Monday, December 7, 2009

TVXOHOF, 12/2009-B: CHARLES DICKENS

Our next inductee into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame for December, representing the "As Seen On TV" category, has made several appearances in the posts of Inner Toob in the past.

CHARLES DICKENS

AS PORTRAYED BY:
Simon Callow

AS SEEN IN:
. . . "Doctor Who" (2005)
{The Unquiet Dead (#1.3)}
. . . An Audience with Charles Dickens (1996)
. . . Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale (2001)

. . . The Mystery of Charles Dickens (2000) That many appearances in Toobworld as Dickens earns Simon Callow the "honor" of representing the author in the Hall of Fame gallery.

(There's also "Christmas Carol: The Movie" from 2001, which is mostly an animated film. But it
begins with a live-action introduction that takes place in 1857 Boston where Dickens is about to give a live reading of "A Christmas Carol" - as we saw him do in that 'Doctor Who' episode'. And again, over in the Cineverse, Simon Callow played Dickens.)

This doesn't negate any other portrayals of Charles Dickens on television; all save one, that is. Most of the others can be placed in alternate TV dimensions.

The one exception is the Dickens played by Jonathan Harris in an episode of 'Bonanza'. In his tour of America, Dickens never made it past the Mississippi River, and yet there he was in Carson City, Nevada and at the Ponderosa Ranch if I'm not mistaken.

O'Bviously, as I once splained in the old Tubeworld Dynamic website, this charlatan was a professional Charles Dickens impersonator who scammed the people of the wild, wild West into paying him for his "lectures". He was a very confident confidence man - not even after being arrested for a crime he didn't commit did this grifter drop the ruse and reveal himself to be anyone else other than Charles Dickens.
Here's Charles Dickens, as seen in "The Unquiet Dead", one of my favorite episodes of 'Doctor Who':



And here's the imposter as seen in the 'Bonanza' episode "A Passion For Justice":



So here's to Charles Dickens, and to his "official" representative, Simon Callow, for this induction into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

BCnU!

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