Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 25 -- Radio Days and Saturday Matinees
We'll start with an animation of better quality,
however, Disney's Fantasia (1940). While the
Sorcerer's Apprentice setting isn't subterranean, per
se, the lighting and the stairs suggest that the
broom-brigade is flooding the basement. Mickey
had brought upon himself an underground river.
"Hare-Breadth Hurry" (1963) opens as a typical Wile
E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon, until Bugs
Bunny slows enough to reveal his identity and
explain why he is in the cartoon instead of the Road
Runner. In using his wits to outwit the Coyote, Bugs
draws a line in the road, at which Wile stops. Bugs
then draws a second line, but as Wile steps in
between the marks, the bottom falls out from under
that segment dropping Wile E. Coyote into an
underground river and Bugs runs off.
The underground river as a gag is a metaphor not
anticipated in Chapter 29.
Not derived from a book or comic strip, the
Thunderbirds series is pure TV, which is to say,
wasteland.
In "Terror in New York City," aired in 1965,
Thunderbird 2 is inadvertently incapacitated by an
experimental high-speed Navy strike vessel. When
an operation to move the Empire State Building
goes awry and the building collapses, the Navy
allows Thunderbird 4 to hitch a ride on the same
ship to find an underground river and rescue a
reporter trapped beneath the wreckage.
Brian : I've bee studying Manhattan Island, Mr. Tracy. Its base is solid rock. Underground
streams do exist, but they've never been considered a threat.
Mr. Tracy: Does that wash out your underground river theory?
Brian: No, it's possible that over the last hundred years, the minor streams have eaten.
Mr. Tracy: What are you getting at, Brian?
Brian: Well, no recent surveys have been carried out. It's got to be a difficult task to locate
the river.
Mr. Tracy: I see. Already a touch and go whether the Thunderbird 4 can arrive in time. Now
the rescue could be delayed even further!
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