Post by niecie on Oct 2, 2016 15:56:02 GMT -5
You know, this is the first time I've realized that Jim too has a mauve suit. At least, I've always thought of that lavenderish shade as being mauve. (Having read a little from David Gerrold's The Flying Sorcerers back when I was a kid, in which the name of one of the characters was rendered by his universal translator as 'As a color, a shade of purple-gray' - and then it hit me that the shade of purple-gray was mauve, making the guy's name Asimov - well, that's a pun that's stuck with me ever since!)
Wonder where Jim picked up that fishy key?
Now, there's a cat who was almost short one of its nine lives!
Definitely a theme tavern!
For a guy with a very French name (Phillipe de la Mer - dunno why Jim pronounces it as Felipe), the dude using the puffer fish PA system sure has a very German accent. Just sayin.'
Well, I usually enjoy a good pun. Pity the darts line doesn't qualify! And as usual when Jim gets a dart in the neck, the angles don't match up.
Dominique is a WWW girl whom I emphatically DO NOT LIKE.
(I'm embarrassed to admit that the first time I viewed this episode after getting the DVD set, I didn't realize that the girl on the ship with the jeweled compact was the same girl as the mermaid.)
Not a very satisfying explosion special effect!
As Our Heroes will discuss later, it does seem odd - if not dangerous - that the baddie's chief villainous villainess HAS to be aboard the ships he's about to destroy.
Nice shot of Blackjack waiting alongside the train!
Lt Keighley is another one who is emphatically on my DO NOT LIKE list! (Even if I did stick him into one of my fanfics - but he wasn't being such a jerk in that one.)
Keighley has the imagination of a clam, to steal a line from the first season.
Artie has obviously already met Keighley; I love his candid appraisal of the pompous lieutenant!
Boy, our baddie-of-the-week sure set Jim up royally, didn't he? Making the threat while also making sure the threat will not be taken seriously - not until it's too late, that is.
Good ol' Artie! Keighley hears dragon and blows Jim off, but Artie hears dragon and says it couldn't have been that, so it must have been a sophisticated bomb of some kind. I'll take Artie's estimation of Jim over Keighley's any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Cute how they wrote the scene so that Artie would get angry enough at Keighley to slam the compact down on the desk, all so he could discover the picture in the pattern of jewels on its surface.
(By the way, I took a pair of screen shots, one of the compact, the other of the dots before Artie connects them, and frankly I don't think the dots match up with the jewels on the compact. Just sayin'.)
Also, Artie says the dots represent the diamonds. Fairly sure it's the rubies that made the dots; the diamonds look much shorter to me. Just sayin' again!
*sigh* Artie may think that the design on the compact is a strong enough link between the woman and the dragon-bomb that Keighley has to believe Jim now, but given the viewers' brief acquaintance with the blowhard lieutenant, I think it's more likely Keighley wouldn't believe Jim until and unless the sea serpent came up and bit Keighley on the leg. (Which is practically what happens later anyway.)
Love the little exchange about the silver dollar. (I notice Jim's thumb is conveniently covering up the date on the coin.) Only thing is, if the dollar will blow up after five seconds' exposure to heat over 110 degrees, should Artie really have tossed the coin at the gas lamp? (At least the lamp wasn't turned on!)
I also love the banter about nobody knowing anything about jewels - not even the jewelers.
(Now that I took such a close look at the compact, every time they show a close-up on it, I think what a shoddy job somebody did of anchoring the 'jewels' on its surface.)
I absolutely love the idea of three anchors representing a seagoing pawn shop!
So is the buxom naiad adorning the front of the Three Anchors the same fetching gal who graced the barroom of the Bucket of Blood in TNOT Samurai, I wonder?
Love the interior of the pawn shop! I can imagine the set dressers and propmen clearing out several storerooms to find all of that eye-catchingjunk trash paraphernalia!
Ah, Captain Pratt! Such a colorful character - barely stops talking, doesn't he? (Authentic-est is a marvelous word, isn't it? A bear to spell, but great to hear.)
I notice the 'finest carved figurehead' has a swath of cloth draped demurely across her, ah... assets. Oh, and she's got a sword tucked through the crook of her arm!
Seriously, who would need a jewel-encrusted peg leg???
Artie's grinning up a storm; I think he finds Capt Pratt an incredibly colorful character too. (And maybe he's memorizing him for future disguise material?)
Pratt does a Popeye squinky eye!
Capt Pratt's not such a good poker player, is he?
Who said anything about dragons? Why, Artie did!
Now, Capt Pratt says the Mermaid Tavern is on Grand St. I'm sure he said Grand with a D - no matter what the closed captioning has to say about it. Oh, and then he tells Our Heroes to be there at two bells. Be helpful if he'd translate that into regular landlubber time!
Whose eyes are those behind the eye for the Chinese junk?
Jim too pronounces it Grand St. But then we see the sign which says plain as day: GRANT ST.
By the way, if Jim didn't know the Mermaid was on Grant St, how'd he ever find it in the first place?
I love the way Artie acts once they get to the Mermaid, teasing Jim unmercifully! Right up until the time King Neptune attacks.
I will never understand why the music for this particular bar fight is so cutesy. I do love the bar fight! Artie (Bob Herron, I presume) goes flying over the bar to tussle with the bartender while Jim takes on the two lugs in the main part of the room. Why, though, Jim pulls back his arm to paste the second guy, then pauses to wag his finger at him before belting him so hard he smacks into the bar across the room - well, that's another thing I don't understand.
Now, I really love Artie and the barkeep popping back up into view with Artie spritzing the guy with the foam from a bottle of beer. Sadly, the beer runs out of foam way too quickly. No problem for Artie, though: he puts the bottle into the bartender's hand - WHO HOLDS ONTO IT! - and then Artie pastes the guy, sending him reeling into the wall.
But I have one more objection: Artie's slinging the beer off his hands! Why oh why did Uncle Artie go out to work without a handkerchief in his pocket, huh? He always had a handkerchief on hand before! And since, too, I think.
Off to the Three Anchors once more - and this is probably my least favorite scene in the whole episode. I really liked Capt Pratt, and it certainly wasn't his fault Jim and Artie won the bar fight! But the squirrely little captain is no more. Yes, the sight of Our Heroes' informant dangling from the ceiling drew Jim in far enough for him to stand on the trapdoor (which apparently the captain already had installed in his room), but land's sakes! There are plenty of less terminal ways to catch Jim West's attention!
Fine little fight in the sandpit below, with Jim tossing the minions around one after the other (one of them, I'm pretty sure, being Dick Cangey). But then someone smacks Jim from behind with a cosh - and oh, look at that! We finally lay eyes on the Big Bad of the episode for the Act One freeze frame!
Back to the eye of the Chinese junk, just to establish where we are again (the late lamented Capt Pratt's pawn shop) as Artie, having given Jim his requested ten minutes, now comes in search of his partner. Someone's tidied the place up in the meantime, in particular removed the dangling corpse! (By the way, the bird in the cage in Pratt's back room: real or stuffed? Never moves, so I say stuffed - but then, why keep it in a cage? It ain't goin' nowhere!)
Back to Grant St - and now the location of the Mermaid Tavern has become Maude's Dress Shoppe. The use of the name Maude here cracks me up - and so does Artie's hiding of his face from the lacy unmentionables in the dress shop window.
Poor Artie finds himself in another of those 'they whisked so well' situations (referencing TNOT Skulls). He gives his nose a thump.
(Oh, and those doors, whether they give entrance to the Mermaid or to Maude's, every time someone opens 'em or rattles 'em, they strike me as extremely flimsy doors!)
What an opulent bed Jim is laid out upon! Here's Dominique again, being her usual icky self, dressed in her piratical best. What is it about her that annoys me so? Well, part of it is the way she talks; she doesn't sound like a real person, but like someone putting on a snooty voice. I guess maybe it's her air of smug superiority. (Maybe it's the faky eyelashes.) Maybe it's the fact that she isn't charmed by either of Our Heroes, nor does she make any real effort to charm either of them. (Antoinette at least flirted with Jim!) Her lines here about not giving Jim a lift off the doomed gambling ship because she hates cramped quarters, so that she left him there to possibly be killed. Yeah, she's too mean for my taste, even for a villain, and lacking any of the redeeming qualities of the more endearing class of villain.
And then she kisses Jim, but even that doesn't strike me as particularly flirtatious. Jim reacts by telling her, with a big grin on his face, that he doesn't have the compact.
So why does she make reference to the Marquis, using that word, and when Jim asks, 'The Marquis de la Mer?' she corrects him so sternly with 'Phillipe de la Mer'? What was wrong with what Jim called him? (Methinks the lady just wants to be angry at Jim!)
Ah, the Marquis again, all jackboots and leather. At least now he can say West with a w instead of a v at the beginning. (The puffer fish couldn't.)
The Marquis has an interesting gadget in his bedroom for despensing ale. He's quite a gadgeteer in general. 'Poorly-fashioned accessory' - yeah, that's what I've been saying about the compact ever since the dots scene!
So... the Marquis strolls across the room to plunk the string of a ukulele-ish-looking instrument mounted on the wall, and the bed to which Jim is tied spread-eagle (don't tell me that wasn't a bit of fan-service on the director's part!) rises up until the mattress is vertical. Jim and the Marquis talk about how this allows the Marquis to simply walk out of bed in the morning - but the mechanism to cause the bed to do that is located across the room! In order to cause the bed to lift up and let him walk out of bed, he first has to get up and go pluck the string waaaay over there! Someone didn't think that one through very well.
I do like Jim's line that the one who has had the most difficulty in the matter is Capt Pratt.
Dominique arrives and whispers in the Marquis' ear. Reminds me of Antoinette showing up in Murderous Spring to whisper in Loveless' ear. Makes me wonder if the writers needed to move the plot on to the next scene, couldn't think of what to have happen, so hey, just deliver an unheard message and go on to the next scene! Nice little plot device.
Dominique smiles when told to stay with Jim and watch him - and what a cannon she produces and points at Jim when he attempts to flirt with her!
Of all people for Artie to wind up venting to about the disappearance of Jim, why oh why does it have to be Keighley???
And why does Keighley think the scenario Artie puts forth is preposterous? I think the lieutenant is too prejudiced against Our Heroes to be able (or willing) to put his brain into gear to actually consider what Artie is saying at this point.
Artie doesn't like being called cracked.
And great segue back to Jim and the Marquis, with Jim calling his captor that exact word!
By the way, it seems to me that Jim's plan is to make the Marquis so annoyed with his disbelief that he'll take Jim to see what he's talking about, to prove to Jim it's real. This would be a good goal for Jim, since for one thing it'd get him untied from that bed, and for another, it would put Jim within range of the dragon torpedo to possibly put the swimming bomb out of commission. (It doesn't quite work out like that, but Jim gets his way eventually.)
De la Mer, by the way, sounds a good bit like Capt Philo, the villain from Deadly Bubble.
So he doesn't want to start the negotiations until after he's killed a huge amount of people, Admiral Farragut among them. Charming fellow, ain't he?
By the way, in the background there are a couple of aquaria sitting on whimsical supports, one of them what looks like a one-legged table, the other some sort of shell? (Oh, and I think that's the bottom of the blue chandelier hanging above the scene too!)
I can't figure out what the Marquis says to Dominique. Closed captioning has it, 'Dominique, we'll have to start wasting time retrieving the compact from Mr Gordon' - and that's what it sounds to me like he says too. But surely he means they have to stop wasting time??
And now we see that other gadget: the disintegrating force field. This too seems to me to be something the writers (or whoever came up with it) didn't think through very well. As somebody (and I sure wish I could remember who!) said once upon a time on one of the WWW forums (argh - as with the plural of aquarium, I really really want to type the plural of forum as fora...), if you have something as powerful as a disintegrating force field, why bother playing around with toy dragon-bombs? All he has to do is figure out how to deploy that force field and he'll have the world by the throat!
It just so happens that when Jim put on his up-the-sleeve device before heading out to work the day before, he thought to himself, 'Instead of the usual derringer in this device, I should load a knife instead.' *nods*
Have I mentioned how much I love that mauve cloak of Artie's? Here he goes down the street wearing it, all bundled up under it... Passes the Three Anchors, passes the jeweler's shop he and Jim visited the night before... And happens to draw the notice of Dominique and some minions. Yes, that's what Artie hoped would happen, that they would see him, but sure is convenient that they happened along in that carriage at just the right moment!
Down the alley he goes, with the two henchies on his trail, and as someone on the WWW fora mentioned a while back (pretty sure it was Dieter!), Artie does his quickest quick change of the entire series! Just time it: he's not out of view for more than three seconds. Sure, that's time enough to ditch the cloak and the broad-brimmed hat - but is it also enough time to put on the wig, the other hat, and the mustache? Hmm???
That song makes just no sense! But it's fun hearing him sing it.
He just has to peek into the carriage and give the girl the eye! Come to think of it, I believe that's his first glimpse of Dominique.
Look at the way he holds his fingers when he walks into the Three Anchors! What on earth is wrong with his hands? Drunken hands! (Oh, and come to think of it, Artie doesn't know that Pratt is dead.)
Hey, I think I recognize the guy who isn't Capt Pratt. Pretty sure he was sitting outside the Three Anchors when Jim and Artie walked in the night before. (Took a couple of screen shots and compared them: same guy with the same clothes, all right - but now he's wearing Capt Pratt's hat.)
Two guns and a knife, and Artie drops right out of the drunken Swedish character. (Mission accomplished!)
So... it's a force field that disintegrates anything that comes in contact with it, right? So how come Jim throws his knife right through it? Again, not well thought through! (Yeah, the knife's handle is trailing a little smoke, but still!)
The guards can hear that the force field is off, so they come peeking in... and yes, that is the same blue chandelier from other episodes! Nice brief fight scene - but you'd think henchies who work for a guy who has disintegrating force fields strewn throughout the house would think twice before running towards the location of one of the said force fields. (Just sayin'.)
*snicker* There's Whitey wearing a beard and mustache, and a big black eye patch. *grin*
So Jim takes out that pair of guards as well, rushes to the front door, opens it... and the Marquis is standing right outside with his gun at the ready! What, is the guy clairvoyant? (If he was, this whole business would work out a lot better for him in the end, I dare say.)
That looks very much like the foyer of Dr Loveless' house in TNOT Raven, except that what was the front door here led into the good doctor's lab in the other episode.
However, now Jim is in the same room with the sea dragon. That's a plus. Ish.
(Look at allllll those barrels marked GUN POWDER!)
I do wonder though: why does the sea dragon have the fire coming out of its nostrils while it's just hanging around, and especially in a room containing so much gun powder? Wouldn't you have a no open flames policy for the gun powder magazine? Anyway, I can see having the dragon spout flames when it's out there on its run against the shipping, but why while it's in storage, huh? Another of those not-well-thought-through moments.
'I'm just appreciating.' Great line!
And what's the first thing that happens as the Marquis leads Jim closer to the dragon? One of the henchies turns off the flames. Guess they had been turned on expressly to impress Jim when he first saw the dragon - but he'd seen one before, so huh?
The Marquis gives us a history lesson on torpedoes, then a demonstration on the workings of the dragon.
What a tin dictator vision he has for his country of La Mer! He definitely put himself on Jim's Stop This Guy at All Costs list!
Ah, and here comes Artie. I absolutely love his lines in this scene! Love his interactions with everyone all around him too.
Love how Artie's misses the last step, and the Marquis takes the opportunity to call him 'the ever-graceful Mr Gordon.'
The place where Artie has hidden the compact points up yet again that he couldn't possibly have changed into that disguise in a mere three seconds.
The 'make them uncomfortable' line - the 'pillar to post' line - somebody was having a great day for writing when they churned out that scene!
Our Heroes are just openly discussing the case in the hearing of the Marquis' minions. What if they hit on something they don't want the minions to report to their boss, huh?
(Love the drawings on the wall of the dragon, by the way!)
One of my favorite bits in this episode is Keighley's face and voice when he says, 'A woman aboard a US man-o'-war???' (Because it's such an in-character Keighley line.)
As the henchies leave the room where Jim & Artie are tied up, you can see that loose board that becomes important later.
Kick up the heels. At this point I noticed how the two posts they are tied to are at such a convenient distance apart (namely, leg length).
One thing Dominique may not have realized was how very much Keighley despised West's warnings about the dragons.
So she plays the weeping female card. Very likely that was the only thing that would get through to Keighley.
Her fake crying is so very intensely fake. Seriously, I wonder how Keighley failed to smell the onion in her hanky! (But the one and only thing I ever like about Dominique is the face she makes when she pulls that onion out of the hanky and drops it - and even there she overdoes it.)
Sometimes I wonder: when the guys are tied up and one unties the other, were the actors really tied up and having to undo the knots for each other?
Good thing Artie backs up when he steps on the loose board and triggers the force field! The henchies outside the door hear the thing crank up, so they go to take a peek inside...
...and Our Heroes are at the posts, arms behind them, just like they oughta be. The agents talk so casually as the henchie comes to check on things, then wham! they take the guy out!
This time they jump over the loose board. And oh, the teamwork! This bit is pure gold! Knock on the door, call out as if the inside henchie, 'One, two, three' - open the door, and Jim knocks the guy down the steps. Then out go Our Heroes with such a pair of jaunty waves!
So what is that liquid in the fountain? It's purple, so is it wine?
At least this time when Jim opens the front door, there's not anyone standing outside it! But as soon as Jim turns around after seeing Artie off, here comes the Marquis again.
Oh, yay - another set of force field generators!
The Marquis gives Jim his choice: die by bullet or by disintegration. But when we come back from the commercials, the Marquis says instead that he wants Jim to stay alive to be his negotiator. Well, I'm glad he's not gonna kill Jim right away, but he sure sounds like he flips flops a LOT.
Dominique's superior tone of voice irks me yet again! At least Keighley sounds more reasonable now - pity he's being reasonable about the wrong thing.
And there she goes, saying stuff about the 'silly old admiral' and calling the Virginia a boat! I'm a bit shocked that Keighley doesn't get mad at her for talking like that.
Oh, she never never should have pulled out that compact! I suppose she didn't know Our Heroes had shown the thing to Keighley.
Artie, you really should have looked behind the door!
(Love the look of that shirt on Artie!)
The disguised periscope on the roof of the house - that's genius!
Every so often the Marquis' leather jacket squeaks on the sound track.
As the camera dollies in on the Marquis' 'distant grandchildren of my tawdry dragons' speech, you can see Jim rolling his eyes in the background.
So when they add the gunpowder, they pour it in. Then the Marquis closes the little hatch that covers the gunpowder - and I really do not think that closure is in any way waterproof. The gunpowder could and should get wet!
Jim knows now he hasn't much time left to stop the dragon.
When the Marquis says to connect the wires to the detonator, someone flips a switch and the dragon's eyes light up. And when he turns back after arming the dragon, the nostrils are flaming.
Back when they opened the hatch, there wasn't anything hanging down from the underside of the dragon; the hatch would have hit it. But when they lower the dragon through the hatch into the water, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of extension sticking down from the underside, like a keel or something.
Jim makes his move! Double elbows to the guys holding him, kick to the Marquis, swinging on the rope toward the other henchies! Somebody really hollers as he falls against something on the wall that catches fire.
Whitey kicks Jim onto the loose board, turning the force field back on.
Ah, and there goes the Marquis, getting hoist by his own petard by stumbling right into his precious force field!
Ok, time for Jim to go swimming! That dragon must not go very fast, considering what a head start it had on Jim. (But now I realize why the henchies had to strip Jim of his jacket and vest, so he could be in a thin white shirt for the swimming scene.)
Boy, that dragon's whirring sound certainly precedes it.
Time for Dominique's quick exit. She sure doesn't freak out over being on a doomed ship. What was in that fake jewel she threw?
And... Jim catches up to the dragon. Meanwhile Artie is busting out the window to clear out the smoke from the bomb.
Oh good! Artie spotted the compact! Stomp it good, Artie! (Actually, the crunch sound effect doesn't quite match up with the stomp visual.) (Oh, and the components inside look more like something you could buy at Radio Shack in the 1960's instead of something the Marquis would have had to devise on his own in the 1870's.)
And once again, Artie the gadgeteer and Jim the action hero have worked together so that Jim has exactly the gadget he needs with him to destroy the dragon. (Good thing he had that silver dollar in his pants pocket rather than a pocket of his jacket or vest...) As he places the dollar on the dragon's nose, you can see a small patch of a different color to which Jim attaches the dollar.
Swim away, Jim, swim away!
Boom! Still a cheesy explosion special effect.
The tag is so much fun. I don't know if the newspaper report really should have identified Artie by name. And why doesn't Dominique have a last name?
Wonder when Artie's supposed to give that speech he's rehearsing. Sure love his 'I'm so sick' bit: the voice, the hair, the foot bath, the horse blanket, the bare chest, etc. And the line about double pneumonia in his showboating days!
Jim: It's not that I'm not interested - because I am! (Yeah, we all believe you, Jim.)
Hey, why is that dragon torpedo in the parlor anyway, huh??? (Must be a spare they found in the Marquis' house, but still.)
'Take your pills.' I still don't understand the pill business...
...because it looks like he's about to take the pill (it's pink; he just took the yellow one), and then he puts it on the box instead to demonstrate dropping aerial bombs on the submarines...
...only to have the pill explode when it hits the water! So was that his medicine? Was it supposed to do that? And if it wasn't his medicine, where did it come from and why did he nearly take it??? (Enquiring minds want to know!)
(At least that dragon torpedo didn't have its nostril flames turned on!)
I might add that, even with all the objections noted above, this episode is one that I return to again and again to watch and enjoy. Not sure why it's one of my favorites - not even sure if I would name it as among my favorites if I were asked to list them - but the fact is that I definitely watch it a lot. (Maybe it's the drunken Swede disguise!) (Or hey, maybe it's the ill-fated Capt Pratt.)
(Or Whitey in the eye patch?)
Wonder where Jim picked up that fishy key?
Now, there's a cat who was almost short one of its nine lives!
Definitely a theme tavern!
For a guy with a very French name (Phillipe de la Mer - dunno why Jim pronounces it as Felipe), the dude using the puffer fish PA system sure has a very German accent. Just sayin.'
Well, I usually enjoy a good pun. Pity the darts line doesn't qualify! And as usual when Jim gets a dart in the neck, the angles don't match up.
Dominique is a WWW girl whom I emphatically DO NOT LIKE.
(I'm embarrassed to admit that the first time I viewed this episode after getting the DVD set, I didn't realize that the girl on the ship with the jeweled compact was the same girl as the mermaid.)
Not a very satisfying explosion special effect!
As Our Heroes will discuss later, it does seem odd - if not dangerous - that the baddie's chief villainous villainess HAS to be aboard the ships he's about to destroy.
Nice shot of Blackjack waiting alongside the train!
Lt Keighley is another one who is emphatically on my DO NOT LIKE list! (Even if I did stick him into one of my fanfics - but he wasn't being such a jerk in that one.)
Keighley has the imagination of a clam, to steal a line from the first season.
Artie has obviously already met Keighley; I love his candid appraisal of the pompous lieutenant!
Boy, our baddie-of-the-week sure set Jim up royally, didn't he? Making the threat while also making sure the threat will not be taken seriously - not until it's too late, that is.
Good ol' Artie! Keighley hears dragon and blows Jim off, but Artie hears dragon and says it couldn't have been that, so it must have been a sophisticated bomb of some kind. I'll take Artie's estimation of Jim over Keighley's any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Cute how they wrote the scene so that Artie would get angry enough at Keighley to slam the compact down on the desk, all so he could discover the picture in the pattern of jewels on its surface.
(By the way, I took a pair of screen shots, one of the compact, the other of the dots before Artie connects them, and frankly I don't think the dots match up with the jewels on the compact. Just sayin'.)
Also, Artie says the dots represent the diamonds. Fairly sure it's the rubies that made the dots; the diamonds look much shorter to me. Just sayin' again!
*sigh* Artie may think that the design on the compact is a strong enough link between the woman and the dragon-bomb that Keighley has to believe Jim now, but given the viewers' brief acquaintance with the blowhard lieutenant, I think it's more likely Keighley wouldn't believe Jim until and unless the sea serpent came up and bit Keighley on the leg. (Which is practically what happens later anyway.)
Love the little exchange about the silver dollar. (I notice Jim's thumb is conveniently covering up the date on the coin.) Only thing is, if the dollar will blow up after five seconds' exposure to heat over 110 degrees, should Artie really have tossed the coin at the gas lamp? (At least the lamp wasn't turned on!)
I also love the banter about nobody knowing anything about jewels - not even the jewelers.
(Now that I took such a close look at the compact, every time they show a close-up on it, I think what a shoddy job somebody did of anchoring the 'jewels' on its surface.)
I absolutely love the idea of three anchors representing a seagoing pawn shop!
So is the buxom naiad adorning the front of the Three Anchors the same fetching gal who graced the barroom of the Bucket of Blood in TNOT Samurai, I wonder?
Love the interior of the pawn shop! I can imagine the set dressers and propmen clearing out several storerooms to find all of that eye-catching
Ah, Captain Pratt! Such a colorful character - barely stops talking, doesn't he? (Authentic-est is a marvelous word, isn't it? A bear to spell, but great to hear.)
I notice the 'finest carved figurehead' has a swath of cloth draped demurely across her, ah... assets. Oh, and she's got a sword tucked through the crook of her arm!
Seriously, who would need a jewel-encrusted peg leg???
Artie's grinning up a storm; I think he finds Capt Pratt an incredibly colorful character too. (And maybe he's memorizing him for future disguise material?)
Pratt does a Popeye squinky eye!
Capt Pratt's not such a good poker player, is he?
Who said anything about dragons? Why, Artie did!
Now, Capt Pratt says the Mermaid Tavern is on Grand St. I'm sure he said Grand with a D - no matter what the closed captioning has to say about it. Oh, and then he tells Our Heroes to be there at two bells. Be helpful if he'd translate that into regular landlubber time!
Whose eyes are those behind the eye for the Chinese junk?
Jim too pronounces it Grand St. But then we see the sign which says plain as day: GRANT ST.
By the way, if Jim didn't know the Mermaid was on Grant St, how'd he ever find it in the first place?
I love the way Artie acts once they get to the Mermaid, teasing Jim unmercifully! Right up until the time King Neptune attacks.
I will never understand why the music for this particular bar fight is so cutesy. I do love the bar fight! Artie (Bob Herron, I presume) goes flying over the bar to tussle with the bartender while Jim takes on the two lugs in the main part of the room. Why, though, Jim pulls back his arm to paste the second guy, then pauses to wag his finger at him before belting him so hard he smacks into the bar across the room - well, that's another thing I don't understand.
Now, I really love Artie and the barkeep popping back up into view with Artie spritzing the guy with the foam from a bottle of beer. Sadly, the beer runs out of foam way too quickly. No problem for Artie, though: he puts the bottle into the bartender's hand - WHO HOLDS ONTO IT! - and then Artie pastes the guy, sending him reeling into the wall.
But I have one more objection: Artie's slinging the beer off his hands! Why oh why did Uncle Artie go out to work without a handkerchief in his pocket, huh? He always had a handkerchief on hand before! And since, too, I think.
Off to the Three Anchors once more - and this is probably my least favorite scene in the whole episode. I really liked Capt Pratt, and it certainly wasn't his fault Jim and Artie won the bar fight! But the squirrely little captain is no more. Yes, the sight of Our Heroes' informant dangling from the ceiling drew Jim in far enough for him to stand on the trapdoor (which apparently the captain already had installed in his room), but land's sakes! There are plenty of less terminal ways to catch Jim West's attention!
Fine little fight in the sandpit below, with Jim tossing the minions around one after the other (one of them, I'm pretty sure, being Dick Cangey). But then someone smacks Jim from behind with a cosh - and oh, look at that! We finally lay eyes on the Big Bad of the episode for the Act One freeze frame!
Back to the eye of the Chinese junk, just to establish where we are again (the late lamented Capt Pratt's pawn shop) as Artie, having given Jim his requested ten minutes, now comes in search of his partner. Someone's tidied the place up in the meantime, in particular removed the dangling corpse! (By the way, the bird in the cage in Pratt's back room: real or stuffed? Never moves, so I say stuffed - but then, why keep it in a cage? It ain't goin' nowhere!)
Back to Grant St - and now the location of the Mermaid Tavern has become Maude's Dress Shoppe. The use of the name Maude here cracks me up - and so does Artie's hiding of his face from the lacy unmentionables in the dress shop window.
Poor Artie finds himself in another of those 'they whisked so well' situations (referencing TNOT Skulls). He gives his nose a thump.
(Oh, and those doors, whether they give entrance to the Mermaid or to Maude's, every time someone opens 'em or rattles 'em, they strike me as extremely flimsy doors!)
What an opulent bed Jim is laid out upon! Here's Dominique again, being her usual icky self, dressed in her piratical best. What is it about her that annoys me so? Well, part of it is the way she talks; she doesn't sound like a real person, but like someone putting on a snooty voice. I guess maybe it's her air of smug superiority. (Maybe it's the faky eyelashes.) Maybe it's the fact that she isn't charmed by either of Our Heroes, nor does she make any real effort to charm either of them. (Antoinette at least flirted with Jim!) Her lines here about not giving Jim a lift off the doomed gambling ship because she hates cramped quarters, so that she left him there to possibly be killed. Yeah, she's too mean for my taste, even for a villain, and lacking any of the redeeming qualities of the more endearing class of villain.
And then she kisses Jim, but even that doesn't strike me as particularly flirtatious. Jim reacts by telling her, with a big grin on his face, that he doesn't have the compact.
So why does she make reference to the Marquis, using that word, and when Jim asks, 'The Marquis de la Mer?' she corrects him so sternly with 'Phillipe de la Mer'? What was wrong with what Jim called him? (Methinks the lady just wants to be angry at Jim!)
Ah, the Marquis again, all jackboots and leather. At least now he can say West with a w instead of a v at the beginning. (The puffer fish couldn't.)
The Marquis has an interesting gadget in his bedroom for despensing ale. He's quite a gadgeteer in general. 'Poorly-fashioned accessory' - yeah, that's what I've been saying about the compact ever since the dots scene!
So... the Marquis strolls across the room to plunk the string of a ukulele-ish-looking instrument mounted on the wall, and the bed to which Jim is tied spread-eagle (don't tell me that wasn't a bit of fan-service on the director's part!) rises up until the mattress is vertical. Jim and the Marquis talk about how this allows the Marquis to simply walk out of bed in the morning - but the mechanism to cause the bed to do that is located across the room! In order to cause the bed to lift up and let him walk out of bed, he first has to get up and go pluck the string waaaay over there! Someone didn't think that one through very well.
I do like Jim's line that the one who has had the most difficulty in the matter is Capt Pratt.
Dominique arrives and whispers in the Marquis' ear. Reminds me of Antoinette showing up in Murderous Spring to whisper in Loveless' ear. Makes me wonder if the writers needed to move the plot on to the next scene, couldn't think of what to have happen, so hey, just deliver an unheard message and go on to the next scene! Nice little plot device.
Dominique smiles when told to stay with Jim and watch him - and what a cannon she produces and points at Jim when he attempts to flirt with her!
Of all people for Artie to wind up venting to about the disappearance of Jim, why oh why does it have to be Keighley???
And why does Keighley think the scenario Artie puts forth is preposterous? I think the lieutenant is too prejudiced against Our Heroes to be able (or willing) to put his brain into gear to actually consider what Artie is saying at this point.
Artie doesn't like being called cracked.
And great segue back to Jim and the Marquis, with Jim calling his captor that exact word!
By the way, it seems to me that Jim's plan is to make the Marquis so annoyed with his disbelief that he'll take Jim to see what he's talking about, to prove to Jim it's real. This would be a good goal for Jim, since for one thing it'd get him untied from that bed, and for another, it would put Jim within range of the dragon torpedo to possibly put the swimming bomb out of commission. (It doesn't quite work out like that, but Jim gets his way eventually.)
De la Mer, by the way, sounds a good bit like Capt Philo, the villain from Deadly Bubble.
So he doesn't want to start the negotiations until after he's killed a huge amount of people, Admiral Farragut among them. Charming fellow, ain't he?
By the way, in the background there are a couple of aquaria sitting on whimsical supports, one of them what looks like a one-legged table, the other some sort of shell? (Oh, and I think that's the bottom of the blue chandelier hanging above the scene too!)
I can't figure out what the Marquis says to Dominique. Closed captioning has it, 'Dominique, we'll have to start wasting time retrieving the compact from Mr Gordon' - and that's what it sounds to me like he says too. But surely he means they have to stop wasting time??
And now we see that other gadget: the disintegrating force field. This too seems to me to be something the writers (or whoever came up with it) didn't think through very well. As somebody (and I sure wish I could remember who!) said once upon a time on one of the WWW forums (argh - as with the plural of aquarium, I really really want to type the plural of forum as fora...), if you have something as powerful as a disintegrating force field, why bother playing around with toy dragon-bombs? All he has to do is figure out how to deploy that force field and he'll have the world by the throat!
It just so happens that when Jim put on his up-the-sleeve device before heading out to work the day before, he thought to himself, 'Instead of the usual derringer in this device, I should load a knife instead.' *nods*
Have I mentioned how much I love that mauve cloak of Artie's? Here he goes down the street wearing it, all bundled up under it... Passes the Three Anchors, passes the jeweler's shop he and Jim visited the night before... And happens to draw the notice of Dominique and some minions. Yes, that's what Artie hoped would happen, that they would see him, but sure is convenient that they happened along in that carriage at just the right moment!
Down the alley he goes, with the two henchies on his trail, and as someone on the WWW fora mentioned a while back (pretty sure it was Dieter!), Artie does his quickest quick change of the entire series! Just time it: he's not out of view for more than three seconds. Sure, that's time enough to ditch the cloak and the broad-brimmed hat - but is it also enough time to put on the wig, the other hat, and the mustache? Hmm???
That song makes just no sense! But it's fun hearing him sing it.
He just has to peek into the carriage and give the girl the eye! Come to think of it, I believe that's his first glimpse of Dominique.
Look at the way he holds his fingers when he walks into the Three Anchors! What on earth is wrong with his hands? Drunken hands! (Oh, and come to think of it, Artie doesn't know that Pratt is dead.)
Hey, I think I recognize the guy who isn't Capt Pratt. Pretty sure he was sitting outside the Three Anchors when Jim and Artie walked in the night before. (Took a couple of screen shots and compared them: same guy with the same clothes, all right - but now he's wearing Capt Pratt's hat.)
Two guns and a knife, and Artie drops right out of the drunken Swedish character. (Mission accomplished!)
So... it's a force field that disintegrates anything that comes in contact with it, right? So how come Jim throws his knife right through it? Again, not well thought through! (Yeah, the knife's handle is trailing a little smoke, but still!)
The guards can hear that the force field is off, so they come peeking in... and yes, that is the same blue chandelier from other episodes! Nice brief fight scene - but you'd think henchies who work for a guy who has disintegrating force fields strewn throughout the house would think twice before running towards the location of one of the said force fields. (Just sayin'.)
*snicker* There's Whitey wearing a beard and mustache, and a big black eye patch. *grin*
So Jim takes out that pair of guards as well, rushes to the front door, opens it... and the Marquis is standing right outside with his gun at the ready! What, is the guy clairvoyant? (If he was, this whole business would work out a lot better for him in the end, I dare say.)
That looks very much like the foyer of Dr Loveless' house in TNOT Raven, except that what was the front door here led into the good doctor's lab in the other episode.
However, now Jim is in the same room with the sea dragon. That's a plus. Ish.
(Look at allllll those barrels marked GUN POWDER!)
I do wonder though: why does the sea dragon have the fire coming out of its nostrils while it's just hanging around, and especially in a room containing so much gun powder? Wouldn't you have a no open flames policy for the gun powder magazine? Anyway, I can see having the dragon spout flames when it's out there on its run against the shipping, but why while it's in storage, huh? Another of those not-well-thought-through moments.
'I'm just appreciating.' Great line!
And what's the first thing that happens as the Marquis leads Jim closer to the dragon? One of the henchies turns off the flames. Guess they had been turned on expressly to impress Jim when he first saw the dragon - but he'd seen one before, so huh?
The Marquis gives us a history lesson on torpedoes, then a demonstration on the workings of the dragon.
What a tin dictator vision he has for his country of La Mer! He definitely put himself on Jim's Stop This Guy at All Costs list!
Ah, and here comes Artie. I absolutely love his lines in this scene! Love his interactions with everyone all around him too.
Love how Artie's misses the last step, and the Marquis takes the opportunity to call him 'the ever-graceful Mr Gordon.'
The place where Artie has hidden the compact points up yet again that he couldn't possibly have changed into that disguise in a mere three seconds.
The 'make them uncomfortable' line - the 'pillar to post' line - somebody was having a great day for writing when they churned out that scene!
Our Heroes are just openly discussing the case in the hearing of the Marquis' minions. What if they hit on something they don't want the minions to report to their boss, huh?
(Love the drawings on the wall of the dragon, by the way!)
One of my favorite bits in this episode is Keighley's face and voice when he says, 'A woman aboard a US man-o'-war???' (Because it's such an in-character Keighley line.)
As the henchies leave the room where Jim & Artie are tied up, you can see that loose board that becomes important later.
Kick up the heels. At this point I noticed how the two posts they are tied to are at such a convenient distance apart (namely, leg length).
One thing Dominique may not have realized was how very much Keighley despised West's warnings about the dragons.
So she plays the weeping female card. Very likely that was the only thing that would get through to Keighley.
Her fake crying is so very intensely fake. Seriously, I wonder how Keighley failed to smell the onion in her hanky! (But the one and only thing I ever like about Dominique is the face she makes when she pulls that onion out of the hanky and drops it - and even there she overdoes it.)
Sometimes I wonder: when the guys are tied up and one unties the other, were the actors really tied up and having to undo the knots for each other?
Good thing Artie backs up when he steps on the loose board and triggers the force field! The henchies outside the door hear the thing crank up, so they go to take a peek inside...
...and Our Heroes are at the posts, arms behind them, just like they oughta be. The agents talk so casually as the henchie comes to check on things, then wham! they take the guy out!
This time they jump over the loose board. And oh, the teamwork! This bit is pure gold! Knock on the door, call out as if the inside henchie, 'One, two, three' - open the door, and Jim knocks the guy down the steps. Then out go Our Heroes with such a pair of jaunty waves!
So what is that liquid in the fountain? It's purple, so is it wine?
At least this time when Jim opens the front door, there's not anyone standing outside it! But as soon as Jim turns around after seeing Artie off, here comes the Marquis again.
Oh, yay - another set of force field generators!
The Marquis gives Jim his choice: die by bullet or by disintegration. But when we come back from the commercials, the Marquis says instead that he wants Jim to stay alive to be his negotiator. Well, I'm glad he's not gonna kill Jim right away, but he sure sounds like he flips flops a LOT.
Dominique's superior tone of voice irks me yet again! At least Keighley sounds more reasonable now - pity he's being reasonable about the wrong thing.
And there she goes, saying stuff about the 'silly old admiral' and calling the Virginia a boat! I'm a bit shocked that Keighley doesn't get mad at her for talking like that.
Oh, she never never should have pulled out that compact! I suppose she didn't know Our Heroes had shown the thing to Keighley.
Artie, you really should have looked behind the door!
(Love the look of that shirt on Artie!)
The disguised periscope on the roof of the house - that's genius!
Every so often the Marquis' leather jacket squeaks on the sound track.
As the camera dollies in on the Marquis' 'distant grandchildren of my tawdry dragons' speech, you can see Jim rolling his eyes in the background.
So when they add the gunpowder, they pour it in. Then the Marquis closes the little hatch that covers the gunpowder - and I really do not think that closure is in any way waterproof. The gunpowder could and should get wet!
Jim knows now he hasn't much time left to stop the dragon.
When the Marquis says to connect the wires to the detonator, someone flips a switch and the dragon's eyes light up. And when he turns back after arming the dragon, the nostrils are flaming.
Back when they opened the hatch, there wasn't anything hanging down from the underside of the dragon; the hatch would have hit it. But when they lower the dragon through the hatch into the water, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of extension sticking down from the underside, like a keel or something.
Jim makes his move! Double elbows to the guys holding him, kick to the Marquis, swinging on the rope toward the other henchies! Somebody really hollers as he falls against something on the wall that catches fire.
Whitey kicks Jim onto the loose board, turning the force field back on.
Ah, and there goes the Marquis, getting hoist by his own petard by stumbling right into his precious force field!
Ok, time for Jim to go swimming! That dragon must not go very fast, considering what a head start it had on Jim. (But now I realize why the henchies had to strip Jim of his jacket and vest, so he could be in a thin white shirt for the swimming scene.)
Boy, that dragon's whirring sound certainly precedes it.
Time for Dominique's quick exit. She sure doesn't freak out over being on a doomed ship. What was in that fake jewel she threw?
And... Jim catches up to the dragon. Meanwhile Artie is busting out the window to clear out the smoke from the bomb.
Oh good! Artie spotted the compact! Stomp it good, Artie! (Actually, the crunch sound effect doesn't quite match up with the stomp visual.) (Oh, and the components inside look more like something you could buy at Radio Shack in the 1960's instead of something the Marquis would have had to devise on his own in the 1870's.)
And once again, Artie the gadgeteer and Jim the action hero have worked together so that Jim has exactly the gadget he needs with him to destroy the dragon. (Good thing he had that silver dollar in his pants pocket rather than a pocket of his jacket or vest...) As he places the dollar on the dragon's nose, you can see a small patch of a different color to which Jim attaches the dollar.
Swim away, Jim, swim away!
Boom! Still a cheesy explosion special effect.
The tag is so much fun. I don't know if the newspaper report really should have identified Artie by name. And why doesn't Dominique have a last name?
Wonder when Artie's supposed to give that speech he's rehearsing. Sure love his 'I'm so sick' bit: the voice, the hair, the foot bath, the horse blanket, the bare chest, etc. And the line about double pneumonia in his showboating days!
Jim: It's not that I'm not interested - because I am! (Yeah, we all believe you, Jim.)
Hey, why is that dragon torpedo in the parlor anyway, huh??? (Must be a spare they found in the Marquis' house, but still.)
'Take your pills.' I still don't understand the pill business...
...because it looks like he's about to take the pill (it's pink; he just took the yellow one), and then he puts it on the box instead to demonstrate dropping aerial bombs on the submarines...
...only to have the pill explode when it hits the water! So was that his medicine? Was it supposed to do that? And if it wasn't his medicine, where did it come from and why did he nearly take it??? (Enquiring minds want to know!)
(At least that dragon torpedo didn't have its nostril flames turned on!)
I might add that, even with all the objections noted above, this episode is one that I return to again and again to watch and enjoy. Not sure why it's one of my favorites - not even sure if I would name it as among my favorites if I were asked to list them - but the fact is that I definitely watch it a lot. (Maybe it's the drunken Swede disguise!) (Or hey, maybe it's the ill-fated Capt Pratt.)
(Or Whitey in the eye patch?)