#2 dilf

Homoerotic bandaging™️

Behind the scenes of The Lazarus Experiment (Part One)

Excerpts from Benjamin Cook’s article in DWM 383

David Tennant arrives.  He’s wearing a tux, and black Converse trainers. The director, Richard Clark, wants him to dash across to the control area, and sonic the main panel.  “So,” repeats David, “I say the line, something explodes, then I jump over there…”

“We’ll rehearse a few times before we do the explosion,” clarifies Richard. “You’re going to have to jump as quickly as possible.”

“You any good at parkour, then?” asks Julian Howarth, the sound recordist.

“Oh yes,” smiles David.  “I base all of my work on that.”

“Bang! Bang! Bang!” calls out Dan Mumford, the First Assistant director, because the pyrotechnics get saved for the final take.

“Something’s wrong!” screams David.  “It’s overloading!”

“This is the panel that’s exploding,” explains Richard, afterwards, “so this is the one to be on, David.  Another rehearsal, please.”

DWM asks David whether he knows what all of these buttons do.  “Of course,” he insists.  “I recognise some of them: they were on Sanctuary Base Six!”

[after Mark Gatiss arrives on set, and they discuss the extra (whom they have nicknamed “Helga”) whose acting is rather unconvincing]  A take.  At last. Sparks spurt over Helga.  “Helga doesn’t feel pain,” murmurs Mark.

But David does.  He catches his hand on the control panel.  “Ouch!” he yells, only a bit ruder.

As he nurses his finger, DWM distracts David from the painful throbbing sensation by asking him inane questions.  For instance, what age he would revert to if he had his own Genetic Manipulation Device?  “There are things that I’d like to do better in my teenage years,” he admits, “but that’d mean living through them all again.  It’s tempting, isn’t it?  But I suspect that way utter, utter madness probably lies.  No, I’m quite happy being where I am right now.  I don’t feel a yearning for a lost youth.  Maybe that’ll come?”

“Perhaps,” suggests DWM, “you aren’t old enough to yearn for your youth?”

David chuckles.  “Well, I don’t know…! I’m past the first flush.” He considers this. “I’m past the second flush, probably.”

In those last few seconds, Aziraphale and Crowley were saying fond goodbyes. They were thinking of each other -- of the depth of their history, and of how very together they were, and, a little bit, of their regrets.

The other side of a regret is a wish. Specifically, it's a wish that things had been different. And when angels and demons wish for things, reality often has a way of bending around them, even if all they're thinking of is each other.

A few years ago, Aziraphale and Crowley desperately tried to hide a little half-miracle from Heaven; they weren't completely sure of themselves, and they had the awkward distraction of dealing with Jim in the meantime. That teeny-tiny little half-a-miracle ended up warping reality the same amount as if they'd brought Lazarus back to life 25 times.

This time, Aziraphale and Crowley weren't hiding anything; they were united and committed in front of their very maker, and their thoughts were pure. They loved each other, and they loved humanity, and they wished they'd been allowed to choose each other like humans do.

Reality listened. In effect, they held hands with no one between them and did an 8 billion Lazarii miracle. They brought themselves and the universe they knew forward into the universe being created anew.

It took a while (13.8 billion years), but the stuff that had once made up people and histories who had disintegrated before our eyes eventually reintegrated. For all the power of the Book of Life, Aziraphale and Crowley weren't undone. The world had a connection to Aziraphale and Crowley, and Aziraphale and Crowley made a connection to the next universe. And like Michael carrying the Archangels with her, they carried the world with them. It wasn't a one-way relationship, either; the remaining hints of the wills of people who had been erased clung to that one little bridge for dear existence. That's what free will looks like when there's nothing else left.

It wasn't a perfect duplicate of the old universe. The people couldn't be angels or demons, of course, so the angels and demons all got stirred into humanity. But it turns out a sapient being is a sapient being. Everyone was also starting from scratch, experience-wise, which leads to questions about whether they were the same people at all. But they were certainly continuations of the same stories.

You could argue that this means there was technically celestial interference in humanity’s next course, but all the quantum-level stuff that was brought over from the previous universe had to slog through billions of years of the laws of physics before any of it came together in a human way we would recognize, and it could have been stopped at any time if it weren't made of the echoes of people trying really hard, so I think it's earned its place in this universe, too.

As for God, She's on the outside, off doing something ineffable somewhere else. She knew right away that the new universe was made of the same stuff, including the same people (for starters, anyway) as the previous one. But She had already set the parameters: She could not interfere.

Hi, Good Omens fam, long time no see. I miss you! We're all still dealing with the finale and the fallout one way or another and this post is explicitly not supposed to be a place to argue about it in any way.

Understandably emotions are still running high, but no matter how you feel about it all, your feelings are valid! Hopefully there's still one motto we all agree on, so my Good Omens LEGO babies and I come bearing a little throwback to S1 as a gift for you.

These two want to bring you a little happiness in those hard times and hopefully make you smile with a little re-enactment of this famous moment.

They really did their best to get it as close to the original setting as possible, but please forgive any discrepancies. Almost 2000 years is a long time after all! 😉

Please enjoy, reblog, like, comment,... and most importantly:

You have explicit permission for non-commercial use of this Ineffable LEGO photo as long as you don't alter it and/or remove the credit! Be kind to each other (and to yourself). ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤎🩵🩷🤍

Good Omens and the wrong thing

Bonus silliness:

Well, here it is.

I have to say - for a verrrry long time, Quality Control was one of those David Tennant credits that sat on my research list surrounded by question marks. As I'd shared beore on A Tennantcy To Act, I knew the film had been broadcast, but beyond that, very little seemed certain.

All of that changed very quickly once I found Hannah Lewis, who wrote and directed the film, and Duncan McLean, whose short story inspired it. From them came surviving VHS copies, production records, recovered memories....and eventually, the original 16mm print itself.

None of this would have happened without Hannah's generosity. Not only did she preserve the film all these years, she very kindly gave permission for me to share it with y'all, so that David's fans could finally see it.

So, after years of research and more than a few unexpected twists along the way, I'm delighted to finally share Quality Control.

Enough from me. You've waited long enough.