The Man from UNCLE – an extended introduction to the 60’s series from a newbie slash fan

[rallamajoop]

Since most of my activity here nowadays seems to be me writing Man from UNCLE meta or fic on every topic under the sun, I figured it was time to make a proper masterpost of everything I've posted here or to various comms.

Most of these links go to LJ, though there are a few at the end to odds and ends I've posted to tumblr too.

Fic

• UNCLE slashfic recs masterpost – [LJ Mirror]


• My fic:
  • Fatale
    

    Pairing: Napoleon/Illya
    Summary: Napoleon’s weakness for femme fatales has never been one of the more ambiguous facets of his sexuality. (Or, a world in which Illya began his career on the wrong side of the law certainly isn’t one where Napoleon is any less likely to wind up in bed with him.)
    Rating: NC-17
    Word Count: 6,630
    Notes: Alternate universe, contains gun-kink and some bondage

    
    
  • A Unified Theory of UNCLE, in four parts
    

    Pairing: Napoleon/Illya
    Summary: In a world where the occasional well-placed enemy mole or major security breach is simply a matter of course, a handful of UNCLE's most sensitive operational directives have never been committed to paper at all.
    Rating: PG
    Word Count: 28,544
    Characters: Napoleon, Illya, Waverly, with appearances by Angelique, Ursula Alice Baldwin, Mark Slate, Gemma Lusso and "Wanda"
    Notes: Effectively a mix of elaborate crack theories and historical trivia built around a faintly ridiculous amount of flirting, fluff and prolonged UST

Resources

• The Man from UNCLE – Complete Season 1-4 subtitles – [LJ Mirror]
Ripped from the DVDs, available in text format. Not as good as proper episode scripts as the lines lack attribution, but handy for checking dialogue in a hurry.


• Complete production credits spreadsheet – [LJ Mirror]
So, I started making a spreadsheet to get my head around which of the recurring cast showed up when, and got a bit carried away. Set up to be sortable either by episode airdate or original production order, covers shooting dates, air+rerun dates, directors, writers, and pretty much all the other credits available for import. Should be useful to anyone trying to figure out chronology and recurring influences.


• MGM Character bios – Napoleon, Illya and Waverly – [LJ Mirror]
The original source for a lot of details that made it into collective fanon without ever really coming up in the show, like Napoleon's yacht and Illya's love of jazz.


• Original outlines for UNCLE and THRUSH – [LJ Mirror]
Published with some of the early promotional material, and packed with details that didn't make it into the show, like the existence of the Mask Club and some of the other entrances to UNCLE HQ. Includes scans of some early promotional articles.


• The UNCLE Special – [LJ Mirror]
Scans of some articles with detailed technical info on the UNCLE gun.

Meta

• The Man from UNCLE – an extended introduction from a newbie fan – [LJ Mirror]
In which I attempt to write the introduction I'd wished I'd been able to find before watching, to let me know what I was getting into.


• Family Trees of Napoleon, Illya and Waverly – [LJ Mirror]
Covering every known family member we've ever met, heard about, or whose existence was perhaps vaguely alluded to once, plus some musings about what it all tells us about their backgrounds.


• On nicknames and Illya's wandering ethnicity – [LJ Mirror]
Ficcers are fond of throwing around nicknames like 'tovarisch' or 'Smart Russian'. I ran some searches through the subtitle files to check exactly what was used in the show and how, and in the process, made the surprising discovery that the show all but completely stops admitting that Illya is Russian in the later seasons.


• The curious semi-canonicity of the UNCLE Special – [LJ Mirror]
The UNCLE gun was and is one of the defining symbols associated with the series - so it would probably surprise most long-time fans to realise it was never actually mentioned by name on screen. Virtually everything fans 'know' about the gun actually comes from various news articles (scans and links included).


• The spotter's guide to The Girls of U.N.C.L.E. – [LJ Mirror]
UNCLE actually featured a number of recurring female staff members over the years, and many of them (IMHO) are so much more interesting than they get credit for (even if most of them were inexplicably called 'Wanda'). There's also an appendix post of sorts: Heather McNabb, Wanda Mae Kim and Sarah Johnson in print


• Gay communist spies and KGB honey traps – The surprising history of the Lavender Scare – [LJ Mirror]
Only tangentially related to UNCLE, but I started looking up the subject of gay spies, and found so much more material than I was counting on.

Picspams

• That one photoshoot – [LJ Mirror]
Three UNCLE stars, three attractive models and a smoke machine all get together to have one hell of a day at UNCLE HQ.


• Illya vs. The Cameraman: A Saga in Pictures – [LJ Mirror]
One of my favourite things about UNCLE's many promotional stills is just how many there are where it looks like Illya’s spotted the camera man, and thinks he’s up to no good.

Book reviews

• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Behind the Scenes Story of a Television Classic
  
A real treasure trove of behind-the-scenes details, recommended to any UNCLE fan.


• Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities
  
A travel book by the author of the James Bond novels, and one of Norman Felton's first inspirations for the series. Unfortunately, it quickly turns out that no matter what city Fleming wound up in, all the misogyny of the Bond franchise would still be along for the ride.


• KGB: The secret work of Soviet secret agents
  
A fascinating source on Cold War espionage.

Trivia and other odds and ends from tumblr

• General:
  • On the canonical support for that good old bed-sharing trope in MfU
  
  
• Napoleon Solo:
  • Norman Felton and Ian Fleming design Napoleon Solo + Addendum
  
  
  • Sam Rolfe continues to develop Napoleon Solo
  
  
  • An Annotated Guide to Napoleon’s Apartment + gifs
  
  
• Illya Kuryakin:
  • Canon details about Illya’s UNCLE career
  
  
  • Illya, romance and sex appeal
  
  
  • Illya's promotion to equal billing
  
  
  • Quotes from the later writers' guides, and some meta on Illya, women, and Napoleon + Addendum
    
  
  
• Mr. Waverly:
  • Behind the scenes with Leo G. Carroll's failing health
  
  

Comments

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

XD See, when I say the show 'stirred up my old essay writing habits', I do mean to say I have serious form for getting a bit loquacious

Oh, me too! Early fandoms used to get meta posts from me all the time, and happiest times ever were when I would fall in with others who would also do the same. The early "campfire discussions" of us debating fine points of fandom... ah, such fun! Sadly, I rarely have time for that anymore. It's a matter of parceling up my life and allowing myself to come out for a few hours of play periodically and having to also rotate between the parts. But it's a lot of fun to see others engage, and I'm really delighted to see all the thought you've put into this. So much fun to read along and go 'yes!' ;D

Tumblr isn't the easiest for fandom interactions. I finally got on there, but spend more time liking posts than actually talking.

I did like your fic. I remember seeing it posted originally - I have a tab on my phone set to tv MFU and one for movie MFU ao3 posts so I can see the new ones coming through. Fun now to go back and see knowing it's you. Enemies or not, those two just can't stay away from each other! ;D Very yummy.

I lasted all of about five minutes in the movie blinking at tall!Illya and then shrugged and went with it. I suspect that if they'd tried making movie!Illya anything like tv!Illya, fans would be even more outraged and be picking it apart like crazy going nononononononononooooooooooo! As it is, he's so far different, that the fans who weren't going to like it can't say much other than "not Illya!" and not go into nitpicking, and the ones who do like it can like without the problems. Tv!Illya was such a phenomenon, that making the changes was probably the only way to make a true character in it. And yeah, probably just having fallen in love with tv!MFU didn't help you when seeing movie!TMFU. ;D I've been very much enjoying rewatching the tv series, but for me it's a rewatch and not a first fall. Though it is a first major fandom jump into it for me - I was always on the edges watching the fandom but not interacting directly with it before. So this is fun for me too in a new fandom but not new way.

A focus on Illya without Napoleon wouldn't have been nearly as much fun for me, I suspect. I like my buddy-buddy series, even before slash. ^^ Fascinating to see how that happened, though!

Yes, 80s is when VCR came out and fans started recording in mass and trading amongst each other for all sorts of things. I was pretty much running mine for everything under the sun... had every single Dr. Who episode that channel 54 showed. :) There's an infamous moment in a brief-lived series called Phoenix that my friend and I were watching off my old tapes a good decade or so later where in the middle of the show, a ticker tape marquee scrolls across the bottom of the screen "Mount St. Helens has just erupted"... ;D And then in other series there were fans copying their own recordings and sending around to other fans, second, third, fourth generation... talk about pixilated, sometimes! I've got some behind the scenes things from Due South that I got that way. Not to talk about the anime fansubs of the time. ^^

Fandoms are remarkably durable. I was doing the Dr. Who scene the entire time it was on hiatus. For a long time, the convention was inviting all sorts of other guests like Babylon 5 and other SF things just to keep going as a convention while still doing the primary Dr. Who (and watching the actors get older and older...). I actually stopped going to the cons a few years after New Who came along because of the sheer explosion of fandom at that point was overwhelming.