Posted by andelendir on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/New-in-the-SHADO-Library-tp3037403p3064931.html

Hi,
 
> As a writer you may interpret the discrepancies as you wish.
 
Oh, that is not something simply touching writers. It touches practically everyone who watches UFO or deals with it in some way.
 
As to interpretations - that was the point I am making. I wasn't making any. I simply looked at the facts which are presented and stripped them of the lore they unwittingly accumulated through too few viewings, bad video copies and distributions cut or maimed, or conveniently invented shortcuts, instead of sound, logical reasoning, especially where they helped fannish squee.

> But since Straker was wearing the same style of hair and suit during his
> meeting with Henderson and Freeman's official recruitment AND immediately
> following the wedding (which we know took place in 1970-71) AND he was
> wearing the same hair style during the meeting and working in HQ - the
> visual cues indicate these events were probably intended to be interpreted
> as being close in time.
 
Hmm. The husband of one of my sisters has been wearing his hair the same style since early youth (he is now well past 40). He is a reasonably senior CEO in a company producing luxury goods and has a nice yearly income. He wears rather expensive, conservative looking bespoke suits which haven't much changed their cuts and materials over several decades now.
 
Given your reasoning the last 20 years of his life all took place in the same year.
 
Or in other words: none of that are serious cues as to what timeline we are looking at. Especially not in the face of the very clearcut mention of the actual years these events span.
 
By the way, the relevant haircut - which Ed Bishop wore most of his life - is a no-nonsense, conservative hairstyle worn to the day without much change by a large number of men. And as we know, Straker would have kept wearing it, had Bishop not resented the bleaching of his own hair. The short, helmet-style wigs were a response to his refusal to turn into a male Marilyn Monroe.
 
That Straker, as this was consecutively put in the series, would see sense in turning himself out as a movie producer after that role was demanded of him on top of being the CiC of SHADO, is a logical enough explanation given us by the Andersons. Before his rather conservative personality would hardly have agreed to such a change.
 
> But in a discrepancy like this there are at least a few possibilities for
> the writer:
 
As said, there was no discrepancy.

> 1: ignore the problem - Ford never said that.
 
Why would anyone do such a thing?

> 2: explain away the 'two year' statement as something other than Ford's
>total time in SHADO - perhaps his actual time in HQ rather than SHADO - or
>maybe he was recruited and was doing something else before being brought
>'into the fold'.
No need for that, and I checked. Ford said "Just over two years" which leaves leeway enough for those additional months.

>3: skew the timeline - place most or all of SHADO's building and recruitment
>into a 1977-78 timeframe (7-8 years after its commissioning), and put AQoP
>out to 1986-87 or so.
What for? The timeline as the series presents us with works just fine.


> A decent compromise would be for Mary to have gotten pregnant around 1974 or
>75 but that still doesn't explain Ford's statement.
There is no need for compromises. The timeline is clearcut.
>Putting AQoP out to 1984-85 is still bit of a stretch. Straker didn't update
>his car for 5 years? *grin*
What is the problem with driving the same car for several decades? If it is a solid one? Most people valueing a good sportscar over here in Europe, especially one threatening to become a classic, hold on to it. The UK is notorious for phantastic classic cars and oldtimers, and a Rolls in its 50th year isn't  even considered an oldtimer, it's just a good car.
As to Straker and updating cars, he was not depicted as being keen on running after latest fashions, rather to the contrary. At the time period people drove their cars for a decade or two, or even longer.
> Why make the assumption that Straker personally investigated each of those
> 7000+ reports? Those reports could well have been forwarded from other
> agencies - If we assume SHADO had field agents from the beginning, just 10
> field investigators would take that number down to a few a month per agent.
No one said that he would have done that. That WAS the point I made. The assumption that The Long Sleep takes place in 1980 is stretching things to that point.
Prior to roughly 1975 there was no personnel in SHADO (that is even hinted at) to do the job. As we were shown it was Straker himself who investigated the UFO incident with Catherine.
The blooper is (or isn't, depending on what you hear) the mention of 1970 instead of 1974.
>While there is no direct mention of people 'out there'
>investigating things, I think it's a fair assumption that they exist and
>probably have existed for a long time.
Assumption being the key problem here.  Between 1970 and roughly 1975 there existed no trained SHADO personnel (as per Straker's and Alec's own words).
The assumption, that Military Intelligence under Straker's and Henderson's lead would help, could be considered  a logical conjecture, in the absence of ulterior information and facts. But we do have those, through the subtitles and through the much graver likelihood that we are looking at a simple blooper. Instead of twisting everything around so it fits that one blooper (which the distributors have outed as one), the less disruptive solution is keeping TLS what it clearly is, very late in the timeline.
However, things should become easier now. We have set up a canon wiki at The Ed Straker Herald, which is called UFOpedia. It can be found here:
http://ufopedia.edstraker.com
and we will be slowly filling it with the hard canon, which facts will be clearly detached from grey canon and likewise fanon.
Everyone interested in contributing can contact either Lightcudder or myself for an editing account (registration is manual only to avoid spam). That wiki should become useful for anyone wishing to check up on the real hard facts as they can be seen, heard and read onscreen.
Cheers
 
An

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