#Visits with Ian Royle

[lionessleesha]

IMGP3376 by Matt Buck Via Flickr: JL (Cagaran Picard Jean-Luc) and Snowdrop (Cagaran Therefore I Am) sit in a pen together at the Edinburgh & East of Scotland Cat Club Show.

[quasi-normalcy]

@unassumingtherizinosaur

Okay!

"They do nothing with McCoy's communicator..." Star Trek (DC Comics, 1989 series), issue #11 by Peter David and Gordon Purcell

"...Built a Starfleet cosplay society..." Star Trek: Unlimited (Marvel Comics), issue #10 by Michael A Martin, Andy Mangels, and Ron Randall

"...Flying around in ships that look like black Studebakers..." Star Trek: Picard: Rogue Elements, by John Jackson Miller

"The Borg ATE PLUTO!" Before Dishonor, by Peter David

"Janeway became the Borg Queen and Died" Also in Before Dishonor, by Peter David

"She got better" The Eternal Tide, Kirsten Beyer

"...rift where you will slowly turn into a ghost..." Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1989 series), issues #30-31, by Michael Jan Friedman and Carlos Garzon

"Trelane is Q's son" Q-Squared, by Peter David

"...remarkably similar to the cast of Lost in Space" Star Trek (DC Comics, 1989 series), issue #13 by Peter David, Bill Mumy and Gordon Purcell

"...a giant bird hatched out of its home planet." Star Trek: New Frontier, books 1-4, by Peter David

"...Assimilated a Ferengi..." Vendetta, by (again!) Peter David

"...basically a velociraptor" Shenti Yisec Eres Ree, introduced in Taking Wing, by Michael A Martin and Andy Mangels

"...Sorbonne-educated dolphin..." Dark Mirror, by Diane Duane

"...homophobic dinosaur joined Starfleet Academy." Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (Marvel Comics), issue #17, by Chris Cooper and John Royle

"Q...accidentally killed the dinosaurs" The Q Continuum, by Greg Cox

"Worf was roommates with a rock monster" Worf's First Adventure, by Peter David (the rock monster's species, the Brikar, much later became canon in Star Trek: Prodigy)

"...An ancient alliance of 666 alien species..." The Furies, as they were known, were the subject of the Invasion crossover event.

"...Burning them in a wicker man." Also Invasion, specifically Book 1, First Strike, by Diane Carey

"...Visited the planet of the Apes" in the aptly named comic Star Trek / Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive, by Scott and David Tipton and Rachel Stott

"The Eugenics Wars already happened..." according to the again aptly named novel duology Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars, by Greg Cox

"The crew of the Cerritos created a sentient Dracula..." Star Trek: Lower Decks (IDW publishing), issues #1-3, by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio

"...Against the family of the Enterprise-D's barber" Star Trek: Unlimited (Marvel Comics), Issue #2, by Dan Abnett, Ian Eddington, and Ron Randall

Things that I SWEAR I'm not making up about the Star Trek franchise:

A shifty alien bartender, his brother, and his nephew were what happened at Roswell

There are three mutually contradictory canonical explanations for what exists at the centre of the Galaxy, none of which are "A fuck-off gigantic black hole"

Two of these things are, respectively, God and the Devil

(The crew got along well enough with the Devil, but Spock had to blow-up God with a torpedo)

One of the most compelling and sympathetic characters in the franchise is a hologram of Professor Moriarty who gained enough self-awareness to realise that he didn't need to be evil just because he was written that way

If you fly too fast, you turn into a salamander

(Said salamanders are actually the inevitable endpoint of human evolution)

The universe is balanced on the back of a giant koala (why is it smiling? What does it know!?)

There have been three separate groups of Space Nazis (not just aliens with a fascist government; literal Nazis with armbands and swastikas)

There are also: two (2) cowboy planets, two (2) planets that are just post-apocalyptic versions of Cold War-era Earth, one (1) planet ruled by Chicago mobsters from the 1920s, and one (1) version of Earth where the Roman Empire never fell

The Roman planet has its own Jesus

There is an anthropological law governing parallel planetary development that holds that planets are likely to recapitulate eras from Earth history

Because of the intervention of an ancient race of ur-humanoids, most sentient races in the galaxy look like human actors with rubber prostheses glued to their foreheads

There are so many planets centred around sex and hedonism that people in the fandom use the term "Roddenberry Sex Planet" to describe them

Jack the Ripper was an alien ghost

Amelia Earhart was abducted by aliens

If you have a high ESP score, you turn into a god when you try to fly outside of the Galaxy

The major antagonists are: Space Vikings/Samurai, Space Romans (not the Romans mentioned earlier), Space Fascists (not any of the nazi groups mentioned earlier), the Space British Empire (ruled by goo people), and Space Bees (except you'll turn into one if they sting you)

Klingons have two dicks

Borg assimilation can be catalyzed by eating car batteries

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Ian's idea of giving up smoking on doctor's orders was to cut down from sixty a day to thirty … and on instruction he reduced his intake of Vodka Martini from three lethal doses to one. He was very shaky, his normally brick-red complexion the dry mauve of a paper flower.

- AIan Ross, Coastwise Lights

Fleming was 56 and indifferent about living longer. He once revealingly described his own character thus: "I've always had one foot not wanting to leave the cradle and the other in a hurry to get to the grave." This strange mixture of the infantile and the world-weary seems very typical of the man. A few months earlier he had been visited by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was a friend of Fleming's glamorously waspish wife Ann and didn't like Fleming much. The feeling was mutual. Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford: "[Ian] looks and speaks as though he may drop dead any minute. His medical advisors confirm the apprehension."

Where did this implicit death wish come from? In some ways it's a very English slow suicide – one that Waugh, incidentally, was also participating in – obesity, cigars, alcohol and assorted drugs hastening him to an early grave two years after Fleming. Yet, on paper, Fleming had everything to live for. Born into a rich and well-connected Scottish banking family, he went to Eton, briefly to Sandhurst and then became a remittance man, notionally working in the City – "the world's worst stockbroker", in his own estimation – enjoying pretty girlfriends, fast cars and foreign holidays. After the war, during a spell at the Sunday Times, he began to write the James Bond novels, one a year from 1953 to his death. To new global fame could be added even more riches. Why was he so unhappy?

It's hard to explain this taedium vitae when it seems that most of life's injustices, hassles and difficulties – large and small – have been erased by wealth. A few biographers and friends have said Fleming couldn't get over the second world war. I think this rings about true.

For many of his generation the war was both a gigantic upheaval and an astonishing adventure in his life, an unparalleled episode in which he had found himself and felt his work had been both meaningful and useful. In other words, during the war, paradoxically, he had been happy. When it was over the meaninglessness of his feather-bedded existence slowly re-established itself.

Fleming's good fortune was to be recruited in 1939 into the Naval Intelligence Division as personal assistant to NID's head, Admiral John Godfrey. He had a rank in the RNVR – commander – wore a uniform and went to work in the Admiralty. Everything about his life had changed. As a result of this key role and position he not only was connected to the very centre of the secret world of spies and spying but he could also actively participate in it – travelling to France and Spain, the US and Canada – suggesting ideas and schemes as they came to him, some of which were taken up and provided notable covert successes.

The most remarkable and lasting of these was his suggestion that a special commando be set up – a small group of intelligence-gathering raiders – who would attack and plunder targeted German establishments – radar stations, Kriegsmarine offices, naval installations and the like – and "pinch" anything that that might be useful – code books, movement orders, bits of Enigma machines and so forth.

The force that was established as a result of Fleming's brainwave was called the 30 Assault Unit, a commando that saw its first operation during the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe. Fleming was on board a destroyer not far from the beaches during the raid and it was not an auspicious start, as even he had to admit, but 30AU was to prove itself invaluable in north Africa, Sicily, Italy, Rhodes, Yugoslavia, the invasion of France – and, most effectively, in Germany during the final days of the Third Reich when, among the wholesale larceny of German technology that was taking place as the war ended, its most audacious "pinch" of all was achieved, namely, the entire archive of the German Navy – the Tambach Archives, a vast document haul that weighed more than 400 tons.

As well as being intrepid fighters it seemed as much a requisite of joining 30AU that the soldiers possessed strong, not to say eccentric, personalities. These included such extraordinary men as Bon Royle, Lofty Whyman, Patrick Dalzel-Job, "Sancho" Glanville and Peter Huntington-Whitely among others. Together they went on audacious exploits from 1942 onwards.

Many of 30AU's pinches facilitated the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. Captured Enigma machines, cipher books and coded messages were sent back for analysis and, as the code-breakers grew ever more efficient at their work, it is clear that Fleming's commandos actively aided the general war effort and possibly shortened the conflict.

The commandos were unaware of the actual contribution and long-term effects of their looting – as, probably, was Fleming. He remains something of a background figure to the group itself. Fleming occasionally visited the men on the front line (and complaining about the quality of the brandy he was served) and not much loved, it has to be said. This again is probably a result of a particular trait of the privileged English classes. Fleming found it hard to mix with others outside his own society and to express emotion, like many of his peers, and cultivated instead the very English phenomenon of putting on a façade of nonchalance.

If the war made Fleming feel fulfilled as a man it also provided him with a vast store of memories that consciously or unconsciously fed into the plots, characters and situations of the novels themselves. "M" in the novels is a portrait of Fleming's old NID boss Admiral Godfrey. The "Lektor" machine in From Russia with Love is clearly modelled on the Enigma encryptors.

An old 30AU member, Tony Hugill, became a minor character under his own name in The Man with the Golden Gun, and so on.

Most telling of all is the late story Octopussy that can be interpreted as a deliberate self-portrait of the author as embittered, self-loathing drunk, living off the capital of his war.

For Fleming, one feels, nothing ever matched the intensity and excitement of his life between 1939-45 and all his worldly success after it could not drive away his demons. His wife, Ann, described him in his last days as living in a state of "total misery".

Alan Ross, however, an old friend and together they would watch Sussex cricket at the Hove would write his own memoirs of his dear friend. Ross just saw another multifaceted and complex man and also a naval officer in the war: "Not many of [Fleming's] wife's friends cared for him, a feeling that was reciprocated, but to me he was a good and entertaining friend and I missed him greatly."

[eastenddiscourse]

Ian Beale Origins (7 August 1990)

You’re not just born like him. Something has to trigger it.

Well, I think I’ve found the exact moment Mr Nice Beale develops that streak of his. His transformation into someone who’s mean-spirited at best, and vindictive at worst. Into a selfish, disillusioned bastard with a burning distrust of all women. Into Bad Beale.

The change can be pinpointed. It comes when Cindy tells him Steven isn’t his, which he double-checks with her at the start of the episode in case anyone missed the last one. (I was about four days old when this aired, so I’m very much going at this with fresh eyes.)

Kathy’s on hand to take Steven from Cindy and he viciously shoves her into his van.

You can imagine the kind of questions being asked here. He’s saying what a mug she’s made of him, before getting worked up and calling her a slag and shoving her back out of the van.

Out you get, that’s it.

Cindy calls Wicksy, who is meant to be Ian’s best mate. He, of course, is Steven’s father.

Wicksy is very much EastEnders’ original lothario.

A bit of Maxi Priest playing in the Vic, providing a nice soundtrack to Phil, Pete and Grant discussing their concerns over new pub landlord Eddie Royle’s ex-copper status.

Eddie can’t be that bad. He’s let Wicksy go and see Cindy.

Cindy’s worried about how Ian drove off. She goes, “I've never seen him like that before. he's so good natured.” Shall we see how he’s getting on?

Young Ian looks a bit like a clean-shaven David de Gea. Got that baby llama look about him.

Jesus. He wouldn’t, would he?

This is why you should always wear a seatbelt.

Fuckin’ ell.

He’s not taken this well.

Back at the pub, and there’s a nod towards Pete having some telepathic bullshit for his son’s peril.

Ian’s promptly strapped in and loaded into an ambulance. You know he’s going to be fine, and the paramedics handle him as if they’re in on the immortal nature of main characters. EastEnders’ Homer.

Hi, are you Mrs Cindy Beale? Yeah, er, your husband’s actually made an attempt on his life because you’ve ruined it?

Wicksy’s over at Michelle’s, who seems to have been in on the secret. He reminds her she’s fucked up a few times herself and that minimises her scorn considerably.

Kathy took a break from her Saved By the Bell audition to sit with Cindy and Pete at the hospital.

~ Will Ian make it? ~

Lots of technical equipment close-ups in this ep. Not sure whether this is all new in 1990 or something and they’re trying to show it off, but it seems gratuitous.

Poor bugger.

What the hell is this? Sharon’s birth mother?!

I smelt another future retcon, but nope, Carol Hanley (who looks even more like Roly than her) is truly Sharon’s real mother.

Carol’s alarmingly wary of bonding with Sharon, who just needs a friend. But, nah. Not interested. You don’t need her anyway, Shaz. 

Icon.

Wicksy’s in Cindy’s ear, telling her he loves her and their son, and wants them to all be together. All the while he’s still dressed like fucking Annie Hall.

Cindy takes Steven back to the hospital to visit Ian. Must care a bit, mustn’t she. Wake up, mate.

Chin up, Cindy! He goes on to comfortably outlive you and your shitty son.

Come on, Ian, just open your eyes, eh?

There he is. You big drama queen!

But the man who opens his eyes is changed forever. His dream of a perfect, tidy life is tainted, and the metamorphosis into the Ian Beale we have to this day is complete. Give ’em hell!

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Star Wars Adventures, and more! All coming your way for April 17th!

TRANSFORMERS #3

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Ron Joseph (CVR A) Nick Roche (CVR B) Anna Malkova

High above Cybertron, the planet’s inner moon unfolds to become a gigantic energon harvester, a magnificent show for Bumblebee and his new friend. Meanwhile, Megatron is assembling a new security force, but rumors abound about the new team. A cosmic epic of grand scale, presented by Star Trek/Green Lantern and Injustice 2 artist Angel Hernandez! Plus awesome action by G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and Revolutionaries artist Ron Joseph! A brand new era of Transformers! Featuring 35th Anniversary covers by Guido Guidi!

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #261

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) John Royle

Exciting new story arc! A great jumping-on point! Featuring the return of artist Netho Diaz! Fresh off the terror caused by Dr. Venom and his insane Venom-Bot, the Joes find themselves smack dab in the middle of new world-shaking dangers! Superstar artist Netho Diaz (G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: Silent Option) returns to the main series to join forces with living legend Larry Hama in the latest fight against the nefarious Cobra!

DISNEY AFTERNOON GIANT #4

Warren Spector, Ian Brill (A) Jose Massaroli, Ruben Torreiro (A/CVR) Leonel Castellani

Get ready for two more stories featuring your favorite Disney Afternoon characters! First up is Chip ‘n’ Dale in “Stranger Danger,” followed by Part Four of “Rightful Owners” as Uncle Scrooge and company conclude their epic mission across the globe!

DITKO’S MONSTERS! KONGA VS GORGO

Joe Gill (A/CVR) Steve Ditko

Two “famous monsters of filmland” battle for your hearts and minds in this terror-ific comic! Gorgo and Konga’s best individual stories! They don’t go head to claw, they’re busy fighting commies, but they battle for your mind as you decide who is the coolest of the cool! Plus, two covers using Flipism technology: one on the front, another on the back! And wait till you see the flipped-out centerfold! With Gorgo introduction by Tony Isabella and Konga introduction by Mark Ditko!

GHOSTBUSTERS: 35TH ANNIV: ANSWER THE CALL

Devin Grayson (A/CVR) S. L. Gallant

The 35th Anniversary of the Ghostbusters is upon us! Let’s celebrate with four spooktacular weekly comics featuring different Ghostbuster teams in all-new standalone adventures!   Do demons get visitation rights? That’s the question facing a harried young mother as she tries to accommodate a stream of otherworldly visitors intent on paying their respects to her half-demon toddler. When the ghosts begin to herald the arrival of the girl’s father-rumored to be a class 7 entity-Mommy knows who she has to call: The ANSWER THE CALL GHOSTBUSTERS! Erin, Abby, Patty, and Holtzman find themselves mediating the custody battle from hell… and it’s a scorcher!   The Answer the Call Ghostbusters in an all-new original adventure by the slimerific creative team of Devin Grayson (Nightwing) and SL Gallant (G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero)!

STAR TREK: THE Q CONFLICT #3

Scott Tipton, David Tipton (A/CVR A&B) David Messina

As the clash of the godlike beings continues, the captains face off in a series of war games that become much more lethal when Q introduces a fifth competitor-a Doomsday Machine! The biggest Star Trek crossover ever continues here. The crews of The Next Generation, The Original Series, Voyager, and Deep Space 9 come together to face their biggest challenge yet! Written by Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken scribes Scott & David Tipton! All the captains together for the first time!

STAR WARS ADVENTURES #20

Cavan Scott (A/CVR A) Derek Charm

During the Clone Wars, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Master Yoda undertake an urgent mission, where Anakin’s rebellious nature could spell trouble for the Republic. The final issue of three set during the prequel films! The Original Trilogy gets the spotlight starting next issue!

STAR WARS ADVENTURES TALES FROM VADERS CASTLE TP

Cavan Scott (A) Derek Charm, Chris Fenoglio, More (CVR) Francesco Francavilla

Advance solicited for May release! How do a band of rebels distract themselves when sneaking into the creepiest place in the galaxy? Tell scary stories of course! Follow Lina Graf, Crater, and friends as they sneak-and fight-their way into the terrifying castle of Darth Vader! Along the way, they’ll trade spooky stories featuring the most terrifying villains and creatures in the universe! Your favorite characters like Obi-Wan, Han and Chewie, Hear Syndulla, and the Ewoks, face classic creeps like ghosts, monsters, witches and more… all with a singular Star Wars twist!

TANGLED THE SERIES HAIR & NOW #1

Katie Cook (A) Diogo Saito (A/CVR A) Eduard Petrovich, Rosa La Barbera

It’s another series of brand-new Tangled stories! Join Rapunzel, Eugene, and all their friends in “The Corona Caper” and “Curtain Call.” The final series of Tangled: The Series comics begins this month! All stories are written by fan-favorite Katie Cook! Three more stunning RI covers by Disney artist Gabby Zapata!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for April 17th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like