Denn-sha! Denn-sha!
Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
- Start date
Replying to somebody's post with only an eyeroll is extremely disrespectful and rude, it's never not intended as a direct neg.
Last edited:
I don't know, while he's certainly not mythological per see (I tend to class myths as pertaining to a culture's origins and sense of identity), I think I'd class "Jack The Ripper" as a kind of folkloric figure since the real culprit was never found and so we can only know him by those very specific deeds. So roughly on par with the likes of "Robin Hood".
King Arthur is a tricky one since any historical basis was mangled in the French retelling and the figure only became important way down the line when the English were trying to carve out a sense of identity from the various appropriated scraps left over after centuries of successive foreign occupations. Still, that is another one where non-Brits seem more fixated on than actual Brits who for the most part never give it a second thought. One imagines the Japanese have similar feelings about Samurai and Ninja.
I think what's slightly more perplexing is that I've noticed quite a few Americans under the impression that certain fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes are actual historical figures...
As for mispronouncing place names; that doesn't bother me so much. Yanks always mispronounce the English language in general and place names in particular. Sheridan is indeed a Yank, so it checks out.
Last edited:
What I want to know is how did us British mess up shows dealing with "our" mythology. Both Merlin and Robin Hood were dreadful.
Arthur wasn't even English - if he existed at all, he was possibly a Romano-British warlord leading a guerrilla-like resistance against the encroaching Anglo-Saxon invaders (that is, the proto-English of the 5th and 6th century). We English later adopted Arthur just as we did Boudicca, the leader of an earlier Brythonic rebellion against the Romans, over 400 years before the English even showed up in Britain. At least, Boxleitner wasn't given the opportunity to mangle the pronunciation of "Worcestershire".
Damned if I know. Never watched either of them.
The closest to a half-way enjoyable Arthurian adaptation anyone has ever gotten was Monty Python. As for Robin Hood...well it's a fairly light, low stakes and insubstantial set of yarns that everyone's always trying to reinvent it to varying degrees of success.
That's always the way though. Short of a complete genocide, the invaded and the invaders typically merge cultures to some extent or another. Case in point the Romano-British were mostly just the decedents of the local tribes that opted to assimilate rather than bugger off into the highlands with the Welsh and the Gaels etc. Yet they still retained a certain cultural and linguistic heritage and in time romanticised certain folkhero type figures in history. Doubtless class dynamics come into play as often the emerging upper class are descended from the most recent invaders (and collaborators) while the lower classes are mostly descended from those that didn't have much say in the matter, so it's no wonder the likes of Boudicca and Arthur took hold in the imaginations.
And it's not like the Celts were the first to show up either. The history and pre-history of these islands is basically a long succession of one native population being overrun and assimilated by another from mainland Europe, over and over.
Bottom line, it's always way more nuanced and complicated than a bunch of arrows moving across a map, as depicted in every history textbook ever.
Jack the Ripper was a time traveler in Good Night Sweet Heart, Time after Time (The movie and the series), and Time Cop the series. Jack the Ripper was an immortal spaceghost in Star Trek the Original Series.
Use him, or lose him Britain.
Use him, or lose him Britain.
Wishful thinking.
And then certain historical figures are under the impression that they're fictional.
All that does is display an amazingly naive faith in the London constabulary's competence by assuming the only reason he could have escaped was by being a time travelling alien or some-such. In reality, they just weren't (and still aren't) very good at the job.
Well, this American Anglophile knows that Boudica's rebellion was in 60 or 61 AD, during Nero's rule, not 400 years before Rome was in Britania.
And as an interesting side note, spell-check thinks Boudica should be "Boudoir." :O
Thinking it over, Wayne Alexander is a Force of nature, but they had David Warner on the payroll. JMS knew the Jack storyline was coming, and how much trouble would he have really been in if he had dove tailed Babylon 5 into Time after Time, by using the same Jack the Ripper?
There’s also Doctor Who, where the Silurian Private Detective Madame Vastra caught him, killed him, and ate the corpse. So maybe the British do have a more realistic appraisal of the police force.
Now see even I didn't know that.
I can't speak for the current curriculum (such as it is with what's going on) but I was never taught about that part of our history in school. Broadly speaking it went: Ancient Greek Mythology > Dark Ages > Tudors > Slave Trade > Victorians > WWI > WWII > Cold War > go read a newspaper.
We were probably taught a little bit more than most about pre-Roman Britain where I went to school since we happened to be within walking distance of a certain world heritage site of the hengey persuasion, so it made for a cheap and easy field trip...like 3 times...
That sounds like all the more reason to avoid making that connection. I mean it's not a very good movie for one, and for another this is a very specific interpretation of the character that Warner would have played very differently than Alexander. Plus he did already kinda played a very similar role on TNG, so there's that...
There was however the persistent rumour that at some point in season 1 or 2 JMS wanted Robert Culp to reprise his role from 'The Outer Limits' for an episode. Though it's never been 100% clear if he was serious or just his way of trying to nudge Ellison into penning an episode.
And that we can always count on saurian sub-contractors to make up the difference...
Boudicca was queen of the Iceni tribe in Roman Britain (Britannia) in 61 CE during the reign of Nero, the fifth Roman emperor - his predecessor, Claudius, was the emperor who annexed Britannia in 43 CE. The Romans left Britain in 410 CE. The Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians etc. turned up in large numbers on these shores in the late 5th and early 6th century CE around 500 CE. So Arthur (or possibly Artorius) would have been around about 400 years after Boudicca. Genetic studies suggest it was the ruling Romano-British families who were driven to the East while the "invaders" assimilated with the remainder of the existing population. However, Arthur himself is probably entirely mythical.Well, this American Anglophile knows that Boudica's rebellion was in 60 or 61 AD, during Nero's rule, not 400 years before Rome was in Britania.
And as an interesting side note, spell-check thinks Boudica should be "Boudoir." :O
Last edited:
Try Wymondham...
I never watched Babylon 5 but Comet TV is going to air a special marathon this weekend
FROM ONE TO Z'HA DONE
FROM ONE TO Z'HA DONE
Do you mean Wymondham in Leicestershire or Wymondham in Norfolk?
Okay so I was really starting to lose faith in season 3 and then Point Of No Return happened!
Martial Law is now a thing. Garibaldi went cray-cray with the rage, and Londo and Vir don’t trust each other on account of that one of them will be emperor when the other dies...
Good stuff, finally!
Martial Law is now a thing. Garibaldi went cray-cray with the rage, and Londo and Vir don’t trust each other on account of that one of them will be emperor when the other dies...
Good stuff, finally!
Similar threads
