By Slanted Light

In catch up mode, with a weekend free - hurrah! Of course there's a bit too much to catch up on, but you've got to start somewhere... One of my catch-ups, inspired by gilda_elise's post for Discovered in the Autumn is my Pros ALphaFic Bingo Card for 2022! It's not that I've not been reading Pros, it's just that I've not been doing the card... (rats, just realise I said the exact same thing in my last Bingo entry, way back in April...)



The Alphafic Stories
( A - At the Admiral Nelson )

B

( C - Command Performance )

D

( E - The Eyes of a Child )

F
G

H is for High Noon, by Brian Clemens of all people! I was flicking happily through the Network dvd Mark III book when I came across his Operation Impossible at the end - imagine my surprise when I flipped past the last page and found another Pros story written by him! The only thing is that it turned out High Noon for the Professionals was basically the Blackout episode as a short story - so interesting, but not new Pros. Hey-ho!

There are a few differences in the short story though. It's Doyle who's shot at in the ambulance, and Bodie who goes running after him when he realises what might have happened, shouting his name (rather than one of my fave wee scenes where Doyle roars into the ambulance in search of Bodie, grabs him around his waist, swings him around and then holds onto him! *g*)

There's no Stuart - Doyle ends up working with Benny, but not the Benny we know and love from various eps either. This Benny is "...powerful and tall and blacker than any hat, and very, very experienced. But best of all he had an uncanny animal instinct that often overruled all logic, and which he would self-mockingly explain as 'Darwin's Theory proved, man'." Doyle likes working with Benny because of all this, and he follows Benny's instructions. Gotta love a highly competent agent. *g*

Bodie, on the other hand, we're told hates working with Cowley because of Cowley's unpredictability: "You never really knew when to call him 'sir', and when not to, and even money when you did or didn't it was the wrong time." *g* I think Doyle gets this wrong in the eps more often than Bodie does, but it seems very right to me!

The final thing is that they don't track Tilson down in the end because Ilse remembers about the accountant, it's Bodie passing a bank when they're trying to guard the conference at the end that makes him realise that's where Tilson probably is, and why Tilson was grabbed in the first place. He smashes his way in just as he does in the ep, but the moment he faints from his broken collar bone is where the story ends: "Thirty seconds, Bodie," Cowley's voice crackled back, then a lighter note crept into it. 'That nice new quartz watch of yours, Bodie. It's wrong.' Bodie couldn't see his watch anymore, the room was swaying, as he heard Cowley add: 'But you, Bodie, you're all right', before he passed out. Hee!

( I - Island Innocents )

( J - Just a Neighbour )

K
L
M
N
O

( P - Paying Their Respects )

P - Professionals Minus 1 by Ranald Graham - Another story from the Network dvd box sets, this one at the end of the Mk II book! *g* I know I've already got a "P", but I can't resist reading (and adding) this one too... *g*

Again, it's not a new story, because it's apparently the short story that Wild Justice was based on - and most elements in the story are much more clear. For instance, Bodie does his own motorbike racing and Doyle has gone along with him as mechanic for the bike. He also didn't loan Bodie a bike - Bodie bought a new one especially...

Bodies enemy in this story isn't King Billy, it's a South African called Visser, and it turns out that Bodie's mate Williams was not just killed - his girlfriend Cheryl was gang-raped in front of him first. So it's a much harsher story, but if Bodie found that out at William's funeral, it explains why he's reacting so violently against Visser (more so than just his mate being dead in WJ).

The only thing I don't like about this story, is that the author doesn't seem to have watched the previous episodes at all, because when Cowley asks Doyle to keep an eye on Bodie, Doyle thinks this:
Bodie was not exactly Doyle's bosom pal. They had a close relationship which was professional. Bodie and he made a perfect two-man team. They knew each other's reflexes. Strengths, weaknesses.

"But they were both loners. They didn't hang out together all that much. Perhaps because they were too competitive, and went for the same women. Perhaps they wanted to keep a respectful distance. Perhaps Bodie made him feel a tiny bit insecure. But that was far too deep down to think about at the moment."

They don't hang out together?!! Have you not seen episodes like When the Heat Cools Off? Female Factor? Hunter/Hunted? They don't hang out with anyone else?! *g*

The Shusai bit in the story is made more relevant to what happens too. Shusai and Bodie spar with sticks, and Shusai is trying to tell Bodie that, like the child, he has to connect action and intent with nothing in between - it's not a sandcastle though, Shusai has them watch a three year old exploring the kendo sticks, and he picks one up and then smashes it down without further thought. So Bodie punching the car is the moment he finally connects action and intent, and that's what's happening when he hits Doyle who's come to his rescue (to stop him killing Visser). The very end is the same - Cowley is there too, and threatens Bodie, and Cheryl, Williams' girlfriend, agrees to testify against Visser, so Bodie lets him go. It stops there though, the lads don't come together at the end.

Oh, and it's not Doyle's girlfriend who comes with them to the enduro, it's Jennifer Black - although she leaves in disgust when it's clear Bodie has totally abandoned her, and Doyle's about to follow when Cowley turns up. There's no Kate Ross either, she's completely absent - Cowley works it all out after Craine calls him to say that he's worried Bodie's acting oddly...

And that's it! A shame it wasn't a brand new story, but it was interesting to read the original Wild Justice. *g*

Q

( R - Rule Britannia )

( R - Redemption )

S

( T - Table Conversation )

U
V
W
X
Y
Z

My next fic in Second Variation on the Theme of B and D was Command Performance by Maiden Wyoming, and it turned out to be a sort of AU crossover featuring Bodie and then Alan Cade. I wasn't totally convinced by it - partly because I don't think I ever saw a Happy Eater where thirty people could have lain down on the floor all at once! - and I'm not mad on the overall theme. Bodie wasn't a Bodie I wanted to know, and there was something of the so-wise-and-worldly-Bodie vs naive-wee-Doyle-Cade, but... I was able to read to the end, which I can't always, so... That said, I can't find a source for Maiden Wyoming anywhere online. (There's a surprising number of fics entitled Command Performance, mind you!)

The next story in the zine was Table Conversation by PFL, which is of course also online in various places. It's basically philosophical dialogue over the cleaning of guns, and to be honest I'm not sure that I buy into this one, but it's interesting enough... That said, I did remember reading it before, so I was expecting the... well, you know. The unexpected. *g*

At the Admiral Nelson by is in the zine Second Variation on the Theme of Band D from Keynote Press, and is on the ProsLib dvd too. It's by Georgina Kirrin, who I like as a Pros writer, but as I started reading this I realised that I've had this zine for years, but must never have picked it up to read properly!

ETA - And also, of course here on the author's own website!

This is listed in the zine contents page as an AU story, and it's about two young men who frequent a particular pub in London. At first I thought it was a historical AU, but actually I'm not sure it's an AU at all really. It's the lads before they've joined CI5, before they've met, before they've become the men we know and lovingly slash. *g* And they're young, so it's presumably set in the very early 1960s which in some ways is an alternative universe to life now, so... yeah, I guess it is historical!

Whatever it is, it's solid writing and I enjoyed trying to work out how it all fit together, and seeing how the lads were each set in their own directions. Definitely worth the read! *g*

I love that Pros Alphafic Bingo is popping up all over my flist pages - yeay everyone! *g* I've actually read two fics so far this year, but I've only just sort of got a chance to post this now, because - well, you know, as usual, work... And I'm also inspired by jat_sapphire's formatting with her story reviews below the board in the alphabet, so thank you too!
The Alphafic Stories
( A-D )
E - The Eyes of a Child - This was my second Prosfic read this year, again by Song, the same author as Just a Neighbour below (so also to be found in the Prosfanfic IO group files). It's a Doyle-centric case fic, and again gen of course, but the author seemed pretty trustworthy in TEoaC as far as that went, so I gave this one a go too. And if anything, there's almost a bit too much Bodie-looking-after-Doyle! I know, I know - can you have too much of that?! *g* Like Just a Neighbour it involves a child, which had me looking at it sideways slightly, but it settled into a decent story rather than an I-wish-the-lads-had-kids-because-I-want-them, and in fact it doesn't pull any punches in that respect - bad things happen to children, and children do bad things, if they're not looked after properly. I felt like the author was riffing off MMoMH to some extent, in the way that we see Doyle thinking and caring about what happens to people. My only slight gripe would be that there's a bit of the cockney-sparrow or something about the way both lads speak sometimes, that we really don't hear from them in the eps. But it wasn't so bad that I couldn't just roll my eyes a bit and carry on reading, because everything else fit well. So I enjoyed this one too! *g*

( F-I )
J - Just a Neighbour by Song - My first Prosfic read this year was an unusual one for me, because it was officially a gen story. What kept me reading though was that it felt very true to the eps, and since I see the eps as entirely and eternally slashing our Bodie and Doyle, I could read the story that way as well. *g* It's over in the ProsFanFic IO group files (so you'll have to go over there to find it if you're a member, although she may well post her fic elsewhere too), but a currently-active writer, and I enjoyed it. Doyle goes home after a difficult operation, only to find more chaos and people needing his help when he gets there, rather than the rest he really needs. Bodie's in the story too, but it's Doyle-centric, which feels like something of a change these days, and it's also just slightly different in its focus - entering the realms of what the lads do when they're off-duty, and what's important to them. This comes nicely from the background we see for Doyle in the eps I think, so that I found it entirely convincing. And Song seems to have a knack for final lines, too! *g*
( K-Z )