Multiple multitudes of cool geeky stuff

It’s safe to say that if you don’t feel like getting your geek on just a little bit, this is not the post for you.

Dr. Who & The DaleksMetal machine music. After years of work (as in upward of 15 years) and months of renewed speculation, Silva Screen is releasing the surviving music tracks from both of the 1960s Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies on a single CD, with a lavish booklet to boot. The track list (posted at the Doctor Who News Page) is:

Dr. Who and the Daleks

1. Fanfare And Opening Titles
2. TARDIS
3. The Petrified Jungle
4. The Petrified Creature And The City
5. Four Return To TARDIS
6. The Medicine Box And The Climb To The City
7. City Corridors
8. Captured By The Daleks
9. Susan Leaves The City
10. The Jungle At Night
11. Susan Returns To The City
12. Escape From The Cell
13. The Trap
14. The Swamp
15. The Mountain
16. The Cave
17. The Jump
18. The Thals Approach The City
19. The Countdown
20. The Countdown Stops
21. Finale And End Titles

Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

22. Smash And Grab
23. TARDIS Departs (Sound Effects)
24. Opening Titles
25. TARDIS (Sound Effects)
26. London 2150 A.D. (Music And Sound Effects)
27. Daleks And Robomen
28. Message To Grandfather And The Dalek Saucer Takes Off (Music
And Sound Effects)
29. The Mine Workings And The Cottage
30. Preparing The Bomb Capsule (Music And Sound Effects)
31. Smash And Grab (Reprise) And End Titles

The Singles

32. The Eccentric Dr. Who
33. Daleks And Thals
34. Fugue For Thought

Dr. Who And The Daleks – Bonus Tracks

35. Fanfare And Opening Titles (Soundtrack Version With Effects)
36. TARDIS Effects
37. Dalek City Effects

According to Mark Ayres, who cleans up sound on everything from the classic series DVDs and CDs to the much-lamented extinct classic series music soundtracks, there was no source material for the second movie that didn’t have the sound effects mixed in with the music – it was unavoidable. The real prize, however, is that the music from the first movie is free of effects; for those who haven’t done their reading up, Dr. Who & The Daleks (the 1965 movie adaptation of the second story from the TV series, which introduced the Daleks) was a key influence on Austin Powers, maybe second only to In Like Flint and Our Man Flint. This soundtrack will be coming out on October 5th, and I’ll definitely be getting one. Oh yes, I will.

Final Yamato…again. Here’s a trailer for Uchuu Senkan Yamato Fukkatsu hen, coming out in December in Japan. What the heck is this? The English translation is, roughly speaking, Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth Chapter, a continuation of the original animated series and movies (which we in the English speaking world know as Star Blazers). Before you ask…I have no idea if this is going to be dubbed or brought to the English-speaking world in any form, or when.

I’ve gotta say that this is looking really good. Color me very interested… as soon as it’s dubbed or at least subbed. I’m heartened by the use of the music of the late Hiroshi Miyagawa in the trailer; I do not, however, envy whoever winds up scoring the movie. The thought occurs that they could track the whole thing with Miyagawa’s existing works (the awesome-sounding Symphonic Suite Yamato, a.k.a. possibly the best CD I’ve ever imported from Japan in my life, might actually become the official score to something after all). Anyone new coming into it will have to strike some kind of awesome balance between referring to the existing Yamato musical canon and adding their own voice to the proceedings. And while the transitions between traditional-looking animation and CGI are a bit jarring – almost as jarring as the ol’ BBC “video-in-studio, film-on-location” look – that shot of the Yamato blasting out of the ice is just effin’ awesome.

Good deal! After quite a lengthy stretch with few updates due to a number of family crises, my friend Michael Thomasson is back in business as Good Deal Games. He’s revamped the mission statement though: instead of keeping a large collection in stock, he’s become a clearing house for homebrews for every system imaginable. At some point a while back he seemed to be considering selling the whole kit and/or kaboodle, and I’m glad he didn’t. Michael is one of the rock-steady pillars of the retrogaming hobby: he’s been there since before I popped my head into the hobby, and he’s still there now that I’ve become a slightly reclusive cranky old bugger (see actual photo above). What he says, he does, and if there’s a more reliable person in the hobby to do business with, I’m not sure I know who it is. And let’s face it – the idea of an all-in-one-stop homebrew shop is a brilliant idea. There have been too many fragmentations and schisms for such a small hobby, and a lot of stuff gets “lost” because it’s an exclusive on one site and isn’t welcome to be advertised on another. Good Deal Games can now serve as a kind of retrogaming Switzerland – completely neutral territory, everyone’s welcome. And if that’s not incentive enough for you, Michael’s carrying Odyssey2 and Videopac homebrews that I’ve done the artwork for, and even a 2600 game or two that has the same dubious honor. 😆 (Just checked, yeah, he’s carrying the version of Backfire that has a heavily-photoshopped picture of me on the label looking like I’m about to be hit by a bus. Doesn’t that make you want to go and buy one?) They’ve even got repros of an unreleased Star Trek V: The Final Frontier NES game that I’ve never heard of before. Somebody hold me back. What does God need with an 8-bit cartridge?

The long and short of it is that GDG and Michael get my highest recommendations. The place chugs along on the pure love of the hobby – it’s hard to go wrong getting stuff from them.

Goodbye, farewell and amen… I saw in the news that Larry Gelbart, who developed M*A*S*H for TV and was its showrunner for the first few years (i.e. the Trapper / Henry Blake years), died of cancer last week. The number of other things Gelbart wrote in his long career would not only take up its own blog entry but, in all likelihood, its own blog. I’m a second generation M*A*S*H fan – my mother was a huge fan of it, and wouldn’t miss the nightly strip syndicated version of it or the new shows until it went off the air. I’ll be the first to fess up that I didn’t “get” it at the time; my own deeper appreciation for it would have to wait until the years that I spent – ironically – running tapes of it at another local station that had it in strip syndication. Great stuff, and at times difficult to swallow; I suppose M*A*S*H was to my mother what the new Battlestar Galactica was to me. Probably no coincidence that their respective series finales were structured somewhat similarly. (Actually, having made that statement, the more I think about it, it’s very similarly, not somewhat similarly.) M*A*S*H may be one of those shows that’s about a specific historical event, but has only gained more significance with time.

OK, enough geeking out from me for a while. I have kitten bellies to tickle.

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