-Micky
=======================================================================
DECLASSIFIED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION #3
June 10, 1990
Micky DuPree
Part of our problem as an apa seems to be a small member base. The
custom in most closed apas is that a member only has to contribute to
every other issue in order to satisfy minimum activity requirements.
But if we did that we'd get some practically nonexistent issues. We
need a recruitment drive. Obviously "The Sandbaggers" is a bit marginal
to begin with because it hasn't been shown in a lot of markets. I've
tried sending a short promo letter for ASOO to the PBS station that ran
SB in my area, asking them to please run the promo in the viewer mail
column of their monthly program guide. SB was very popular on WENH, and
they got a lot of letters on it, so I figured there might be some
isolated SB fans out there who didn't have anyone else to talk to about
it.
By the way, I don't know how anyone else has fared with them, but
for me, sending things to the group Vested Interests is like sending
things into a black hole. Since joining last October I've gotten one
supposedly monthly newsletter out of them and a promo sheet on their
proposed trip to England. These are not fannish people as most of us
would understand the term. They do not share information. They hoard
it.
I've read two of Ian Mackintosh's early novels so far, "A Slaying in
September" and "Count Not the Cost." I found them fascinating precisely
because they were Mackintosh's early work, but they did not have much
literary merit on their own. They were terribly overwritten and
awkward, trying to combine the worst cliches of both hard-bitten
thrillers and women's romances, I kid you not. (The combination has to
be seen to be believed.) In both cases Mackintosh was reaching for a
tough-on-the-outside-sensitive-on-the-inside lead character. I got the
feeling that he was reaching for Neil Burnside, in effect, but in 1967
he hadn't yet gotten the knack of making that combination plausible. I
could buy the reasons why Burnside was callous, but the combination in
the earlier Mackintosh characters was extremely incongruous.
The early Mackintosh protagonists ate macho pills for breakfast and
chased them with black coffee, whole bottles of brandy, and chain-smoked
cigarettes. They were SO tough that one character was in two bruising
fights, a bloody automobile accident, received another beating while
tied to a tree, and then was set on fire long enough for him to "smell
the sickening pork-like stench of his own flesh as it began to roast,"
all in the same night. What did he do to recover from all this? He put
some ointment and gauze on the burns and then went back to work. Now
THAT'S tough. It's also laughable. At the least, Mackintosh didn't
have a very good grasp of the effects of burns severe enough to roast
living human flesh.
The protagonists were also so sensitive that they were forever
rhapsodizing about the women they desired as the saviors and the lights
that would guide them. "Savior" is a particularly apt word, for the
male leads fell in love instantaneously, with little or no knowledge of
the women they were falling in love with, and then they turned these
women into a religion. All the meaning in their lives derived from
those women and from nothing else. In fact, Pat was incorrect to say
that all the Mackintosh protagonists put duty before love. The
protagonist in "Count Not the Cost" placed love before duty every time,
to the extent of getting himself cashiered out of the CIA for turning
double.
Surprising as it may sound, I would actually recommend the books if
you want to get a feeling for Mackintosh sort of thrashing around on his
way to coming up with "The Sandbaggers." The glimpses of what he would
eventually be trying to achieve are abundant, and I personally found "A
Slaying in September" and "Count Not the Cost" fascinating for that
reason. But be warned that the interest does not lie in their being
well-crafted.
\Pat\ Personally, now that it is 1990, I would question the wisdom of
Marsden reviving "Sandbaggers" where the action left off, with Caine
wounded and so forth. Marsden, for one, while very versatile with his
looks, is noticeably older now. I think that a TV revival should pick
up at least five years later and preferably the full ten years later
that have elapsed in the real world.
I'd generally agree with your assessment of Burnside's managerial
skills. He was usually excellent with his subordinates, terrible with
his superiors, and pretty good with his peers (we didn't see a lot of
his peers). Ross said it best in "Who Needs Enemies": "An ambitious
officer whose dedication and ruthlessness have won him respect rather
than popularity." Mixed marks.
I don't think I quite agree with your assessment of Burnside's
superiors, but it's more a matter of degree and shading than of outright
disagreement. I think Peele had a FALSELY paternal attitude towards
Burnside because Peele thought that sort of relationship went with the
territory of being in authority. Peele didn't realize that Burnside
would only respond to substance that he could respect, not to the mere
fact of authority. (Peele would never grasp this distinction either,
since Peele himself responded to authority like a Pavlovian dog.)
I was sorry to see Greenley go because I thought that he had the
greatest chance of being a good influence on Burnside. He was openly
concerned about Neil, he openly respected Neil, and most important of
all, he had Neil's respect in return. There was also more there than
met the eye. Greenley was the consummate diplomat, seldom giving
anything away.
According to the SB novelization, Wellingham was supposed to be 58
to Burnside's 39. Alan MacNaughtan struck me as closer to 65, though.
In either case, despite their differences of age and rank, I always got
the impression that Sir Geoffrey and Neil related more as older brother
and younger brother or even as equals than they did as members of
different generations. I never got a paternalistic feeling from Sir
Geoffrey.
While I did think that Gibbs made an interesting new character, I
disagree that he was likely to be a great help in "changing" Burnside.
Gibbs may have come to respect Burnside, but I never got a solid
impression that Burnside had come to respect Gibbs (other than the faint
praise that he would make a better "C" than Peele), and that question of
respect is all important to my mind.
(I think that Gibbs was his last name, by the way, and that many
people merely used his middle name as his given name. I think that he
was referred to as just Gibbs on at least one occasion and as John Gibbs
on another.)
I don't blame Burnside directly for Sally Graham's death in "Is Your
Journey Really Necessary?" but I do blame him for blithely contributing
to it and never bothering to consider that he could set things in motion
that he couldn't foresee and that could get out of his control. I think
the suicide resulted from the combination of Burnside's blackmail and
Denson's waffling in the final phone call, and that either circumstance
alone wouldn't have been enough to push her over. In a sense, I suspect
that Denson's death was more of the same. It wasn't a direct result of
Burnside interfering, but he wouldn't have been so preoccupied if
Burnside had left matters alone.
Burnside's taking of the suicide note to Alan struck me as perfectly
tenable in a security situation. He didn't want a Sandbagger or his
directorate involved in a police investigation. (Actually, with a
suspected link to SIS, they'd probably call in MI5/Scotland Yard to do
the investigation and then the shit would have hit the fan.) From a
legal standpoint, the very fact that the envelope was addressed to Alan
probably gave Burnside discretionary powers under the Official Secrets
Act. As to the morality of his action, it was really one of the least
objectionable things he did, especially considering that the addressee
was dead.
I've noticed that many series, whether American or British, are
intellectually comfortable with the idea of strong female characters as
long as they aren't on OUR side. In SB the two gun-handling women were
KGB and CIA, not SIS. (In "Blake's 7" the strongest female character
was the villain. In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" there are strong
female line officers in command positions in the Federation, but never
on OUR point-of-view ship.)
I still don't think that Willie was ever in any danger of being
attracted to violence, but I'm at the point now where all I can say is
that it's my subjective intuition based on the dinner conversation with
"Ferris" in Cyprus.
\Myra\ I like the examples you gave of Peele doing his own double-
dealing to get his way ("Always Glad to Help" and "Who Needs Enemies"),
a sin he so often chided Burnside for. Peele was the sort of fellow
who'd be likable in a social setting, but who was completely unsuitable
to make executive decisions and take responsibility. (I even have to
wonder whether he was all that great as a head of station.) I think
Burnside's lack of respect for him was quite justified, and if
Wellingham's assessment of Peele was any indication, the Foreign Office
had his number too.
To the best of my memory, though, it was never said that Peele had
ever been Director of Intelligence.
\Michael\ I thought it was pretty obvious that Burnside did want
promotion. His desire to do the assassination personally in "A Proper
Function of Government" revolved around promotion, and he was depressed
about the less-than-glowing promotion recommendation he received in
"Decision by Committee." He just wasn't willing to change the way he
ran his directorate in order to get that promotion.
\Caryn\ I have a lot of trouble with your statement, "Neil had a strong
need to be right all the time, or at the very least, he needed others to
be wrong," particularly the last part. I think his strong desire for
Edward Tyler to not be a double agent, even though Tyler was his biggest
rival for promotion, and his own statement that Tyler was brilliant and
that he preferred a D.Int. that he could work with, proved that he
wanted everyone in SIS to be right, for the good of SIS and the good of
the nation. The fact that he frequently believed others to be wrong
wasn't the same thing as him needing others to be wrong.
And in re the Ops Room, I think Dickens hit the nail on the head
when she said that Burnside spent at least some of his nights there in
order to avoid dealing with the ghosts at home.