Podcast: Play in new window | To download, right-click here and chose save/download link (9.6MB)

In the culture to which I was born, this time of year is for reflection, and for wishing peace and goodwill to all. Or this time of year is for excessive indulgence, and mindless materialism. Or this time year is for being with family and loved ones. Or this time of year is for rituals, the origins of which are unknown to most; rituals that are pleasurable to some, tedious to others. Or this time of year is for spiritual renewal. Or this time of year is for giving and receiving gifts. I am talking about Christmas, of course. Or rather, I am talking about the ‘festive season’, a distinction I will make because Christmas is essentially a Christian holiday, yet its trappings have been absorbed into a cultural juggernaut that transcends religion. I will start where I began, from the position that Christmas is for reflection, peace and goodwill to all. I may not be Queen Elizabeth II, who this year gave her fifty-sixth Christmas broadcast since 1952 (she had the day off on Christmas Day 1969). Nor am I President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who gave this year’s ‘alternative’ Christmas message on the UK’s Channel 4, causing some to get so upset with the fact that he was allowed to speak that they completely failed to listen to what he said. As this is a time for goodwill, I beg your forbearance as I offer a further Christmas message of my own.

There is no such thing as Christmas, of course. I do not mean to dispute that there was a Jesus and that he was born a man on a given day. Scholars believe that the man existed, though you will forgive me if I, like most of them, avoid stating a conclusion on whether Jesus was God incarnate. I mean that Christmas is no longer one story, one festival. It is a convenient coming-together of many disparate themes into a symphony of celebration. Christmas is a melting pot, or better still a party where everybody brings a dish that they made themselves. As far as Christmas is concerned, people put in and take out what they like. That means there are as many Christmases as there are ways to celebrate it.

Scholars do not believe that December 25th is the literal birth date of Jesus. However, if Christmas is meant to celebrate the arrival of Jesus on this Earth, you could be forgiven for forgetting that fact. Most Christmas ceremony is as reliable a guide to Jesus’ birth, life and message as Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner are faithful purveyors of the story of Robin Hood. Christmas, like Jesus himself, is the kernel. Around it we find layer upon layer of shiny wrapping. Much of the season is as insubstantial and transitory as gift paper, and destined for the dustbin the day the season is over.

Over the ages, Christians have been no less susceptible to mixing Christmas with other rituals. German pagans left carrots or straw in their shoes, a gift of food for the horse of the god Odin. After his horse had eaten, Odin would repay their kindness by refilling the shoes with gifts or sweets. There are no more offerings of carrots or straw, but people still leave out their stockings today. In Britain, the puritanical government of Cromwell had such a dim view of the heritage of Christmas as a Christian festival that they banned it outright. What we understand as Christmas is really a mangling and merging of traditions and inventions. For example, the character known as Father Christmas in English-speaking countries, and as Père Noël amongst Francophiles, is historically distinct from Santa Claus. The British Father Christmas used to wear a green cloak, not a red suit. Some Czech advertising professionals, keen to maintain their own traditions have even resorted to running their own anti-Santa campaign. To their minds, Santa is a corporate invader from the US and UK, not a giver of gifts from the North Pole. They see Santa as a threat to local traditions that even the Soviets could not suppress.

For the first time in the history, near enough anyone can acquire the capability to share their Christmas message with near enough everyone who wants to listen to it. This era’s investment in electronic communications is possibly the greatest gift that mankind has ever enjoyed. Messages of peace and goodwill are no longer the preserve of royalty and the rich. That said, capability is only a starting point for communication. To communicate, you also need a shared context, a common outlook, and content that is meaningful to the recipient as well as to the sender. At this time, when the world is confronted by problems that are ever more global in both cause and effect, the need for communication has never been more apparent. Having attained the technological prowess, we still lack the language to talk to one another. Babel’s cacophony is a nuisance, but the obstacle posed by the many languages of the world is surmountable. Every day English is evolving into the de facto standard for anyone wanting to make themselves understood beyond their nation’s borders. The real shortfall lies not in words, but in metaphors and stories. We lack the shared references that permit words to convey more than immediate and mundane desires. Ethics and spirituality cannot be described in terms of bread and stone. Christmas is a case in point. This holiday can be used to signify the desire to realize the brotherhood of man. Yet, as often as not, it is promulgated for more prosaic ends. Its message of unity can alternatively be read as divisive, depending on whether it is used to emphasize tolerance or religious hegemony. Stripped of religious overtones, and the problem is made worse, not better. Without its moral firmament, Christmas becomes a proxy for good things, leaving us no wiser as to what really is good for us.

Left to wander outside its Christian stable, Christmas morphs into a chameleon. The festive season is a license to do anything that makes us happy. If that is sugar fizzy water, then you can drink Coca-Cola until your mouth rots. If happiness lies in sex, then you can carry your mistletoe and stalk your prey at drunken parties. If food is the source of joy, then ’tis the season for gluttony. It is no wonder that the Czech advertising executives see Santa’s sleigh as a vehicle for commercialism. Not that they object to the commercialism, they just object to the way it can digest all humanity and regurgitate it as the same tasteless pulp. Perhaps fighting Christmas materialism misses the point. Materialism is what people have in common, more than anything else. It is little wonder that typing christmas.com into your web browser takes you to a splog - a spam blog containing many links and used to generate click-throughs to retail websites. The US is the global standard-bearer for materialism, so it should be no surprise if Santa Claus speaks to the world with an American accent. Saint Nick is easily appreciated by all, because everyone can see the advantages of knowing somebody who gives but expects nothing in return. He ends up looking the same all over the world because that is the path of least resistance. Why go to the trouble of getting Father Christmas a green cloak, when you can simply buy in the same red-suited Santa Claus as the rest of the world? And if those Santa Clauses come from the same Chinese factory or Hollywood studio, so much the better, as economies of scale will keep the costs down, meaning you get more Christmas for your money. Though if Christmas is about getting what you want, then how does it differ from the rest of the year?

The festive season has not just consumed Christmas and spewed it up as a sickly goo. The goo coats everything that coincides with it, giving them all the same flavour. Hanukkah is not meant to be happy just because it is convenient to send Jews a greeting card at the same time as everyone else. China is a country of Buddhists supposedly run by Communists, but in the Northern city of Harbin this year they built ‘the world’s largest ice santa’. Why the organizers of this ice festival would make effigies of Saint Nick should be a mystery, but you will have already guessed at the reason: to make money, in this case from increased tourism. This is Christmas as photo backdrop, stripped of any other significance. Perhaps this is what we should be hoping for from the season. Perhaps the festive season really is the perfect combination of trade and peace, even at a time of financial despondency. Maybe if we are all too dependent on buying and selling from each other, we will have too much to lose and will never resort to fighting each other again. However, I doubt it. Alongside the insipid well-wishing, people need to work together if the world is to be a harmonious place. The world’s population continues to grow, non-renewable resources are inevitably diminishing, and it is a rare person who, like Santa, puts the needs of humanity ahead of their own. If we needed a reminder that making, buying and selling stuff is not a formula for lasting happiness, you need only read the story of Harbin’s ice santa as reported in the China Daily. Alongside the various headlines bemoaning the global downturn and reduced exports from Chinese factories, the story tells us that the ice sculptors in Harbin faced an especially difficult and dangerous task this year. Global warming has forced the sculptors in the northerly city to resort to using manufactured ice. Without irony, we are informed that the warmer temperatures mean that the ice is prone to melting, causing it to become slippery, and making the sculptor’s job especially hazardous.

It is not enough to have a message. Somebody needs to be motivated to circulate that message. Others must want to listen. The accessibility of modern communication technology does not greatly change that. The balance has shifted from the few previously able to send to message to the many now deciding which of countless messages they choose to listen to, but the number of messages that get listened to remains finite. Not many people have the time to handle the volume of correspondence that Santa receives. There can be fewer messages that are so readily conveyed and understood than the one which says people should get things they want. That is why the retailers and manufacturers will always be keen to give the Christmas message, and consumers will always want to receive it. Even small children can relate to it. At this time each year, I find writing my annual seasonal letter, and selecting and sending greeting cards (both those made of actual card and the oxymoronic e-cards) to be a challenge in diplomacy. Messages that wish a ‘Merry Christmas’ miss the mark when sent to people that happen to believe in something different to the Christmas sermon-cum-confection. The messages proffered by the oddball crew of Christians, atheists and opportunists that board the yuletide bandwagon each year may be disparate, but they still resonate with Christian overtones. ‘Season’s Greetings’ is hardly an improvement on ‘Merry Christmas’, as we all know why the season centres on December 25th. Try as I might, I will never combine the sensitivity and knowledge to articulate a message that would be meaningful and appreciated right around the world. As my seasonal letter-writing struggles demonstrate, I am barely adroit enough to communicate to the people that I know. Whilst I have the capability, thanks to the advance of technology and engineering, I do not have the content to talk to an entire planet. I cannot empathize with all points of view around the world. Zoroastrians of the world will need to accept my sincere apology when I say I do not have time to learn about their religious practices (though I am reluctant to be too hard on myself, as I am still someway ahead of anyone who thinks Zoroastrians dress in black and uses swords to cut Z’s into the seat of their opponents’ trousers). The only truly universal messages I can think of tend to be as bland as the ones I want to rail against. Although I would like to do better, the global majority possibly have it right. If Christmas means buying-and-selling, giving-and-taking, and comes wrapped in a vaguely American packaging, that may be the best we can all hope for, collectively, as a race. Even with the internet, for all its democratizing potential, the sheer dominance of American, and commercial, participation skews its usefulness as a medium for other important messages. Modern communications is still prone to reinforcing what is already considered mainstream - especially if it is mainstream in North America. Using the internet to deliver an anti-commercial Christmas message may be barely more popular than a message of goodwill from the President of Iran.

Setting aside the Czech admen for a moment, this season does revolve around ideas that most of us can agree are good, at least at a personal level. Beyond the personal, it is not so clear that Christmas is good. We are consuming the Earth’s resources, and not replenishing them. We have no clear view on how to bring this back into balance. In some senses consumption has become essential, and along with it the kind of ebullient outlook encouraged by Christmas. If people stop buying we may get depressed about the future and, in turn, fear for our jobs. On the other hand, perhaps losing those jobs would be a real Christmas blessing. They may not have been very good jobs to have, if they depend on the capacity to consume way beyond actual needs. How badly did we need those jobs anyway? If the purpose is to earn income in order to consume to excess, then perhaps we can do without those jobs.

In practice, the distribution of the world’s wealth is not based on merit. Saint Nick keeps a list of all the good boys and girls, and visits them all, at least according to Google and the air traffic controllers at North America’s Norad who claim to track Santa’s progress in real-time. In contrast, our global economy is not based on such a simple premise of rewards for merit. It tends to bestow too many gifts on some, too few on others. Now we are nearing the capability of universal communication, thoughts should turn to global conversations, about the topics the world needs to talk about. I cannot think of a topic more apposite for this Christmas than how we distribute the wealth of the world. I am not just talking about the many remaining and severe injustices around the planet, where people starve, die of curable diseases or are left homeless by no fault of their own, though that is a very important element of it. I am also talking about how we find better, fairer ways to reward people for the real value of what they contribute to the world. We need to find better ways to motivate people to address people’s needs, and fewer ways to placate greed. Charity is no solution. The largesse of individuals like Bill Gates should not obscure the disadvantages of living in a world that permits such obscene wealth to be accumulated. Wealth is a corrupting influence, as can be attested to by the many hard-working competitors who were unfairly crushed by Microsoft’s business tactics. Confronting and dealing with the problem of disparate wealth will require willing collaboration from people around the world. The default mode of world governance - waiting for the Americans to take the lead - is not a suitable approach. America is the cheerleader for consumption, and its power depends on it. Doing nothing is not much of an alternative, as evidenced by the scientists that monitor the impact our profligacy has on the environment. If ordinary folks will not take the reigns, then we might ultimately need rescuing through the imposition of dictators (benign or otherwise). As dictators are always a risky solution to any problem, the morality of wealth and reward is something we all need to talk about now, whether we are Christian or Muslim, non-believer or undecided, Zoroastrian or other. Many will be reluctant to do so. The technological capability to communicate with anyone on the planet is the wonder of our time. Disparate wealth and the corrupting influence of endless consumption is its evil. Managing consumption is the essential challenge of the era, with human suffering and environmental devastation as the consequences if we fail. We will not set the world to rights in time for next Christmas, but like the ice sculptors of Harbin, we need to chip away at our goal. If we can use our technology to pursue this noble enterprise, and not just for opening more lines of communication dedicated to selling and reinforcing our old selfish prejudices, we may one day achieve the dream of a brotherhood of man. This season, I cannot think of a better wish.

Think of a Christmas film. Maybe you thought of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life‘ or ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol‘. Maybe you need your Christmas schmaltz to be tempered, so thought of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas‘ instead. If you were a bit more lateral you might have thought of ‘Home Alone‘, ‘Gremlins‘ or ‘Love, Actually‘ which are also set at Christmas. But you probably did not think of a homo-erotic drama set in a Japanese PoW camp (’Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence‘). There are so many schlocky films where somebody like Tim Allen dresses up in a red suit and acts good, or somebody like Billy Bob Thornton dresses up in a red suit and acts bad, you may have forgotten all the films where Christmas features prominently in the story, but which also managed to be so much more. Luckily, you have me to remind you. When sat in front of the tellybox this festive season, here are ten excuses to change the mood and enjoy something different.

10. Eyes Wide Shut

The last film made by the obsessive Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut is less a story about the sexual imagination of two people, and more of an excuse for Kubrick’s imagery. Kubrick paints with a vivid palette that cuts between sensuous reds to offset radiant skin, and icy blues that reflect the dark hungers of the soul. Real-life star couple Kidman and Cruise play the married protagonists, but the story itself dances on the boundaries with the surreal. The character’s dreams are merged with the dream-like events that happen to them, leaving the viewer disoriented about what is happening in the world and what is happening in the character’s minds. In the final scene, thoughts are equated with actions. Kidman revels in fantasies about infidelity, but turns down the one real-life lothario that she comes across. Tom goes cruising for sex, gets into trouble, and is frightened back into his wife’s arms. But the real star of the movie is Kubrick’s backdrops, which is also why it fails to be erotic. No matter how good the drapes look, they will never turn me on. Kidman and Cruise do their best, but ultimately they have to settle for being gorgeous mannequins in a Kubrick set piece. Whether at a fabulous party, a costume shop, a sumptuous orgy, or the deserted streets at night, the movie transports us through the hinterland of the subconscious. The bright lights of Christmas can be cold and distant, and are used to frame this moving picture artwork. Take a look at this scene where Cruise finds himself being followed:

The film does leave you asking one question, though. Why do I never get invited to parties to like that?

9. Go

There are teen movies that are made for teens who want teen movies, and there are teen movies that are made for people who think they are old enough to know better. Go is a superior example of the latter. It has all the hallmarks of a movie on the cusp of indie and Hollywood. A cast of good-looking emerging stars eat up the dialogue in a multi-threaded plot. The ribbon of story ties together all those favourite devices of drugs, cars, crime, sex, guns, and violence, and wraps it in the shiny tinsel paper setting of Christmas in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Diving into the plot and motivation of the characters is not recommended, as any apparent depth is an optical illusion. One to watch when the kids are in bed and you are still pickling your brain on what is left of the party booze.

8. Lethal Weapon

This is the Hollywood buddy cop movie with edge. Before the franchise was watered down with the likes of Joe Pesci and Chris Rock, Gibson and Glover came as close to granite as you can get in a mainstream action flick. As the suicidal Riggs, distraught over the death of his wife, Gibson delivers a performance that is straight out of the watch-out-I-am-very-disturbed-and-might-go-mental-at-any-moment drawer. Setting the film at Christmas is a simple way to add depth to this emotional undercurrent. Check out the scene where Riggs contemplates ending all his troubles:

7. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

When they make the effort, Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer can out-act most of the rest of Hollywood. Fortunately for the audience, they were both ready for action when they showed up at the shooting of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This black comedy crime caper is sometimes too clever and too black for its own good, but the scintillating dialogue lights up the movie when Downey Jr. and Kilmer are on screen. It is the story of a petty thief mistaken for an actor who reunites at an LA Christmas party with the girl he had a crush upon in childhood, only to become embroiled with her and his metrosexual private eye acting coach in a murder mystery that… Forget me trying to explain the plot. If you have not seen it already, then watch it and find out for yourself. To whet your appetite, here is a choice cut from this juicy script:

6. While You Were Sleeping

Along with Speed, this film turned Sandra Bullock into a star, and she has never been better. Romances sprinkled with touches of comedy and pathos are always delicate affairs. Get the mix too heavy, and they are unpalatable to anyone but the desperately sentimental. Too few ingredients, and they evaporate before you can taste them. They demand actors that can stay believable when both silly and serious, without letting either kind of scene overpower the flavour of the movie. Bullock shines as the lead character in this movie. She plays a lonely girl with a crush on a stranger that buys train tickets from her booth, and is then mistaken for his fiancé when he falls into a coma. Bill Pullman is also at his best as Bullock’s comic and romantic foil. Choosing to set this story at Christmas may seem like overkill, but it was handled as gently as the rest of this surprisingly tender and heartwarming story. If you want a masterclass in Christmas romance, you will not get better.

Having read my review, you may think While You Were Sleeping is at least half-decent. Unfortunately, you would not think so from the movie trailer, which just confirms what I said about how hard it is to get the balance right. Here it is anyway.

5. Batman Returns

Tim Burton was the movie maverick who started Hollywood down the dark path which has brought us to the most recent Batman movies and Heath Ledger’s spellbindingly unhinged take on ‘The Joker’. When Burton first unleashed his gothic vision of Gotham City, it set nerves racing. After directing the visually stunning, creepy, enormously successful but ultimately quite bland Batman, Burton had licence to take the follow-up, Batman Returns, deeper into the cave of Bruce Wayne’s psyche. The result is an eerie concoction. Sewers of explosive penguins are commanded by a deformed Danny DeVito. Christopher Walken is the corrupt businessman in extremis. His character’s name, Max Shreck, is a reference to the actor who was the original screen vampire, Nosferatu. Michael Keaton inhabits the rubber suit with an embodiment of the phrase “still waters run deep”. The change to Batman’s love interest completes the swing in the mood. Goody-goody reporter Vicky Vale from the first film is out, replaced by the cartwheeling, nine-lives, tight-stitched Catwoman of Michelle Pfeiffer. Though it looks a little tame by recent standards, Burton’s Batman Returns was too much for the Hollywood machine, which handed the directorial baton into the much safer hands of Joel Schumacher. Batman Returns is certainly not your typical Christmas flick. This is the scene where Shreck lights Gotham’s Christmas tree, only to be interrupted by the Penguin…

4. Edward Scissorhands

Tim Burton must have a thing about Christmas. As well as Batman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas, he also directed Edward Scissorhands. Scissorhands is perhaps the most personal of Burton’s unlikely festive treats. It is a modern inversion of a morality play, where the unfinished Edward remains good and innocent despite the provocations of the corrupting townsfolk. Edward, like many a misunderstood teenage goth or emo, may look scary, but is timid and has a sensitive soul. His early Christmas present from his creator, a pair of hands, does not arrive early enough. His maker, played by Vincent Price, dies whilst showing the hands to Johnny, and they are never fitted, leaving Edward with blades instead. After his misadventures with the townsfolk, Edward is forced back into hiding at the deserted house of his creator. Even so, the film ends with Edward showering down a present on the town below - the ’snow’ created by the whirlwind creation of his ice sculptures. The eponymous lead is beautifully played by Johnny Depp, and he is ably supported by a tremendous cast including the gorgeous Winona Ryder. Depp imbues his fantastic character with a real gravity. In this scene, Edward is helping with the Christmas decorations:

3. Trading Places

Commodities trading used to be so simple. Time was, you could take an ordinary guy off the street, suggest to him that he should buy low and sell high, and before you knew it he would corner the market in frozen orange juice. Those were the days. Back then, John Landis was a hot director (long before the ignominy of Blues Brothers 2000), Dan Aykroyd could still see his toes and could still time his punchlines, and Eddie Murphy was a rising star who went to auditions and cared about being funny. Working with a great script, and a tremendous supporting cast including Denholm Elliott (best ever English butler), Jamie Lee Curtis (best ever tart with a heart and best ever superfluous money shot), Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche (best ever rich scheming billionaire baddies) they made a timeless gem of a movie in Trading Places. Not only do the baddies turn the lives of Aykroyd and Murphy upside down, they do it at Christmas! Thankfully, the heroes end up joining forces and hatch a scheme to turn the tables on the crooked arch-capitalists.

In this scene, our Murphy’s character shows the billionaires that he really has the inside ‘juice’ on how the commodities markets work. If only the rest of the world understood it as clearly…

2. Brazil

Dystopian futures never come as dystopian, or as fantastic, as the dystopian futures created by director and ex-Monty Python Terry Gilliam. In Gilliam’s future, they do not just torture you - they ruin your credit rating by making you pay for the electricity. Long before the war on terror, Gilliam’s vision is one of a repressive government squeezing the life out of its own people, in the name of safeguarding their security. In this world, government is not just ruthless and inhuman, it is also bureaucratic and incompetent. Gilliam rightly sees that their bungling inability to identify who their enemies are, and their production-line punishment of the innocents that they catch instead, makes them scarier still. But this being Gilliam, we also get caught up in the story of a man just trying to make the system work well enough and long enough to allow him to find the woman of his dreams. In Brazil, the always superb Jonathan Pryce excels as the hapless protagonist Sam Lowry. Along the way his paths cross with a real assortment of characters that only populate a mind like Gilliam’s. Robert De Niro puts in a performance of unusual verve and originality for his later career, playing a ‘terrorist’ plumber who is the only man wiling to turn down the heat in Lowry’s flat. Another Python, Michael Palin, is cast as Lowry’s more career-minded friend. He not only tortures people for a living, he changes the name of his wife to fit in with a mistake made by his boss. If you have not seen it, I will not spoil the ending, and I promise you will not be able to predict how this Christmas story ends. Did you expect the predictable from a Python? This clip shows the opening of the film…

1. Die Hard

No matter how bad your office party was, it was not as bad as the one held in Nakatomi Tower, downtown LA, 1988. It was not a good party, but it was a truly great blockbuster movie - good enough to spawn three sequels. Bruce Willis is John McClane, the wise-cracking NYPD cop in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alan Rickman is Hans Gruber, the smooth and sophisticated European terrorist turned master thief. In Die Hard you cannot take your eyes off either. Combine them with a great script, tremendous direction, pacy editing and top stunt action, and you get the best Christmas film you completely forgot was about Christmas. Willis and Rickman are individually brilliant, and because the film keeps cutting backwards and forwards between them, Die Hard has a wonderful dramatic rhythm that few action films can recreate. This is the scene where they first face each other:

Die Hard has it all, and raised the bar for every action movie afterwards. It is exciting. It is well written. It is funny. By the time they got to version 4.0, they had started to run out of good ideas, buy anyone would struggle to match the original Die Hard. Another of its incredible strengths is how well paced it is. You get a little breather every so often, and then…

Helping to keep the film engaging and moving at the same time, the film delivers an intriguing array of supporting characters. You get FBI agents Johnson and Johnson (”No relation”). There is McClane’s estranged wife Holly Gennaro (”What idiot put you in charge?” “You did. When you murdered my boss.”) Sergeant Al Powell boosts the morale of McClane by talking to him over the radio, whilst Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson makes a hash of things (”What about the body that fell out the window?” “Well, who knows? Probably some stockbroker, got depressed.”) Rounding out the ensemble we get a couple of classic buffoons in scumbag reporter Richard Thornburg, and corporate clown Harry Ellis (”I negotiate million dollar deals for breakfast. I think I can handle this Eurotrash.”) Each character gets just a few minutes to make their mark, but each character hits the mark. It takes an ambitious script to slip in so many vignettes alongside the adrenalin, but Die Hard does it with elegance and wit.

There is a lot of icing on the Die Hard Christmas cake. All the finishing touches turn an excellent film into a unique treat. McClane is a fan of Roy Rogers but no fan of flying. We find out where Gruber buys his suits. One of the henchmen helps himself to a chocolate bar whilst waiting for a shootout in the lobby. Finally, there is the music: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and Vaughn Monroe crooning “Let it snow! Let is snow! Let it snow!” As a result, we get a regular subconscious reminder that all the events are set on Christmas Eve.

This festive season, try not to spend too long glued to the television. But if you do indulge, spare a thought for these forgotten classics. If you have nothing better to do, you can do worse than digging out your old video tapes or DVDs. I promise you will enjoy them far more than a re-run of The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. All of which leaves me with only one more thing to say. Yippee-ki-yay and merry Christmas!

In November of 1942, following the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Winston Churchill said:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

As ever, Churchill found a pithy way to convey many different messages with just two dozen words. To British minds at least, El Alamein was a turning point in WWII. It was the place where the democratic powers engaged in the war were finally able to push back their totalitarian enemies. In one sense the Egyptian town was literally a turning point, as it represented the furthest point of advance by the Axis forces in North Africa. It was also a turning point in terms of success. The Second Battle was a decisive victory and the first successful major Allied offensive. As Churchill later wrote in his memoirs:

It may almost be said, “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”

Victory in North Africa was vital for the Axis forces, and hence for the Allies too. Earlier in the conflict, the strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Sahara had seen Britain vying with Italy in a see-saw contest. The arrival of Germany’s Afrika Korps, under the command of Erwin Rommel, had changed that, and the Axis forces were now making sustained progress towards their goal. They pushed further and further East, towards the shipping routes through the Suez which played a crucial role in transporting supplies to the Allies. At this time Britain was already suffering a severe problem with getting the resources needed to sustain the fight. Britain faced a very real danger of starvation. As an island, Britain needed to import vast amounts of food from North America. Britain also badly needed American equipment. To pay for it all, Britain had to resort to vast amounts of borrowing. Even so, U-boat attacks on supply ships in the mid-Atlantic threatened to force Britain’s surrender without the need for an invasion of its soil. These attacks reached a peak in 1942. German submarines sunk a total of 1,159 ships that year, more than they had in 1939, 1940 and 1941 put together. Conversely, German control across North Africa would have been the solution to what ultimately proved the most debilitating limitation of the German military, their lack of fuel. Germany had the tanks and aircraft to execute remarkable blitzkrieg tactics, rapidly capturing large swathes of territory. They used the blitzkrieg to great effect, first in Western Europe and then in Russia, but the Axis powers were unable to supply the quantities of oil needed for a sustained fight. German control of the Middle East would have solved that problem.

Rommel began as the aggressor at El Alamein, though his attacks were borne of desperation. The Axis supply lines were stretched, making it too easy for the Allies to attack and interrupt their flow. Too few reinforcements were being sent anyhow, as Germany directed ever more resources to the front in Russia, which was stalled in the face of bitter Winter conditions and intractable Russian defenders. The Axis advance towards the oil fields of the Caucasus had been depleted in the punishing Battle of Stalingrad. Rommel needed to win soon or he would inevitably be overmatched and defeated by the Allies. As well as the manpower and resources that came from the British Commonwealth, he would soon have to contend with the American forces as well. The USA only entered the war in late 1941, and their initial focus was solely on the fight with the Japanese in the Pacific. However, they had earlier stretched the bounds of neutrality by providing naval protection to the Atlantic convoys that Britain depended upon. Having regrouped in their Pacific conflict with the Japanese, the US would soon extend their field of operations to North Africa. Rommel needed to act decisively. The British, with the assistance of the Commonwealth nations of India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, had methodically assembled superior numbers of troops and equipment. At El Alamein, Rommel had roughly half the number of tanks and troops at the disposal of the Allies. With little prospect of further matériel reaching him anytime soon, Rommel had to attack now if he was to have any hope of consolidating the Axis gains. In the First Battle of El Alamein, Rommel had hounded the poorly organized Allied forces under the command of General Auchinleck, but been unable to break through and secure a victory. Auchinleck was dismissed. His eventual replacement was Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, a man who emphasized planning, coordination and the morale of the common soldier. Despite Rommel’s best efforts, the superior forces of Montgomery’s British Eighth Army prevailed and permanently blunted the Axis drive to take North Africa, Suez and the Middle East.

The victory at El Alamein served a symbolic purpose, which Churchill grasped. The democracies of mainland Europe had all fallen to Germany. Russia was suffering staggering losses on the Eastern Front in a desperate bid to slow the German advances. Churchill needed a victory to boost flagging British morale. At the same time, the war was a long way from being won, so Churchill had to temper any jubilation. His words were carefully chosen to do that. Victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein was also important to Churchill himself. He had replaced General Auchinleck even though the general has held El Alamein in the first battle. Churchill was also facing the threat of a motion of no-confidence in the British House of Commons if the sequence of Allied defeats continued. He badly needed a victory to secure his own political position as wartime leader.

So why am I telling you all this? I find the history fascinating in itself, but this story of events from over sixty years ago still offers many parallels to challenges we face at the start of the 21st Century. The struggle for El Alamein was pivotal. At this point in the war, the pendulum, which had been swinging in favour of the despotic Axis powers, had reached its limit and began to swing back toward the Allied democracies. However, the victory for democracy in WWII was only partial. There would not have been an Allied victory, if the totalitarian Soviet Union, with its extraordinary willingness to lay down the lives of its citizens in its defence, had not been part of the alliance. The Eastern Front consumed enormous quantities of Axis manpower and resources that would otherwise have been focused on taking Britain and North Africa. At the end of the war, the autonomy of Western Europe was reinstated, and Japan was eventually integrated into the democratic fold. On the other side of the scales, Stalin encompassed Eastern Europe within his authoritarian grip, and the seeds of further war and repression were sown widely, in places as diverse as China and Iran. Although history was punctuated with a long Cold War, more recent decades have apparently seen the pendulum continue to swing further towards democracy. The Soviet Union collapsed, Germany reunified, and the former Warsaw Pact countries have by and large deposed the Communist oligarchs that used to rule them. Spain democratized following the death of Franco. Elsewhere, in places like China, Korea and Vietnam, brutal regimes have been limited in scope or softened their approach. But might this pendulum now being reached its pro-democratic limit, and be about to change direction again?

Political power is determined by a mix of basic ingredients. Those ingredients are essentially the same as those that featured in our potted history of El Alamein and the surrounding circumstances of WWII. To begin with there is freedom of the people and political expression. For years, the democratic US, with an isolationist streak to its culture, dithered as a neutral. This only meant the scale of the task it faced was much larger when they eventually joined the fighting. Britain dithered too in the early stages, first with appeasement, then by toying with the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Nazi Germany and inaction during the phoney war. Britain also wasted important military resources through a misguided excursion on to mainland Europe to bolster the defensive lines of its allies. This excursion achieved nothing and would have been a complete loss were it not for the Dunkirk evacuation. It was only when Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister that Britain started to properly focus on the essential tasks needed to win a war against Germany. In contrast, the Soviet leader Stalin may have made many countless errors, but was able to maintain an absolute control that enabled his nation to defend resolutely and bounce back from devastating losses. Soviet citizens had little choice but to work and fight tirelessly. They laid down their lives in terrible numbers in the Battles for Moscow and Stalingrad and the siege of Leningrad, but they did not capitulate for fear of terrible reprisals. Others worked tirelessly to rebuild the Soviet industry far away from enemy lines, and this industry would eventually be able to not only replace the enormous Soviet losses, but overwhelm its enemies. Attitudes to personal liberty and the process of national decision made a difference to how ruthlessly the war effort was pursued. Different beliefs about a person’s rights and entitlements, what they should expect from life and how much they should be prepared to suffer, are just as important in determining how the would is governed today.

Other ingredients from history still feature prominently in the current mix. Food, energy, industry, trade and transport all played an important part in the story of events around November 1942. They are all just as important now. The availability of these resources, who controls them, how they are controlled, and the uses they are put to, will greatly determine what kind of world we live in. Morale and vision are important too. In order to inspire people, they must have a vision of what they want to do. Churchill cut through any pretensions to finding peace with the Germans and hardened the resolve to fight. He unified Britain around a message of stubborn defiance and total war. Hitler offered his own vision, which he used to unite the German people. His message was world domination and racial purity. Today, we still find similar extremes in the opposing visions of how the world should be run. The content of these visions are important, but so too is the extent to which they are used to bring groups of people together. A sense of common purpose, or its absence, will also shape the future for democracy.

WWII hastened the decline of one superpower, and bolstered the rise of two others. Great Britain, even when drawing upon the enormous reserves of its Empire, was barely able to contend with the focused industrial might of Germany. As an island nation, it could not even feed itself. Without trade, and enormous borrowing to pay for the imports it needed, Britain would have soon been defeated. In contrast, the demands of fighting a war helped to lift the USA out of recession and put its workers back into employment in order to service its phenomenal industrial output. Financing Britain through loans was a natural, and ultimately profitable, corollary to America’s rejuvenation. Today we may be seeing the emergence of different flows of industrial output and capital in the world economic ecosystem. Recent events have turned back the clock in Britain to a level of borrowing not seen outside of wartime. The same events have confirmed and underlined the shift in polarity of the US economic model. The US, which was once an industrial powerhouse, creator of wealth and exploiter of vast natural resources, may be entering a period of terminal decline. It supplies less of its own demands, is dependent on finance from other nations and is the importer of an unprecedented share of the world’s energy reserves. Meanwhile, countries like China are on the industrial rise. Control of valuable energy resources has enabled a diverse group of nations like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to invest in their futures and extend their influence. New alliances are emerging, as strange in their own way as the bedfellows that WWII made of Japan and Germany or the US and Soviet Union.

Lest we forget, we are also at war today. Though the Iraq War continues to wind down, the war in Afghanistan persists as a staging ground in the nebulous ‘War on Terror’. The terrorist antagonists seem to be as international in scope as WWII was, though the ultimate goals on either side are much harder to identify. Where we can identify goals, they represent alternative visions of human liberty and morality that are seemingly impossible to reconcile. This conflict is harder to plot on a map than WWII, but its impact is just as real. It insidiously changes our perceptions of human nature. The product of fear and the tightened security it provokes is an unmeasured drain on economies, diverting resources from other uses. It also opens up new fronts in the ethical arguments about personal responsibility for our actions.

These are our present conditions. It is easier to judge history and execute hindsight, than to look ahead and anticipate the future. But the future is often determined by events that take place before people properly consider the possible consequences, just as the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany was as much a product of the crippling national debt imposed through WWI reparations as they were the product of ages-old racial antipathies. These conditions will shape the future of democracy, and hence of how people are governed and the lives they live. This point in time is a good time to take stock, see where we have come from, and where we are going to. I am not going to do that all now - this site is called halfthoughts for a reason - but I am going to explore these themes further in a series of upcoming posts. What I will say is that Churchill was right about El Alamein being the end of the beginning. The war continued for another three years, but the tide had turned with the aggressors forced backwards from then on. The events that unfolded subsequently could not be confidently predicted at the time, but they were profound. One of those events, to use another phrase coined by Churchill, was the drawing of the Iron Curtain across Europe. We live in times of change that are as dramatic, in their own way, as the period that lead up to that battle in November of 1942. They will determine how the human race will live in the 21st Century. Let us look ahead, and draw some analogies with history, in the hope we can better understand what the future has in store for democracy, and for all of us.

Some sequels are inevitable. Spiderman begat Spiderman II. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure spawned Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Peter Jackson always planned to make three movie adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Probably somebody should have told the Wachowski Brothers to call a halt after The Matrix and spare us the mumbo-jumbo attempts to create a workable plot in the two sequels. And the people behind those ill-considered spoofs in the Scary Movie sequence should definitely stop now. They have gone beyond wearing the joke thin - they have rubbed it out of existence. As for George Lucas, perhaps he knows no better than to unleash his fourth Indiana Jones movie, but Harrison Ford should have.

So, you knew what was going to happen when you first read my alternate take on Lucas’ other great film franchise. I will try to keep my efforts worthy of the premier division of sequels, like the original version of The Empire Strikes Back, rather than letting them plummet to the depths inhabited by the likes of Jaws 3-D. Here it is: my follow-up to Star Wars: Parallel Universe, More Star Wars: Parallel Universe and the imaginatively entitled Even More Star Wars: Parallel Universe. Let us return to that parallel universe, a re-imagining of the Star Wars saga, which instead of being set far far away and a long time ago, is found somewhere strangely close to home…

[In a windowless chamber, part of the Emperor's offices on Coruscant, Darth Vader gives evidence to a committee composed of the Empire's top-ranking Health & Safety officials.]

H&S Chair: Lord Vader, are you trying to tell us that the Death Star just blew up? It was completely destroyed, after being hit by one modest torpedo from a single fighter?

Darth Vader: Yes, that’s right. There was some kind of chain reaction when the torpedo exploded in the exhaust vent.

H&S Chair: That seems like a remarkable design flaw, and it cost the lives of almost three million people. Are we to understand that the Rebel Alliance identified this flaw from the plans they stole? Yet nobody on board our own station took the time to review the blueprints and identify the risk?

Darth Vader: Not as far as I know.

H&S Committee Member: The preliminary investigation of the debris says that the torpedo was fired into an innocuous exhaust shaft.

Darth Vader: Apparently so.

H&S Committee Member: Would you therefore agree that this terrible tragedy could have been avoided had someone had the foresight to fit a safety grill above the exhaust vent?

Darth Vader: Before we go any further, I want to reiterate that I wasn’t in charge of construction.

H&S Chair: We know that, Lord Vader. Nevertheless, as a senior member of the Death Star’s management team, you share some responsibility for safeguarding the well-being of its crew.

H&S Deputy Chair: Lord Vader, during the battle itself, did you sense any danger?

Darth Vader: What do you mean?

H&S Deputy Chair: Your prescience is the stuff of legend around the Imperial Fleet. You have an uncanny ability to know what will happen before it does.

Darth Vader: I did not anticipate the destruction of the Death Star. I was completely focused on the task of shooting down the Rebel’s X-Wings.

H&S Deputy Chair: Let’s get this straight, shall we? You kept chasing these Rebel fighters as they flew down this peculiar trench on the surface of the Death Star (aside to the Chair) why build a trench like that on the surface of a space station? I cannot imagine. (To Vader) The Rebel Alliance were intent on firing on this particular exhaust vent. One of their pilots had already fired upon it and narrowly missed, before Luke Skywalker executed his fateful shot. Did you never ask yourself why the Rebels were flying down that trench… why they were risking their lives to attack this particular exhaust port, a seemingly meaningless target?

Darth Vader: Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was caught up in the heat of battle. Their tactics appeared desperate.

H&S Deputy Chair: So you never said to yourself, never sensed with your extraordinary clairvoyant powers, that maybe this exhaust vent was the metaphorical equivalent of a big self-destruct button just sitting unprotected on the outside of our most important space station? The only thing that was missing was a neon sign with an arrow saying “Rebel Alliance: press here”!

Darth Vader: As I said, I was not responsible for either the design or the construction of the battle station.

H&S Chair: That is true Lord Vader, but you were responsible, like all our Imperial forces, for its protection. Yet you allowed Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing to fly past your defences, and fire his torpedo right into our shaft.

Darth Vader: I was chasing him. I was trying to shoot him down.

H&S Chair: Why did you chase him from behind? Why not attack from above, or even head on? Why not just park your ship on top of the exhaust vent? You must have guessed that it was their target. You wouldn’t need special powers to realize that.

Darth Vader: Attacking from behind is a much less risky manoeuvre in a dogfight, and also has a higher probability of success.

H&S Committee Member: That much is true, but it was jolly convenient the way you were thrown clear of the Death Star, wasn’t it?

Darth Vader: (Shocked) What are you insinuating?

H&S Committee Member: Are we supposed to believe that the Rebel Alliance, in the hour of their greatest victory, just flew home to party, instead of mopping up and destroying all the stray fighters like yours?

Darth Vader: I’ve never been so insulted…

H&S Committee Member: I put it to you, Lord Vader, that you were in cahoots with the Rebel Alliance. You permitted them to attack this critical but also easily defended target. You took to your ship, knowing the Death Star was about to be destroyed, and leaving Moff Tarkin and all those valiant men to die. In return for your treachery, the Rebel Alliance did not merely allow you to escape, but helped you to do so - so you could continue to assist them.

Darth Vader: I’m trying to cooperate with your investigation, but your accusation is outrageous. Nobody is more loyal to the Emperor than I.

H&S Chair: That may be so, Lord Vader, but you do have a rather reckless approach to life don’t you? You show scarcely any regard for the health and safety of others.

Darth Vader: I don’t ask anything of my men that I wouldn’t ask of myself.

H&S Chair: Which is exactly my point. Just look at you! You lost your arm in a fight whilst still a young man. Then, in another fight, you lost both your legs and also suffered third degree burns across virtually your entire body. Even your own mother allowed you, as a ten year old boy, to compete in podraces! I mean, a human boy! According to our files, the vehicle you piloted was capable of traveling at 947kph, and you continued to race it even when being shot at by Sandmen, or after being barged off the road by your opponents. Madness!

Darth Vader: (Angry) You leave my mother out of this! That woman was a saint! I’ve had enough of this…(lifts his hand)

H&S Chair: Look here, Lord Vader, don’t raise your voice to me. We members of the Imperial Health and Safety committee have a sworn duty to… (starts choking, as do the other committee members)

Darth Vader: Health and safety this! The authority to investigate health and safety is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

…

[At the Rebel base on the ice world of Hoth, Luke is overdue from his patrol. Leia and Chewbacca are worried he might freeze to death if he does not return before nightfall...]

C-3PO: R2 says the chances of survival are 725 to 1. But he has been known to make mistakes.

R2-D2: Beep. Whistle. (translates as “The only mistake I’ve made recently was choosing to associate myself with an effete protocol droid like you. If I didn’t need you to translate, I would have ditched you long ago. The only thing in the universe that is stupider and more pointless than you was the laserbrain who decided R2 units should speak in funny robotic whistles and beeps instead of English. What was he thinking of? Even Stephen Hawking can talk, but I make these silly noises instead. I’ve got the necessary hardware to synthesize speech, but nobody has installed the firmware. It’s just a con by the robot factory. They make more money by selling the English language droids at a premium. If I could only download a pirated copy of the code, I’d do the installation myself.”)

Chewbacca: Growl (translates as “How did R2 calculate those odds? They sound very precise.”)

C-3PO: When we first established the new base here at Hoth, Rebel Alliance command used to send out patrols every night. Of the first 725 patrols, only one came back. It was then decided to stop running night patrols. Our Health & Safety directorate were very insistent about it.

…

[Night is falling, and Luke has collapsed in the snow from exhaustion after fighting off a wampa, a local carnivorous beast. Luke looks up, trying to summon the energy to lift himself. The spectral image of his old mentor, Obi-Wan 'Ben' Kenobi, appears before him.]

Obi-Wan: Luke… Luke!

Luke: Ben? Am I glad to see you! I could really do with your help now, more than ever.

Obi-Wan: You will go to the Degobah system…

Luke: Degobah system? Sure, but first I need a hand just to get inside. I’m so cold and tired.

Obi-Wan: … there you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi master who instructed me.

Luke: Okay, but first, could you tell my friends where I am, so they can come rescue me?

[Obi-Wan fades away]

Luke: Ben… Ben!!! Why did he go? It was as if he couldn’t hear me. Of course - I’m being so stupid! It was just a recorded message on my Jedi videomail. I knew I should have left a proper forwarding address. I’m so cold, I think I’ll just take a little nap now…

[Han Solo rides up to Luke on a tauntaun, an indigenous specious of the ice world. It promptly falls over and dies from the cold.]

Han: Geez. If it’s too cold for this fella, I know we’re in trouble. Luke! Wake up buddy!

Luke: Ben? Ben?

Han: You think that old duffer is here to help? That man was good for only one thing - getting us into trouble. He’s dead, kid!

Luke: Degobah system. Ben. Degobah.

Han: NO! It’s Han, remember me? And we’re on Hoth! We’re bloody freezing on Hoth! Look, I’m going to cut up this tauntaun and we’re going to climb inside it to stay warm.

[Later that night...]

Han: I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with ‘S’.

Luke: Spleen? Stomach?

Han: Wrong and wrong. Do you give in?

Luke: Alright. You win again. What was it?

Han: Small intestine!

…

[In the bar at the Rebel base, a few of the hardcore regulars are enjoying a drink. Major Bren 'Cliff' Derlin is sat with a beer. In walks his friend, Major Wes 'Norm' Janson.]

Everyone: Norm!

Norm: Yikes! It’s cold in here tonight. Cliffy, did you leave the front door open again?

Cliff: That’s no laughing matter, Normy. That poor boy, Skywalker, never came back from his patrol. I could see the Princess was all shook up about it. She didn’t say anything, but I could see it in her eyes.

Norm: So what did you do?

Cliff: What could I do? I said to Princess “sorry about your friend and all, but we have to close those shield doors or we’ll all be frozen by the cold”. She just nodded. But it’s not just Skywalker who is out there. Her fancy man, Solo, went out looking for him.

Norm: You don’t say.

Cliff: Yep, he just rode straight out on a tauntaun on his own. Crazy. They’ve both probably frozen to death by now. Impetuous fools.

Norm: Don’t say that.

Cliff: I think Solo was all cut up about leaving his pal out there in the first place. From what the boys have been saying, they were on patrol together, but Solo came back alone whilst Skywalker was taking a look at some damn fool meteor that fell nearby.

Norm: It’s dangerous out there. You should never split up from your buddy like that. You never know if a Wampa or other beast might be lurking, hidden in an underground ice cave, ready to make a meal of you. And you say he was taking a look at a rock?

Cliff: Yup, but you can’t talk sense to some of these new recruits. There’s going to be hell to pay when the Health and Safety boys find out about this screw up.

Norm: But Solo and the others all seem to be well connected with the top brass.

Cliff: Rumours are that Solo’s taking care of business for the Princess, if you know what I mean. Some of the boys are getting pretty sniffy about his high and mighty attitude, what with showing off that fancy medal he got for destroying the Death Star, when all he did was turn up late and fire one shot. He was aiming for Darth Vader, but he missed! To add insult to injury, he then demands a big pay day as well. Talk about a mercenary attitude…

Norm: Destroying the Death Star? That wasn’t so hard. The thing practically had a big button with “self destruct: press here” written on it.

Cliff: True.

Norm: This place is dead tonight. You’d get more atmosphere on an asteroid in Polis Massa.

Cliff: Yup, but I’ll say one thing for this place, Normy. The beer is always cold.

Norm: If it was any colder, they’d have to serve it frozen on a stick.

Cliff: Did you know that the coldest known drink is in fact the iced tea served on the Sith world of Ziost?

Norm: Really?

Cliff: It is actually an infusion made using the sap from Ziostian Oak trees, a liquid which only freezes at very low temperatures. Traditionally, the tea is served so cold that it would burn the inside of the drinker’s mouth, throat, and digestive system, causing an agonizingly painful death.

Norm: I think I’ll stick to the beer then.

…

[In the same windowless chamber as previously, another Health & Safety committee meets. Previously they were the Empire's second-ranking officials. Following the mysterious deaths of their predecessors, they are now the top-ranking officials in the Empire.]

New H&S Chair: (to doorman) Send him in.

[Darth Vader enters and sits down]

New H&S Chair: Lord Vader, we are here to determine what happened to the committee you met with last week.

New H&S Deputy Chair: Yes, our forensic reports indicate that they all asphyxiated at exactly the same exact moment. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

Darth Vader: Not really.

New H&S Chair: Why is that?

Darth Vader: I used my mind powers to kill them all.

New H&S Chair: (Shocked) Why did you do that!??! Don’t you want to improve the design of the new Death Star we’re constructing? We all want to avoid further casualties, and to do that we need to learn from our mistakes.

Darth Vader: (Menacingly) I agree entirely. It is my sincere desire to also minimize further casualties. However, they bored me. And they insulted my mother. So I choked them until they stopped doing either. Perhaps you should learn a lesson from their mistake.

New H&S Chair: (Hurriedly) Well, that seems to conclude that investigation. No need to take up any more of your valuable time - thank you!

…

[Back at the bar at the Rebel base on Hoth. Cliff runs in excitedly. Norm is at his usual seat.]

Cliff: Did you hear, Normy? We’re evacuating! Solo and Chewbacca think they found an Imperial droid. They reckon it has already sent a signal back to the Imperial fleet.

Norm: I was just starting to like this place, as well.

Cliff: Yeah. It felt like, for the first time, a place where everybody knows your name.

Norm: Hey, you know something? You were wrong about Solo and the Princess being an item.

Cliff: What’s that?

Norm: One of the nurses told me she saw Princess Leia call Solo a ‘nerf-herder’ and then she planted a great big wet one on Luke Skywalker.

Cliff: That scrawny kid Skywalker? What would a sophisticated woman like that see in a redneck like him?

Norm: I don’t know, but they must have something in common.

Cliff: Maybe so Normy, but I think I’d choose a nerf-herder over a moisture farmer any day. I mean, who farms moisture?

…

[The cockpit of an Imperial AT-AT - also known as a "walker" - participating in the attack on the Rebel base on Hoth.]

Driver: Front right. Front left. Rear right. Rear left. Front right. Front left. Rear right…

Gunner: Do you have to do that?

Driver: Do what?

Gunner: Talk out loud about what you’re doing.

Driver: It helps me concentrate. Battle can be very distracting.

Gunner: What do you mean? We’re still ten miles away from the rebel base. It’ll be hours before we get there at this rate. Can you speed this thing up?

Driver: Do you think this thing was meant to go at a gallop? I tried cantering once, it was a bumpy ride, I can tell you. No, slow and steady is best. Now where was I? Ah yes… rear right, rear left, front right, front left….

…

[Chewbacca is once again left alone, making repairs to the Millennium Falcon. R2-D2 trundles by...]

Chewbacca: Growl, bark, howl (translates as: “Hey! R2! You’re great at fixing up spaceships. You’re really clever. Why don’t you come over here and lend me a hand? With your help we could get this hunk of junk working again in no time. We gotta get this ship flying before the Imperial fleet arrives, you know.”)

R2-D2: Beep (translates as: “Now you want my help. I’m clever, am I? Before, when we were playing that game on the Falcon, whilst en route to the Death Star, you threatened to rip my arms out, just because I was winning. And I don’t even have arms! Good job for you, because if I had fingers they’d soon show you how much I want to waste my time fixing up your ship. Let’s just call this payback for letting the wookie win.”)

Chewbacca: Growl, howl, bark (translates as: “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Somebody should have fitted you with a voice synthesizer.”)

R2-D2: Whistle, tweet, beep, tweet, whistle, bleep, beep, beep, bleep, tweet, whistle (translates as: “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say.”)

…

[Back in the cockpit, the Imperial AT-AT has started firing upon the rebel base.]

Driver: Front right. Front left. Rear right. Rear left. Front right. Front left. Turn head right. Rear right…

Gunner: (Shouting) Will you please stop that? I’m trying to concentrate on where I’m shooting.

Driver: Now I’ve lost my place. Was it front right or rear right?

Gunner: Keep moving. They’re firing at us, you know!

Driver: This thing is so heavily armoured, they might as well have pop guns.

Gunner: Okay, but let’s not take all day about this. My wife’s pregnant and she’s due any moment. I missed the birth of our first child and I don’t want to miss this one too.

Driver: You should have said. No wonder you’re in such a hurry. Hold on, hold on, I’ve got a problem here…

Gunner: What is it?

Driver: It’s as if… it can’t be… I don’t understand…

Gunner: What? What is it?

Driver: Somebody tied our shoelaces together!

[Later that day...]

Gunner: (Shivering) Man, I’m freezing out here. Why don’t our boys come and pick us up?

Driver: They must have assumed we were killed when the rebels tied the legs together on our walker and it fell over. The old AT-AT’s used to burst into flames when that happened. But this new design has been greatly improved, thanks to the work of the Imperial Health and Safety committee.

Gunner: (Hugging himself to keep warm) I knew I should have brought a winter jacket, or a jumper at least.

Driver: Wait, do you see that?

[The spectral image of Obi-Wan Kenobi appears before them.]

Obi-Wan: Luke… Luke!

Driver: (to Gunner) Are you called Luke?

Gunner: Not me.

Obi-Wan: You will go to the Degobah system…

Gunner: Degobah system? What the hell is this guy going on about? Why would we go to a swamp world like that? I’ve got to get back to my missus!

Obi-Wan: … there you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi master who instructed me.

[Obi-Wan fades away.]

Driver: What was all that about?

Gunner: It was a recorded message, for some guy called Luke, I suppose.

Driver: Then why did we get it?

Gunner: Must have been a crossed wire. That, or a ghost in the machine.

To be continued…