Flash aaaaaaaaahhh-arrrggghh!!!

Since we last spoke, I have obtained the script of the Flash Gordon Show (series 1 episode 1 - first broadcast on 27 April 1935) from the Generic Radio Workshop Script Library, via the Simply Scripts website.

The reason I downloaded this and the scripts for three subsequent episodes is so I can learn how radio pulp sci fi series were written back during the Thirties. And yes, it’s American because fast-moving pulp sci fi shows would have been a bit too exciting for the Beeb back then.

For such an ancient piece of history, it still packs an awful lot of incident into the first episode alone.  The best way to prove this is for me to recount the plotline to you.

The action kicks off to a brisk start with the discovery that a newly discovered planet is on a collision course with the Earth.  Not surprisingly, everyone on the planet is more than a little concerned about the prospect of rapidly impending annihilation.

Flash Gordon and his girlfriend Dale Arden are travelling somewhere or other on a giant airliner, though we never get to find out where or why they are going there.

Such minor details turn out to be immaterial, as suddenly, the plane crashes.

Big, burly hunk of heroism that he is, Flash completely unperterbed by this unexpected (if you’re not writing the script, that is) turn of events.  Quickly, he grabs Dale in his arms, leaps out of the plummeting plane and parachutes them both to safety.

Once they’re down and safe, Dale notices a large steel door closing. Flash recognises it as the entrance to the secret laboratory of the great scientist Dr Hans Zarkov, who he decides to ask for help.

Bad move, mate!  Dr Zarkov turns out to be yet another stereotypical mad scientist.  Instead of assisting them, he loses his rag and accuses them of dropping to steal his secrets.

In retaliation, he forces them to climb into his top secret experimental rocket ship at gun point.  Then the ship takes off.  Its course is set for the new planet.

Flash tries to persuade Dr Zarkov to swing the rocket ship out of the path of the new planet, but being barmy, Dr Zarkov refuses to listen to all reason.  While the ship ducks and dives, he rants and raves his obscure resentments against the world, the universe and humanity.

The ship crashes.

Both Dr Zarkov and Dale are thrown from the rocket ship unconscious.  Luckily Flash is thrown to one side of the wreckage and lands on his feet, uninjured.  Flash picks Dale up and starts to carry her in the direction of the glittering towers of a distant city.

Once again, the sensible solution turns out to be singularly ill-advised.

Suddenly, soldiers armed with ray guns jump out.  They surround Flash and Dale and capture them.

The soldiers take the captives to the throne room of Ming the Merciless, emperor of the planet Mongo and supreme ruler of the universe (or so he thinks).

Flash is a proud and free American who refuses to bow down and worship anybody.  He argues with Ming the Merciless.

Ming the Merciless isn’t going to put up with this sort of crap, so he commands his slaves to throw Flash to the red monkey-men in the arena.

Flash is released into the arena, where he knocks out the first monkey-man.  Then he picks the stunned simian up and uses him as a flail to knock down all the other ones.

Refusing to be deprived of his cruel revenge, Ming orders the soldiers to destroy Flash with their ray guns.

Before they can shoot, Ming’s beautiful daughter Princess Aura calls Flash to her balcony.  Grabbing him by the hand, she leads Flash through a secret door and into a private elevator.

The lift ascends to the private landing pad of her personal rocket car.  Aura instructs Flash to climb into the rocket car to escape from Ming’s guards.

Once he’s safely in the car, Flash demands to know how he can now manage to rescue Dale.  


Aura explains that obviously he can’t.  Now he must love her instead – or die!

Meanwhile, Ming informs Dale that his soldiers will soon recapture Flash.  Dale asks what Ming proposes to do with her.

That’s easy.  She is very pleasing to him, so he will take her and she will become his new wife.  According to Ming, because the men of Mongo don’t have any human traits like love, mercy or kindness, it really doesn’t matter in the least to him whether Dale loves him or not.

A slave rushes in and announces that the lion-men have started bombarding the city in their space gyros.  Ming can see the carnage for himself on the ‘spaceograph’ (genuine example of Thirties spacey techno-speak, here).

Ming orders the entire space fleet to attack the space gyros.  A terrific aerial battle breaks out.  Finally, the men of Mongo manage to drive off the space gyros of the lion-men.

Unfortunately, Princess Aura’s rocket car is blown up during the bombardment.  Once more, Flash is in luck.  Instead of dying horribly, he is thrown to the ground, unconscious but otherwise uninjured.

Flash comes round to find himself staring into the face of Thun.  For those of you who don’t know, this character just happens to be the prince of the lion-men.


Thun demands to know who Flash is and what he is doing there.

Flash explains he is the enemy of Ming the Merciless and is trying to rescue the girl he loves.

In ringing tones, Thun declaims that he and his people are all long-standing enemies of Ming and co.  If Flash wants to be his friend, he will gladly help him beat Ming.

Flash knows he can trust his new buddy, so they shake on it.

Thun shows Flash a secret way back into the palace.  If they follow the passage, they can get in and rescue Dale.

First they repair to Thun’s handy space gyro to look at the ‘thought projector’ (more genuine Thirties spacey techno-speak!).  This shows them not only where Dale is currently being held captive, but the precise route of the secret passage.  And it leads straight into the throne room!

The hidden doorway turns out to open onto the top of the altar steps, directly behind Ming’s throne.  Flash and Thun are hidden from sight by an enormous and very convenient statue of the god of death.

As they emerge, they hear the wedding procession approach.

Even though Thun warns him that looking round the statue means certain death, Flash peers round it to try and spot Dale.

Ming is furious.  He commands his soldiers to pursue Flash and Thun – and kill them!

While Ming is distracted by Flash, Thun quickly guides Dale into the secret passageway.

The soldiers swarm up the altar steps to the attack – until Flash and Thun topple the idol right over onto them.

As the soldiers struggle to help their wounded comrades, Flash, Dale and Thun scarper down the secret passageway.  But not for long …

All of a sudden, they slip.

Tumbling down into a whirling underground river, they are swept down by a raging current and over a waterfall into a lake.

Flash swims to the shore with Dale.

But, just as he is about to pull her to safety, she screams - and disappears below the surface of the lake, clutched in two giant green scaly arms.

Flash plunges into the water to Dale’s rescue …

All this takes place in the space of 14 minutes – or rather 12, if you subtract air-time for two breathless and protracted plugs for Hearst Newspapers by the announcer at the beginning and end of the episode.

Much of the action is described by the announcer, rather than being depicted through the medium of sound, even though you do get the odd well-judged sound effect, such as a rocket taking off, an elevator humming and the statue crashing onto the startled soldiers.

Other action is indicated by deplorably clunky dialogue, such as Zarkov ordering Flash and Dale: “Get down this ladder, into this tower.  Down, I tell you!”, Dale observing: “Oh, look, Flash!  There’s a large steel door.  It’s closing!” and Dale explaining: “This rocket ship is breaking away from the Earth with the speed of light.  Right into the path of the new planet!”.  Still, I suppose she needs something to do, considering that she is too girly to participate in the action and you can’t even see how beautiful she is on the radio.

Despite living in a futuristic, technologically superior society, many of the extra-terrestrials talk in amusingly/irritatingly cod-Biblical jargon.  For example, a slave addresses Ming thus: "Oh, thou indulgent Ming, most merciless majesty of Mongo, supreme ruler of all the peoples of the new planet, thy slaves salute thee.”

Thun asks Flash: “Who are thou, white-skinned youth?  Speak!”  Note that Ming and Aura both address Flash as ‘you’ rather than ‘thee’, despite the fact that ‘you’ is the politer and more modern form of the third person singular in English.

God only knows what happens in episode 2.  I’m still too knackered to attempt it just yet.  

Attack Of The Grill-E

What’s a grill-E, you might well ask?  Nothing to do with Wall-E, I’m afraid.

Grill restaurants have been trendy of late, probably because grilled food is quick and easy to prepare and reminds people of backyard barbecues, festivals and camping trips.

Well, that’s ‘grills’ for you.  If you consult your handy neighbourhood dictionary, it will tell you that a grill with an e on the end is a type of fancy metal framework placed over a car radiator or drain.

It’s nothing to do with a sodding steak or burger!

However, thanks to bad spelling, nowadays it has also come to denote a bar or restaurant serving grilled food.  But only a very posh sort of joint, like the Blue Parrot on Piccadilly Gardens.

Oh no! It's Radar Men From The Moon

As part of the research for my all-new exciting and vital project (a radio series, no less!), I’ve been watching loads of schlocky sci-fi B movies and film serials dating from the Thirties to the mid-Fifties.

Whilst I still couldn’t exactly describe myself as an aficionado of the genre, or at least not yet, I’m starting to get to know my way around the subject now and don’t mind admitting to a sneaking admiration for some of what I’ve seen.

Prime amongst the gleaming gems posted on YouTube is the great, the one and only Radar Men From The Moon.  This 12 part film serial from 1952 forms the second in a somewhat informal Republic ‘trilogy’.  Part 1 was of course the classic King Of The Rocket Men and part 3 Zombies Of The Stratosphere (not nearly as interesting as its title would tend to suggest, sadly).  The central character Commando Cody then went on to appear in his very own series on American television.  If you’re thinking all this sounds a tad familiar, then you’re right.  These series inspired the recent retro-smash movie The Rocketeer.

The basic premise behind Radar Men From The Moon is that perennial favourite of tried, tested and tired sci-fi tropes, the alien invasion.  Retik their leader claims that the moon-people must invade the Earth because the air is running out on the moon.  Yet up there they still manage to have a light-coloured sky with clouds in it that looks bang on identical to that of Earth.  That’s mainly because all the outdoor sequences were filmed out in the wilds of California.  Of course, the moon’s gravity is just the same as ours as well.  You won’t see any Earth astronauts or Moonmen bouncing slowly about in 1/6^th our gravity like the Apollo missions did just 17 years later.

This cannot be due to scientific ignorance of the real conditions on the moon.  Back in the Thirties, airmen visiting Earth’s fictional Second Satellite found its gravity to be far less than that of our own planet.  They bounded along the surface in slow motion, just like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  The difference is that it is much easier, not to mention cheaper, to achieve special effects like these on the printed page than the screen.    

And here we come to the crux of the matter.  Despite being some of the most popular products of the film studios, the serials usually had the least money lavished on them.  Saving cash was the order of the day, which inevitably led to a lot of recycling.

Take the spectacular footage of Commando Cody flying through the air.  Okay, so production company Republic was quite justly renowned for its special effects – but the fact remains that this is basically the same launch, flight and descent in all 12 episodes.  According to Wikipedia, his flying suit originally appeared in King Of The Rocket Men, along with the actor who plays Retik the king of the moon-people.

Even by the standards of the Fifties, the flying suit most definitely does not represent state-of-the-art technology.  It looks like it was thrown together on the spur of the moment with the dregs of the production funds (after they’d bought the tea and biscuits).  Commando Cody wears a boiler suit just like your ordinary everyday motor mechanic or gas station service man would, plus the back-mounted oxygen tanks of a scuba-diver, surmounted by a coal-skuttle helmet with eyes and mouth hacked out just like Ned Kelly in the outback.  Underneath he retains the neat suit and tie of his business-man-inventor alter-ego – which never seem to get in the least bit crumpled or dirty, no matter what his daredevil stunts and general derring-do.

Despite the probable extreme speed and force of his jet-propelled rocket-pack, Commando Cody still travels slowly enough to have enough time to fumble around in his jacket pocket for a bog-standard pistol, retrieve it, aim it and fire it at his target, instead of missing because he’s already shot ahead of it by about 500 miles.  If you don’t believe me, have a look at the footage of real jet-pack tests on YouTube.  (And while we’re on the subject, whatever happened to all those nuclear-powered personal jet-packs and silver-foil covered hovercraft we were assured we’d all be zooming about in come the 21^st century?  We was robbed!)   

The rest of the wardrobe is just as basic.  Moonmen Retik, Krog and co sport your typical Emperor Ming from Mongo style flowing satin tabards, exquisitely set off by balaclavas.  Whoever decided that this is how all extra-terrestrial people dress?  Probably these particular outfits were recycled from another sci-fi series or film like Flash Gordon, that’s why.  To save even more money, all the characters wear the same set of clothes throughout the entire series.  This leads to the most ridiculous plotholes.  Even though Krog the Moonman henchman is working undercover on the Earth, he doesn’t think to disguise himself as one of us. (And he appears to be based in Batman’s bat-cave, to judge by the background furnishings of his lair!)

My research so far suggests that actors were also recycled between series and even within the same ones.  Because the bloke who plays Retik was mainly known for westerns, the wardrobe department had to bung him in very obvious spaceman gear to show that this time he is not playing a cowboy.  And when the same set of extras portray Earthmen in one scene and Moonmen in the next, you need to be able to tell the difference, hence the use of white hats for the heroes and black ones for the villains in westerns.

The script also has to do its bit to cut the costs.  Because Republic couldn’t afford to do much scene-setting, there is very little in the way of motivation and backstory.  So we have next to no idea why it is so important to Commando Cody to stop the moon-people from invading Earth or save his glamorous secretary from their evil kidnap and ransom scheme.  We hear precisely nothing about any character’s inner life or their earlier experiences. 

If the main purpose of a film serial is to provide thrills and spills aplenty in a short space of time before the main feature, then obviously you don’t want to waste any valuable time on boring talky bits that lose the attention of the audience and get them trotting off for hot dogs with mustard on or a quick whazz.  You’d cut to the chase as quickly as possible.  This is handy because all the film studios kept extensive libraries of stock footage which they would encourage both scriptwriters and directors to plunder with impunity to provide many of the special effects.

However, none of the characters ever get established as real people.  The result is there is next to nothing with which the writers can raise the stakes or build tension.  For example, Commando Cody doesn’t seem to be in love with his secretary or she with him, which makes it rather difficult to give a stuff about his need to rescue her when she gets kidnapped by the moon-people.

Nor do you see the moon-people suffering the dire effects of the lack of atmosphere that forces them into drastic action against us here on Earth.  No-one on the Moon dies from lack of oxygen and no crops are lost.  Presumably it would cost time and money the production company hadn’t got to include sequences like this, though the writers could easily have provided them.  As a result, the viewer fails to develop any sympathy for the terrible dilemma faced by the Moonmen, so assumes they must be ‘bad’, rather than desperate.  Naturally the Moon-people only have one name each.  There is no mention of family or clan names or nicknames or anything like this.  Therefore, they don’t have any social structure or history to encourage you to take an interest in them or develop a liking for them.

In order not to hold up the action a second longer than necessary, explanatory dialogue is cut to the absolute minimum.  Instead they like to chuck in a bloody good fight or action sequence every two minutes.

For a supposed interplanetary invasion planned by a race technologically superior to our own, the Moonmen are surprisingly incompetent.  Retik has sent out a grand total of one agent and one ray gun to just a single place of strategic importance in the United States.  Okay, so we know the production company can only afford very few actors and props – but you would still imagine that the script could get around this difficulty somehow.  Why not have it at least mention other agents and weapons in other nations round the globe?  Surely that wouldn’t deprive the action sequences too much?

The invasion seems to be very badly funded too.  Although Krog the moon-agent is running out of money, he feels he cannot ask Retik for more, forcing his two Earthling heavies to resort to nefarious capers like payroll heists and kidnap schemes to raise some more.  You’d think working out the likely financial costs of all their evil plotting would be a central part of the research and preparation for such an ambitious plan as invading another planet.

Maybe the Moonmen are out of pocket generally, following the environmental catastrophe suffered by their world.  The moon-city where Retik lives is depicted by an extremely obvious static cardboard diorama.  For no apparent reason, the predominant style of architecture is Graeco-Roman, which means the director might well have just borrowed an obscure historical diorama at his local museum to save yet more time and money.  Once the rockets have actually landed on the surface of the moon, there is no trace to be seen of any of the other buildings and structures in the city.  Because the outskirts of the moon-city look just the same as the countryside in California on Earth, it can be very difficult to tell sometimes where you are meant to be and when.

The moon itself is represented by a painting that, while extremely beautiful, makes no pretence whatever at looking at all ‘real’.

Part 9 has the barefaced cheek to basically reprise the entire plot so far for the benefit of a character who didn’t get to learn it earlier in the series.  This tends to suggest funding was running pretty low by this point in the production process, so they couldn’t afford to commission a proper script or pay the actors and production crew for doing something new in this part.  Apparently this was standard procedure on a film serial.

Songs to shoot yourself by

Liz Jones

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2093248/LIZ-JONES-Lovely-young-women-men-pink-cheeks-Katie-Price--me.html

reckons women only study at Oxbridge to meet a better class of husband.  This is despite referring to herself as a 'feminist' - without any sense of irony or shame, as I really don't think she possesses either.

Nor much of an intellect, come to that, because she has also recently stated that at the proud and venerable age of 53, there is nothing she would like better than to be swept off her feet by none other than Mr Darcy.

What the HELL is this woman on?

Caitlin Moran's supremely pragmatic test for this elusive condition seems to have totally passed her by.  All you need to do is look down your knickers, then answer the following two questions:

1.)  Do you have a vagina?

2.)  Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you answer yes to both, congratulations, you're a feminist.  You perfectly fit Rebecca West's definition of the term as a woman who expresses views that differentiate her from the average doormat.

She utterly fails to notice the somewhat vital point that women have been studying at Oxbridge and many other venerable institutes of learning since the 19th century in order to get an education.  With one of those to your credit, there's nothing you need less than a happy ending with Mr Darcy and a ridiculous collapsed meringue of a dress.

The reason she hasn't picked up on this fundamental fact about women's lives today is vanity.  If we are to believe the picture of her created by her extensive body of work, basically, she is so obsessed by herself and her pathetic excuse for a 'life' that she considers nothing outside herself and her own petty concerns to be of any importance whatsoever - including history, facts and the opinions of other women.

This self-obsession run riot probably explains why her writing is so poor.  It appears it simply has not occured to her to read her own work back and think a bit about how it might be coming across to other people.

So why haven't the editorial team at the Daily Mail taken her aside and had a quiet word of friendly advice whenever it seems called for?

Maybe they think their readers out there in Middle England really DO believe women are as flaky, sad and all-round bloody useless as depicted in Liz's columns - in which case we need feminism more than ever.  Or they really don't give a monkey's butthole how many people she manages to infuriate +/depress beyond endurance with every new installment of her columns, just so long as it shifts loads of papers and gets plenty of hits on their website.  Or perhaps they actually have tried to say something at some point, possibly more than once, only she just wouldn't damn well listen.

Not that we should let the Guardian off the hook, either.  After all, they are the outfit that published that truly dire column about her total disaster-wedding some years back.  This, if I remember rightly, was during the era when the editorial team were obsessed with features penned by people dying of cancer.  That's right, they decided the wedding of the century made the perfect follow-up to harrowing accounts of terminal illnesses faced with great courage and dignity by highly talented journalists.

Every sodding week, she would go drivelling on and on about how her husband didn't like her, fancy her or respect her.  The feeling was obviously mutual, as she spent much of the rest of the time detailing what a lying, faithless git she reckoned he was.

Every week I would hurl the paper against the wall and yell:  "Then why the **** did you marry him, you stupid *****?"

Things reached such a pass that I was seriously considering writing to the Guardian to complain.  I eventually decided against this course of action because I was worried they would reply: "Why don't you sod off and read the Daily Mail, you raving nutter?".

The end of the world is nigh – latest news just in!

And there isn’t as much time left as we thought.

The reason I know this is because I was sitting with my dad during the festive period that has just departed, watching one of those Brian Cox In’t Universe Bloody Great? documentaries on BBC 4.

Professor Dreamboat chucked on his parka and trendy hobnailed boots to go climbing up a ginormous glacier out in the middle of the Gobi desert (or wherever it was – travel instructions were sadly not included), whilst discussing the end of the world as predicted by the world’s top scientists.

Okay, now admittedly we’d heard it all before.  Round about five billion years from today, our nice bright dependable sort of sun is going to run out of fuel for nuclear reactions.  This will force it to expand – and keep on expanding, until it becomes so large that it gets described as a ‘red giant’.  The earth, meanwhile, has either been frazzled to a crisp in the rapidly rising temperatures of the expansion phase, or been swallowed up by the freakishly swollen sun.  Or possibly both.  No-one is quite sure, though they all agree the planet will be pretty well buggered by that point.

Professor Swoonbucket, on the other hand, said all this would happen ONE billion years in the future.  He did!  I heard him.

So I’m sitting there, spurting out fountains of sherry over the cat’s cushion, shrieking: “WTF?  WTF?  Run for the hills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My dad takes another swig of the amontillado, puts his glass back down by the sofa and observes: “There’s fuck-all you can do about it, so stop making such a racket.”

“But don’t you find it all slightly depressing?”

“Why are you so worried about it?  It’s not going to bother you.  You’ll be long dead by then.”

“What about the people who are living on the planet when it happens?”

“That’s their problem.”

Onscreen, the tousled-haired guru of lurve grins fit to bust, like it’s the greatest development to benefit humanity since sliced bread (fits better in a toaster, I’ll give it that).   

Why either of them think the prospect should be remotely cheering is completely beyond me.  You’re talking to the woman who was specially perched up on her grandad’s shoulders to take a good, long look at comet Kouhoutek in the frosty far-away autumn skies of 1973, because it wouldn’t be coming back to the earth for another 75, 000 years.

If that knowledge seemed unbearably poignant to a six-year-old girl, why would I have changed my attitude so substantially between then and now?  What would prompt such a philosophical U-turn – finding out the world’s best scientists got their sums wrong?

Even though I realized it would be impossible, I still wanted to be there when Kouhoutek returned.  The earth it visited would be inconceivably different to the world of 1973.  That frightened me, to be honest.  Yet I remained curious.

And now I can’t help wondering what the end of the world is really going to be like, when it finally happens.  Yes, it’s incredibly sad, yes, I KNOW it’s not my bloody problem – but I STILL wish I could hitch a ride with Dr Who in the Tardis so I can see it for myself, whether or not anybody plays Toxic by Britney Spears as a soundtrack over the top of it.

Incidentally, in their recent study Never In A Million Years: A History Of Hopeless Predictions, Ivor Baddiel (any relation of David?) and Jonny Zucker point out that the above dire prediction might not even happen when it comes to the crunch.  Back in 2007, boffins at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy discovered that a planet quite like Earth had somehow managed to survive when its sun went into its red giant phase.  They hypothesized that V391 Pegasi b had been pushed into a new orbit twice as far away from its sun as the previous one.

Baddiel and Zucker then go on to speculate that any intelligent lifeforms on the planet would have celebrated their good fortune long into the night, ‘which, with their new position in the galaxy, now lasts twice as long’.

Er, I believe you’ll find it’s their year that now lasts twice as long.  That’s the period it takes their planet to make one entire orbit round their sun.  The day is the amount of time it takes their planet to whirl right round once on its own axis.

Scientists, derrrr … 

Insect nation

No, this entry is NOT about the classic cod-rock opera by Bill Bailey.  Instead I'm going to treat you to a discussion of The Beetle Horde, yet another of the classic serials published by Astounding Stories during the early Thirties.   

This unforgettable masterwork was penned by a cult author called Victor Rousseau.  Though he seems to be no relation of either the philosopher or the painter (as far as I can make out, anyway), he nevertheless managed to produce a work of sci fi so demented, it almost approaches genius.

Unlike normal people, I don’t tend to start reading a book at the beginning, go through to the middle and keep going until I reach the end.  Instead I’ll flip it open almost at random, see if it looks interesting – and if it does, carry on from there until the narrative starts to drag a bit or I nod off.  When I return to the story, I employ the same technique all over again.  Eventually I will manage to finish the book by piecing together the narrative a bit like a jigsaw.

Suppose this may explain why I still find it so difficult to construct a basic three act storyline.  And also why I seem to get on so well with surrealism.  Apparently women as a species are meant to naturally gravitate towards realism in fiction.  Well, I’ve never been a fan of soaps or kitchen sink drama, while French windows comedies and vicar’s trousers falling down in front of the mayor continue to leave me cold.   

All of which means you'll have to forgive me.  I'm doing the best I can, even though times is hard.

So far I’ve only managed to read the final part (of four).  Based on that, here is what I deduce the basic plot to consist of.  If it later turns out to be utter bollocks, suppose I'd better delete all this pdq.

Anyway, a pair of explorers get kidnapped while on an expedition to the Antarctic.  They are then hauled down to the secret underground world helpfully known as Submondia for the hard of understanding.

Now the inhabitants of Submondia are by no means your average mob of sinister lurking gnomes.  They just happen to be a race of gigantic, super-intelligent beetles that developed their very own civilization.

Quite why a species with so many natural advantages would choose to be ruled by a mad human archaeologist who went nuts and disappeared off the face of the earth (quite literally, in this case), instead of the insect version of Nelson Mandela or Josef Stalin (please delete according to preferred political and social affiliation) is yet another of those strange mysteries that never even get addressed, let alone explained, in a story like this.

It still seems positively racist, though, not to mention the type of wilful illogic that would drive the most sensible and mature of Vulcans to drink – particularly when it naturally and inevitably transpires that the beetles are in the habit of abducting humans from the surface world to act as their slaves and food source.  I mean - what rational being is going to accept orders from a bacon buttie?

Turns out the nutcase currently occupying the beetle throne is named Bram (in honour of Bram Stoker?).  Like the infamous Fraser from The Floating Island Of Madness, he can best be summed up as a pretty typical ‘mad scientist’ type of boffin.

It seems that the scientific community of 1930 can’t stop laughing at his continued insistence in the face of all the evidence discovered to date in the fossil record that extinct creatures like the marsupial lion lived long before the theory of evolution suggests they must first have appeared.  Stung by all the constant derision, he has of course developed the standard issue massive grudge against all of humanity.

If the two explorers refuse to admit to his face that his idiotic ‘theory’ is right, he tells them during one of his endless loopy rants, he will condemn the entire surface world and everyone on it to death.  The sentence will be carried out by a swarm of several trillion armour-plated beetles that he will order to ravish the face of the earth at his leisure.

Odd that beetles should act more like a plague of locusts – but then, the story does state that the poor things were starving (yet another reason Submondia urgently needs a beetle revolution, you would have thought.  Beetles of the under-world unite!).

Bram intends to direct the horde from the comfort of his battle chariot.  This consists of the upturned shell from a monstrous beetle that’s moulted, in which he lolls in state on plump cushions like a corrupt and decadent Roman emperor.  The chariot is dragged into the air by a specially trained team of eight sleek war steeds (aka really fast, fancy looking beetles with go-faster stripes down the sides).

Yes, that’s right – they fly!

Sorry, but the first picture to come to mind is the buzzing piebald buggalo in that brilliant Futurama episode Where The Buggalo Roam.

Just as no-one in authority takes much notice of Kif Croker, everyone seems to ignore Haida, the human slave the explorers rescued from the depths of Submondia and brought to the surface with them.  However, it turns out that like the timid green lieutenant, she possesses the knowledge and expertise that will eventually save humanity.

To give her her due, Haida does keep trying to explain the simple and unspectacular facts, but just like Zapp Brannigan, the rest of the human race refuses to listen to a word she and the explorers have to say about the danger posed by the immense beetle horde.

For example, during their enforced stay in Submondia, the explorers soon discovered that the shells of the beetles were completely impervious to bullets.  If you want to escape being eaten alive by a marauding beetle, the best thing to do is dress up in the discarded shell left by one that’s moulted.  Then you will both smell and look like a beetle to the other beetles, so they will leave you alone.

Failing that, your best bet is to hole yourself up somewhere they can’t get in – like a nuclear bunker.  Or you can outfly them by zooming to the top of the stratosphere in an aeroplane.

Problem is, fear makes the human race both stupid and stubborn.

When the Australian air force takes to the skies to repel the invaders, it soon becomes apparent that bullets are less than useless against the vile creatures.  Yet the Aussie pilots keep on pumping them out.

Another pilot later finds out that human planes can reach much greater heights than the beetles – yet no-one seems prepared to act on that discovery, either.

Presumably people back in 1930 knew of many methods of exterminating normal-sized beetles, so why didn’t any scientists try to apply or adapt them to killing enormous mutant ones too?  In the dire circumstances described here, you’ve got to admit calling in Rentokil is worth a shot.

And even if the Australians were somewhat distracted battling off the hordes, why couldn’t people living elsewhere on the globe look for a solution that might help them?

The main reason must be that if any of the above scenarios actually happened, the action would be likely to get resolved a fair bit sooner.  This would deprive us of much-needed narrative tension and urgency – and the explorers of their opportunity to finally save the day in the typical heroic fashion.

Nor would the readers have half so many lurid setpieces of sickening horror and revulsion to look forward to.  The beetle attacks Down Under must rank with the most gore-ridden zombie and chainsaw killer B-movies out there.

The carnage kicks off with the beetles chasing and devouring alive the poor group of Australian aborigines who try to help the explorers and Haida when they eventually emerge from the depths in the middle of an extinct volcano in the outback, instead of Antarctica, like they were expecting.  By the time they've finished their little feast, there isn't much left for the funeral.  

Later the beetles place both Melbourne and Adelaide under siege.  As a result, Bram is despised by 99.9% of people round the globe as the very Anti-Christ, even those who belong to other religions.

No wonder retro-nerds across the States escaped the worst of the Depression by devouring such trash on a monthly basis.  If you live in the Dustbowl and can’t even get a job as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, you either hitch a lift on the back of a rickety truck to go and pick oranges in California – or you sit it out, pretending in your head that you are Bram, unleashing the full might and fury of your ravaging beetle horde on the world that has deprived you of your birthright to the pursuit of happiness.