First off, if you enjoyed yesterday's Skyrim blog, do take a look in that day's comments section. Loads of people have added their own stories, and it looks like we're on the way to getting a recorded version of that Twelve Days of Christmas song.

Also, we've had loads of answers to the first blog's game (where you have to guess what's going to happen in the coming year), but loads more would be great, and there's now just over a week left to enter.  Big prizes!  If it's slipped too far down your screen, take a look here.

And, bless him, Colin Smith at Too Busy Thinking About My Comics is still talking in his usual insightful way about Knight and Squire.  Which makes me feel very festive.  And Paul and Mike are feeling festive with their Prisoner balloon...



Anyway, to business.  This was somewhat inspired by The Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach's Middleman/Doctor Who fan fiction. I like television series that do Christmas episodes, particularly telefantasy that does.  The SyFy Channel seem to agree with my priorities, hence the forthcoming seasonal ventures for Warehouse 13 and Haven (?!) And that made me think about those shows that never did that.  And what it might have been like if they did...

Blake's 7: 'Operation: Santa'

Blake slowly turned to see a woman in a long red dress, flanked by guards, standing over the bodies of the Elves.  'Servalan!' he gasped.  'I should have known!'
     'Honestly, Blake?  Yes.  You should.  Who else is it, ever?'
     'She,' interjected Avon, 'was the one who placed that false image on the Liberator's tracking systems.  A sleigh pulled by reindeer, exceeding the speed of light.  She knew that you, Blake, with your affinity for plum pudding and pantomime, would take the bait.  And you...fell...for...it!'
     'Pantomime?!' Blake adjusted his tunic and put his hands on his hips.  'This is deadly serious!'
     'I like your muff,' said Vila, pointing to the Supreme Commander's fur hand warmer.
     Everyone looked around for a moment, as if wondering who'd said that.  Vila's head drooped.
     'You are still not in possession of all the facts,' said Servalan.  'That was no false image, Blake. Oh no. Santa is not a fiction, but a concrete fact.'
     'You mean... he's made of concrete?'
     'No Blake, I do not mean that Santa is made of concrete.  I'm speaking here with exactly the same rhythm and velocity as a touch typist who every now and then gets an attack of trapped wind, precise but operatic, and I assure you that I mean every word I say and use every one of them to maximum effect!  Santa, as you call him, is an officer in the Sixth Forward Operational Strike Command of Federation Sector... G.  These 'Elves' as you call them are actually... Pixies.'
     'Pixies?' Avon made the word last as long as it possibly could.  Which wasn't very.
     'A Federation experiment involving gene splicing, glitter and the tattered remnants of Pan's People.  Perhaps they were once Pan's People.  But they are no longer.  The devolved fugitives live here at the North Pole.  We were aware of their numbers.  We made a list, Blake, we checked it twice.  When we arrived here, we allowed them to contact you, then ordered them to divide into the naughty along one wall, and the nice along the other.  What you see before you is what remains of the nice.'
     The communicator on Blake's teleport wrist band thing made a pinging noise.  He hit the button.  'Blake.'
     'Blake,' are you going to be much longer?'  The voice was that of Jenna, aboard the Liberator.  Blake could hear that her hands were already on her hips.  'Only, Cally and I were about to order pizza.'
     Blake could hear Cally nod.
     'I... wouldn't advise that,' Blake said carefully, looking at the ring of Federation troopers that were closing in from all directions.
     'Why?'
     'No reason.'
     'Are you saying I'm fat?'
     'Listen, can we talk about this later?'  But Blake had suddenly realised that Avon was looking past Servalan and her ranks of guards, an amused expression on his face.
     'He's behind you,' he said.
     Servalan spread her hands in an expression of incredulity.  'There is nothing behind me.'
     'Oh yes there is!' purred Avon.
     'Oh no there isn't!'
     'Oh yes there is,' agreed Vila, catching on.
     'Such debate is pointless,' said Servalan.  'Shock Commando Sergeant Major Smith, ask the Mutoids to look behind us.'
     The trooper nodded, and turned to make the order, but Blake saw his opportunity.  'Jenna,' he shouted, 'teleport now!'
     And with a wibble and a burr like shaken bacofoil, they vanished.
     Servalan bellowed in frustration.  She was about to order the pursuit ships to immediate launch.  But then a shadow fell over her, and she heard the troopers start to fire.  She took one glance upward like something out of a Victorian melodrama, gasped, and as the roar's of something that once been Santa filled the cave, she took two precise steps off stage right, trying not to slip on those heels.
     On the Liberator flight deck, there was humming of an increasing pitch, and blocky pixels were indicating things speeding away, and the crew were laughing.
     'So that is the code phrase?' Avon raised an eyebrow.  '"Are you saying I'm fat?"'
     'It's not something I'd ever accuse anyone else of, is it Avon?' said Blake.  'Especially not at Christmas.'
     And they all laughed some more.

'That Prisoner Christmas Episode Wot I Wrote'.
(Featuring Sir Ernie Wise as Number Two.)

The extremely educated patrician features of Ernest Wise, OBE, MA (Hons) (Failed), gazed out from where they sat, at the top of his body, which itself sat in a round chair, of so obscure a design that I can't remember what they are called.
     'Number Six,' he sighed, more in sorrow than in anger, 'why do you persist in this char... this... pretend... ing?  It's the middle of July!'
     'It is not.'  The man was pacing before him, his eyes never leaving those of Number Two, despite the fact that both were still on their own heads, atop their bodies.  His tone was deep and crisp and even.  Like the snow that was displayed on every screen in the control room, the snow that Number Two was pointedly ignoring.  'It is approaching the end of December.  As shown on my calendar. Which I made of twigs and hid inside the corpse of a hedgehog. So I will ask you one last time: what do you want for Christmas?!'
     Number Two waved a louche hand loosely.  'A football?'
     'You won't get it!'
     'Did you go through all that to tell me that-?'  Number Two turned, distracted, to see one of his technicians waving from the seesaw contraption upon which he was slowly bouncing, balanced at the other end by an identically-dressed bald man.  This technician had his glasses askew on his face, and was doing his best to attract Number Two's attention, while trying not to shout.  'Yes, what is it?'
     The technician tried several ways to dismount before finally lowering himself slowly down the central plank of the seesaw.  He patted the bald man on the head, then turned round in a circle, and started walking off in the other direction.
     'You wanted to address me?!' called Number Two, his composure only slightly ruffled.
     The man abruptly turned and marched back, as if that had been his intention all along.  'I wouldn't want to address you, I couldn't afford the postage.  That chair suits you.  Your legs don't reach all the way down to the ground.'
     'You are talking to your Number Two!'
     The technician took a deep breath, then, as if thinking again about what he might be about to say, let it out again.  'There's no answer to that!'  He leaned in, whispering behind his hand.  'Ern, did we have to film this in December?  In a minute I'm meant to go out on that beach in a stripy pullover and have a fist fight with him over there.'
     'It's allegory!'
     'Is that his name?'
     'No!  He is Number Six!'
     'Don't blame him if the first five actors wouldn't do it!'
     The angry-looking man had stalked over, and marched right up to glare into Number Two's steely face.  'I am not a number!'
     The technician, frustrated at the interruption, grabbed the man by the lapels of his blazer.  'And I... am not a letter of the alphabet!'
     Number Two looked at his watch.  'Eric!  We're running out of time.  And I was hoping this would be an exercise in Brechtian alienation wot would confound critics for decades.  Until I admitted I'd made it all up as I went along.'
     'You've still got a chance of that, old son.  Go for the song.'
     An orchestra of the most comfortable sort began to play over the massed tannoys of The Village, and Number Two began to sing.  'Bring me sunshine...'
     'I will not bring you sunshine,' muttered Number Six.
     'Bring me laughter, all the while...'
     'I will not bring you laughter.  My life is my own.'
     And he stayed there, looking nonplussed, as Number Two and the technician danced oddly off into the distance, a Rover bouncing after them.  They did a little bit of business at the back, as if they hadn't rehearsed which way to leave the stage for several months beforehand, and left Rover finally deciding to bounce off after Number Two.
     After a moment, the technician popped his head back round the corner.  'Here,' he said, beckoning to Number Six, 'there's a way out back here.'

The Quatermass Festivity

Quatermass burst into the pub, panting, dishevelled from the battering he had received at the hands of the mob.  Beside him ran Dr. Expendable, his quiff now merely an inelegant mass, his macintosh reduced from its former glory.  'The doors!'  shouted Quatermass.  'Bar the doors!'
     Expendable ran to shove back a mass of shoppers that were trying to enter behind them, and finally, with a great cry, heaved them back outside and barred the way.
     Quatermass turned to face the honest, down to earth cockneys who frequented this institution, all of whom were now staring at he and Expendable in silent shock.  'I know...' he said, 'that it must be a lot to comprehend...'
     'Nah,' said the landlady, 'stone the crows, love a duck, pluck a partridge and sling it up your Christmas tree, it's always like this at this time of year.'
     'Always like this?' Expendable tried not to let the horror be evident in his tone as, showing the common touch, he flung a guinea at the woman.
     'Oooh, yes, way back into the mists of time!' cackled an old washerwoman, turning away for a moment from the Spanish football on Sky Sports Three.  'I was saying to Mrs Popplebockle the other day, Mrs Popplebockle, stands to reason, whatever that means, past is prologue, or so said that Shakespeare.  Ooh, look at me, quoting from Shakespeare, funny in itself, that is.'
     Quatermass grabbed Expendable and took him aside.  'That woman... it's Eric Idle!'
     'Ooh, caught out!' yelled the woman, and threw herself out of the window.
     Quatermass rushed to cover the gap before the shoppers could get in.  'Listen, all of you!'  he called over his shoulder, as he tried to make the curtain stretch across the glass.  'We can't afford to let the fairy lights in here get their attention!  All of these decorations, that neon sign saying Happy Christmas, the lights on the tree, it must all be switched off!'
     'Not very jolly, is he?' mused a travelling salesman at the bar into his half pint of mild and bitter.
     'What you call Christmas,' Quatermass continued, helpless at the display of uncaring ignorance before him, 'it's actually a pagan celebration of the solstice!  Those shoppers don't know why they're doing what they're doing!  This goes back tens of thousands of years!'
     'I can feel it in me too, Quatermass!' gasped Expendable.  'I can feel the urge to buy... a Wii Kinnect!'
     'Listen to yourself, man!  Your words make no sense!'
     'It's in my name, Quatermass, you said it yourself.  When we first met, you remarked upon my name, that names are history, destiny!'
     'What are you saying, Expendable?!'
     'I'm saying that what I'm about to do, I do for your rarely-glimpsed nieces, little Jenny and Ann Quatermass, and your wife, Mrs Quatermass, and your brother who runs Quatermass the Greengrocers in Teddington!  I'm doing this for them and all of London!'
     'Expendable!  No!  There must be another -!'
     But it was too late.  Expendable had thrown himself on the nest of intersecting multiplugs by the base of the overloaded Christmas tree.  There was a tremendous flash.  And every Christmas decoration in the building was abruptly dark.  Quatermass staggered to the bar.  From outside, he could hear the continuing sounds of the mob, the tinny carols, the vast ho ho hos booming over the Embankment.  He looked back to the smoldering body of Expendable, and then to the lost, ignorant expressions on the faces of the common people the two of them had just saved.
     The landlady pointed a finger at him, ready to offer homespun wisdom, to tell him that, while he had dealt with things beyond her ken, everyday life went on.  'Oi, Quatermass,' she said, 'you're barred.'

Hmm. I enjoyed that.  I may re-visit the theme next year.  'Sapphire and Steel and Tinsel have been assigned' has a ring to it.

As always at this point, we learn what a creator is doing for the festive season.  Today it's a Mr. Peter David, who writes...

'I'm heading down to Florida where my daughter, Shana, and her husband, Tim, are opening their brand new movie theater, the Sun-Ray Theater in Jacksonville.  After that I'm driving up to Atlanta and meeting up with the rest of my family, where we're spending the holidays at my wife's parents.  Between the movie theater and going to Atlanta, I'll be taking my daughter Ariel to the Harry Potter Park at Universal which she's been dying to go to since it first opened.'

And here's a picture of said cinema, with Shana proudly inside it.  Good to hear of new cinema openings in these lean times, Mr. D.  We wish her the best of luck, and you the best of holiday seasons.


Tomorrow I'll be reviewing my favourite books, TV shows and movies of the last year.  Until then, Cheerio!