when the strings are too obvious

[sergebroom]

Tonight TCM ran a featurette about "The Wizard of Oz" and that's when I found out that, until I pointed it out, my wife had never realized that Star Trek's Balok was a homage to the Great and Powerful Oz.



I guess sometimes something can be so obvious that it's invisible - for example, that, in "Thunderbirds", Jeff Tracy had named his five sons after Mercury astronauts.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

But why not seven sons? Or, anyway, six?

Alan, Virgil, John, Scott, Walter, Gordon, Donald. Walter and Donald did not get Tracys named after them. I wonder why not?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I guess a former astronaut with seven sons - most of them in the same age range - would have sounded too silly. Or Mom said "Sorry, dear, but Thunderbirds are not go anymore."

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

Nah. More likely didn't want the family to be charged with emulating that 1954 musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Brides_for_Seven_Brothers).