mars. An audio drama published by Big Finish, it tells the tale of the Doctor in New York.

It's 1938 and the Doctor & Charley land in NYC. They run afoul of mobsters with some odd technology and it turns out the Halloween invasion transmitted over the radio was, in fact, a real invasion from Mars! Well... Sort of.

The dialogue is witty and quick, the story immersive and fun. The voice acting... well. God bless the British but the attempt at American accents is laughable and corny.

The Martians sound exactly like something out of an old time radio show and they fit perfectly in the grand scheme of the story.

I highly recommend Doctor Who if you desire a nice change of pace with regards to Sci-Fi and Horror.

Musical Musings- Pulp Themes (an opinion)

Hi, folks. Don here, broadcasting from the radio room of The Flying Reaper, Dr. Lightning's all-purpose transformable armored zeppelin. This post is about music: what it means to my pulp-fan's brain.

In 1872, french composer Camille Saint-Saens wrote a "symphonic poem" called "Le Rouet d'Omphale" (or "Omphale's Spinning Wheel"). The topic of this classical music piece is the legend of Hercules: he finds himself in exile, in service of the Lydian queen Omphale. She forces the hero to dress as a woman and to perform the duties of a maid and seamstress. The piece is lilting and flowery, a soft and harmless musical composition... until the middle third. At this point in the narrative, Hercules bemoans his fate to Omphale as she forces him to spin wool at her feet. This passage of the music is mournful, full of aggression and sadness and regret. It is a bit of a downer, and not heroic at all in this light.

But:

In 1937, the Mutual Broadcasting System first broadcast a radio program called "The Shadow", starring a young Orson Welles. The famous opening and closing lines ("Who Knows What Evil...") were not performed by Welles, but by a recording of radio actor and former Shadow (when the character was an announcer) Frank Readick Jr. Behind this recording was an orchestral version (later to be stripped down to just an organ) of...

the middle third of "Le Rouet d'Omphale".

Now, in this new light, the piece has taken on a new feeling to many that hear it: dark and vengeful when in it's full orchestral form, foggy and mysterioso when played by the organ. "Omphale's Spinning Wheel" has since become "The Shadow's theme".

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Music has a strong power to create images in the minds of the listener, whether it's a piece connected with a famous scene in a movie (think of the "Jaws" theme), or whether it causes the listener to dream up the images themselves. I've always been a big fan of musical themes for stories and characters, and they've always helped me to see the events depicted in a story more clearly.

Another piece by Saint-Saens that fits perfectly with The Shadow is his Symphony No. 3 In C Minor Op. 78 , particularly the leitmotifs present in the beginning of the first and third movements. It lends itself, I believe, to stealthy pursuits. Agents move on their orders. A taxicab pulls away from the curb, the driver tersely watching his quarry as he trails a dark sedan through the night-time streets. A mobster vanishes into the darkness, only to be replaced by a cloaked and slouch-hatted figure, briefly seen under a street-lamp.

It is a powerfully visual piece of music.

Other music from other sources creeps into my head from time to time when reading pulps. For Doc Savage, I think the perfect theme would be "Olympic Fanfare" by movie-music master John Williams. Another John Williams composition, ("The Mission"- you would probably know it better as the NBC Nightly News theme) would be a perfect theme for one of my characters, Challenger Storm (shameless plug!). I admit, it may be hard to distance your head from the thematic elements and movies the pieces were written for, but trust me: it can be done.

A final example of classical-style music matching well with pulp fiction can be seen in Chris Kalb's Spider "Flash Trailer" (that's the black & white cartoon near the bottom of the page). Carl Orff's "O Fortuna" (from his "Carmina Burana") is used to great effect here. This piece has been used (some would say "overused") many, many times in the past, but I don't think it's ever fit as well as it does here. The element of grand horror and epic struggle present in those Spider novels matches perfectly with the bombastic choral arrangement and crashing symbols. "Epic" does not do the description justice.