Even Nickelodeon Can Scare You: The Third Eye
I don’t keep track of what cable network Nickelodeon does these days (I don’t have children), but even with the new logo I can’t imagine that the channel has altered much from the manic “no adults in the room” style that it started to specialize in during the mid-‘80s. That was the point when Double Dare and its profusion of goo heralded a rethinking of the channel’s former “education-and-imports” format it had used since its launch in 1979.
That’s right: for people who weren’t watching Nickelodeon during its debut years of the early 1980s, it may be hard for them to believe that the mega-children’s brand was originally educational programs done in the mold of Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and most of the show were imported from Canada and overseas English-speaking countries. Nickelodeon had very little original programming in the early years, and it purchased UK and Canadian shows to fill out its schedule. Some of these shows did break the educational format, such as a number of bizarre animated shorts and the trippy parody Brit-toon DangerMouse (which attracted many adult fans). And then there was the oddball Canadian sketch comedy starring a mostly young cast, You Can’t Do That on Television!, which proudly contained no educational content at all and instead dumped slime on people . . . The Shape of Nick to Come. (And borrowed, no doubt, from Bunny Rabbit pouring ping-pong balls on Captain Kangaroo.)
That newborn Nickelodeon was at the bottom rung of the ratings, but it really was a strange place, weirder for not actually trying to be weird. But why am I bringing up the cable network here, on Black Gate? Don’t I have Conan pastiches to shred apart?
The reason I bring up Nickelodeon at all is that hiding in the shadows of its young years was a genuinely creepy dark fantasy and science-fiction program called The Third Eye. It ran for only a brief time on the network, but I’m amazed how much I recall about it. Aside from DangerMouse, it’s the only show I remember fondly from my time watching the network when I was in elementary school. It was smart, clever, and scary. Kids who would later grow up on Goosebumps have no idea of what genuinely cerebral terrors they missed out on.
I’ve been telling you about this one for quite awhile and now it’s finally here!
It’s only polite to introduce yourself properly, and as this is my fourth posting on this blog, a proper introduction is really overdue. So: Who am I, and what am I doing here?
From his first appearance in print in the pages of The Story-Teller in October 1912, Sax Rohmer’s criminal mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu took the world by storm. While Rohmer would complete three novels featuring the character between 1912 and 1917, the Devil Doctor would extend his domain to include film and comics in the fourteen years before Rohmer bowed to commercial demand and revived the series.
Luke Forney wraps up his detailed, three-part examination of Black Gate 14 with a look back at Part II:
No seriously, I can’t believe I’m writing this. But here goes.
“If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts…”
For those of us who relish Shakespeare and thrill to antique forms of language, this brilliant passage is highly enjoyable. Yet there is no doubt that its style is vastly outdated and many modern readers would shy away from this fantastic novel simply because of its weight of style and ponderous language. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but keep in mind that Eddison published his masterwork way back in 1922. Although beautiful and perfect for the feel of high fantasy, that language just doesn’t fly today…unless you’re staging a production of HAMLET.
Inception (2010)