Remembering a scene that wasn't there

[alias_sqbr]

Have you ever had a really strong memory of scene from a book or movie, but on rewatching/reading, it didn't happen?

I just watched "The City of Death", the Dr Who serial which Douglas Adams helped write and then cheerfully reused the plot of for "Dirk Gently's Detective Agency". I haven't seen the serial since the mid 80s, where it stuck in my memory as one of my favourites, but reading the book in the late 90s was struck by the similarities.

Now as it turns out the plot is somewhat less like Dirk Gently's Holistic Agency than I remember, which isn't that big of a surprise. But there's a scene I remember vividly:

The doctor confronts the bad-guy in his antique shop, and the bad guy laughs, and rips back the wallpaper (which has been there hundreds of years) and painted on the wall are several copies of the Mona Lisa! And at that point, you realise.. HE IS LEONARDO DA VINCI! DUN DUN DUN!!

Except, the bad guy doesn't own an antique shop, he sells antiques on the sly at auction. He does have a house with yellow-y walls full of antiques, and in the cellar, behind a brick wall which has been there hundreds of years, in a cabinet, are several paintings of the Mona Lisa on canvas (which he intends to sell) And they are revealed when he's not in the room, and he's not Da Vinci, though he is in cahoots with someone who was around at the same time.

The "It's the same guy, he's just been hanging around" mistake is I assume a result of that being (kind of) the twist in "Dirk Gently's Detective Agency" but everything is just a bit off, the sort of mix of things you might expect from the half-forgotten memories of a child. I did wonder what the point of painting them on the wall was :)


Anyway, datedness and general "Dr Who crapness" aside it was pretty good. And Dr/Romana OTP, she's at least the right species. I still found the plot a bit confused, the book is definitely better.

Comments

[elaran.livejournal.com]

yeah. :) that only happened once though with one of the anne shirley books.

it happens more often now but as in i read something in fic and then assume it's canon and upon rewatching go but wait, wasn't [whatever] meant to happen?!

[alias_sqbr]

Haha yes, that happens to me ALL THE TIME. I spent ages trying to use amazon etc to find this scene (which I remembered being in "The Vor Game" or thereabouts) before I realised it was in the fic. I did wonder why she included the "random" link :)

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

There's something I remember reading, but I am pretty sure I actually dreamed it instead of reading. (Or maybe I dreamed that I read it.)

[alias_sqbr]

Or maybe you wrote down your dream and read that.

[evil-megz.livejournal.com]

I don't so much misremember scenes as much as experience them during pseudohallucinatory experiences, in which a short clip from an entirely non existent piece of film runs through my head. Sometimes I wonder if I wrote them all down, would it come together as the best movie ever written... or just babble.

[alias_sqbr]

Maybe your head acts like a tv antenna and you're picking up Showtime :)

[pedanther]

One of my early childhood memories of Doctor Who is like that: The Third Doctor is standing up in a boat, and some sort of triangular thing swoops down and steals his face.

The story with the triangular thing swooping down and stealing the Doctor's face is 'The Five Doctors', but the only Doctor who's ever in a boat in that is the Fourth, and the scene where the triangular thing swoops down on him is shot from entirely the wrong camera angle.

[alias_sqbr]

Memory is funny innit?

[edible-hat.livejournal.com]

I invented an entirely fictional... um... nonexistant... prequel to A Nightmare Before Christmas.

[alias_sqbr]

Was it any good?

No wrong memories but...

[w-allmyheartart.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say hi to a fellow Dr. Who fan! Hi!

And say that when I think of "Hearts In Atlantis," the movie made from Stephen King's writings?

I make up the parts left out of the movie. I guess the movie would have been too long, but the entire story was sooo good!

Re: No wrong memories but...

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, yes, I've done that with adaptations too.

Also, total aside: I just clicked on your lj and OMG that cage is AMAZING!

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I just remember one line from spaceballs. It's not on the DVD.


Is confused.

[alias_sqbr]

What's the line?

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

plaid never was my colour

[alias_sqbr]

Doesn't ring a bell for me :)

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

I have a huge long post-apocalypic scene in my head that I was convinced for years was the pre-credits sequence for 'Terminator'. I was very dissapointed to find out that it wasn't so. I do wonder if it is from another movie, and one day I might find it again.

[alias_sqbr]

I once had a long and strange dream about this tv show everyone kept talking about, and it turned out it was just the half remembered opening credits to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" :)