On the Terrace: Shocking Facts

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In the fifth episode of On the Terrace, Vaya chats with Night Terrace head writer John Richards and sound designer David Ashton about episode five: “Sound & Führer”.

The house arrives in the far future in a theme park staffed entirely by robot versions of…Adolf Hitler? John, David and Vaya try to explain how this came about, the sci-fi tropes involved, working with Alan Brough and Phil Zachariah, and how the music, soundscapes and voice effects were created.

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Episode five of Night Terrace, “Sounds & Führer”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can also listen to episode one for free, and purchase the rest of the series, via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.

Show Notes

  • In 2015 the New York Times ran a reader poll asking “Could you kill baby Hitler?”, which spawned a bunch of memes and led to the question being asked of several Republican candidates for the 2016 Presidential election. When asked on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Donald Trump replied “no comment”.
  • The documentary series Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History (known as simply Rock and Roll in the US) was made in 1995 as a co-production between the BBC and WGBH. It won a Peabody Award, so the fact that it may be full of factual errors is a bit of a concern… The US version aired in 1995, narrated by Liev Schreiber, while the UK version appeared on BBC Two in 1996, narrated by Sean Barrett (a voice actor known for, among other things, being one of the English voices of Asterix).
  • The main “villainous” cast of Hogan’s Heroes, Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink) and John Banner (Sergeant Schultz), were indeed Jewish. Klemperer (who got the role without knowing it was to be played for laughs) insisted that if Klink were ever shown in a heroic light, he would quit. Banner served in the US Army in World War II. The rest of the main cast were too young to have served in the war, but Robert Clary (Louis LeBeau), also Jewish, was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp during the German occupation of France.
  • The film John is thinking of is probably 2005’s Stealth, in which an advanced fighter jet equipped with Artificial Intelligence is struck by lightning and turns evil.
  • For more on the lightning-turning-things-evil trope, check out the All the Tropes article for “Lightning Can Do Anything”.
  • The Magic Roundabout was an English stop-motion children’s programme, re-dubbed with new scripts from the French original, Le Manège enchanté. It ran from 1965 to 1977, and was aired on Australia’s ABC well into the 1980s, usually as part of their morning children’s programming. (An American version, The Magic Carousel, used American voice actors and was closely based on the original French version.) A more recent CGI reboot has not become as much of a classic.
  • John recommended the BBC radio adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel Fatherland. (Ben also recommends the book, and thinks the film is pretty good too.)
  • David recommended the steampunk audio drama podcast Victoriocity.
  • Vaya mentioned The Boys From Brazil, originally a novel by Ira Levin, and filmed in 1968 with Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason in the main roles.
  • The other Hitler-in-fiction things mentioned are:
    • Heil Honey, I’m Home! was made in 1990. Eleven episodes were planned and eight filmed, but only one ever aired. It aired on the satellite channel Galaxy, just after an episode of Dad’s Army.
    • Timur Vermes’ satirical novel Look Who’s Back, and its film adaptation.
  • If you don’t think The Sound of Music is scary, watch this trailer.