belphegor1982 | Entries tagged with 30 days of...

Last entry, a day late - I can’t believe it’s been a month already. It’s been fun :o)

Day 30 – What is it that you love most about Hogan’s Heroes?

The humour and the friendship and interactions between the characters. The fact that said characters almost always triumph out of guile and cleverness and sheer outrageous audacity. The fact that, even if you know it’s a sitcom with a laugh track and things will turn out all right, the moments of genuine tension are not played for laughs. The very fact that they made a sitcom set in a WW2 POW camp (I mean, seriously, it’s ridiculous when you think about it! :D).

And the fandom. Whenever I hear bad stuff happening in other fandoms I’m grateful to be in one of the nicest, warmest fandoms I know :o)

THE END (?)

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Doors, "The End"

Day 29 – Just tell us anything. Pick a random thing you want to get off your chest about the show.

One of my personal explanations for Kinch’s total absence (even in passing mention) in season 6 is that it’s actually an alternate universe in which he doesn’t exist, and fate/the powers that be/whatever made it so that Baker landed in Stalag 13 instead. I wish the script writers had (taken the?) time to develop this character; since he’s significantly younger than the rest of the cast, I tend to see him as the clever youngest brother who looks up to his older siblings, but is grounded and level-headed enough that he doesn’t feel he has to prove himself (and is absolutely correct) because he knows he brings his very own talents to the team.

Now, in the head canon I use most, both Kinch and Baker are prisoners in Barracks 2; both are radiomen, so they can relay each other. They speak the same jargon, and sometimes their conversations are completely obscure to non-radio geeks.

But now I wonder what Baker would do/have done in situations that relied on Kinch: would he make the same choices? Have the same reactions? And what if the universes collide, and one day Kinch takes Baker’s place, or vice versa? How would the others react?

If you’re wondering, yes, this is a plot bunny I’d love to see adopted :o)

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Four Star Mary, "Pain" (Slayer mix)

Day 28 – What do you think happened to the characters (Allied and German) after the war?

Well, Hogan probably stayed in the military, along with Kinch – and I can’t see Hogan not pulling strings and use his cunning for an integrated army. When I think of the kind of everyday crap Kinch (and the other African-American soldiers, but we’re speaking of the main characters of Hogan’s Heroes here) must have come home to after the war… Makes my blood boil. I can see the team’s Americans taking part in the March on Washington if they weren’t in Vietnam, too.

Carter passed the pharmacy test and took over when the old pharmacist retired. I’m absolutely certain that he volunteered to take care of New Year and 4th of July fireworks, and he turned out so good at it (surprisingly ;o) that he was immediately promoted in charge of every fireworks display in the county. People came over from other places to see his fireworks, he was that good :o)

I have a headcanon of LeBeau going back to Paris and working hard to start a restaurant, which would be difficult in immediate post-war France (rationing only stopped around 1950) – but this is LeBeau we’re talking about: he mastered guerilla cooking with Red Cross parcels, getting a restaurant started wouldn’t be so hard :D I have no idea what Newkirk would be up to, but in my head he came back to Mavis (and a possible brother-in-law) and … I like to think that he went into show business (possibly magic), and ended up at the Palladium, with his name in lights.

Klink was probably detained for a bit right after Germany’s capitulation, but released soon enough, in great part due to Hogan’s statement that, for all his faults, he never committed war crimes – the most he could be charged with was petty embezzlement and an unhealthy amount of grovelling before his superiors. I like to imagine him being a bookkeeper for a while, in a small book store, where he doesn’t have to deal with annoyed generals and annoying Americans – much :P

Schultz rebuilt his toy factory from the ground and gave a job to as many people he could. He made cheap and hardy toys, the kind everyone can afford, because that way more children can play, and children playing makes him happy. LeBeau sent him his strudel recipe one Christmas, and even though Gretchen’s cooking is still not quite to his liking (still, it’s better than the mess hall!), her strudel skills have vastly improved ;o)

Burkhalter stood trial and did some time in a military jail; when he got out, he found it immensely difficult to adjust to the new world dynamics, and never quite fitted in.

Hochstetter was last seen trying to flee the Russian advance on Berlin. He disappeared off the face of the Earth. And that’s all I’m saying about it.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Lou Reed, "Walk on the Wild Side"

Day 27 – Favourite reference (to a real-life WW2 incident/fictional shout-out/anachronistic 1960s random nod)?

I love that they had the bloody cheek to make Klink chief of Staff during D-Day, thus having our Heroes take part (and what a part!) in one of the most important (both in terms of scale and significance) operations of the century. I mean, really XD

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: The Beatles, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"

Day 26 – Favourite denouement/wrap-up scene/episode ending? (If not, favourite loose end. Or both.)

Hogan and his guys have done a lot of crazy things right in the middle of camp, in plain sight of everybody (and I’m not counting the stuff they do outside the wire): steal and dismantle a Tiger tank, steal and sabotage a mini-tank, make countless people disappear (as far as the Germans are concerned)… But for me, the best denouement has to be when they put back together a freaking plane and fly it out of the Stalag in “The Flight of the Valkyrie”.

The plane had crash-landed nearby a while ago; they recuperated the pilot and the parts and stored them in the tunnels; then Hogan cons Klink into lending them a tent for the (non-existent) prisoner orchestra to practice their Wagner while they rebuilt the plane in the aforementioned tent … All this while dealing with Crittendon’s first appearance in Stalag 13.

The scene when the plane flies out of the camp to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries is so outrageous that it bypasses egregious and goes straight to glorious :o)

Current Music: Queen, "Keep Yourself Alive"

Day 25 – Movie speculation time. Is there a particular character you have an unimpeachable fancast for?

I can’t unsee Nathan Fillion as Hogan. Seriously, the more I watch him in different roles the more I think he’d be perfect for Hogan (even though he might be getting a little too old for the part if the movie gets done in five or ten years – Hollywood is merciless that way).

I have no idea about the others, except that the producers should get German or Austrian actors for Klink and Schultz (and Burkhalter if he’s in the script) and a French actor for LeBeau. Shortish, if possible, and good at both drama and comedy. For some reason (apart from my fancast of Hogan), I have trouble seeing “big name” actors for the characters …

Actually, I’m just hoping that, if indeed they make a movie, they do it right.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Murray Gold, "Words Win Wars"

Day 24 – How did you get into Hogan’s Heroes?

I had watched some of the show when I was a kid, but my memory of it was hazy at best. In late autumn 2011 the show as rerunning on French TV, and I watched a few episodes, which I loved. I then tracked it on Internet and fell in love, hard enough to buy the series on DVD later.

As usual when I discover a new show/book/film, I went on FFnet to search for decent stories … and found an amazing fandom, talented, dedicated people with a great sense of humour, who were kind enough to welcome me warmly into the fold. Best fandom ever.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Adele, "Set Fire to the Rain"

Day 23 – Least favourite part of the show (a scene/line/character/something that made you cringe)?

I really hate the part in “Drums Along the Düsseldorf” where Newkirk and LeBeau make fun of Carter’s Sioux heritage. It makes me frankly uncomfortable and I want to knock their heads together every single time I see this episode. I try to keep a mental balance between what pertains to the politically correct and what pertains to humour, but to me this scene is just not funny. The only redeeming part is that Carter actually gets angry, and that that is not played for laughs.

Carter: (after the guys ask him for a rain dance) We Sioux aren’t too much on rain dances. Massacres are more our style. And if you two fellows will wait until I get through carving this little bow and arrow, I’ll be happy to give you a little demonstration!

And then he messes up the bow and arrow trick later in the episode and Newkirk has to do it :( Honestly, without going all Tumblr social justice warrior mode, I’d have loved if Carter did fire the arrow right and set the truck on fire. It would have made up for some of Newkirk’s and LeBeau’s not-so-good-natured ribbing.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Henry Mancini, "The Pink Panther"

Day 22 – Favourite fandom-related thing? Can be an author, a story, a piece of fanart … Something you really love.

I think my favourite Hogan’s Heroes fanfiction is still and always will be dust on the wind’s Perfect Pitch.

It’s about Burkhalter ‘enrolling’ Hogan and his guys to sing in the Hammelburger Chorgemeinschaft– male voices choir – to please his wife (I swear it makes sense in context), and our Heroes taking advantage of this to retrieve and rescue Robert Morrison, a deep cover agent from the episode “Bad Day in Berlin”, with the help of a generously-built Italian soprano. Music is present throughout the story in various forms; the grand finale, when the whole choir plus orchestra perform Beethoven’s An Die Freude (the Ode to Joy from his Ninth Symphony), is nothing short of glorious, but there’s a short but quite powerful moment when Burkhalter is not quite convinced that Hogan’s men can sing, and Lieutenant Doyle (fantastic original character, by the way) has them sing Jerusalem (a hymn that became the anthem for British resistance to adversity) in front of the Germans. Yes, there are stakes to songs, and important ones, too.

All original characters have personal stakes in the story, believable arcs, and the ending is very satisfying. The character of Lieutenant Doyle has since then featured in a few other stories by the same author, to the delight of her readers. All in all, one of my favourite stories on this site, which is saying a lot, considering the sheer number of fanfictions :o)

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Norah Jones, "Don't Know Why"

Day 21 – Scariest scene/character/episode/bit?

In retrospect, probably the (short) scene in “Two Nazis for the Price of One” where Hogan is ordered to neutralise a SS officer by all means necessary, because he’s heard of the Manhattan Project (Hogan and the guys have no idea what it’s about). It comes down to Hogan grabbing a gun and resolved to shoot the guy.

Who is currently lounging in Klink’s office, that is to say in plain sight of a number of guards.

It’s not really played up, but what Hogan is prepared to do is plain and simple self-sacrifice. An Allied prisoner shooting a German soldier in the middle of a German POW camp? If he’s not killed instantly after the deed, he’s facing Gestapo torture and eventually, a concentration camp. His best hope is killing the officer, and then being shot right after so he doesn’t reveal anything about the Stalag 13 set-up to the Gestapo.

Fortunately, the SS officer is an utter bastard and has been treating his adjutant like crap for a long time. The adjutant ends up shooting his officer himself just as Hogan walks in.

Still, and for all that it’s quite short, the aforementioned implications make this scene much darker than the usual tone of the series. Author Snooky9093 wrote a what-if story (No Way Out) about the consequences of Hogan shooting the officer instead of the adjutant; great story, but it’s every bit as dark as it sounds.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Thomas Fersen, "Monsieur"

Day 20 – For a number of reasons, the writers never mentioned the Final Solution on the show. Should they have? If you think so, how do you believe they could have broached the subject?

I really don’t see how they could have, to tell the truth (but then again, I’m not a script writer). Not only the horrors of the Shoah weren’t as widely and publicly known in 1965-1971 as they are now, but in the absence of plots over more than one episode long (with two exceptions), there was simply no time to treat the subject in a respectful manner – and I’m not even talking of making or avoiding making it a ‘very special episode’. There have been comedies since then that dealt with the Final Solution (I’m thinking of Life is Beautiful, for one), but in a half-hour comedy series (the premise of which was outlandish and controversial enough) I simply see no way they could have included it in a plot, whether they should have or not.

It’s also one of the reasons I don’t think we’ll ever see a Hogan’s Heroes film. At the time, the war itself was barely twenty years ago, still fresh and vivid in people’s minds and in the loved ones they had lost; now, in two years we’ll commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war, but in some ways hindsight has made the subject even more sensitive than it was. So… I don’t know.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Murray Gold, "By Water Borne"

(For the past week I worked at the library as part of a “work experience” - I guess that’s the right word - and today’s the last day. Loved it, although boy, it’s no picnic and quite tiring!)

Day 19 – An important or trivial event of WW2 you wish had been featured/mentioned on the show.

I’m biased, of course, but I’d have loved a relatively LeBeau-centric episode about the Liberation of Paris. Since there wasn’t, I … extrapolated a little in my first Hogan’s Heroes story, Soul Food (chapter 4, to be precise). That’s what fan fiction is for, isn’t it? In my head, that’s what happened, gratin dauphinois and all ;o)

Current Mood: in a hurry!

Day 18 – A scene, or episode, which made you learn something you didn’t know about WW2.

Before watching “Go Light on the Heavy Water” I didn’t know just how close the Nazis had come to producing nuclear weapons (granted, not that close, thanks to the combined efforts of Norwegian resistance, the British SOE and the French Deuxième Bureau in 1940, but still much too close for comfort). Since then, I’ve read a bit on the subject, and despite the probable inaccuracies I’d like to watch The Heroes of Telemark sometime. It’s a fascinating piece of history.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: The Animals, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

Day 17 – A scene that makes you smile?

Boy, which (funny/heart-warming) one doesn’t? :o)

But I particularly love this one at the end of “The Flame Grows Higher”, where Hogan has just saved Schultz’s bacon, and Hogan jokes that he “[doesn’t] know how [Schultz]’d get through this war without [him]”. Schultz agrees, and adds with a smile:

Schultz: Colonel Hogan, if you ever escape…
Hogan: Yeah?
Schultz: Be a good fellow, and take me with you.

Hogan has no qualms playing Schultz like a fiddle, but from time to time Schultz shows him that he sort of lets himself being played sometimes. Also I get the impression that they gang up on Klink in terms of snark as a(n unspoken) rule. It’s rather hilarious and this example (just outside of Klink’s office) is adorable.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: John Lennon, "Whatever Gets You Through the Night"

Day 16 – A scene that makes you cry?

Okay, it’s actually a toss-up between two episodes of the sixth season. Seriously, I couldn’t choose. Brace yourselves for the dreaded wall of text :o)

( My favourite gut-twisting feels behind the cut... )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Murray Gold, "Amy's Theme"

Starting a week-long "work experience" (I guess that's the correct expression) in our local library today :o) II haven't had hands-on experience with being a librarian for a great long while, so I'm excited and a little bit scared. Wish me luck!

Day 15 – Favourite non canon romantic ship?

Man, the canon ship question was hard enough! I’m not much of a shipper, to tell the truth :o] So I’ll say Major Lutz and Lila Fenster from “Klink vs. the Gonculator”. It’s mainly thanks to Sgt. Moffitt’s amazing story Return of the Informer, in which she weaves the different roles (no less than seven!) played by a recurring actor into one character, a hapless everyman who, after having defected to the Allies, gets shifted around intelligence assignments and runs from unfortunate situation to another – generally something having to do with Stalag 13. He and Lila fall in love during his ‘Major Lutz’ stint, and it’s adorable. The story ends with Lila having been shipped to safety in London and he being sent there too after one final assignment, hopefully to a “nice, safe, boring desk job”. Seriously, this story is adorable and funny as hell, and by the start of the second chapter you’ll end up having a lot of sympathy for the poor guy.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: KT Tunstall, "Suddenly I See"

Day 14 – Favourite canon romantic ship?

Is Klink/himself canon? :P Guess not. I’m going to say Hogan/Tiger, then; both have lives (and affairs, in Hogan’s case – but then we don’t see much of Tiger, so maybe she does, too) and missions which keep them very busy, but from the episodes they appear in together, they’re always very glad to see each other again. They probably won’t sit under the apple tree for each other, but hey, c’est la vie.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Fat Boy Slim, "Praise You"

This is probably one of the longest answers ;o)

Day 13 – Favourite friendship?

In case it’s not been completely obvious from the start – aw, heck, even if it’s completely obvious, I don’t care – Newkirk and LeBeau. Why, you ask? Well.
( How do I begin with these two? )
So, in a nutshell, I love ‘em. Their friendship is one of (if not) my favourite thing about the show, it’s the source of great comedy and sometimes great unexpected drama, and it’s no coincidence that they pop up in most of my stories (at least in a passing mention). That is not to say I don’t love other friendships – I adore the trio of Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau, and Kinch and Hogan is underrated and there needs to be more stories about them – but this is my very favourite.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Eric Clapton and Sting, "It's Probably Me"

I forgot to post the answer to question n.12 yesterday!! Catching up now, then :o)

Day 12 – Least favourite casting/a casting you thought could have been improved with [insert name here]?

I can’t offer any alternative, but as a Frenchwoman, I’m not a fan of all the times a French character was played by an actor/actress who wasn’t, especially when they had to actually speak French or say a few words in French. It’s unfair and it doesn’t do justice to the actors and actresses, I’m aware of it, but it’s glaring and quite jarring, particularly because one of the main cast actually is French, and it’s evident every time he says something. I know that when you shoot a series you take the actors you can get at short notice, and that I should be glad that they actually included a French actor in the first place, but still. It’s a pet peeve of mine.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Johnny Cash, "When the Man Comes Around"

Day 11 – Favourite actress?

I saw The Blues Brothers way before I saw Hogan’s Heroes, but when I finally made the connection and realised that Frau Linkmeyer was a scary nun in Chicago, I laughed my head off. Kathleen Freeman is the only recurring actress who isn’t conventionally pretty, and is there to play the shrewish, small-minded harpy, who is scary because she is 1) forceful, 2) not a beautiful young woman, and 3) a general’s sister (plus a general's (?) widow) and used to a certain amount of obedience from other people. I love Kathleen Freeman’s “Right, Wolfgang? Right” recurring gag when she’s engaged – tells you everything you need to know about her character’s dynamic with a potential husband. She’s in charge, he won’t be able to say a word about anything. The odd thing is, he doesn’t seem to mind too much … At the start ;o)

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Queen and David Bowie, "Under Pressure"

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Belphegor

Procrastination in action

Entries tagged with 30 days of...

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 30

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 29

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 28

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 27

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 26

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 25

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 24

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 23

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 22

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 21

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 20

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 19

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 18

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 17

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 16

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 15

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 14

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 13

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 12

30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 11