Yuletide, 2023
Oct. 15th, 2023 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kateoftheangelsDear Yuletide Creator,
Thank you for offering to create for me! I promise that I'm easy to please, and am certain I will be delighted with whatever you devise.
Here's some further information if you think it might be helpful, and possible directions you may want to take your story in, should you find yourself in need of inspiration. If this additional detail is not for you, please feel free to skip it in its entirety.
My AO3: Kate_Wisdom
General likes: Banter, Best Enemies, Bodyswaps, Comrades-in-arms, Canon-era Crossovers, Enemies to Lovers, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Intensity, Ethical Dilemmas, Explicit Content, Forced Intimacy, Historical AUs, Hurt/Comfort, Iron Woobieness, Moral Shades of Grey, Plot, Punishment, Restrained Language, Spanking and Corporal Punishment, Sex Pollen, Situationally-Appropriate Crying, Third Parties Made Them Do It, World-Building
(I am enthusiastically consenting to Yuleporn, and my smut likes can be found here.)
I am also enthusiastically consenting to treats in all forms!
Request 1
Fandom: Public Eye (TV)
Character: Frank Marker AND/OR Helen Mortimer
DNWs: Character Death, Character/Ship Bashing (except for Denis, you can bash him freely), Dark Frank or Dark Helen, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Permanent Injury/Mutilation, Noncon or Dubcon.
Background:
Public Eye (TV) is a British TV show that ran for seven seasons, from 1965-1975, and is about a private enquiry agent who did actually realistic private investigative work - - debt collections, gathering evidence for divorce cases, bankruptcies, employee due diligence, etc - - in a far cry from the glamorous life of private detectives in the Magnum P.I. mould who solved cases with their fists and always got their man.
Public Eye’s first three seasons are mostly lost, with only five early episodes remaining; the production values are what you’d expect from the time period; much of it is incredibly slow-moving - - but in spite of those drawbacks, the show is so, so great. It focused on the mundane problems in the ordinary, quotidian lives of ordinary people, and somehow made those ordinary lives and hopes and tragedies extraordinary.
The show largely owes its success to its writing, and its main character. Frank Marker is a deeply decent, fallible working-class chap who charges an unassuming 6.50 a day plus expenses (when the going rate is more like 6 pounds an hour). Frank occasionally failed to solve cases, refused to charge needy clients more than what they could pay, occasionally got thumped for his trouble, and was famously sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit - - which allowed the show to put on an experimental Season 4 (set in Brighton where Frank serves out his probation, meets Helen Mortimer, and slowly reintegrates into public life), a mini-series of seven stellar serialised episodes.
It also owes its success to its leading man, the incomparable Alfred Burke, who would go on to star as Dieter Richter in Enemy at the Door. Burke was a master at making the ordinary extraordinary; his Marker was a tour de force, a character like no other, an everyman whom the British public took to their hearts.
Resources:
All 51 of its surviving episodes are available on DVD. The five recovered early episodes plus Season 4 are on a private playlist (courtesy of lostspook1). Seasons 5 to 7 are here on Youtube, though there are a couple of episodes missing.
Here are episode summaries and reviews for Season 4, and here is a comprehensive series guide including lists of cast and crew, a series production history, and interviews with Burke and the showrunner Michael Chapman.
Characters:
Down-at-heel Frank had a strong sense of decency and principle; he didn’t enjoy most of the grimy aspects of his business, for all that he was good at his work, but he did it because he wanted to help people. He was, however, an intensely private person who hated to rely on others for help; he had no close friends and, in a departure from the noir detective cliché, he wasn’t a womaniser; in fact, he had no on-screen flings in all his seven seasons, let alone a proper romance.
The person who got the closest to Frank in all seven seasons was Helen Mortimer. In the Season 4 opener “Welcome to Brighton?”, he arrived on the doorstep of Helen’s boarding house in Brighton, wary and broken by his prison experiences; like Frank, she had a penchant for helping people (she provided halfway-house services to ex-convicts on probation), and she took him under her wing. They bonded when he was falsely accused of workplace theft in S4E3; she accompanied him on a stake-out that wasn’t a date in S4E6; her no-good deserting husband Denis showed up again in S4E7 and she showed him the door.
… and then in S5E1’s A Mug Named Frank,the showrunners Frank decided he was becoming too domesticated, and, since his probation was finally over, it was time to leave Brighton (and Helen) behind and relocate to Windsor.
Helen did however make a return to visit Frank in Windsor for an episode in each of the following two seasons afterwards (S6E10 It’s A Woman’s Privilege and S7E2’s How About A Cup of Tea).
Here is a shipping fanvid courtesy of lostspook1; like this pairing, it will charm you and break your heart.
Prompts - - Gen:
I have selected the option that allows my writer to write a fic for either of these two characters: future fic, backstories, character studies, missing scenes, vignettes or whole plotty episodes. Some prompts:
+ Case fic: any tiny mundane case would make me so happy - - true to canon, it doesn’t have to contain much action or adventure, and could be as serious or as cracky as you like. I’m endlessly charmed by Frank being bemused by how the other half lives, and love his dynamic with Percy. Maybe Helen Mortimer gets to solve a case when Frank happens to be away?
+ Future fic: I have always wanted to see how Shirley in S4E4’s My Life’s My Own turns out. Maybe she comes back to Brighton to look for Frank and meets Helen for the first time? Or brave, tragic Rose Mason in S5E6’s Come into the Garden, Rose: maybe she takes Frank out for tea and gives him a new perspective on his solitary lifestyle.
+ Crossover: As mentioned, Frank and Enemy at the Door’s Colonel Richter are played by the same actor. In S4E3, Frank gives his birth year as 1923, which makes him young enough to be Richter’s son. Richter spent six years in Cambridge after the Great War; what if he had a liaison with Frank’s mother there and left without knowing she was in the family way? Frank would have been eighteen in 1941; according to the PE tie-in novel, he served in the merchant Navy in WW2 - - would he have encountered the Guernsey Kommandant?
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would ensue if Frank swapped bodies with Helen (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? Or with Percy? With Vyvyan Reveldale?
+ Historical AUs: What if Frank ran a dodgy detective agency in the 1940s instead, or in Victorian times (he would so be the anti-Sherlock Holmes, with Percy as Not Inspector Lestrade!)? What if he was a holistic investigator, like Dirk Gently?
Prompts - - Shipping:
I confess to shipping it, intensely, and would be thrilled to receive a shippy fic for them, particularly as they never get together in canon (and didn’t get the Season 8 which would, according to Roger Marshall in the S4 DVD set booklet, have seen Frank going back to Brighton and Helen). Some prompts:
+ Fix-it fic: I still believe in a fix-it happy ending, even though Frank is a solitary, self-contained, self-isolating character who doesn’t believe he deserves nice things. In fact, and Season Seven was building to it, with Frank starting to recognise that his unbearable loneliness was something he could in fact address if he allowed himself to let his guard down. Maybe it happens organically, with him growing weary of the perpetually-broke, physically-demanding life of an enquiry agent? Or it’s triggered by circumstances - - if Helen was in trouble, he’d rush to her side, and once he’s there he might fall under her spell again and decide to stay.
+ Non fix-it fic: she comes to look for him again or he goes to visit her, they spend the night together at last, and then he leaves her again, because he knows he’ll only drag her down and she deserves better…
+ Missing scene: they enjoy their cute not-date at the end of S4E6 so much that they go out to catch another show together? Or Frank feels badly after the way he rejects Helen in S7E2 and sends her a note of apology? I’d be delighted by fluffiness or bittersweetness or both these things at once.
+ Percy and Vyvyan: though Helen is Frank's one true love, I would also gleefully accept Frank and Percy hooking up drunkenly, or having to fake date for a case, or if criminals made them do it! I would also be thrilled if Frank found himself in similar straits with young Vyvyan, particularly since canon did give us the drunken hookup in S6E8’s The Golden Boy. Helen would be very disapproving, but I would be delighted!
Request 2
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Characters: Dieter Richter AND/OR Philip Martel
DNWs: Onscreen Character Death, Permanent Injury/Mutilation (or offscreen, for Richter or Philip), Character/Ship Bashing or bashing of spouses, Dark Richter or Dark Philip, Nazi apologism, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Underage
Background:
Enemy at the Door (TV) is a British TV show that ran from 1978 – 1980, and is about the German occupation of the Channel Islands during WW2. This show is so great, in terms of setting and historicity, and also its writing, which excellently portrays the balance of power and fragile harmony between the islanders and the German occupying forces.
The show centres around Dr Philip Martel (Dr Who stalwart Bernard Horsfall), a member of the Guernsey Controlling Committee, and Major Dieter Richter (the late, great Alfred Burke), the commander of the German occupying forces, as well as a sterling ensemble cast that includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Anthony Stewart Head in his first TV role. It’s a historical war drama that explores conflict and patriotism and enemies forced to live in close contact with each other, telling its characters’ stories in nuanced character arcs that spans the two seasons, and dealing with ethical dilemmas and slice-of-life events in complex, moral shades of grey.
This excellent fanvid by lostspook1 really captures the thoughtful, melancholy atmosphere of the show;thisbluespirit has a fandom manifesto here (both linked to with thanks).
Resources:
All 26 of its episodes are available on Amazon Prime, as well as on archive.org.
Madeleine Bunting’s The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule, 1940-1945 is a balanced and fairly non-apologist account of the occupation.
Characters:
Dieter Richter is the urbane Kommandant of the island of Guernsey, who was a professor of philosophy in peacetime. Richter is very much a military commander - - he takes decisive actions, eg in court-martialling the young soldier whom one of the islanders accuses of rape, and having him executed by firing squad - - but at the same time he does try to mitigate the hardships of the occupation for the islanders. He’s also morally conflicted about the atrocities of the regime; unfortunately, not sufficiently to do enough about it (when confronted in S2E3, he tells Dr Martel, “Whatever may be the abuse of man, that is the use of nature: first survive”).
Philip Martel is a moral, upright doctor who sits on Guernsey’s Controlling Committee and who does his best to hold the occupying forces to account; his interactions with Richter - - as respectful adversaries, as unwilling enemies who might have in other circumstances be friends - - are the heart of the series.
Prompts - - Gen
I have selected the option that allows my writer to write a fic for either of these two characters, and I would love a missing scene or character study of Richter or Martel before, during or after the war. I'm very interested in this historical period and place, and would equally love a story that makes use of the cast and setting: future fic, backstories, missing scenes, vignettes or whole plotty episodes. Some ideas:
+ A scene from the Season 3 canon never gave us, post the Season 2 finale in April 1943. For instance, as the war progressed, the Channel Islands found themselves ignored and Guernseyans faced tremendous deprivations - - how would Richter and his men have addressed this situation? In July 1944, the von Stauffenberg assassination and coup attempt failed; as part of the aforementioned plot, von Stülpnagel, the military governor of occupied France, managed to arrest most of the SS commanders in the Paris garrison. What, if anything, would Richter and his men have done about Reinicke, the SS attache attached to their command? How would Philip and the Martels have coped?
+ Also in July 1944, fanatical Admiral Huffmeier arrived in Guernsey and was shortly promoted to Channel Islands commander. What would Richter and Philip done about this lunatic, who refused to surrender the Channel Islands to the Allied forces even though Germany had surrendered, and how would they have negotiated the last difficult lead-up to V-day?
+ Richter has so many great, conflict-ridden interactions with Philip and the other islanders that tread the line between respectful and coercive (as Olive says, “When is it not just survival? When does it become helping the enemy?”). I’d love to see Richter calling on Helen Porteous, or crossing swords with Peter Porteous; perhaps you might envision a social event to which the Martels invited Richter because they wanted to get something out of him, and vice versa. Equally, I would love to see Philip wrangling (and getting the better of) Richter and his men at the Kommandantur.
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would ensue if Richter swapped bodies with Reinicke (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? Or with General Muller? Or with Clive? (Not for nothing do I append this beautiful classic black-and-white photo of ASH in satin and lace <3)
+ Historical AUs: What if the Germans invaded Guernsey in WW1? Or during the Silesian wars, or the time of the Vikings? Would Richter have been a reluctant captain in Frederick the Great's army, or an even more reluctant Viking chieftain, to Martel’s island leader and healer?
Prompts - - Shipping
The show doesn't sugar-coat, nor is it apologist for, the dark moral choices made by Richter or indeed the other Nazis or islanders on Guernsey, and I would be interested in all dark moral choices and fraught shippy scenarios, with Philip Martel (or with Reinicke and really anyone else in the cast).
+ Perhaps Richter was unexpectedly placed in harm’s way by enemy action or his own side? Dr Martel would clearly be the only man whom he could rely on to administer both medical and non-medical treatment. Or Richter finds himself compelled as part of his duties to subjugate one of the islanders in all senses of the term, and Martel is the only one he can bear to inflict himself on? Or in an even darker version of events, after V-Day, the islanders brand Martel a collaborator, and force him to punish Richter as a sign of loyalty?
+ Alternatively, I would be delighted with these gentlemen bickering over radio requisitions, or risking their lives/their careers to rescue each other (Martel from the terrible SS a la Judgement of Solomon or Richter from a POW internment in a terrible Soviet gulag), or sharing a romantic breakfast of ersatz coffee at the Kommandantur or the Hotel Normandie. (Please deal with Anna and Olive respectfully in the manner you think best -- perhaps Olive is all for her husband's uncomfortable closeness with the Kommandant, or perhaps she's decided to pack it in and leave Philip for That Nice Doctor Forbes.)
+ Fake Marriage AU: What if Richter was compelled by vengeful islanders or bizarro SS rules or impending Allied postwar imprisonment to marry Reinicke, or (in a scenario where Olive leaves) Philip? Would a practical yoke of convenience lead to physical intimacy?
+ Futurefic: Postwar, what if Richter, newly released from Allied imprisonment and with or without Anna in tow, decided to search for a newly single Philip, or an equally liberated Reinicke? How do they navigate a delicate postwar relationship that becomes a romance?
Request 3
Fandom: Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV) RPF
Character: Robert Vaughn AND David McCallum
DNWs: Noncon or dubcon, Onscreen Character Death, Underage, Character/Ship Bashing esp of Jill Ireland (and mention of McCallum’s RL political beliefs), Dark Characters, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Permanent Injury/Mutilation.
Background:
Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV) was an American spy fiction television series, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC; it detailed the exploits of secret agents Napoleon Solo (played by Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (played by David McCallum), who work for a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. The series premiered on September 22, 1964, completing its run on January 15, 1968. The series won the Golden Globe Award for Best TV Show in 1966.
This is such a great show, which, in its heyday, was the most popular show on Western TV, and made instantly recognisable celebrities of its two stars. When the Beatles visited America, they asked to be introduced to Robert Vaughn!
Resources:
The show is available on Netflix, and here.
Here is a link to Vaughn’s fan site, with several photo articles on his life and relationship with McCallum, and to his autobiography, A Fortunate Life.
Here is a link to McCallum’s fan site, with more than you wanted to know about the man’s life and career, his relationship with his fans, his musical ability, and his relationship with Vaughn.
Characters:
All-American Vaughn (November 22, 1932 – November 11, 2016) would, post-U.N.C.L.E., go on to play detective Harry Rule in the 1970s series The Protectors; General Hunt Stockwell in the fifth season of the 1980s series The A-Team; and grifter and card sharp Albert Stroller in the British television drama series Hustle (2004–2012). He also appeared in the British soap opera Coronation Street as Milton Fanshaw in 2012. In film, he portrayed the gunman Lee in The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, Ross Webster in Superman III with Christopher Reeve, and war veteran Chester A. Gwynn in The Young Philadelphians with Paul Newman, which earned him a 1959 Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
A lifelong Democrat, Vaughn was the first popular American actor to take a public stand against the Vietnam War; he debated William F. Buckley Jr. on his program Firing Line on the Vietnam War, and campaigned for the Kennedys. He studied at Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, earning a master's degree in theatre. After graduating from college, Vaughn was drafted into the Army, serving as a drill sergeant. While working on U.N.C.L.E., he worked on a Ph.D. in communications, and obtained it the University of Southern California in 1970. In 1972, he published his dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting.
McCallum (19 September 1933 — 25 September 2023) was a Scottish actor and musician who would in the years post-U.N.C.L.E. go on to play Simon Carter in Colditz and alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel. In recent years, he gained renewed international recognition and popularity for his role as NCIS medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the American television series NCIS. We lost him this year at 90 years young, after a storied career and life filled with love.
Hailing from a musical family, McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he pursued the oboe. On leaving school, he joined the British Army's 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force. In March 1954 he was promoted to lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate. A classically-trained musician, in the 1960s McCallum recorded four albums for Capitol Records.
The tabloid press famously reported that there was an on set feud between Vaughn and McCallum, but whatever the truth of the matter, there are a zillion photos out there with the two of them on the press circuit and on the road, looking like they were enjoying each other’s company - - including at the memorable Golden Globes 1964, where they walked onstage to collect their award holding hands (emcee Andy Williams cracks, "You guys have been together too long”!) They men stayed in touch over the years since U.N.C.L.E., speaking to each other on their birthdays; McCallum gave his former co-star a moving tribute at a 2009 dinner for Vaughn.
In 1983, the men hit the talk show circuit together to promote the less-than-stellar The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E - - taking part in an adorable a joint Return interview, where, to the talk show host's "There were rumours that you two didn't get along!", Vaughn said, "Absolutely untrue!", and McCallum quipped back, "There were rumours that we knew each other very well!". In 1986, McCallum guest-starred in a Season Five episode of the A-Team, The Say UNCLE Affair, playing a Kuryakin-esque villain Ivan Trigorin who has a charged history with Vaughn’s General Stockwell. In 2007, they came together for a reunion interview for the re-re-release of the UNCLE DVD set, and were as handsy and adorable as ever! When Vaughn passed on in 2016, McCallum spoke of his "utter devastation", saying, heartbreakingly, “losing him is like losing a part of me”.
Prompts:
I received the most wonderful treat for this fandom in last year’s Yuletide, and it just made me long for more! Here are some prompts:
Gen:
+ Series Finale and post: MFU Season Four was famously cut short thanks to a tonally-inconsistent season and plunging ratings; to all accounts Vaughn and McCallum were taken completely by surprise. How would they have managed if they had been given the rest of Season Four (and potentially a Season Five)? Would the Return Movie have been different, if they had?
+ Crossover: What if Vaughn and McCallum found themselves in an entirely different spy duo/buddy cop franchise like The Professionals, or Starsky & Hutch? Or, in a reverse of MFU TV Season One's The Project Strigas Affair (which guest-stars Leonard Nimoy and Will Shatner sharing the small screen two years before their Star Trek debut), what if they'd been cast in Star Trek: the Original Series? What if Vaughn had joined McCallum on Colditz or NCIS, or if McCallum had joined the cast of The Magnificent Seven, or Hustle, or Coronation Street?
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would have ensued on the MFU set if Vaughn swapped bodies with McCallum (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? What if it had happened during the Return movie, or the Say UNCLE Affair?
+ Historical AUs: What if Vaughn and McCallum were suddenly transported to the front lines of World War Two? Would they have been able to help stave off the Wehrmacht enslaught on the Channel Islands, or the London Blitz, or fought side by side at Normandy?
Prompts - - Shipping:
I confess to shipping it, intensely. The glare of fame when they were in their early 30s! Living in each other's pockets in Hollywood during the demanding filming schedule, and being joined at the hip while on the road across America and Britain and the Far East carrying out the studio's punishing promotional schedule in the hiatus between seasons, fending off hordes of hysterical fans all the while! The nearly 60 years of history and friendship, the hand-holding and the easy intimacy, the handsiness and bantering - - all the while bickering and teasingly competitive, in the same way of Napoleon and Illya's bickering, bantering, push-and-pull onscreen relationship.
Various aspects of Napoleon's and Illya's bitingly flirtatious onscreen dynamic only made sense if they were shagging on the sly - - perhaps their dynamic only played out that way because Vaughn and McCallum were themselves shagging on the sly?? "There were rumours that we knew each other very well" wouldn't have come out of a vaccuum, after all!
+ Envision for me various interstitial hookups between those flirty episodes, and/or the long decades of their on-again, off-again relationship!
+ Season finale: the penultimate S4 episode has the agents’ boss, Mr Waverly, remarking on what terrible husbands his spies would make; the episode ends with Illya gazing at his partner and remarking, meaningfully, “At least we have each other.” What happens when the cameras stop rolling?
+ "You guys have been together too long!" Give me a behind-the-scenes look at the hand-holding at the Golden Globes, and what came after?
+ McCallum's marriage to Jill Ireland famously fell apart during the filming of MFU Season 3. What if bachelor Vaughn helped him cope, intimately, on set, or on one of their overseas tours?
+ Fake Marriage AU: S3's The Suburbia Affair saw the spies setting up house in suburbia to spy on an enemy scientist gone to ground (no, really), with Napoleon and Illya squabbling over the bread run and making a souffle. What if Vaughn and McCallum had to set up house for the job, too? Would fighting over exploding milk and doing the dishes have led to physical intimacy at last?
+ Futurefic: Perhaps Vaughn and McCallum finally hook up fifteen years after MFU's demise, during the filming or press circuit of The Return Movie, or the A Team's Say UNCLE Affair? (If you go with this prompt, please deal kindly with wives Linda and Katherine; feel free to have them join in in a polyamorous OT4, or have them give their enthusiastic blessing to these two old friends, who would have finally managed to find their way to each other at last <3)
Thank you again for creating for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with this Yuletide!
Thank you for offering to create for me! I promise that I'm easy to please, and am certain I will be delighted with whatever you devise.
Here's some further information if you think it might be helpful, and possible directions you may want to take your story in, should you find yourself in need of inspiration. If this additional detail is not for you, please feel free to skip it in its entirety.
My AO3: Kate_Wisdom
General likes: Banter, Best Enemies, Bodyswaps, Comrades-in-arms, Canon-era Crossovers, Enemies to Lovers, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Intensity, Ethical Dilemmas, Explicit Content, Forced Intimacy, Historical AUs, Hurt/Comfort, Iron Woobieness, Moral Shades of Grey, Plot, Punishment, Restrained Language, Spanking and Corporal Punishment, Sex Pollen, Situationally-Appropriate Crying, Third Parties Made Them Do It, World-Building
(I am enthusiastically consenting to Yuleporn, and my smut likes can be found here.)
I am also enthusiastically consenting to treats in all forms!
Request 1
Fandom: Public Eye (TV)
Character: Frank Marker AND/OR Helen Mortimer
DNWs: Character Death, Character/Ship Bashing (except for Denis, you can bash him freely), Dark Frank or Dark Helen, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Permanent Injury/Mutilation, Noncon or Dubcon.
Background:
Public Eye (TV) is a British TV show that ran for seven seasons, from 1965-1975, and is about a private enquiry agent who did actually realistic private investigative work - - debt collections, gathering evidence for divorce cases, bankruptcies, employee due diligence, etc - - in a far cry from the glamorous life of private detectives in the Magnum P.I. mould who solved cases with their fists and always got their man.
Public Eye’s first three seasons are mostly lost, with only five early episodes remaining; the production values are what you’d expect from the time period; much of it is incredibly slow-moving - - but in spite of those drawbacks, the show is so, so great. It focused on the mundane problems in the ordinary, quotidian lives of ordinary people, and somehow made those ordinary lives and hopes and tragedies extraordinary.
The show largely owes its success to its writing, and its main character. Frank Marker is a deeply decent, fallible working-class chap who charges an unassuming 6.50 a day plus expenses (when the going rate is more like 6 pounds an hour). Frank occasionally failed to solve cases, refused to charge needy clients more than what they could pay, occasionally got thumped for his trouble, and was famously sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit - - which allowed the show to put on an experimental Season 4 (set in Brighton where Frank serves out his probation, meets Helen Mortimer, and slowly reintegrates into public life), a mini-series of seven stellar serialised episodes.
It also owes its success to its leading man, the incomparable Alfred Burke, who would go on to star as Dieter Richter in Enemy at the Door. Burke was a master at making the ordinary extraordinary; his Marker was a tour de force, a character like no other, an everyman whom the British public took to their hearts.
Resources:
All 51 of its surviving episodes are available on DVD. The five recovered early episodes plus Season 4 are on a private playlist (courtesy of lostspook1). Seasons 5 to 7 are here on Youtube, though there are a couple of episodes missing.
Here are episode summaries and reviews for Season 4, and here is a comprehensive series guide including lists of cast and crew, a series production history, and interviews with Burke and the showrunner Michael Chapman.
Characters:
Down-at-heel Frank had a strong sense of decency and principle; he didn’t enjoy most of the grimy aspects of his business, for all that he was good at his work, but he did it because he wanted to help people. He was, however, an intensely private person who hated to rely on others for help; he had no close friends and, in a departure from the noir detective cliché, he wasn’t a womaniser; in fact, he had no on-screen flings in all his seven seasons, let alone a proper romance.
The person who got the closest to Frank in all seven seasons was Helen Mortimer. In the Season 4 opener “Welcome to Brighton?”, he arrived on the doorstep of Helen’s boarding house in Brighton, wary and broken by his prison experiences; like Frank, she had a penchant for helping people (she provided halfway-house services to ex-convicts on probation), and she took him under her wing. They bonded when he was falsely accused of workplace theft in S4E3; she accompanied him on a stake-out that wasn’t a date in S4E6; her no-good deserting husband Denis showed up again in S4E7 and she showed him the door.
… and then in S5E1’s A Mug Named Frank,
Helen did however make a return to visit Frank in Windsor for an episode in each of the following two seasons afterwards (S6E10 It’s A Woman’s Privilege and S7E2’s How About A Cup of Tea).
Here is a shipping fanvid courtesy of lostspook1; like this pairing, it will charm you and break your heart.
Prompts - - Gen:
I have selected the option that allows my writer to write a fic for either of these two characters: future fic, backstories, character studies, missing scenes, vignettes or whole plotty episodes. Some prompts:
+ Case fic: any tiny mundane case would make me so happy - - true to canon, it doesn’t have to contain much action or adventure, and could be as serious or as cracky as you like. I’m endlessly charmed by Frank being bemused by how the other half lives, and love his dynamic with Percy. Maybe Helen Mortimer gets to solve a case when Frank happens to be away?
+ Future fic: I have always wanted to see how Shirley in S4E4’s My Life’s My Own turns out. Maybe she comes back to Brighton to look for Frank and meets Helen for the first time? Or brave, tragic Rose Mason in S5E6’s Come into the Garden, Rose: maybe she takes Frank out for tea and gives him a new perspective on his solitary lifestyle.
+ Crossover: As mentioned, Frank and Enemy at the Door’s Colonel Richter are played by the same actor. In S4E3, Frank gives his birth year as 1923, which makes him young enough to be Richter’s son. Richter spent six years in Cambridge after the Great War; what if he had a liaison with Frank’s mother there and left without knowing she was in the family way? Frank would have been eighteen in 1941; according to the PE tie-in novel, he served in the merchant Navy in WW2 - - would he have encountered the Guernsey Kommandant?
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would ensue if Frank swapped bodies with Helen (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? Or with Percy? With Vyvyan Reveldale?
+ Historical AUs: What if Frank ran a dodgy detective agency in the 1940s instead, or in Victorian times (he would so be the anti-Sherlock Holmes, with Percy as Not Inspector Lestrade!)? What if he was a holistic investigator, like Dirk Gently?
Prompts - - Shipping:
I confess to shipping it, intensely, and would be thrilled to receive a shippy fic for them, particularly as they never get together in canon (and didn’t get the Season 8 which would, according to Roger Marshall in the S4 DVD set booklet, have seen Frank going back to Brighton and Helen). Some prompts:
+ Fix-it fic: I still believe in a fix-it happy ending, even though Frank is a solitary, self-contained, self-isolating character who doesn’t believe he deserves nice things. In fact, and Season Seven was building to it, with Frank starting to recognise that his unbearable loneliness was something he could in fact address if he allowed himself to let his guard down. Maybe it happens organically, with him growing weary of the perpetually-broke, physically-demanding life of an enquiry agent? Or it’s triggered by circumstances - - if Helen was in trouble, he’d rush to her side, and once he’s there he might fall under her spell again and decide to stay.
+ Non fix-it fic: she comes to look for him again or he goes to visit her, they spend the night together at last, and then he leaves her again, because he knows he’ll only drag her down and she deserves better…
+ Missing scene: they enjoy their cute not-date at the end of S4E6 so much that they go out to catch another show together? Or Frank feels badly after the way he rejects Helen in S7E2 and sends her a note of apology? I’d be delighted by fluffiness or bittersweetness or both these things at once.
+ Percy and Vyvyan: though Helen is Frank's one true love, I would also gleefully accept Frank and Percy hooking up drunkenly, or having to fake date for a case, or if criminals made them do it! I would also be thrilled if Frank found himself in similar straits with young Vyvyan, particularly since canon did give us the drunken hookup in S6E8’s The Golden Boy. Helen would be very disapproving, but I would be delighted!
Request 2
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Characters: Dieter Richter AND/OR Philip Martel
DNWs: Onscreen Character Death, Permanent Injury/Mutilation (or offscreen, for Richter or Philip), Character/Ship Bashing or bashing of spouses, Dark Richter or Dark Philip, Nazi apologism, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Underage
Background:
Enemy at the Door (TV) is a British TV show that ran from 1978 – 1980, and is about the German occupation of the Channel Islands during WW2. This show is so great, in terms of setting and historicity, and also its writing, which excellently portrays the balance of power and fragile harmony between the islanders and the German occupying forces.
The show centres around Dr Philip Martel (Dr Who stalwart Bernard Horsfall), a member of the Guernsey Controlling Committee, and Major Dieter Richter (the late, great Alfred Burke), the commander of the German occupying forces, as well as a sterling ensemble cast that includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Anthony Stewart Head in his first TV role. It’s a historical war drama that explores conflict and patriotism and enemies forced to live in close contact with each other, telling its characters’ stories in nuanced character arcs that spans the two seasons, and dealing with ethical dilemmas and slice-of-life events in complex, moral shades of grey.
This excellent fanvid by lostspook1 really captures the thoughtful, melancholy atmosphere of the show;
thisbluespirit has a fandom manifesto here (both linked to with thanks).Resources:
All 26 of its episodes are available on Amazon Prime, as well as on archive.org.
Madeleine Bunting’s The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule, 1940-1945 is a balanced and fairly non-apologist account of the occupation.
Characters:
Dieter Richter is the urbane Kommandant of the island of Guernsey, who was a professor of philosophy in peacetime. Richter is very much a military commander - - he takes decisive actions, eg in court-martialling the young soldier whom one of the islanders accuses of rape, and having him executed by firing squad - - but at the same time he does try to mitigate the hardships of the occupation for the islanders. He’s also morally conflicted about the atrocities of the regime; unfortunately, not sufficiently to do enough about it (when confronted in S2E3, he tells Dr Martel, “Whatever may be the abuse of man, that is the use of nature: first survive”).
Philip Martel is a moral, upright doctor who sits on Guernsey’s Controlling Committee and who does his best to hold the occupying forces to account; his interactions with Richter - - as respectful adversaries, as unwilling enemies who might have in other circumstances be friends - - are the heart of the series.
Prompts - - Gen
I have selected the option that allows my writer to write a fic for either of these two characters, and I would love a missing scene or character study of Richter or Martel before, during or after the war. I'm very interested in this historical period and place, and would equally love a story that makes use of the cast and setting: future fic, backstories, missing scenes, vignettes or whole plotty episodes. Some ideas:
+ A scene from the Season 3 canon never gave us, post the Season 2 finale in April 1943. For instance, as the war progressed, the Channel Islands found themselves ignored and Guernseyans faced tremendous deprivations - - how would Richter and his men have addressed this situation? In July 1944, the von Stauffenberg assassination and coup attempt failed; as part of the aforementioned plot, von Stülpnagel, the military governor of occupied France, managed to arrest most of the SS commanders in the Paris garrison. What, if anything, would Richter and his men have done about Reinicke, the SS attache attached to their command? How would Philip and the Martels have coped?
+ Also in July 1944, fanatical Admiral Huffmeier arrived in Guernsey and was shortly promoted to Channel Islands commander. What would Richter and Philip done about this lunatic, who refused to surrender the Channel Islands to the Allied forces even though Germany had surrendered, and how would they have negotiated the last difficult lead-up to V-day?
+ Richter has so many great, conflict-ridden interactions with Philip and the other islanders that tread the line between respectful and coercive (as Olive says, “When is it not just survival? When does it become helping the enemy?”). I’d love to see Richter calling on Helen Porteous, or crossing swords with Peter Porteous; perhaps you might envision a social event to which the Martels invited Richter because they wanted to get something out of him, and vice versa. Equally, I would love to see Philip wrangling (and getting the better of) Richter and his men at the Kommandantur.
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would ensue if Richter swapped bodies with Reinicke (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? Or with General Muller? Or with Clive? (Not for nothing do I append this beautiful classic black-and-white photo of ASH in satin and lace <3)
+ Historical AUs: What if the Germans invaded Guernsey in WW1? Or during the Silesian wars, or the time of the Vikings? Would Richter have been a reluctant captain in Frederick the Great's army, or an even more reluctant Viking chieftain, to Martel’s island leader and healer?
Prompts - - Shipping
The show doesn't sugar-coat, nor is it apologist for, the dark moral choices made by Richter or indeed the other Nazis or islanders on Guernsey, and I would be interested in all dark moral choices and fraught shippy scenarios, with Philip Martel (or with Reinicke and really anyone else in the cast).
+ Perhaps Richter was unexpectedly placed in harm’s way by enemy action or his own side? Dr Martel would clearly be the only man whom he could rely on to administer both medical and non-medical treatment. Or Richter finds himself compelled as part of his duties to subjugate one of the islanders in all senses of the term, and Martel is the only one he can bear to inflict himself on? Or in an even darker version of events, after V-Day, the islanders brand Martel a collaborator, and force him to punish Richter as a sign of loyalty?
+ Alternatively, I would be delighted with these gentlemen bickering over radio requisitions, or risking their lives/their careers to rescue each other (Martel from the terrible SS a la Judgement of Solomon or Richter from a POW internment in a terrible Soviet gulag), or sharing a romantic breakfast of ersatz coffee at the Kommandantur or the Hotel Normandie. (Please deal with Anna and Olive respectfully in the manner you think best -- perhaps Olive is all for her husband's uncomfortable closeness with the Kommandant, or perhaps she's decided to pack it in and leave Philip for That Nice Doctor Forbes.)
+ Fake Marriage AU: What if Richter was compelled by vengeful islanders or bizarro SS rules or impending Allied postwar imprisonment to marry Reinicke, or (in a scenario where Olive leaves) Philip? Would a practical yoke of convenience lead to physical intimacy?
+ Futurefic: Postwar, what if Richter, newly released from Allied imprisonment and with or without Anna in tow, decided to search for a newly single Philip, or an equally liberated Reinicke? How do they navigate a delicate postwar relationship that becomes a romance?
Request 3
Fandom: Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV) RPF
Character: Robert Vaughn AND David McCallum
DNWs: Noncon or dubcon, Onscreen Character Death, Underage, Character/Ship Bashing esp of Jill Ireland (and mention of McCallum’s RL political beliefs), Dark Characters, Unrequested Gender Identity Headcanons, Permanent Injury/Mutilation.
Background:
Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV) was an American spy fiction television series, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC; it detailed the exploits of secret agents Napoleon Solo (played by Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (played by David McCallum), who work for a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. The series premiered on September 22, 1964, completing its run on January 15, 1968. The series won the Golden Globe Award for Best TV Show in 1966.
This is such a great show, which, in its heyday, was the most popular show on Western TV, and made instantly recognisable celebrities of its two stars. When the Beatles visited America, they asked to be introduced to Robert Vaughn!
Resources:
The show is available on Netflix, and here.
Here is a link to Vaughn’s fan site, with several photo articles on his life and relationship with McCallum, and to his autobiography, A Fortunate Life.
Here is a link to McCallum’s fan site, with more than you wanted to know about the man’s life and career, his relationship with his fans, his musical ability, and his relationship with Vaughn.
Characters:
All-American Vaughn (November 22, 1932 – November 11, 2016) would, post-U.N.C.L.E., go on to play detective Harry Rule in the 1970s series The Protectors; General Hunt Stockwell in the fifth season of the 1980s series The A-Team; and grifter and card sharp Albert Stroller in the British television drama series Hustle (2004–2012). He also appeared in the British soap opera Coronation Street as Milton Fanshaw in 2012. In film, he portrayed the gunman Lee in The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, Ross Webster in Superman III with Christopher Reeve, and war veteran Chester A. Gwynn in The Young Philadelphians with Paul Newman, which earned him a 1959 Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
A lifelong Democrat, Vaughn was the first popular American actor to take a public stand against the Vietnam War; he debated William F. Buckley Jr. on his program Firing Line on the Vietnam War, and campaigned for the Kennedys. He studied at Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, earning a master's degree in theatre. After graduating from college, Vaughn was drafted into the Army, serving as a drill sergeant. While working on U.N.C.L.E., he worked on a Ph.D. in communications, and obtained it the University of Southern California in 1970. In 1972, he published his dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting.
McCallum (19 September 1933 — 25 September 2023) was a Scottish actor and musician who would in the years post-U.N.C.L.E. go on to play Simon Carter in Colditz and alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel. In recent years, he gained renewed international recognition and popularity for his role as NCIS medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the American television series NCIS. We lost him this year at 90 years young, after a storied career and life filled with love.
Hailing from a musical family, McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he pursued the oboe. On leaving school, he joined the British Army's 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force. In March 1954 he was promoted to lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate. A classically-trained musician, in the 1960s McCallum recorded four albums for Capitol Records.
The tabloid press famously reported that there was an on set feud between Vaughn and McCallum, but whatever the truth of the matter, there are a zillion photos out there with the two of them on the press circuit and on the road, looking like they were enjoying each other’s company - - including at the memorable Golden Globes 1964, where they walked onstage to collect their award holding hands (emcee Andy Williams cracks, "You guys have been together too long”!) They men stayed in touch over the years since U.N.C.L.E., speaking to each other on their birthdays; McCallum gave his former co-star a moving tribute at a 2009 dinner for Vaughn.
In 1983, the men hit the talk show circuit together to promote the less-than-stellar The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E - - taking part in an adorable a joint Return interview, where, to the talk show host's "There were rumours that you two didn't get along!", Vaughn said, "Absolutely untrue!", and McCallum quipped back, "There were rumours that we knew each other very well!". In 1986, McCallum guest-starred in a Season Five episode of the A-Team, The Say UNCLE Affair, playing a Kuryakin-esque villain Ivan Trigorin who has a charged history with Vaughn’s General Stockwell. In 2007, they came together for a reunion interview for the re-re-release of the UNCLE DVD set, and were as handsy and adorable as ever! When Vaughn passed on in 2016, McCallum spoke of his "utter devastation", saying, heartbreakingly, “losing him is like losing a part of me”.
Prompts:
I received the most wonderful treat for this fandom in last year’s Yuletide, and it just made me long for more! Here are some prompts:
Gen:
+ Series Finale and post: MFU Season Four was famously cut short thanks to a tonally-inconsistent season and plunging ratings; to all accounts Vaughn and McCallum were taken completely by surprise. How would they have managed if they had been given the rest of Season Four (and potentially a Season Five)? Would the Return Movie have been different, if they had?
+ Crossover: What if Vaughn and McCallum found themselves in an entirely different spy duo/buddy cop franchise like The Professionals, or Starsky & Hutch? Or, in a reverse of MFU TV Season One's The Project Strigas Affair (which guest-stars Leonard Nimoy and Will Shatner sharing the small screen two years before their Star Trek debut), what if they'd been cast in Star Trek: the Original Series? What if Vaughn had joined McCallum on Colditz or NCIS, or if McCallum had joined the cast of The Magnificent Seven, or Hustle, or Coronation Street?
+ Bodyswaps: What kind of mayhem would have ensued on the MFU set if Vaughn swapped bodies with McCallum (and, in a prompt that belongs to the shipping section, they had to bang to switch back)? What if it had happened during the Return movie, or the Say UNCLE Affair?
+ Historical AUs: What if Vaughn and McCallum were suddenly transported to the front lines of World War Two? Would they have been able to help stave off the Wehrmacht enslaught on the Channel Islands, or the London Blitz, or fought side by side at Normandy?
Prompts - - Shipping:
I confess to shipping it, intensely. The glare of fame when they were in their early 30s! Living in each other's pockets in Hollywood during the demanding filming schedule, and being joined at the hip while on the road across America and Britain and the Far East carrying out the studio's punishing promotional schedule in the hiatus between seasons, fending off hordes of hysterical fans all the while! The nearly 60 years of history and friendship, the hand-holding and the easy intimacy, the handsiness and bantering - - all the while bickering and teasingly competitive, in the same way of Napoleon and Illya's bickering, bantering, push-and-pull onscreen relationship.
Various aspects of Napoleon's and Illya's bitingly flirtatious onscreen dynamic only made sense if they were shagging on the sly - - perhaps their dynamic only played out that way because Vaughn and McCallum were themselves shagging on the sly?? "There were rumours that we knew each other very well" wouldn't have come out of a vaccuum, after all!
+ Envision for me various interstitial hookups between those flirty episodes, and/or the long decades of their on-again, off-again relationship!
+ Season finale: the penultimate S4 episode has the agents’ boss, Mr Waverly, remarking on what terrible husbands his spies would make; the episode ends with Illya gazing at his partner and remarking, meaningfully, “At least we have each other.” What happens when the cameras stop rolling?
+ "You guys have been together too long!" Give me a behind-the-scenes look at the hand-holding at the Golden Globes, and what came after?
+ McCallum's marriage to Jill Ireland famously fell apart during the filming of MFU Season 3. What if bachelor Vaughn helped him cope, intimately, on set, or on one of their overseas tours?
+ Fake Marriage AU: S3's The Suburbia Affair saw the spies setting up house in suburbia to spy on an enemy scientist gone to ground (no, really), with Napoleon and Illya squabbling over the bread run and making a souffle. What if Vaughn and McCallum had to set up house for the job, too? Would fighting over exploding milk and doing the dishes have led to physical intimacy at last?
+ Futurefic: Perhaps Vaughn and McCallum finally hook up fifteen years after MFU's demise, during the filming or press circuit of The Return Movie, or the A Team's Say UNCLE Affair? (If you go with this prompt, please deal kindly with wives Linda and Katherine; feel free to have them join in in a polyamorous OT4, or have them give their enthusiastic blessing to these two old friends, who would have finally managed to find their way to each other at last <3)
Thank you again for creating for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with this Yuletide!
no subject
Date: 2023-10-21 12:39 am (UTC)Just a FYI that we've edited your name in the app so it shows Kate_Wisdom rather than kateoftheangels - hopefully this will help people to give you treats!
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Date: 2023-10-22 03:48 pm (UTC)