The fabulous rosanicus has been investigating the long-lost 1960s Biggles TV series, of which up till now we have only had one very bad episode on Youtube featuring a toy boat sinking. But now Rosie has discovered more, embedded in a collection of clips from old tv: a six minute clip of Bertie making good use of the NATO phonetic alphabet, and Biggles trying to work out how to behave in a pub (Biggles starts at 33.59). Also Rosie found the summaries of all the episodes and put them together in a single document, so now we know what it was about, approximately speaking. Don't miss 'Follows On Up The Amazon', or the grand finale which features Biggles and von Stalhein trapped together in a collapsing Egyptian tomb.... you can see all the details at rosanicus's post here. If Rosie's efforts come to something we might get to be able to watch more of the show one day soon, but in the meantime I feel like the episode summaries would make fantastic fic prompts.

And as well as all that, we have also finally solved a fannish mystery, which is probably interesting to about six people in the world but I'm one of them. Judging by the episode descriptions, it's clear that in the TV series continuity Buries a Hatchet hasn't happened and von Stalhein continues to be a villain-for-hire and Biggles's nemesis, and - since all villains need a sidekick - he has a sidekick named Laxter.

Now, some while back I posted about the mystery of Laxter, who is mentioned as von Stalhein's sidekick in a short story in Biggles Flies To Work, but doesn't appear anywhere else in connection with von Stalhein, and I had no idea where he had come from or why, or why von Stalhein was suddenly evil again in a story well after Buries a Hatchet.

But now it's obvious. He's from the TV series. The TV series is 1960, Flies To Work is 1961. So the best explanation for the sudden appearance both of Erich as a villain again and with Laxter as his sidekick is that Flies To Work is in TV continuity, and not the main book canon continuity.

And while von Stalhein does not appear in any of the currently extant TV, the detective efforts of the WEJ discord have produced a few photos of Carl Duering in that role, which are below the cut.





As you can see, he is pretty much perfect - the languid pose! the hint of a smile! the cigarette!

Here he is with the mysterious Laxter, played by John Gabriel.



There's only one catch, which is only apparent in this scan (apologies for the quality) of a newspaper article, in which if you look closely you will see that Biggles - who is played by a very tall actor - is noticeably taller than von Stalhein in the TV continuity. But if we ever do get to see all 44 episodes of Biggles having ridiculous TV adventures, I will happily watch it even if Biggles is suddenly Way Too Tall!