Talk:Monty Python's Flying Circus

The "It's" Man-hermit or castaway?

Unless the Pythons themselves have described this character as a hermit, I think it's more accurate that he is a castaway, from a shipwreck or some other disaster. His tattered clothes tend to indicate that he has survived some disaster and a long period of isolation and a long trek back to civilization. Consider the show openings in which he came up out of the surf onto a shore. It's a minor detail, to be sure, but I recommend reviewing and updating this.---theBaron0530 5. October 2010 12:30 ET

Where are the episodes?

ITs a sketch series group, so where are the sketches? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:24, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Removed table

I've undone an edit that apparently reintroduced a table to the article from a few months back. The edit, re-added by User: 129.22.115.74 utilized the following edit summary:

"As discussed on the talk page a few months ago I'm adding detail on what version has what, arranging what I can in a tabular form. Please adjust if needed and allow for other columns for other sources! (I might add a column myself on mentions in the "complete" book of scripts. Whoever added the region 2 DVD note at the very bottom might add a column too, but for now I'm leaving the note alone".

The table contains a lot of uncited information and those particular red flags like "should", "must have", "will be", "likely", "presumably", etc. It seems like a lot of OR on the face of it. I think it should be discussed more here before re-adding any of it to the article. After all, it was removed once before, so substantial discussion should take place before any further addition of the table takes place. As per WP:BRD, the bold edit was reverted; its time to discuss it now. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 22:04, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Ugh, no. The table is NEW (it was not a reintroduction of anything removed before), and the talk a few months back was a question as to whether people would LIKE such a section. It sounded like a good enough idea. So I did it, and it only took twenty minutes for it to come down. The biggest question is, how do you cite a particular recording (DVD, laserdisc, Netflix stream) AS a source? Can we take the table as written and massage it to cite those things and use "proper" language where needed? It's a HELL OF A LOT BETTER in this tabular form, broken down by specific releases, than the existing vague (and also largely uncited) paragraphs saying that SOME source has it but others may not, etc. And you'll note that I did cite specific exact sources when I could. Since youtube is also a citable source, when I get back from being out of town, I will make available a compilation video I've made of some of the differences, so they're cited properly and whatnot. As for the DREADED O.R. QUESTION, all I can say is I would HAVE LOVED to get this sort of information in a simple and clear form when I was trying to learn about what the changes were. If I've gotta go post it on Tumblr or Wordpress or something and then quote it here, fine. But people want to know this stuff. So, O guardians of the MPFC Wikipedia page, have your discussion. I'll check back to see what you say. -174.100.165.147 (talk) 23:47, 17:55, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Much of that information is unsourced, so by default it should not be on WP. I have tried to establish that there may be sketches lost to BBC censoring post-release need to be sourced. The only clear ones that can be sourced are the sketched that used David Frost's personal phone/address. So before this can even be made into a table, find sources to support them. Otherwise, this should be drastically trimmed. (There's more that also needs to be severly trimmed, as well as moving things from Monty Python to here that are about the show specifically. --Masem (t) 23:47, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

OK, so that returns to my question: HOW do you source a DVD, laserdisc, or other recording (or stream)? Even if you can't be certain in general which version was originally aired you can clearly establish with the different releases that there are different versions. I remember all these guides in high school about how to cite a commercial videorecording for a term paper; is there something similar on WP? May I cite LDDB.com pages that contain laserdisc details? Those are sources. I'm pretty sure I can cite the annotated book of episode scripts, too. Easy peasy. Also, I don't know why you're mentioning the David Frost example, because that HAS no citation at all! It's just like all the other thousands of random sentences added with no support.

If this is too much for a subsection, then can we make it its own page? Again, I'm sure people would clamor for a compendium of minor differences that goes into such detail. Everywhere else you look on the web, there is someone's single small subset of the three or four things THAT person noticed, on that person's one copy and a hazy memory of a PBS broadcast that's been lost to time. Nowhere do you ever get a feeling of a comprehensive list, let alone one you can check your own version against or determine where you might find a better version. (At one point I assumed the A&E copies were all that was left, forever! Obviously that's not so.)174.100.165.147 (talk) 00:09, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

It is technically original research to say "I remember it aired this way, but on the home media release it went this way instead." We need sources. If there was a compilation of lost material as a DVD feature (so we aren't guessing what was removed) then we can use a AV media citation template for that.

That said, it looks like some of this can be sourced based on papers obtained from Palin's archives last year. I have not looked into that in any depth to know what we can use, but this is definitely a start. --Masem (t) 00:20, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Well OK. I think we can make this work. Unfortunately, I'm leaving tonight for two weeks, so I'll check back in then, and see what I can do. Note please that I am NOT saying "I remember this but this home video is this". I am trying to pin down the home video versions as explicitly as possible. This is one youtube video that documents the laserdisc versions (at least the parts the content matches don't block): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wYeTQWZEZI - will that be a useful source to cite? Is the citation for the "party political choreography" in episode 38 (an existing citation I pulled into the table) acceptable as one of these DVD features on lost material? Would I have to make a video compilation of the A&E DVD versions of each clip, or (people seem to keep avoiding this topic) MAY I CITE THE DVD ITSELF? What's the "AV media citation template"? 174.100.165.147 (talk) 00:32, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

As long as the DVD itself says, to some degree "This was a lost/deleted scene" then you can cite the DVD directly, no need to make a video, etc. --Masem (t) 00:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

I think we also need to consider that if no reliable references exist for a particular bit of information, it might not be notable enough for inclusion. It is great to have commentary bits from disc commentaries, but it often feels trivial. I do hope that the Palin archives provide some better insight (I personally like the fact that it can be sourced to a publication, even though its behind a paywall). - Jack Sebastian (talk) 04:07, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Transnational themes (again)

I know this has been discussed before, but I don't think the "transnational themes" section is particularly relevant or that this is a notable aspect of Monty Python. Given that the section is only based on two sources, both of which are by the same author, it seems that one person's hobby horse has been given more prominence than it merits. Should we delete it? MFlet1 (talk) 06:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. There have been thousands of articles written about the show, I'm not sure why these two are of particular importance to the general public. The show was internationally popular, I think that's covered elsewhere in the article. Jbmcb (talk) 03:40, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Merge this with the "Monty Python" article.

There's another article named "Monty Python", with mostly the same content: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python

I suggest that article be amalgamated with this and the result published here. zwaa 11:46, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Flying Circus

I can't speak for what the group actually intended at the time, but Richthofen's squadron was named after an already extant term used to describe a traveling circus, in the sense of moving often and quickly. The aviators adopted the term because the word 'flying' took on a new meaning when applied to an aviation uni, but mostly because the unit was housed in tents and frequently moved around to different sectors of the front on little notice, so it essentially meant 'traveling circus'. The flying circus aspect came from the way they lived and traveled on the ground, and was not meant to imply anything circus-like or humorous about their actual flying, which was dead serious and professional. In any case, unless the group themselves stated that they were thinking of WW1 aviators, there is no particular reason to think they weren't simply adopting the same term as Richthofen did, rather than copying him specifically. A Flying Circus is a thing even without WW1 aviation. 64.222.88.237 (talk) 16:46, 8 July 2021 (UTC)