THE RAINBOW AFFAIR

Studying fictional realities means always consuming media with an eye towards the unusual and exceptional. The average episode of Andy Barker P. I. May be amusing, but the episode that crosses over with Buffy: The Vampire Slayer makes you rise from your chair in astonishment. (In the second episode of Andy Barker P. I., “Fairway, My Lovely” Andy investigates the death of Guy Halverson, the entrepreneur who created the Double Meat Palace chain of fast food restaurants. The Double Meat Palace, famous for its chicken/beef burgers, featured prominently in the sixth season of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.)

With that in mind I am always grateful for what I call “Rosetta Stones” of crossovers, media that give me not one or two, but bunches of crossovers and cameos for me to dwell upon and learn from. One of the best and a model for how these things should be done, was The Man From U.N.C.L.E. novel, “The Rainbow Affair.”

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was a spy program from the sixties, done tongue in cheek, detailing the adventures of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, working for a top secret organization in battle with T.H.R.U.S.H., a group of world conquering bad guys. Like most popular TV series a bunch of spin-off paperback novels were written, and the best of these novels were written by Los Angeles based sci-fi fan and writer David McDaniel.

David McDaniel hung with the Los Angeles fan crowd in the sixties, including Star Trek uber-fan Bjo Trimble (she who wrote the classic, legendary Star Trek Concordance.) When McDaniel joined the L.A. fan scene, he adopted the pseudonym Ted Johnstone. He was the uncommon type who wrote under his real name and lived under a pseudonym. McDaniel accidentally died in 1977 from autoerotic asphyxiation. He would have been about 38 years old. The guy’s a minor legend in sci-fi fan circles.

But for our purposes, David McDaniel wrote very popular and quite enjoyable The Man From U.N.C.L.E. novels. These were not novelizations of existing episodes, but new adventures. The one that concerns us here is the thirteenth in the series, the fourth one written by McDaniel. The dedication is interesting. It’s to John Gosling, Det. Supt. (ret.). Gosling had written a book about a master criminal who went under the alias Johnny Rainbow, and that book became the inspiration for McDaniel’s. In real life Johnnie Rainbow may or may not be an actual super-criminal responsible for a great British Bank Robbery. Many of Gosling’s theories about the true identity of Rainbow are explored in the book.

Aside from Gosling and Rainbow another historical figure, T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, is referenced through Ilya’s use of a borrowed motorcycle. Ilya uses a 1935 Brough-Superior motorcycle borrowed from “our friend at Clouds Hill, near Dorchester.” T.E. Lawrence lived at Clouds Hill and died in 1935 riding a Brough-Superior motorcycle.

The references come fast and furious, to detail them all would required a full annotation of the text, and even then I’d miss some of them. In the course of their investigation Solo and Kuryakin run into a host of famous British detective and adventure heroes and villains. Many of these are quickly recognized by modern readers, others are much more obscure.

Simon Templar, aka The Saint, was an adventurer, possibly an ex-criminal, who sets about to help those hurt or oppressed by “ungodly” villains. He gets his name from his initials, ST. The saint was introduced in a series of novels written by Leslie Charteris, and later was the subject of radio dramas, at least two television series, and movies. The most famous actor to play the Saint was Roger Moore, who used the role to springboard into movies as James Bond. The Saint is sometimes pursued by his nemesis, Inspector Claude Eustace Teal.

James Bond himself receives a mention. Bond, the most famous and longest lasting fictional spy, was created by Ian Fleming and is still immensely popular today.

Jane Marple, better known as Miss Marple, is an amateur spinster detective, and along with Hercule Poirot the most popular of Agatha Christie’s creations. Miss Marple has had her adventures dramatized in novels, movies and television.

John Steed and Emma Peel were the main characters in the television series The Avengers. The team operated in a universe similar to that of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the crossover makes a lot of sense. John Steed was famous for his dapper Edwardian outfits (bowler hat and umbrella) and Emma Peel for her martial arts prowess. The opening credits can be seen here.

In 1902 Adam Llewellyn De Vere Adamant was frozen by his arch nemesis, “The Face,” only to be revived in 1966, in the middle of the swinging sixties. Adam Adamant teamed up with Georgina Jones, a typical mod chick of the time, and the pair fought crime and had adventures. The BBC series was called Adam Adamant Lives! And ran two short seasons. The 80’s band Adam and the Ants took their name from the show, and Michael Meyers did a neat reversal and updating of the idea in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. Check out the series opening here.

Sax Rohmer introduced Fu Manchu, the ultimate epitome of the so-called “yellow peril” way back in 1913. The explicitly racist adventures were toned down over the years, and in 1955 there was a television series based on the character. (Perhaps the first television series named for a villain.) "The Rainbow Affair" includes Peko, Fu Manchu’s monkey, which is an explicit reference to the television series. Fu Manchu’s protagonist, the Holmes to his Moriarity, is Sir Denis Nayland Smith.

G.K. Chesterson created detective Father Brown and wrote 51 short stories about the crime-fighting priest. Based on a real life Catholic priest that helped Chesterson in his conversion to Catholicism, Father Brown is more of an intuitive than deductive detective. In "The Rainbow Affair" the good father is portrayed as a friend of Miss Marple.

John Creasey must have been a favorite of McDaniel’s. Creasey wrote over five hundred novels under many pseudonyms. The three of his many characters that concern us here are Dr. Palfrey, Z5, the Toff and Inspector Roger West. The Toff is Richard Rollison, a character with more than a passing similarity to The Saint. He receives a quick mention only. Inspector Roger West is a Scotland Yard detective that was sort of a reversal of the Sherlock Holmes/Inspector Lestrade model. Here, the Inspector is the great detective, and his amateur friend, Mark Lessing, the also ran.

Where McDaniel truly began to weave disparate elements of two separate continuities was the way he detailed the history of the U.N.C.L.E. organization and showed how it was related to Dr. Palfrey’s similar spy organization Z5. McDaniel wove a seamless history between the two continuities, showing how Solo and Kuryakin’s boss, Mr. Waverly, was a protégé of Dr. Palfrey and how the U.N.C.L.E. organization is a spin-off of Z5.

Not content to play it straight, McDaniel introduced Neddie Seagoon, a character in the British radio comedy The Goon Show, which co-starred Peter Sellers. In The Goon Show Neddie Seagoon would narrate his adventures, and jump from job to job for comic effect.

The last identified character from "The Rainbow Affair" is Sherlock Holmes. The story is set in the early sixties, so Holmes would be well over a hundred years old by this point, kept alive by the queen jelly he cultivated from his bees nests. The elderly Holmes has assumed the identity of William Escott, and helps the U.N.C.L.E. agents with some well-timed advice.

In the context of the story, the U.N.C.L.E. agents travel to Great Britain for an adventure. Not content with merely one nod to a favorite character he filled the book with many favorite characters, so that an ordinary adventure becomes a trip to a meta-fictional England, filled with all the spy, adventurer, detective characters McDaniel so obviously loved and enjoyed. In this new expanded universe, in which U.N.C.L.E. is related to Z5 and MI-5 employs James Bond and John Steed, and in which Sherlock Holmes is still alive, it becomes possible that James Bond’s boss “M” is indeed named so in memory of Mycroft Holmes. The universe, and our experience of it, becomes bigger.

THE LOGIC OF CROSSOVERS

Continuity is a fluid, ever expanding thing. Crossovers help to expand continuities in new and interesting ways. Some crossovers are official, and go both ways. When Detective Munch and the cast from the television series Homicide appeared on Law and Order, the producers of both shows made a decision that from now on, two worlds can now be considered to be one world. However, when Detective Munch appeared on The X-Files, the door, to quote Egon Spengler, doesn’t swing both ways. From now, all the events of the shows Homicide and Law and Order can be considered to have happened in the universe of The X-Files, but all the events of The X-Files didn’t necessarily occur in the universe of Homicide and Law and Order.

This is a keen insight, developed by my friend Daniel Ciora, Esquire. He was reacting to an obscure crossover between the shows Knight Rider and Star Trek. I could explain it, but poobala.com does a much better job. Check it out and come back. My friend, when I pointed this out, was distressed. The imagined purity of our beloved Star Trek was tainted by a reckless attempt at a crossover by well-intentioned writers working for a crap TV show. It wasn’t even the original Knight Rider series, but the knock-off sequel. In the end, he pointed out that Star Trek owes nothing to Knight Rider, and even if all the events of Star Trek happen in the Knight Rider universe, we can still be reasonably confident that the events of Knight Rider did not happen in the universe of Star Trek.

I like to think of this as a one-way crossover. If we were to draw a diagram of the crossovers mentioned above, we would draw a line between Homicide and Law and Order, with an arrow at both ends of the line. In the line that stretches between Homicide and The X-Files, we would have an arrow from Homicide pointing to The X-Files, but no arrow going the other way.

(As an aside, I’ve always been struck by the similarity of this kind of thought to certain ideas in theology, especially syncretism. If we look at the history of the Christian church, we’ll see ideas and movements (such as Mithraism) absorbed into Christianity in a sort of two way crossover, and we’ll see religions such as Voodoo borrowing Christian concepts in a one way crossover. Going further, we could see Judaism as Star Trek: The Original Series, Christianity as Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Islam as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But that’s beside the point.)

However, despite my friend’s objections, what’s wrong with Knight Rider being a part of Star Trek’s history? Earlier I’ve made the argument that T.J. Hooker is Captain Kirk’s ancestor, based on their physical similarity. Despite Poobala’s comments to the contrary, there’s no reason to think that the science developed in Knight Rider didn’t result in the kinds of computers and robots seen on Star Trek. Technological similarities between series may indicate they are in the same universe.

THE FOUR DOCTORS, OR, DIE HARD WITH AN URKEL

Brent Spiner is best known for portraying the android Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Among fans he is also known for playing Data’s “evil” android brother Lore. In the context of the series, the androids were by the brilliant scientist Dr. Noonien "Often-Wrong" Soong, also played by Brent Spiner, under a ton of makeup applied to make him look like an old man. The androids created by Dr. Soong, perhaps in a tinge of hubris, were made to look like a younger Soong.

Later, on the last season of Enterprise, the sad forgotten brother of Star Trek, Brent Spiner was enlisted to play Dr. Arik Soong, a brilliant, if misguided and somewhat evil scientist. Arik was assumed to be an ancestor of Data's creator. It seems that Arik Soong was experimenting with the same kind of genetic science that created Khan Noonien Singh, he who so mercilessly plagued Captain Kirk in the original series episode “Space Seed” and then later returned in the second and still best Star Trek movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It’s interesting to note that Data’s creator and Kirk’s nemesis shared a first name, and an active interest in the Eugenics Wars of the late 1990’s.

Moving back in time from the events in Enterprise (which take place roughly in the years following 2151) we arrive at the year 2005, and find yet another brilliant scientist, played by Brent Spiner, combating an alien menace. Dr. Nigel Fenway was a microbiologist who was responsible for finding a way to stop aliens from rewriting human DNA (alien eugenics?) on the television series Threshold. The series, produced by several Star Trek alumni, never played up on the connection between Dr. Fenway and Soong, but the physical resemblance made it obvious that they were related.

Nine years earlier, the insane Dr. Brackish Okun, lead researcher at Area 51, gave his life to help fend off a major attack on Earth by extraterrestrial invaders. We can assume that much of what we saw in the movie Independence Day was fictionalized and expanded upon, and that the actual invasion was much smaller and localized, but again, the brilliance and physical resemblance between Dr.’s Okun, Fenway and Soong are indisputable. They all come from the same family.

Such familial relationships based on actor portrayals are sometimes obvious (T.J. Hooker is the ancestor of Captain James T. Kirk) and sometimes fatuous (Is Tim O’Hara, as played by Bill Bixby in My Favorite Martian, in any way related to Tom Corbett, as played by Bill Bixby in the Courtship of Eddie’s Father, or to Tony Blake, as played by Bill Bixby in The Magician or to Dr. David Banner, as played by Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk?) It stretches credibility, but sometimes actors playing different parts are connected through their roles and the relationship becomes part of continuity.

Lisa Kudrow played a ditzy waitress on the TV series Mad About You starring Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser. When she was cast as a similar character on Friends she was given the name Phoebe Buffay. The two characters were similar, not identical, but they did turn out to be identical twins. When Phoebe’s sister showed up on Friends, she was played by Lisa Kudrow, and became Phoebe’s “evil twin.” She dated Joey, became a porn star under Phoebe’s name (Buffay the Vampire Layer) and will one day become governor of New York.

Much of the groundwork for this kind of theorizing was laid out in The Mad Peck’s seminal article “How J.R. Got Out of the Air Force and What the Derricks Mean.” In this far reaching work (which is a bit faux-Freudian for my tastes) it is effectively argued that Major Nelson, the astronaut from I Dream of Jeannie once made a wish to be a Texas oil millionaire, and through Jeannie’s magics attained this wish, becoming transformed into J.R. Ewing on the popular primetime soap opera Dallas.

This stuff works best in shows that are separated by time, either historical dramas like Little House on the Prairie (so when Michael Landon’s character Charles Phillips “Pa” Ingalls dies, he becomes the angel on Highway to Heaven) or sci-fi shows set in the future (like the aforementioned Star Trek.) Shows with magic or super science work great, because all sorts of weird stuff can happen. It’s also helpful to remember that TV shows and movies present fictionalized dramatizations of actual events, and that oftentimes the same character might be featured on two separate series or movies bearing two different names for copyright reasons.

On the TV series Family Matters, we met Carl Winslow, played by Reginald VelJohnson a police officer and eventually the straight man to the amazing Steve Urkel. Though as a character he is mostly played for laughs, we see some of Carl Winslow’s cop skills in certain episodes: we see him team up with the Urkel-bot to stop a robbery, for instance, but for a real example of his crime fighting skills we have to turn to the Nakatomi Tower terrorist attack in downtown Los Angeles. Because of copyright and trademark issues Carl Winslow was named Sgt. Al Powell, and he, along with John McClane, stopped the nefarious Hans Gruber (as seen in the motion picture Die Hard.)

To be continued...

HOUSE AND HOLMES

By this time it's no big secret that Hugh Laurie's character House, from the show of the same name, is based in part on Sherlock Holmes. There are a plethora of connections between the two characters, and series creator David Shore has said: "...Anytime one says 'puzzle' and 'brilliant deduction' in the same sentence, one can't help but think of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson. And indeed, Holmes -- and the real-life physician that inspired him, Dr. Joseph Bell -- were very much inspirations for 'House.'"
The photo shows House's best friend Wilson (Wilson=Watson?) outside House's apartment, (221B, of course!) showing that the awareness and the references are there to be noticed and commented on by savvy fans. (As an aside: as Holmes is addicted to cocaine, so is House addicted to Vicodin. Each tablet of Vicodin is stamped with the letter 'W,' which stands for Watson Labs.)
The connections are so thick that I suggested at last years Wold-Newtonian conference (held semi-regularly at the San Diego Comic-Con (see you there this year) that the two characters are related in some way, House being a third or fourth generational descendant of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. I am forced to admit that so far there's no evidence in the series for that great leap of logic.
Anyway, this is all just a roundabout way of pointing you in the direction of a weird little blog that takes this whole idea as its reason for existence. At the House and Holmes blog you can read in-depth analysis of each episode of House and learn about hidden connections that may have previously eluded you. Is Dr. Cuddy a stand-in for Inspector Lestrade? Are those three young, good-looking doctors the Baker Street Irregulars?
Adding to the fun (or confusion) is this fanfic, in which Holmes and House team-up. I will admit to having not read it in its entirety (it's a work in progress) so I don't know if a case is made for the characters being related. Writer Michael Weyer gets the story going fast, as Dr. Cuddy and Dr. House are here re-imagined as living in Victorian London, so it's not actually the same House and Cuddy we see on TV each week, but Victorian counterparts.
In future postings I don't know if I can get geekier than House fanfic, but I aim to give it a try.