SPOILERS Discussion of Good Omens, the series

[Penfold]

I also had a reputation for crashing the office early computers back in the eighties. No one knew how I did it (and neither did I) but it kept our techies on their toes in their extremely air-conditioned room. I even managed to wipe the entire month's accounts when using a completely unconnected program (it wasn't my fault I had managed to create 'the perfect storm' by pressing various buttons and commands in the 'correct' order to reveal a programming bug - at least that is what the techies thought I did, or something like it).

 

[=Tamar]

It took us months to figure out why parts of documents would suddenly vanish while we were typing. It turned out that hitting the Escape key (by mistake) and then typing a number and then realizing that the number was wrong and using either Backspace or Delete would, in the program we used, delete that number of lines. If it was a large number, it would make pages of work disappear in a flash.
The difficulty was compounded because we, as lowly typists, were not allowed to read the instructions that had come with the programs we were required to use. The computer man in that office felt threatened if we learned anything. I don't miss that at all.

But to return to the topic: I just realized that not only is GO a buddy movie, it's also a heist movie. More in a separate post.

ETA: Come to think of it, it was sort of like working under the Ineffable Plan. The Ineffable Documentation...

 

[=Tamar]

Good Omens is a heist movie.
It begins with small thefts that have large repercussions - the apple, the sword (stolen by passing it on).

Then services are 'stolen' by being traded off to the other side, for efficiency and personal ease. It's more like embezzling, because nobody ever checks up.
We see the demon setting up a heist to steal holy water [Topkapi-style, hiring an acrobat], and then the angel having stolen it for him, to prevent a potentially lethal mistake.

Then the goof-up with the wrong baby, which is a heist gone wrong: two babies stolen, not one. What would normally be the McGuffin is lost for years, but it's also the wild card in the game.

Then the angel and the demon steal the War from the Archangels and the Dukes of Hell, and thus steal the Earth.
Then they're arrested and "tried"...
Then they steal the dignity from both sides, flicking Holy Water at the demons and breathing Hellfire at the archangels, just to make them jump.

And they get away with it.

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

I picked up this bit of artwork in the dealers room.

 

[=Tamar]

Nice one, Who's Wee Dug!

 

[=Tamar]

What if: Heaven really doesn't want a decisive ending? They just want to keep on refighting.

Because: if they did want an end, why didn't they use holy water and destroy the rebellious angels instead of shoving them into hell? Those flaming swords didn't kill the demons, they just wounded them, and since we never hear of injured demons, obviously they must have recovered.

It's basically Valhalla: they want to have the Celestial War over and over again. Like the Them versus the Johnsonites, they want an enemy to fight, to overcome heavenly boredom.

But they're keeping it quiet, instead of being comparatively honest about it like the Norse heroes.

That's why the Ineffable Plan is left unspoken.

The only one who knows is God, and she's into watching sports. It's heavenly football.

 

[=Tamar]

I've been wondering why Crowley wore a Pictish hooded cloak over his toga in Rome, held with a PIctish silver penannular brooch. I think it may have to do with the fact that the Picts were so fierce that Rome built walls to hold them back. They were Unconquered. He'd like that.

 

[=Tamar]

apple-duty on tumblr has reposted today (2019-09-08) a long analysis of Book!Good Omens with respect to the political climate in which it was written, with some references to Series!Good Omens and how it differs. It is by someone unnamed who is not on tumblr themselves, who writes very well but with traces that make me think they are someone for whom English is a second language. I printed it out; it took eight pages. It is well worth reading.
A very brief, flawed summary is that the book was published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the year before the fall of the URSS. The James Bond transfers on the Bentley are not a one-shot joke, they are a key to Crowley's character - he is the James Bond parody-equivalent. He and Aziraphale meet in St James Park just like all the other representatives of the Cold War, and at the end, two (human) spies discover they are on the same side. This link works until they post more stuff

 

[=Tamar]

Gaiman says that he tried to fix all known typos for the current edition of the book. He also admitted that he missed one whole-word mistake: in one scene when Anathema and Newton are talking, she does something but the name given in the text is Agnes.

Gaiman also said that there is one huge goof that he isn't going to explain, and that in future editions he intends to fix it quietly. It isn't as simple as a typo, or he'd have fixed it already.

I thought I'd found it, but Google maps tells me different. I thought it was the Horsemen riding south, when Tadfield, which is near Oxford off the A40, is northwest of London.

Crowley takes the M40 North (and then the A40 branch) to [meet the demons who give him the infant so that he can] deliver the infant Antichrist to the convent. [Later, leaving from London] To return to Tadfield, which is near Oxford, he has to cross the M25. In the novel he begins by driving south, then when he reads Aziraphale's notes, he turns and drives north.

In the novel, the Horsemen ride south on the A6 (more or less from Milton Keynes), eventually getting onto the M25 briefly and then to the turnoff for the M40 to Tadfield. In the series, we aren't specifically told what road they take, only that they ride south and that for at least part of the trip they're on the M25 because that's where the rain of fish causes the accident and the blockage that eliminates the Other Four Bikers. Still, it works that they are riding south. So that wasn't the error. Presumably they did all that before the road turned into a flaming Odegra.

Directions are used symbolically in the series. The bookshop is labeled with the four directions between the inner pillars. The director said he put Aziraphale's desk in the East, because he had been guardian of the Eastern Gate. I've read that in Western mysticism, South represents heat, fire, the south of Egypt, etc, and in one scene of Crowley in the bookshop, I noticed that he's standing in the south section. So riding south would work symbolically, but it would have been a fairly short ride down the A6 before the turn to the west, which also works symbolically ("going West" is a metaphor for both death and a total disruption of plans).

[edited to insert clarifications]

 

[=Tamar]

There is one odd turn of phrase, which may have been done to avoid a cliche or may have been a whole-phrase error. At one point when Adam's protective shield is turning people's thoughts away from him, it's said that Anathema's thoughts "slipped away like a duck off water" instead of like water off a duck's back. [p.170 in the new Morrow paperback]

 

[raisindot]

Crowley takes the M40 North (and then the A40 branch) to deliver the infant Antichrist to the convent. To return to Tadfield, which is near Oxford, he has to cross the M25. In the novel he begins by driving south, then when he reads Aziraphale's notes, he turns and drives north...etc

I love this deep dive into British roadways, but at the same time it can't help but remind me of that old Monty Python sketch about "Wrong Way Norris" tracing his ancestors' migration from one suburban English town to another using a complicated pilgrimage route along Britain's modern highways....

 

[=Tamar]

The sense of smell isn't often used in films I've seen. Both Crowley and Sandalphon use it. Sandalphon smells "evil" in the bookshop. Crowley sniffs the air in the bookshop and says "Something's changed" when Dog is named in Tadfield, an hour's drive away. Crowley does an earlier sniff, when he arrives at the meeting point in the graveyard; he's sniffing out the situation, literally, but for the form of the thing, he has to ask what's up. Is he pretending ignorance, hoping that it won't turn out to be his job?

Why can Crowley smell situations? Snakes have a very precise sense of smell, using it to hunt because their vision is rather poor. But Sandalphon can do it too. Is being able to smell situations actually more of an angelic trait? Snakes used to be a holy symbol until the early Christian church wanted to denigrate those religions.

 

[=Tamar]

I saw a meme about "stop drawing Aziraphale skinny", and at first I agreed with it. Then I checked the novel. There is not one single word about Aziraphale's size, unless you count Shadwell's calling him "the soft one in the camel-hair coat" but that is in the context of wanting to borrow money from him.
Book-Aziraphale could actually be skinny. Or even muscular. It's open season - there is really no description except that his hands are well-manicured. I haven't even found anything about the color of his hair, except what might be implied by the fact that Crowley is described as dark-haired.

In the script, Gabriel bullies him in the park and says "lose the gut" and tries to get him to say he's a "lean, mean fighting machine"; after Gabriel jogs away, Aziraphale says sadly, "I'm soft." It could still refer to attitudes, but both meanings could apply.
Series-Aziraphale does routinely tug at his waistcoat, so much that the nap has worn off it at all the wear points. It doesn't actually strain at the buttons, but its snug fit is clearly intended as part of his characterization. Series-Aziraphale is intentionally shown as slightly plump.

Book-Crowley is described as having dark hair and good cheekbones, and as "lithe" when he gets out of the Bentley at the graveyard a five minute drive from the birthing hospital. That's it, but it's a lot more than we have for Aziraphale. IF the reader assumes that they must contrast, then book-Aziraphale could be assumed to be blond (or even red-haired) because book-Crowley is dark haired, and "soft" might be taken to mean plump because Crowley is lithe, but assumptions aren't canon.
So go for it, fan artists!

 

[raisindot]

In a thread on this forum about Magrat, one discussion point is about Pterry's physical descriptions (or lack thereof) of characters.

One thing I pointed out is that, for the most part, Pterry rarely provided detailed physical descriptions of his male protagonists in the series-DW books. We really know next to nothing about what Vimes, Wm. De Worde, or Moist look like. Even their ages are undetermined. Conversely, Pterry does seem to offer more detailed if superficial descriptions of female protagonists and male supporting characters. Agnes is fat but has beautiful hair. Nanny is short but has a face like an apple core. Granny has severe but long gray hair, piercing eyes but if sometimes described as "handsome." Magrat is skinny, flat chested and has terrible hair. Fred Colon is described mainly as fat. Carrot's name refers to his body structure (wide at the top, narrow at the legs). Nobby is small and not-quite-human with multi-hued skin.

Did Pterry do this intentionally, because he wanted to create an "open slate" that allowed readers to visualize what a protagonist looked like? But then why not do the same for the women protagonists? My guess is that, in spite of his very progressive attitude toward things, he was, in many ways, still bound to the conventions of the genre, where authors found a need to physically describe female characters (and he often fell victim to stereotypical and sexist tropes) but didn't feel is necessary to pain a detailed visual picture of male protagonists.

 

[=Tamar]

We also know that Carrot is extremely muscular and that he has red hair, though that isn't what gave him his name. By inference, we know that either he has a weirdly small head in proportion to the rest of him, or the Discworld equivalent of a Mr Potatohead toy is very large, because the hat apparently fits him. (Given that he also tried to wear the Protector as a hat, I think he really does have a small head.) This is an example of a specific type of over-the-top humor.
We know that Magrat has blonde hair, though it takes careful reading to find it; when the Elf Queen makes herself look like a glamorous version of Magrat, she has blonde hair and Verence identifies that image as Magrat.

Still, I believe the blank slate approach has been stated overtly in the past. On the other hand, Terry also said that he had very clear ideas of what certain characters looked like; he just didn't describe them. He said that no one had ever drawn the mental image he had of Tiffany, though many people had done good pictures that worked.
Neil Gaiman recently said that back in 1991, when they were working up a screenplay and imagining casting actors for roles in Good Omens, they discovered that they had notably different ideas of what Aziraphale looked like. Terry thought Aziraphale was skinny, while Neil had envisioned him as being bulky - not fat, but big enough (stocky, muscular) to take up some space. Both of them agreed he was blond, even though there's nothing in the book that says that. [ETA: I got that backwards. See below, the post where I attached a photoshot of Neil's discussion. It was Terry who saw Aziraphale as bulky.]

 

[=Tamar]

On a completely different subject, I have been working out the dates given in the book as opposed to those given in the series set decoration. Gaiman had removed those dates from the Script book, but someone doing set decoration put them back in the filmed Series. I think that was a mistake. This story is mythic, and is always set to happen "next Saturday". Putting a precise date on it ties it to a calendar, and authors notoriously don't check calendars when they are writing. Furthermore, the standard calendar changes in regular ways except when it doesn't; not only do leap years change how dates and day-names fall, so do periods of 400 years and millennia change how leap years fall.

Given that in the original novel, the paintball training session was held on August 20 and 21, and it happened at some point after the Antichrist's eleventh birthday which is on a Wednesday, I looked carefully at the specified timing of events. In the novel, the paintball fight is going full-on at night (unusual, I believe), and happens a day earlier than in the script, when it is going on in daylight. That changes the timing of a few other things as well. The series as filmed seems to match the script pretty well as far as that goes. Unfortunately for the fans who want precise dates, Gaiman said on one occasion that it happens in 2018 and on another that it happens in 2019.

To make matters worse, those given dates don't work for either of those years.
The paintball fight has to happen during the time period of August 20-21. If it is at night, it has to be on August 20, late at night. If it is daytime, it happens on August 21, because otherwise it's too fully-engaged to be early in the morning on the first day of a two-day conference.

Book-canon timing of events with a night-time fight requires that Armageddon happen on Saturday, August 22. That date happens in 2009 and in 2020.

Script-canon* timing with a daytime fight requires that Armageddon happen on Saturday, August 23. That date happens in 1986, 1997, 2008, and 2031.

So, any writers out there: either check your calendar carefully, or make your story timeless and undatable. Because people will check.

*Technically, it's Series-canon, because the dates were removed from the Script but visible in the Series. But since I don't have access at the moment and have to rely on my memory (I do recall the paintball fight being daytime), I'm calling it script-canon.

ETA: sigh. I should never post anything involving numbers. Right now I think I reversed some of the date information. But it is true that the book differs from the script about the time of day of the paintball fight. In the book, it's around midnight Wednesday night, the same day as the birthday but well after 3 PM, and after they run into Anathema. In the Script it's in full daylight, and our two heroes leave as it is growing dark again, and only then run into Anathema.

 

[=Tamar]

Neil Gaiman said that the BBC showing of Good Omens won't happen until sometime around February 2020. They have the right to show it starting at the end of November, but they didn't schedule it for then. No doubt this will spark more purchases of DVDs.

 

[=Tamar]

Sheer speculation: The Dowlings come from Tadfield, originally.
The novel tells us that Thaddeus Dowling was named after his father, and intended to name his son Thaddeus until Mrs. Dowling named him Warlock. A nickname for Thaddeus is "Tad." If the name were passed down in the family with differing middle names, it wouldn't be numbered, and it might go back to before the Dowling ancestors emigrated to the United States, abandoning a plot of land known as Tad's field. With nobody guarding it, the field became anybody's land, so people built houses there.

 

[Dotsie]

Book-Aziraphale could actually be skinny. Or even muscular. It's open season - there is really no description except that his hands are well-manicured.

His hands are also described as 'plump', when Crowley takes the paintball gun off him. So it stands to reason that he would be quite soft all over - definitely not skinny or muscular.

 

[=Tamar]

Thank you, Dotsie! I knew I'd read that word somewhere but missed it the last four times I searched. It's on page 120 in the new William Morrow paperback, bottom of the page and the word is at the binding edge of the page: ""He took the gun from the angel's plump hand". So the photograph of the actor Neil* preferred may have been more for the long, narrow face than the thin body.
*OMG I just checked and it was Neil who preferred the thin actor and Terry who preferred the bulky one.