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camwynI 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.)
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the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 05:22 am (UTC)I can see Preston at some of the small colleges in Minnesota, or maybe at the state institutions in Montana or the Dakotas...
Re: the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 06:08 am (UTC)Until I heard this episode I'd never actually considered the possibility of having him cross the border to go to school. Then again, I hadn't even been thinking he'd gone to college to begin with- we're talking the late 1800s here. When I'd heard the earlier character call him a 'man of education' I'd assumed said character was mostly using that as an excuse to quit telling tall tales about his ancestor's supposed role in the Napoleonic War to other miners and trappers who had no knowledge of history at all. I think as well that I went to look up Superintendent Steele's personal history, since I'd been borrowing a lot of stuff from his life story to fill in the blanks on Preston, and I didn't remember seeing Steele go to college.
But the idea's an interesting one. I may have to consider it- and ultimately adjust a few numbers and one or two bits of the fanfic I've already written.
Re: the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 07:37 am (UTC)Re: the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 08:07 am (UTC)Yeah, that wouldn't be hard to see. And it'd make the one story I have that mentions college for him fairly easy to change- from 'I'm not going at all' to 'I'm not going back'. Heck, it was good enough for Hamlet*.
There are a lot of tiny little colleges in places like MN--St Olaf and Carleton are both in Northfield, and I doubt either one would have over 3000 students now, let alone back in Preston's day--and they are probably old enough to have been open then. The school I went to in Iowa, Grinnell, was started in 1846--which isn't as old as Harvard, but still old enough for Sgt. Preston.
I'll look up their histories and pick out something that sounds right. I know that when I was cobbling together his early history I was working from the assumption that he grew up in Alberta before his father got posted to Dawson; some of those tiny little colleges would probably be easier to reach than the ones all the way back east in places like Ontario or Quebec.
*"Dude, I was totally grooving at Wittenberg. This had better be good."
"Your dad bit it, H-dog. Could be a heart attack, could be poison."
"..."
"And your uncle's marrying your mom."
"...!"
"Sorry, man. Wanna sell me the other half of that round-trip ticket?"
"ARRRGH!"
Re: the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 11:16 am (UTC)Re: the educated Sgt. Preston
Date: 2004-08-31 11:58 am (UTC)(In the meantime I have got to find an acceptable colour for the uniforms in Corporal Ikeshoji's world, I'd like to work on that when I get the chance..)
Re: Hamlet*
Date: 2004-08-31 08:58 pm (UTC)Re: Hamlet*
Date: 2004-08-31 09:04 pm (UTC)Re: Hamlet*
Date: 2004-08-31 09:08 pm (UTC)Re: Hamlet*
Date: 2004-09-01 01:19 am (UTC)Star Trek novels
Date: 2004-08-31 11:12 am (UTC)Re: Star Trek novels
Date: 2004-08-31 11:29 am (UTC)And then you get novels like... I can't even remember the title, but it involved some chick from a planet where the females of the species were incredible hunters because they were genetically programmed to sense and track their absolute best possible mates, only for whatever reason this one particular female wound up locking onto both Kirk and Spock. I don't even remember the rest of the plot or who the enemies were, just that dumbass hunt thing.
That was published under the official Star Trek name, just like "The Case That Made Preston A Sergeant" was put out under the official Sergeant Preston name. And I'm going to need to borrow a d20 to consider it further, because I'd like to roll to disbelieve.
Re: Star Trek novels
Date: 2004-08-31 09:07 pm (UTC)Given that, I'm going to recommend the Doctor Who solution: Take what you like, and toss the rest. As long as you don't specifically violate MAJOR canon, it's good. It worked for Doctor Who through 26 years of TV production.... plus, later, an appallingly massive line of novels, Audio adventures, and comics (each of which takes the TV show as given and then has its own continuity entirely separate from the other later forms). Know the story well, and then write what you want. {grin}
Have fun!
Re: Star Trek novels
Date: 2004-08-31 09:26 pm (UTC)