TIME COMMANDERS UPDATE: or “OLAF THE FLASHY“:
they’ve changed the TC format slightly, so that the battle comes with a prior getcha-feet-wet skirmish, plus BATTLED PAUSED respites for the amateur warmongers to gather their wits (which the actual real back-in-the-day generals didn’t have, though on the whole their director’s-cut versions of the battles in question took rather longer than half-an-hour in toto): hard to tell if the changes are making it easier for the present-day contestants to win, or that self-selecting TC-fandom is discovering ppl who now play this particular computergame very well (= sort out focused command structure and know to POUND POUND POUND) – certainly the first two eps of this series have seen the gamesplayers in decisive triumphs, which to this viewer at least a little disappointing (as regards learning about war) (as clauswitz probably didnt say, no one ever learnt anything from a victory).
It still repays watching, if only for the stuff that mighty battle-historian Aryk Nusbacher chooses to note), viz, that
a. the nephew of Lady Godiva – one Leofric – fought at alongside Harold Godwinson in 1066, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge
b. that Harald Hardrada’s teenage son was called “Olaf the Flashy”
c. that German tribeswomen stood arrayed behind their fightin menfolk, not (as someone faux-twerpishly asked) “like cheerleaders”, but armed with big butcher knives, so they cd go “SHOPPING FOR JEWELLERY” (if not sunday lunch prime cuts) when the battle was done
mark urban: “if an omelette needs making…”
aryk: “i’m the man to break the eggs!”
mark urban also: “Alea iacta est, as the pirate in Asterix was always saying” O tempora o mores! as classical war scholars might add!!
I sort of worry and wonder at the kinds of folk who like this prog – ie me – broadcast as it is during actual real serious wartime: is the interest just part of a general raised civilian bloodlust, or twisted nostalgia for an age when war was simpler and “nobler” (or indeed “less noble”, since which it is is a hard call i think)?
to further (not) help sort out this observation, the winners of the first ep were a v.scary quartet of BATTLIN VICARS!!