Entertainment desk
< July 11	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 13 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 12

Red Chinese submarines at Tristan da Cunha

Way over yonder at fr:Wikipédia:Oracle:

A question that is not very encyclopedic nor of mad importance.

Long ago I saw on television an American or British movie in black and white. It had to do with the military invasion of the island of Tristan da Cunha by Chinese communists arriving in submarines !!! if I remember well, these Chinese wanted to take control of a strategic node of undersea telecommunication cables. All ended "well" thanks to good coordination between the little English garrison and an American ship passing by. Despite all my searches (invasion, Chinese, Tristan da Cunha) no result on Internet. Did I dream? The film must have been made after 1949 (when Mao took power in China) in the Fifties or early Sixties (last "carat") and almost entirely shot in studio..

Tristan da Cunha is not often in the news and I hoped to enrich the WP article with this "cultural" element...

If a Wikipedian cinephile has ideas...Cordially, Basnormand.

(My translation of the question. I don't know what "carat" means here.) —Tamfang (talk) 08:55, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No idea about the movie, but "dernier carat" is slang for "at the latest". Adam Bishop (talk) 10:48, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that, anyway! —Tamfang (talk) 08:02, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't know either. If the description is accurate, is sounds like the sort of thing the BBC might do as a made-for-tv production. A lot of BBC stuff from that era has vanished without a trace, so if that's the case it could be very hard to track down. ApLundell (talk) 16:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it is Tristan da Cunha? The island has never had any communication cables - it is way of any significant route - and apart from a brief period during WW2 when there was a small naval unit monitoring the weather it has not had a British garrison since the death of Napoleon. The story sounds very implausible. Wymspen (talk) 16:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional territories are not unknown in British comedies. Examples are the Caribbean island colony of Cascara in the 1985 film Water and St George's Island in the Indian Ocean from a 1986 episode of Yes Minister. Also the island of Gaillardia in the 1959 film Carlton-Browne of the F.O.. Alansplodge (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]