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I broke down and ordered the full set of Sergeant Preston mp3 files last Friday. Today, when I went to the Post Office, there was an envelope waiting for me- the entire run of the radio show in mp3 form, plus some extras (mostly image files of Sergeant Preston promotional material or comic book covers, but also a CD containing samples of every radio series available from the same company). I didn't have batteries on hand for my cd-based mp3 player, so I didn't get to listen to my new recordings until I got home. I copied all the files to my hard drive immediately (I love the fact that I now have 70+ gigabytes of available space- new HD!), pulled on my earphones, fired up Windows Media Player, and pointed it at the 1953 mp3 file 'The Case That Made Preston A Sergeant'.
I should not have worried.
First of all, the episode was a grand total of eight minutes long- of which one minute was the introduction. Even the first several seasons' episodes, beginning in 1938, ran 15 minutes each. By 1947, most episodes were half an hour each, including the cheerful plugging of Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice ("the cereal shot from guns!") halfway through. I have a very, very, very hard time accepting as canon an episode that was half the length of one of the originals.
Second, and more importantly, Preston was accompanied during this episode by 'his great lead dog Yukon King'. BZZT. WRONG. The 1946 episode "How Preston Got King" gave the dog's origin story. Preston got King from a malemute breeder after he had become a sergeant. Unless Preston named all his dogs Yukon King, the 1953 episode is completely wrong.
And third, the writing for the 1953 episode is crap, introducing another major error hot on the heels of the dog problem. The narrator refers to Preston as a constable at first, which is right- and within two minutes calls him 'Sergeant Preston'. Immediately afterwards, he goes back to calling Preston a constable again, but too late. Any episode that carelessly researched and that poorly written doesn't count in *my* book. If it had only contradicted a bit of canon detail I might almost have given it a miss, but the original King episode was very clear.
The only way the 1953 episode could fit into continuity is if Preston had named two entirely separate dogs Yukon King. With two major continuity errors (the dog error and the rank error) in the space of less than eight minutes, "The Case That Made Preston A Sergeant" disqualifies itself from any claim to continuity.
There's also an eight minute 1953 episode called 'How Preston Found King', but I'm not sure I'm even going to bother listening to that unless I need a really good laugh.
(About the only thing that caught my attention in a positive way about the 1953 episode was an *extremely* startling revelation about the Sergeant's history. They claimed he was at college in the United States when the news came in about his father's death. This puts a bit of a new spin on a statement in a different episode to the effect of 'the Sergeant's a man of education'. If the rest of the episode hadn't been badly written self-contradictory crap that most Star Trek novel writers would be ashamed of. . . oh well.)
I should not have worried.
First of all, the episode was a grand total of eight minutes long- of which one minute was the introduction. Even the first several seasons' episodes, beginning in 1938, ran 15 minutes each. By 1947, most episodes were half an hour each, including the cheerful plugging of Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice ("the cereal shot from guns!") halfway through. I have a very, very, very hard time accepting as canon an episode that was half the length of one of the originals.
Second, and more importantly, Preston was accompanied during this episode by 'his great lead dog Yukon King'. BZZT. WRONG. The 1946 episode "How Preston Got King" gave the dog's origin story. Preston got King from a malemute breeder after he had become a sergeant. Unless Preston named all his dogs Yukon King, the 1953 episode is completely wrong.
And third, the writing for the 1953 episode is crap, introducing another major error hot on the heels of the dog problem. The narrator refers to Preston as a constable at first, which is right- and within two minutes calls him 'Sergeant Preston'. Immediately afterwards, he goes back to calling Preston a constable again, but too late. Any episode that carelessly researched and that poorly written doesn't count in *my* book. If it had only contradicted a bit of canon detail I might almost have given it a miss, but the original King episode was very clear.
The only way the 1953 episode could fit into continuity is if Preston had named two entirely separate dogs Yukon King. With two major continuity errors (the dog error and the rank error) in the space of less than eight minutes, "The Case That Made Preston A Sergeant" disqualifies itself from any claim to continuity.
There's also an eight minute 1953 episode called 'How Preston Found King', but I'm not sure I'm even going to bother listening to that unless I need a really good laugh.
(About the only thing that caught my attention in a positive way about the 1953 episode was an *extremely* startling revelation about the Sergeant's history. They claimed he was at college in the United States when the news came in about his father's death. This puts a bit of a new spin on a statement in a different episode to the effect of 'the Sergeant's a man of education'. If the rest of the episode hadn't been badly written self-contradictory crap that most Star Trek novel writers would be ashamed of. . . oh well.)
