"That flying stunt today was pure madness. If there wasn't a lady present, I'd tear you apart like Christmas goose."

So, which Batman film has the Oliver Stoniest cast? Although the Nolan trilogy has Lee Harvey Oswald as Jim Gordon, I'd say the Stoniest Bat-flick is Batman Forever, which has Jim Morrison as Batman and Clay Shaw as Two-Face.
Honourable mention: Batman Returns, which has Tony Montana's wife as Catwoman, and the US…

Bat…and to the left.

I'm parroting Dr Sandifer here, but the Doctor didn't really become the big dominant hero character until the Jon Pertwee era. Hartnell was the leader of an ensemble; Troughton was undoubtedly the star of his show, but his Doctor was a trickster figure who influenced from the sidelines.

xref: the story about Seymour the Dog* in Victor Bockris' Lou Reed bio.

Waters' reputation for being an asshole to work with only really spans from Animals to The Final Cut (and given how the albums turned out, I'd say it was worth it).

"An uncanny physical match for Hartnell…"

Does "The Death of Jean DeWolff" mischaracterise Spider-Man? I suppose Spidey is portrayed as having a more right-wing attitude than usual towards crime and punishment - but, I dunno, I think if he was acting out of character, we can cut him some slack because he was affected by the death of a close friend.

Would I be right in thinking that we only have Shooter's word for it that Mantlo actually pitched that idea? Has anyone else verified it?

The story behind Peter David's run on Spectacular Spider-Man was interesting. Jim Owsley (editor of the Spidey books at the time) put Peter David on Spectacular (replacing Al Milgrom, whose whimsical stuff on the title Owsley didn't care for). I think the plan was for Amazing Spider-Man to feature the more traditional…

I get the feeling that Jim Shooter was to Marvel Comics what John Nathan-Turner was to Doctor Who. People who are megalomaniacs and are rightly criticised, but impossible to hate unequivocally because they saved the franchises.

Christopher Priest (nee Jim Owsley)'s stories about Marvel in the 1980s… Jesus, what an eye-opener. It's insane that Shooter had Peter David slung off Spectacular Spider-Man (when David was doing good stuff like "The Death of Jean DeWolff") and that his machinations resulted in the removal of Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz…

I needed Peary to point it out to me, sad to say…

I saw that documentary a few months ago - wasn't it stated by one of Pryor's friends that Pryor poured a whole bottle of brandy on himself before lighting himself?

"But then he was such a heroic figure that nobody who watches the film to this day seems to get that he was the one that got everybody killed."

Nicholas Meyer wrote the Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven Per Cent Solution, and co-wrote and directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and when Khan next appeared on the big screen, he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Sherlock Holmes on TV.

Yeah, the bit with Kirk and Spock running afoul of punk music in ST IV was derived from a bit that Meyer planned to put into Time After Time… I think the gag was, Wells is perturbed by a Chinese guy playing punk music on a boom box, and then later on when Steenburgen asks Wells what kind of music he likes, he says…

And don't forget that Warner also spent two episodes of TNG torturing Jean-Luc Picard.

"Bobby looks and acts just like Jack! I think they're related. Or at least in cahoots!"

"How many others have reached that apex of commercial and critical success with not one but two films in the same year?"