Christmas Carols

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 22:21:56 GMT

I've been following my Christmas tradition, by watching an episode of "The Real Ghostbusters": Xmas marks the spot. Basically, this is their version of "A Christmas Carol".

There are various adaptations of this story, and most of them fall into 2 categories:
1. Played straight as a costume/period drama, the same way that you might see a Jane Austen story.
2. Re-casting the roles for existing characters, e.g. Bob Cratchit is played by Mickey Mouse in "Mickey's Christmas Carol", and by Kermit the Frog in "A Muppet Christmas Carol".

The Ghostbusters version is different, because it's basically a crossover. So, it takes the original story as a starting point, then goes in a different direction. Some of the lines come directly from Dickens, e.g. Scrooge saying that "There's more of gravy than of grave about you" when he's sceptical about the ghosts.

The episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski (who later went on to create "Babylon 5"); generally, I'd say that he and Kathryn M. Drennan wrote the best episodes of the series.

Digressing slightly, I've read a lot of superhero comics where the basic premise is that two heroes will meet, fight each other, then team up. Typically the initial fight is due to a misunderstanding, but it works better when they have proper character motivations. A good example comes from when Acclaim did the Valiant heroes (in the late 90s), and Magnus Robot Fighter met X-O Manowar. Magnus was a time-traveller, from a future where humans has become completely dependent on technology to the extent that they were subservient to robots. Donovan Wylie had the X-O armour (similar to an Iron Man suit), and he relied on that technology to solve problems. So, they both had good reasons to be at loggerheads with each other.

Coming back to this episode, the basic premise is that ( Spoilers for episode from 1986 )

So, if you've never seen this episode, I highly recommend it. I've got the DVDs, but you can stream it via Amazon.

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John C. Kirk

Christmas Carols