Revisit Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Reinvented Music Videos & Pop Culture

In the eight­ies, peo­ple lament­ed the atten­tion-span-short­en­ing “MTV-iza­tion” of visu­al cul­ture. By the mid-nineties, net­works were try­ing to fig­ure out how to get view­ers to sit through music videos at all. A solu­tion arrived in the form of Pop-Up Video, a pro­gram pitched by cre­ators Woody Thomp­son and Tad Low to VH1 when that much-less-cool MTV clone found itself strug­gling to stay car­ried by cable providers. It had an appeal­ing­ly low-bud­get con­cept: take exist­ing music videos, and spice them up with text bub­bles con­tain­ing facts about the artists, behind-the-scenes anec­dotes, and amus­ing (if semi-rel­e­vant) triv­ia.

“We got a lot of resis­tance from VH1. They owned Block­buster Video at the time, so they knew no one rent­ed for­eign films because no one want­ed to read the TV.” So recalls Low in Bill­board inter­view about the his­to­ry of the show, which orig­i­nal­ly ran from 1996 to 2002 (with a brief revival in 2011 and 2012). Like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, Pop-Up Video has received the oral-his­to­ry treat­ment more than once: Uproxx also did one a cou­ple years ear­li­er. These arti­cles are enter­tain­ing in the same way as Pop-Up Video itself, open­ing up the doors of the fac­to­ry and offer­ing a glimpse of how pop-cul­tur­al sausage gets made.

Launched well before the age of Wikipedia, Pop-Up Video required inten­sive research. That meant not just inter­net search­es, but phone calls to direc­tors, pro­duc­tion design­ers, hair­styl­ists, car­pen­ters, cater­ers, and any­one else who might have worked on a par­tic­u­lar music video (if not the musi­cians, few of whom knew how their videos were made, and even few­er of whom were will­ing to dish dirt on them­selves). These often com­pli­cat­ed, rushed, and oth­er­wise trou­bled pro­duc­tions tend­ed to pro­duce mem­o­rable sto­ries, which par­tic­i­pants turned out to be hap­py to tell years lat­er — not that the net­work or the artists’ man­age­ment were always hap­py with the results.

Also like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, the show was sat­u­rat­ed with the famous­ly irrev­er­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty of Gen­er­a­tion X. Tasked with deliv­er­ing fun facts, its writ­ers did­n’t hes­i­tate to knock celebri­ties off their pedestals while they were at it, and with a sense of humor that came to be rec­og­nized as decep­tive­ly intel­li­gent. (Head writer Alan Cross has spo­ken of being inspired by Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Low by a favorite writer who made “exten­sive use of foot­notes,” which brings anoth­er three-ini­tial name to mind.) You can watch over 100 “popped” music videos on this Youtube playlist, with more at the Inter­net Archive. Alas, many have nev­er come avail­able online, but then, Pop-Up Video did make a virtue of ephemer­al­i­ty.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Revis­it Episodes of Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, MTV’s 90s Show­case of Fun­ny, Irrev­er­ent & Bizarre Ani­ma­tion

How Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” Went from 80s Pop Smash to Bas­tion of Inter­net Cul­ture: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

Bob Ross the man died near­ly thir­ty years ago, but Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been more wide­ly known. “With his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions such as ‘hap­py lit­tle trees,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness appears on a wide assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Here in Korea, where I live, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly called Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a kind of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged men. It’s quite an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross quick­ly became a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that era, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. But over the decades, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­thing near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “More than a decade before most ther­a­pists were telling clients to be mind­ful and present, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their every breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive mood per­vades all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s more than 400 record­ed broad­casts, and they even deliv­er the sooth­ing effects of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you can watch almost all those broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which includes all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The videos come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Joy of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Despite hav­ing end­ed its run well before any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video online, the show now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­net, what with not just its ASMR qual­i­ties, but also the paraso­cial friend­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the high­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Every time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from start to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle trees, but occa­sion­al­ly some­thing just dif­fer­ent enough to keep it inter­est­ing. And so the man Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most famous painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Season of the Iconic Comedy Show

Sat­ur­day Night Live began its 50th sea­son last fall, around the same time as the pre­miere of Jason Reit­man’s film Sat­ur­day Night, which dra­ma­tizes the pro­gram’s 1975 debut. All of this has put fans into some­thing of a ret­ro­spec­tive mood, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to have been tun­ing in since the very begin­ning. For oth­ers, SNL is a show they haven’t been watch­ing all that long, used to watch, or watched at one time and have start­ed watch­ing again. With its ever-chang­ing cast, writ­ers, sketch con­cepts, and over­all comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty, it’s nev­er remained the same for too long at a stretch, and though many view­ers have their favorite sea­sons, few grasp the full sweep of its his­to­ry as a tele­vi­sion insti­tu­tion.

Now, any­one can get a sense of SNL in its entire­ty with Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live, a YouTube series that, true to its title, recounts the show’s most notable per­form­ers, char­ac­ters, inno­va­tions, trou­bles, and moments planned or oth­er­wise (often the lat­ter, giv­en the nature of the broad­cast). Each sea­son gets its own episode, start­ing with the first, whose Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers includ­ed such young up-and-com­ers as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Gil­da Rad­ner.

As that list of names would imply, this “hip com­e­dy vari­ety pro­gram for baby boomers that dared to stay up late” soon became a ver­i­ta­ble force of era-defin­ing fun­ny­men and fun­ny­women. Then as now, SNL tends to send its break­out stars to Hol­ly­wood, albeit with vary­ing results.

That con­tributes to the con­stant churn that has brought onto the show’s ros­ter such house­hold-names-to-be as Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Adam San­dler, and Tina Fey, while also fea­tur­ing non-cast-mem­bers like Penn and Teller or guest hosts like Steve Mar­tin, whose appear­ances great­ly raised their own pro­files. To watch through these encap­su­la­tions, which as of this writ­ing have reached sea­son nine­teen (1993–94), is to take a jour­ney through Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture itself. Cre­ator Lorne Michaels’ recent­ly declared lack of intent to step down any time soon bol­sters SNL’s aura of unstop­pa­bilty, built up over five decades of influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties, still-quot­ed gags, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters — if also the occa­sion­al unco­op­er­a­tive host, chem­istry-free cast, or acci­den­tal­ly uttered bit of pro­fan­i­ty. But what’s the fun of doing half a cen­tu­ry of live TV if it goes with­out a hitch?

Fol­low Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny. In all like­li­hood, it would have been can­celed, but see­ing as it had already been announced and pro­mot­ed (and in any case, was com­plet­ed only a few days before it was sched­uled to air), the show went on. In the event, not only did it please the view­ers of Amer­i­ca, it went on to become one of the most beloved pieces of Christ­mas ani­ma­tion — and that jazz score went on to become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums.

In the new Dig­ging the Greats video above, bassist Bran­don Shaw breaks down some of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Vince Guaral­di’s score, with help from drum­mer Ryan Shaw (not just Bran­don’s broth­er, but also a musi­cian with his own direct con­nec­tion to Peanuts pro­duc­tions) and pianist Jon­té Moore.

“There’s beau­ty, because of the major 9 sound­ing, but there’s, like, this ten­sion,” Moore explains while play­ing the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able chords of “Christ­mas­time Is Here.” “Some­thing’s maybe miss­ing: it could be peo­ple who have lost a loved one, or are maybe just tired of the hol­i­day sea­son, so they have this weight that they car­ry.” We’re a long way indeed from the insipid cheer of many a hol­i­day pro­duc­tion.

Christ­mas­time Is Here” may be the sin­gle most influ­en­tial piece of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas’ musi­cal lega­cy. But it’s best heard in the con­text of the whole sound­track, where it sounds of a piece with the “jazz arrange­ments of Christ­mas clas­sics,” as Shaw puts it, as well as with “Linus and Lucy,” the Peanuts theme song Guaral­di had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed. This coher­ent aes­thet­ic and sen­si­bil­i­ty — the com­poser’s, of course, but also that of the world Charles Schulz cre­at­ed — goes a long way toward mak­ing the project not just a col­lec­tion of Christ­mas songs, but an endur­ing Christ­mas album: one that, over the next cou­ple of days, even those of us with­out enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas music in gen­er­al will be spin­ning as many times as we can get away with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

“It’s inter­est­ing that some peo­ple find sci­ence so easy, and oth­ers find it kind of dull and dif­fi­cult,” says Richard Feyn­man at the begin­ning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imag­ine. “One of the things that makes it very dif­fi­cult is that it takes a lot of imag­i­na­tion. It’s very hard to imag­ine all the crazy things that things real­ly are like.” A true sci­en­tist accepts that noth­ing is as it seems, in that noth­ing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, behaves in a way that accords with our every­day expe­ri­ence. Even the nec­es­sary scales — in which, for exam­ple, an atom is to an apple as an apple is to Earth itself — are dif­fi­cult to con­ceive.

Despite his much-cel­e­brat­ed bril­liance as a physi­cist, Feyn­man also admit­ted to find­ing the quan­ti­ties with which he had to work unfath­omable, at least when exam­ined out­side their par­tic­u­lar con­texts. At the atom­ic lev­el, he explains, “you’re just think­ing of small balls, but you don’t try to think of exact­ly how small they are too often, or you get kind of a bit nut­ty.”

In astron­o­my, “you have the same thing in reverse, because the dis­tance to these stars is so enor­mous.” We all have an idea of what the term “light year” means — assum­ing we don’t mis­un­der­stand it as a unit of time — but who among us can real­ly envi­sion a galaxy 100,000 light years away, let alone a mil­lion?

Feyn­man dis­cuss­es these mat­ters with char­ac­ter­is­tic under­stand­ing and humor across Fun to Imag­ine’s nine seg­ments, which cov­er phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na from fire and mag­nets to rub­ber bands and train wheels. Those who know their physics will appre­ci­ate the vivid­ness and con­ci­sion with which he explains this mate­r­i­al, appar­ent­ly right off the top of his head, and any­one can sense the delight he feels in mere­ly putting his mind to the behav­ior of mat­ter and ener­gy and their rela­tion­ship to the world as we know it. And how­ev­er much plea­sure he derived from under­stand­ing, he also got a kick out of how much mys­tery remains: “Nature’s imag­i­na­tion is so much greater than man’s,” he says toward the end. “She’s nev­er going to let us relax.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Work of Richard Feyn­man Explored in a Three-Part Freako­nom­ics Radio Minis­eries

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

Watch a New Ani­ma­tion of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Won­der of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

“The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law”: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

Ear­li­er this week, we fea­tured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s per­for­mance in Cold­play’s new music video, full of visu­al ref­er­ences to the sit­com that made him a house­hold name in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties. And a house­hold name he remains these six decades lat­er, though one does won­der how many of those who appre­ci­ate his extreme longevi­ty — both cul­tur­al and bio­log­i­cal — have ever seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I myself only caught the occa­sion­al late-night rerun in child­hood, but how­ev­er much he indulged his char­ac­ter­is­tic goofi­ness, the thir­ty-some­thing Van Dyke in the role of com­e­dy writer Rob Petrie always struck me as the very image of mature adult­hood.

Whether or not you saw it in the first place, you can now watch The Dick Van Dyke Show’s five sea­sons free on Youtube, start­ing with the first here. They’ve come avail­able at a chan­nel called Film­Rise Tele­vi­sion, on whose col­lec­tion of playlists you’ll also find such pil­lars of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion as Drag­net, The Lone Ranger, Bonan­za, and That Girl.

Hard though it may be to under­stand for any­one who came of age under the fire­hose of on-demand con­tent these reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled enter­tain­ments became ver­i­ta­ble cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions when they orig­i­nal­ly aired on major net­works in the fifties and six­ties, with an influ­ence that extend­ed far beyond their already con­sid­er­able view­er­ship.

The mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion grew up regard­ing shows of this kind as hokey but suf­fi­cient­ly amus­ing diver­sions when noth­ing more irrev­er­ent or post­mod­ern hap­pened to be on. At worst, they felt like infe­ri­or pre­de­ces­sors of the then-cur­rent sit­coms and dra­mas we were watch­ing in prime time. But then began the long “gold­en age” of pres­tige tele­vi­sion, with its new lev­els of aes­thet­ic and nar­ra­tive com­plex­i­ty, which changed our very con­cep­tion of tele­vi­sion.

Today, watch­ing The Dick Van Dyke Show or any of the oth­er hits with which it shared the scarce air­waves feels almost exot­ic, like trav­el­ing to the past: a for­eign coun­try, as L. P. Hart­ley famous­ly put it, where they do things dif­fer­ent­ly — and a few of whose cit­i­zens are, for­tu­nate­ly, still around to enter­tain us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touch­ing New Cold­play Video, Direct­ed by Spike Jonze

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

757 Episodes of the Clas­sic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Louis Arm­strong, Sal­vador Dali & More

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & the Existential Questions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

We now live in the midst of an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence boom, but it’s hard­ly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been sub­ject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties. Even­tu­al­ly, those busts — which occurred when real­iz­able AI tech­nol­o­gy failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thor­ough­go­ing that each was declared an “AI win­ter” of scant research fund­ing and pub­lic inter­est. Yet even deep into one such fal­low sea­son, AI could still inspire enough fas­ci­na­tion to become the sub­ject of the 1978 NOVA doc­u­men­tary “Mind Machines.”

The pro­gram includes inter­views with fig­ures now rec­og­nized as lumi­nar­ies in the his­to­ry of AI: John McCarthy, Mar­vin Min­sky, Ter­ry Wino­grad, ELIZA cre­ator Joseph Weizen­baum. It also brings on no less a tech­no­log­i­cal prophet than Arthur C. Clarke, who notes that the dubi­ous atti­tudes toward the prospect of think­ing machines expressed in the late sev­en­ties had much in com­mon with those about the prospect of space trav­el dur­ing his youth in the thir­ties. In his view, we were already “cre­at­ing our suc­ces­sors. We have seen the first, crude begin­nings of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence,” and we would “one day be able to design sys­tems that can go on improv­ing them­selves.”

If com­put­ers were there­by to gain greater-than-human intel­li­gence, it would, of course, “com­plete­ly restruc­ture soci­ety” — not that the soci­ety he already knew would­n’t “col­lapse instant­ly” if its own rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple com­put­ers were tak­en away. Clarke not only asks the ques­tion now on many minds of what “the peo­ple who are only capa­ble of low-grade com­put­er-type work” will do when out­stripped by AI, but more deeply under­ly­ing ones as well: “What is the pur­pose of life? What do we want to live for? That is a ques­tion which the intel­li­gent com­put­er will force us to pay atten­tion to.”

Few view­ers in 1978 would have spent much time pon­der­ing such mat­ters before. But pre­sent­ed with footage of all this now-prim­i­tive pro­to-AI tech­nol­o­gy — the com­put­er chess tour­na­ment, the sim­u­lat­ed ther­a­pist, the med­ical-diag­no­sis assis­tant, the NASA Mars rover to be launched in the far-flung future of 1986 — they must at least have felt able to enter­tain the idea that they would live to see an age of machines that could not just think but, as the nar­ra­tor puts it, pos­sess “the most cru­cial aspect of com­mon-sense intel­li­gence: the abil­i­ty to learn.” Per­haps anoth­er AI win­ter will fore­stall that age yet again — if it’s not already here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Before Chat­G­PT, There Was ELIZA: Watch the 1960s Chat­bot in Action

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The BBC Creates Step-by-Step Instructions for Knitting the Iconic Dr. Who Scarf: A Document from the Early 1980s

Knitting-Pattern-4th-Doctor

When Jon Per­twee rein­car­nat­ed into Tom Bak­er in 1974, the Fourth Doc­tor of the pop­u­lar sci-fi show Doc­tor Who ditched the fop­pish look of vel­vet jack­ets and frilly shirts, and went for the “Roman­tic adven­tur­er” style, with flop­py felt hat, long over­coats and, most icon­i­cal­ly, his mul­ti­col­ored scarf.

Fan leg­end has it that cos­tume design­er James Ache­son picked up a load of mul­ti-col­or wool and asked knit­ter Bego­nia Pope to cre­ate a scarf, and Pope, per­haps mis­hear­ing, used *all* the wool, result­ing in a scarf that ran 12 feet long. The mis­take was per­fect, and sud­den­ly many UK grand­moth­ers were being asked by their grand­chil­dren to recre­ate their hero’s look.

The above memo isn’t dat­ed, but comes from some­time in the ear­ly ‘80s when the BBC sent detailed instruc­tions to a fan’s moth­er on mak­ing the scarf. (Click here, then click again, to view the doc­u­ment in a larg­er for­mat.) The col­ors include camel, rust, bronze, mus­tard, grey, green and pur­ple and should be knit­ted with size four nee­dles (that’s #9 US size). The requests must have come reg­u­lar­ly, because a sim­i­lar memo is reprint­ed from many years lat­er to anoth­er fan’s fam­i­ly.

The orig­i­nal scarf only last­ed a few episodes, then was altered, replaced, and sub­tly changed as the show went on. There were stunt scarves for stand-ins.

Come Sea­son 18, cos­tume design­er June Hud­son rethought the entire cos­tume and stream­lined the col­ors to three: rust, wine, and pur­ple, to match the Doctor’s more swash­buck­ling look. It also became the longest scarf of the series, some 20 feet.

The fol­low­ing year, the Doc­tor rein­car­nat­ed again into a crick­et-jumper and striped trouser-wear­ing young blonde man. The Scarf Years were over.

For a very in-depth look at the scarves, includ­ing Pan­tone col­or ref­er­ences and wool brands, there is noth­ing bet­ter than DoctorWhoScarf.com. So, get knit­ting, Who-vians!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

More in this category... »
Quantcast