Court Martial

I've just joined, so please excuse me if this subject has been
mentioned before. Is the episode of Court Martial missing a
sequence? According to the novelisations by Robert Miall, when
Straker and Freeman go to the electronics shop that supplied the
bugging devices in Foster's flat, our heroes get really ruthless and
pour a can of paraffin over the shop's owner, threatening to set him
alight if he doesn't tell them what they want to know. I haven't
seen this scene in the recent(?) BBC2 repeat, nor in the Digital
Entertainment VHS release, nor in the Carlton DVD release. And yet,
I seem to remember it when this episode was shown on ITV in 1987/88.

Also, a feature in an issue of SIG fanzine describes Straker as being
ruthless enough to do such a thing, in a profile of the character.
I'm confused. The item would of course refer to events in the TV
series, as they can be regarded as canonical, but it's because it
refers to a specific incident in a novelisation that I'm wondering if
my memory is tricking me.

Can anybody clarify this point?

>Also, a feature in an issue of SIG fanzine describes Straker as being
>ruthless enough to do such a thing, in a profile of the character.
>I'm confused. The item would of course refer to events in the TV
>series, as they can be regarded as canonical, but it's because it
>refers to a specific incident in a novelisation that I'm wondering if
>my memory is tricking me.

I suppose it's possible you saw a print with an alternate edit that
wasn't supposed to be released -- it has happened before with other
series...

I've never seen that scene in any broadcast version of the episode.
It *was* in the script, however, but I don't know whether they filmed
it and then edited it out, or whether they didn't film it at all.

Here are those pages from the original script:

http://ufoseries.com/court54.jpg
http://ufoseries.com/court55.jpg

Which reminds me, now that I've gotten those frame captures online,
I need to start working on transcribing some more scripts!

Marc

"docmed03" wrote:
Hi and welcome!

I also seem to remember seeing this scene, but it seems very
unlikely that I did, as by all accounts, it was never actually
filmed! It's much more likely that we both remember the blowtorch
scene from reading the Miall novel, which was based (I believe)
not on the actual TV episodes, but the original scripts, parts
of which were not used.

Whether the 'blowtorch scene' was ever actually scripted, or was
merely added by Miall for extra dramatic flavour, I don't know.
But I'm glad it wasn't used - it would have been far too
heavy-handed.

Cheers
James

--- James Gibbon <james.gibbon@v...> wrote:
> Whether the 'blowtorch scene' was ever actually scripted, or was
> merely added by Miall for extra dramatic flavour, I don't know.
> But I'm glad it wasn't used - it would have been far too
> heavy-handed.

One good reason to drop that scene is that it would have taught an
unwelcome "interrogation aid" to the wrong sort watching the episode.

Quite often, when a book is made from a movie, the book is made from
a non-final version of the movie script, to get the book and the
movie out at about the same time.