Snowflake Challenge Day #11
20 Jan 2020 05:13 pmSkipping about a bit - I've been so tired over the last week or so and where I've had any energy I've tried to put it into my ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
chocolateboxcomm assignment.
Challenge #10: In your own space, talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.
I rarely know what to say for this one - because it's fannish I think of fanwork creators, and that always seems too difficult. We are many and so many different interactions have inspired me over the years. But![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
auroracloud talked about some of the pro SFF authors who have meant so much to her in being ill. And I thought, there is one creator who's helped me through my illness and inspired me to write quite a few things in the way I have, when I've been able to, but he's an invisible person I know very little about. (I might not like him at all, who knows? Maybe it's better this way.)
Anyway, as plenty of you will know, I have ME/CFS and am home chronically ill and wound up watching a lot of very old TV and among it, the work of writer, script-editor and producer Michael Chapman. I first came across him in Special Branch (1968). (His episode wasn't a standout, but he had written a housewife character with an unexpected side-stepping of stereotyping and sexism in context, and so, I took note of his name, but I didn't know it'd ever be of any more significance.)
However, he also created and script-edited Enemy at the Door, was responsible for the last three seasons of Public Eye, and Mr Palfrey of Westminster. The things that he produced rather than script-edited also show his influence - the importance of small things, quiet continuity and character growth, a sense of compassion and the complexity of humanity in a very understated way, plus impressive historical accuracy in EatD. I've loved a lot of things, but those three touched me probably more than all the rest, and the common link is Michael Chapman. Sometimes you find the right story or creator for the right time, and that was mine.
His individual episodes aren't always my favourites (although some are, especially his S1-2 bridging episodes in EatD, and in Mr Palfrey, where two in particular are just really beautiful), some are a bit dull, even, but while there are lots of things I'd like to see released or found from old TV, Michael Chapman's other TV series that he produced and/or scripted-edited are at the top of my list. I can't imagine I'd be disappointed, because he hasn't let me down yet, from 1960s The Protectors and Undermind to Mr Palfrey. I suppose I'll have to watch his work on The Bill eventually instead (look, there's a lot of The Bill, not much of it edited by him, and I'm dangerously completist, so...), as I'm assured it's also good and he won a much-deserved BAFTA for it.
He's probably therefore entirely to blame for weird origfic canon I use for Runaway Tales & nowrainbowfic, because it started out as a Fake 1970s TV show (that was totally script-edited by Michael Chapman in my head). (The Edward/Julia AUs aren't his fault, though. Those are definitely mine. ;-p)
Some quotes, although, as I've said, it's often his overarching influence that's his main strength.
From Mr Palfrey:
On spying: "Our country right or wrong. We leave small matters such as crises of conscience, fastidiousness over the truth to traitors." And: "Who will remember us in a hundred years' time?"
"... a man who restores violins is arguably of more use to mankind than an Air Vice Marshall."
From Public Eye:
Frank: "You can't erase someone on a technicality."
Lawyer: "You're a humanist, Mr Marker."
From Enemy at the Door:
Major Richter: "Would you be happier with a more conventional attitude of hostility, then?"
Olive Martel: "In a way, yes. It would be less confusing. Small kindnesses tend to cloud the issue."
Richter: "Which is what?"
Olive: "That we are at war, and you and I are enemies."
Richter: "And ordinary humanity has no place in it?"
Olive: "As I say, it confuses."
"War must be fought, even if it's only in the mind. You cannot win if you do not fight... but you cannot fight if you do not survive."
Also, his description, in an interview, of The Protectors* as being "about three level-headed people who try to prevent crime from happening." (♥)
* Not that Protectors. Or the other one. The one I'm the only one who's heard of, exceptliadt because I lent her the disc with John Carson and his hat. Because it's about three level-headed people trying to prevent crime.
chocolateboxcomm assignment.Challenge #10: In your own space, talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.
I rarely know what to say for this one - because it's fannish I think of fanwork creators, and that always seems too difficult. We are many and so many different interactions have inspired me over the years. But
auroracloud talked about some of the pro SFF authors who have meant so much to her in being ill. And I thought, there is one creator who's helped me through my illness and inspired me to write quite a few things in the way I have, when I've been able to, but he's an invisible person I know very little about. (I might not like him at all, who knows? Maybe it's better this way.)Anyway, as plenty of you will know, I have ME/CFS and am home chronically ill and wound up watching a lot of very old TV and among it, the work of writer, script-editor and producer Michael Chapman. I first came across him in Special Branch (1968). (His episode wasn't a standout, but he had written a housewife character with an unexpected side-stepping of stereotyping and sexism in context, and so, I took note of his name, but I didn't know it'd ever be of any more significance.)
However, he also created and script-edited Enemy at the Door, was responsible for the last three seasons of Public Eye, and Mr Palfrey of Westminster. The things that he produced rather than script-edited also show his influence - the importance of small things, quiet continuity and character growth, a sense of compassion and the complexity of humanity in a very understated way, plus impressive historical accuracy in EatD. I've loved a lot of things, but those three touched me probably more than all the rest, and the common link is Michael Chapman. Sometimes you find the right story or creator for the right time, and that was mine.
His individual episodes aren't always my favourites (although some are, especially his S1-2 bridging episodes in EatD, and in Mr Palfrey, where two in particular are just really beautiful), some are a bit dull, even, but while there are lots of things I'd like to see released or found from old TV, Michael Chapman's other TV series that he produced and/or scripted-edited are at the top of my list. I can't imagine I'd be disappointed, because he hasn't let me down yet, from 1960s The Protectors and Undermind to Mr Palfrey. I suppose I'll have to watch his work on The Bill eventually instead (look, there's a lot of The Bill, not much of it edited by him, and I'm dangerously completist, so...), as I'm assured it's also good and he won a much-deserved BAFTA for it.
He's probably therefore entirely to blame for weird origfic canon I use for Runaway Tales & now
rainbowfic, because it started out as a Fake 1970s TV show (that was totally script-edited by Michael Chapman in my head). (The Edward/Julia AUs aren't his fault, though. Those are definitely mine. ;-p)Some quotes, although, as I've said, it's often his overarching influence that's his main strength.
From Mr Palfrey:
On spying: "Our country right or wrong. We leave small matters such as crises of conscience, fastidiousness over the truth to traitors." And: "Who will remember us in a hundred years' time?"
"... a man who restores violins is arguably of more use to mankind than an Air Vice Marshall."
From Public Eye:
Frank: "You can't erase someone on a technicality."
Lawyer: "You're a humanist, Mr Marker."
From Enemy at the Door:
Major Richter: "Would you be happier with a more conventional attitude of hostility, then?"
Olive Martel: "In a way, yes. It would be less confusing. Small kindnesses tend to cloud the issue."
Richter: "Which is what?"
Olive: "That we are at war, and you and I are enemies."
Richter: "And ordinary humanity has no place in it?"
Olive: "As I say, it confuses."
"War must be fought, even if it's only in the mind. You cannot win if you do not fight... but you cannot fight if you do not survive."
Also, his description, in an interview, of The Protectors* as being "about three level-headed people who try to prevent crime from happening." (♥)
* Not that Protectors. Or the other one. The one I'm the only one who's heard of, except
liadt because I lent her the disc with John Carson and his hat. Because it's about three level-headed people trying to prevent crime. 
