Twin Peaks in ‘TV Zone’ Magazine From June 1991

For more than a year on eBay, I would periodically see ‘TV Zone’ magazine with Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) on the front cover. I finally found a reasonably priced copy of this June 1991 issue of the now defunct monthly British magazine of cult television.

WHAT IS ‘TV ZONE’ MAGAZINE?

TV Zone was a British magazine that was published every four weeks by Visual Imagination that covered cult television. First published in Sept. 1989, “TV Zone” was a spin-off of “Starburst” magazine. Jan Vincent-Rudzki served as the magazine’s original and longest-serving editor. He was also a founder of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and acted as its president for several years. Other editors took over for Vincent-Rudzki including Lee Binding, Tom Spilsbury and Anthony Brown. The magazine would continue being published until December 2008, with its publisher, Visual Imagination, folding in early 2009.

TWIN PEAKS IN ‘TV ZONE’ MAGAZINE FROM JUNE 1991 | COVER

The cover of issue 19 of “TV Zone” featured an image of Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman standing over a deer head resting on a table. The issue would have stories about visual effects for Star Trek: The Next Generation, computer-speak from Peter Tuddenham in Blake’s 7, Dodo the companion from Doctor Who and Twin Peaks – “David Lynch’s twilight world of mystery.”

Here is the original publicity photo of Cooper and Truman with the deer head.

TWIN PEAKS IN ‘TV ZONE’ MAGAZINE FROM JUNE 1991 | PAGE 2 | CONTENTS

Page 2 contained the table of contents for “TV Zone” Issue 19 from June 1991 (ISSN: 0957-3844). The Twin Peaks article was listed as beginning on page 16. The caption for the article read: “Not exactly a Soap Opera, or a Murder Mystery, but there’s plenty of Fantasy…”

The front cover caption read: “FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) in Twin Peaks.”

TWIN PEAKS IN ‘TV ZONE’ MAGAZINE FROM JUNE 1991 | PAGES 16-17

The Twin Peaks article titled “The Peak of Success” was written by Gary Russell. According to FYCuroisity.com, Russell has “done a bit of everything in media, from acting when he was young to writing fanzines to writing for Doctor Who Magazine to working for the BBC to co-founding Big Finish Productions, which produces a variety of audio dramas for various TV series including Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Dark Shadows, and more.”

The two-page layout contains the iconic image of Ronette Pulaski walking across the railroad bridge from the Twin Peaks pilot. There are four additional images next to Ronette’s image which are strangely printed in reverse.

“What exactly places David Lynch’s unique American tv series Twin Peaks in the Fantasy genre? Can a series which is, on the surface at least, no more than a glorified Soap Opera really be classed as Telefantasy?

The answer really depends on how you view television programmes in general. Are things which appear to be, for the most part, allegorical reflections of Reality really fantastical? Twin Peaks seemingly revolves around the search, by FBI Agent Dale Cooper, for the murderer of one Laura Palmer. So should one take the emergence of Laura’s murderer, ‘Killer Bob’, to be a ‘spirit inhabiting the body of her father Leland Palmer, or as Lynch’s suggestion of straightforward schizophrenia and nothing else?

That then raises the question of Bob’s appearance in Dale Cooper’s original dream — are we saying that Cooper is also schizoid? Taking that idea on board, it is quite easy to see why, before Leland’s guilt was presented, so many followers of the programme thought Cooper equally as capable of Laura Palmer’s murder as other top suspects such as the drug-dealing trucker Leo Johnson or town mogul Ben Horne. 

Precognition
Dale Cooper is not the only character, however, to have dipped into the morass of unusual behaviour. Sarah Palmer, the murdered girl’s mother, exhibits definite psychic powers — she sees Doctor Jacoby…”

The article continues on pages 18-19

TWIN PEAKS IN ‘TV ZONE’ MAGAZINE FROM JUNE 1991 | PAGES 18-19

On pages 18-19, there are five publicity images from Twin Peaks including Leland Palmer holding a photo frame, a group shot from Laura Palmer’s funeral in episode 1.003, the Little Man from Another Place and Laura Palmer in the Red Room from the ending to the International Pilot or episode 1.002, Big Ed and James Hurley at Big Ed’s Gas Farm and David Lynch standing by railroad tracks in Snoqualmie, Washington.

“…removing her daughter’s locket as a vision, she sees a white horse in her living room and she even witness. Bob crouch-ing by her bed — things no one else can see. Easily explained away one might think, and we eventually learn that her husband, Leland, was drugging her. But then again, her powers would appear to be inherent. Both Laura Palmer (according to her diary) and Madeleine Ferguson, her niece, witness manifestations of Killer Bob.

And what of Laura’s best friend and soul mate Donna Hayward? After all, it is Donna, essentially the first series’ heroine, who enters the house of one of Laura’s former clients and is greeted with the strangest of OAPs anyone has ever seen. She’s an old lady who, with her nephew, performs strange magic tricks with sweetcorn puree and ultimately points Donna in the direction of Harold Smith who possess the final clues to Laura’s other life style.

Donna is also notable because, along with Cooper and to some extent Bobby Briggs, Laura’s ex-lover, she is suddenly aware that Bob is killing again when at the roadhouse listening to Julee Cruise Rockin’ Back Inside Your Hears! Al-though neither of the youngsters realise it at the time, they are psychically sensing Leland/Bob’ s sadistic murder of Madeleine.

Giants and Dwarves
FBI Agent Dale Cooper of course, as the programme’s real hero, is prone to a majority of the weird happenings. Firstly, he has a dream — a dream in which a seductive Laura whispers in his ear the identity of her killer. Around him the One-Armed Man and Bob shout their heads off and the Little Man From Somewhere Else does his backward talking and strange dancing, echoing Leland’s actions throughout his grieving period back in the real world.

Later, after Josie Packard has attempted to gun him down and he’s lying on his hotel room floor, Cooper is visited by a waiter who it appears is also a Giant, in much the same way as the One-Armed Man is an alternate aspect of Killer Bob. The Giant proceeds to warn Cooper, not only of the impending death of Madeleine but also of other dangers, such as the predicament of Cooper’s confident, Audrey Home, the upcoming threat of The White Lodge and that he should beware of the Owls, for they are not what they seem.

The Giant makes further appearances, once to assure Cooper that he is on the right track, and once, at the roadhouse during the aforementioned concert, to ac-tually tell him that Bob is killing once more, although somewhat unhelpfully, the Giant omits to tell Cooper who exactly is dying. And again when trying to warn Cooper not to let Annie take pan in the Miss Twin Peaks contest and thus sign her death warrant!

Why exactly Cooper is visited by these spectres of such opposing size and stature is never explained — but then Twin Peaks wouldn’t be Twin Peaks if every answer was obvious.

Super Strength and Door Knobs
As he recovers from an attack by Josie, and finally — or so he thinks — removes Bob from the scene, Cooper’s own adventures seem to take on a less fantastical nature, particularly when his crazed ex-partner Windom Earle’s machinations bring him back into the real world in the penultimate episode. Also, the messages from Outer Space warning of the owls are revealed to have come from the locality, and Little Nicky’s antics are more to do with his being an orphan than actually being the Devil incarnate. Windom Earle’s Lex Luthor-like hold over Leo, via an electronic collar, is just state-of-the-art FBI technology and although Major Briggs appears to have been kidnapped by aliens, we have to assume, by his amnesiac return, that it probably wasn’t little green men after all. Yet, the strange re-occurring dream he has with the cowled figure, whose face is just an expanse of stars with a flying owl going across it, may tell another story.

Other characters, however, have their share of strange experiences. For instance, Nadine Hurley goes through a quite alarming metamorphosis during the second season. As her husband’s in-fidelity with cafe owner Norma Jennings grows, Nadine sinks slowly into desperation, and everything she tries to do to keep her husband faithful goes wrong. On top of these disappointments Nadine, who is already one sandwich short of a picnic anyway, finally gets depressed and tries to top herself. When Doctor Jacoby, Twin Peaks’ local shrink who is also one step short of a staircase himself, manages to bring her around, she has mentally retreated to a sixteen year old high school girl, believing her marriage to be merely an extended romance. Consequently, she allows husband Ed to go off with Norma as Nadine has found a new love in Bobby Briggs’s somewhat thuggish friend Mike Nelson. Mike puts up with Nadine’s attentions, firstly because he is terrified of her and, secondly, because she is great in bed — whilst unconscious her adrenalin count shot up, giving her superhuman strength and stamina, enabling her to rip doors of their hinges, crush glass like paper and hospitalise Norma’s husband Hank, no wallflower himself, when he attacks Ed! However, after all these ghosts, super-strengths, UFOs and mysterious owls, the adventures do then take an almost Indiana Jones twist as Cooper, Sheriff Harry Truman and Deputy Hawk, closely pursued by Cooper’s arch-foe Windom Earle, go on a sort of treasure hunt as they put together the pieces of a puzzle supplied by obscure unnatural birthmarks. Margaret, The Log Lady, one of Twin Peaks’ more dotty but likeable residents, who can only report her activities via her Log ever since her husband died in the same manner as Major Briggs’s disappearance, sets them off on the trail to find the appropriately named Owl Cave, where, in best Indiana Jones style, they line up symbols, twist poles embedded in rock and try to solve the mystery of the White and Black Lodges.

Of course, whilst all this is going on, Cooper has been revisited, for reasons he cannot surmise, by the Little Man From Somewhere Else and Killer Bob yelling obscure messages whilst standing over the corpse of oriental evil Modesty Blaise look-alike Josie and her final victim, the peculiarly accented Thomas Eckhart. On top of all that, a knob on the front of a near-by chest of draws twists itself into Josie’s screaming face.

Then, even weirder, is Eckhart’s female assistant Jones’s insistence that Josie and Eckhart be buried together. She then at-tempts to seduce/assassinate Harry Truman, which maybe indicates further psychological mysteries to be explored.

Ultimately, Twin Peaks is a series to be watched on many levels. It is a Soap Opera about admittedly strange, but nevertheless, intriguing characters, It is a murder mystery (albeit a solved one—we know who killed Laura, we know Windom Earle is killing people, we know Josie was a vicious assassin, we know Andrew Packard isn’t dead, etc) and it is a Fantasy romp with Bob, the Dwarf and the Giant, the shape-changing owls, the UFOs etc. Above all, we know that Twin Peaks is probably the fin., most original, most daring, imaginative, witty, touching and, most importantly of all, enjoyable tv series to have come out of a major American tv network in decades.

If the proposed third series should come off, which is looking increasingly unlikely now that the later shows in season two achieved fairly dire viewing figures, we’ll see more Fantasy mixed in with every-thing else, simply because it has earned its place and has been proven to be successful, which is, after all, the most important aspect of any American tv show.”

Sadly, that third season would take more than 25 years to air on Showtime. Russell’s article, however, gives a glimpse into the days of the show’s reception by fans.