document_title: Visa requirements for Pakistani citizens

question_text: visa free countries list for pakistani passport holders

text: Visa requirements map[edit]

text: Visa requirements[edit]

text:
Country
Visa requirement
Notes (excluding departure fees)

 Afghanistan
Visa required[2]

 Albania
Visa required[3]

 Algeria
Visa required[4]

 Andorra
Visa required[5]

 Angola
Visa required[6]

 Antigua and Barbuda
Electronic Entry Visa[7]

 Argentina
Visa required[8]

 Armenia
Visa required[9]

 Australia
Visa required[10]
May apply online (Online Visitor e600 visa).[11]

 Austria
Visa required[12]

 Azerbaijan
eVisa[13]
30 days[14]

 Bahamas
Visa required[15]

 Bahrain
eVisa[16]
14 days to 1 Year Multiple entry Visa.[17][18] Visa is not required for holders of valid visa or residence permit issued by GCC countries.

 Bangladesh
Visa required[19]

 Barbados
Visa required[20]

 Belarus
Visa required[21]

 Belgium
Visa required[22]

 Belize
Visa required[23]

 Benin
Visa required[24]

 Bhutan
Visa required[25]

 Bolivia
Visa required[26]
Pakistan is listed as a Group III country by Bolivian authorities, meaning that citizens of Pakistan must obtain a visa in advance.[27]

 Bosnia and Herzegovina
Visa required[28]
Exemption from the visa regime upon entry, exit or crossing over the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina holders of diplomatic and official passports of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for up to 90 days.

 Botswana
Visa required[29]

 Brazil
Visa required[30]

 Brunei
Visa required[31]

 Bulgaria
Visa required[32]

 Burkina Faso
Visa required[33]

 Burundi
Visa required[34][35]

 Cambodia
Visa on arrival/[36]

 Cameroon
Visa required[37]

 Canada
Visa required[38]

 Cape Verde
Visa on arrival[39]

 Central African Republic
Visa required[40]

 Chad
Visa required[41]

 Chile
Visa required[42]

 China
Visa required[43]

 Colombia
Visa required[44]

 Comoros
Visa on arrival[45]
45 days

 Republic of the Congo
Visa required[46]

 Democratic Republic of the Congo
Visa required[47]

 Costa Rica
Visa required[48]
Visa issued on arrival for ordinary passport if traveler holds a valid tourist, visa, crew visa, multiple-entry business visa, permanent resident or student visa for the United States or Canada.[49]

 Croatia
Visa required[50]

 Cuba
Visa required[51]

 Cyprus
Visa required[52]

 Czech Republic
Visa required[53]

 Denmark
Visa required[54]

 Djibouti
Visa on arrival[55]

 Dominica
Visa not required[56]
6 months

 Dominican Republic
Visa required[57]

 East Timor
Visa on arrival[58]
30 days

 Ecuador
Visa required[59]

 Egypt
Visa required[60]
Visa on arrival for ordinary passport holding valid GCC residence permit for 30 days.

 El Salvador
Visa required[61]

 Equatorial Guinea
Visa required[62]

 Eritrea
Visa required[63]

 Estonia
Visa required[64]

 Ethiopia
Visa required[65]

 Fiji
Visa required[66]

 Finland
Visa required[67]

 France
Visa required[68]

 Gabon
eVisa[69]
Electronic visa holders must arrive via Libreville International Airport.

 Gambia
Visa required[70]

 Georgia
Visa required[71]
Visa not required for holders of a valid Schengen visa or a valid visa from any of the OECD member countries; or a valid residence permit of a Schengen or OECD country or valid visa or residence permit of a GCC country.[72]

 Germany
Visa required[73]

 Ghana
Visa required[74]

 Greece
Visa required[75]

 Grenada
Visa required[76]

 Guatemala
Visa required[77]

 Guinea
Visa required[78]

 Guinea-Bissau
Visa on arrival[79]
90 days

 Guyana
Visa required[80]
Those holding a letter of invitation from sponsor or host may apply for a visa on arrival.

 Haiti
Visa not required[81]
3 months

 Honduras
Visa required[82]

 Hungary
Visa required[83]

 Iceland
Visa required[84]

 India
Visa required[85]

 Indonesia
Visa required[86]

 Iran
Visa required[87]

 Iraq
Visa required[88]

 Ireland
Visa required[89]

 Israel
Visa required[90]
Confirmation from Israeli government is required before a visa is issued.[91]

 Italy
Visa required[92]

 Ivory Coast
eVisa[93]
3 months; eVisa holders must arrive via Port Bouet Airport.

 Jamaica
Visa required[94]

 Japan
Visa required[95]

 Jordan
Visa required[96]

 Kazakhstan
Visa required[97]

 Kenya
eVisa / Visa on arrival[98]
3 months

 Kiribati
Visa required[99]

 North Korea
Visa required[100]

 South Korea
Visa required[101]

 Kuwait
Visa required[102]

 Kyrgyzstan
eVisa[103]

 Laos
Visa required[104]

 Latvia
Visa required[105]

 Lebanon
Visa required[106]
Visa on arrival for Pakistani nationals holding valid GCC residence permit (subject to white collar profession being mentioned on resident permit). For others, in addition to a visa, an approval should be obtained from the immigration department of the General Directorate of General Security (La Sûreté Générale).

 Lesotho
eVisa[107][108]

 Liberia
Visa required[109]

 Libya
Visa required[110]

 Liechtenstein
Visa required[111]

 Lithuania
Visa required[112]

 Luxembourg
Visa required[113]

 Macedonia
Visa required[114]

 Madagascar
Visa on arrival[115]
90 days

 Malawi
Visa required[116]

 Malaysia
eVisa[117][118]
30 days

 Maldives
Visa on arrival[119]
30 days

 Mali
Visa required[120]

 Malta
Visa required[121]

 Marshall Islands
Visa required[122]

 Mauritania
Visa on arrival[123]
Available at Nouakchott–Oumtounsy International Airport.

 Mauritius
Visa required[124]

 Mexico
Visa required[125]
Ordinary passport holders do not require visa for tourism, business or transit if they possess a valid and non-expired visa for, or are legal permanent residents of, the United States of America, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom or Schengen area.[126]

 Micronesia
Visa not required[127]
30 days

 Moldova
Visa required[128]
E-Visa can be obtainable if you Pakistani nationals holding Schengen Member State valid visa.

 Monaco
Visa required[129]

 Mongolia
Visa required[130]

 Montenegro
Visa required[131]

 Morocco
Visa required[132]

 Mozambique
Visa on arrival[133]
30 days

 Myanmar
eVisa[134]
28 days. eVisa holders must arrive via Yangon, Nay Pyi Taw or Mandalay airports.

 Namibia
Visa required[135]

 Nauru
Visa required[136]

   Nepal
Visa on arrival[137]

 Netherlands
Visa required[138]

 New Zealand
Visa required[139]

 Nicaragua
Visa required[140]

 Niger
Visa required[141]

 Nigeria
Visa required[142]

 Norway
Visa required[143]
Pakistani citizens holding an official or diplomatic passport are not required to have a visa when they travel to Norway for official purposes.

 Oman
Visa required[144]
Visa on arrival for ordinary passport holders holding valid GCC residence permit (subject to white collar profession being mentioned on permit).

 Palau
Visa on arrival[145]
30 days

 Panama
Visa required[146]

 Papua New Guinea
Visa required[147]

 Paraguay
Visa required[148]

 Peru
Visa required[149]

 Philippines
Visa required[150]

 Poland
Visa required[151]

 Portugal
Visa required[152]

 Qatar
Visa on arrival[153][154][155]
30 days. May also apply online.Under following Conditions.
Must have Valid Passport upto 6 months,5000 QAR or Valid credit Card,Return tickets and Cretificate of Vaccination of Polio.

 Romania
Visa required[156]
Visa not required if holding two or multiple entry short-stay visa issued by a Schengen member state for stays that of no more than 90 days during any 180-day period. [8]

 Russia
Visa required[157]

 Rwanda
eVisa[158]
30 days

 Saint Kitts and Nevis
eVisa[159]

 Saint Lucia
Visa required[160]

 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Visa not required[161]
1 month

 Samoa
Visa on arrival !Entry Permit on arrival[162]
60 days

 San Marino
Visa required[163]

 São Tomé and Príncipe
eVisa[164]
Visa is obtained online.[165]

 Saudi Arabia
Visa required[166]

 Senegal
Visa required[167]

 Serbia
Visa required[168]

 Seychelles
Visa on arrival !Visitor's Permit on arrival[169]
3 months

 Sierra Leone
Visa required[170]

 Singapore
Visa required[171]

 Slovakia
Visa required[172]

 Slovenia
Visa required[173]

 Solomon Islands
Visa required[174]

 Somalia
Visa required[175]
Visa on arrival for 30 days, provided an invitation letter issued by the sponsor has been submitted
to the Airport Immigration Department at least 2 days before arrival.

 South Africa
Visa required[176]

 South Sudan
Visa required[177]

 Spain
Visa required[178]

 Sri Lanka
Electronic Travel Authorization[179][180][181]
30 days; Visa on Arrival is issued provided the traveler has applied for the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) online prior to traveling and holds return or onward tickets.

 Sudan
Visa required[182]

 Suriname
Visa required[183]

 Swaziland
Visa required[184]

 Sweden
Visa required[185]

  Switzerland
Visa required[186]

 Syria
Visa required[187]

 Tajikistan
eVisa[188]
E-visa holders can enter through all border points.[189]

 Tanzania
Visa on arrival[190][191]

 Thailand
Visa required[192]

 Togo
Visa on arrival[193]
7 days

 Tonga
Visa required[194]

 Trinidad and Tobago
Visa not required[195]
30 days

 Tunisia
Visa required[196]

 Turkey
Visa required[197]
Ordinary passport holders with a valid Schengen, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) member's visa or residence permit may get their one-month single entry e-Visas online.[198]

 Turkmenistan
Visa required[199]

 Tuvalu
Visa on arrival[200]
1 month

 Uganda
eVisa / Visa on arrival[201]
May apply online.[202]

 Ukraine
Visa required[203]

 United Arab Emirates
Visa required[204]
E-Visa can be obtained Online for ordinary passport holders holding valid GCC residence permit (subject to white collar profession being mentioned on permit).

 United Kingdom
Visa required[205]

 United States
Visa required[206]

 Uruguay
Visa required[207]

 Uzbekistan
Visa required[208]

 Vanuatu
Visa not required[209]
30 days

  Vatican City
Visa required[210]

 Venezuela
Visa required[211]

 Vietnam
Visa required<[212]
Visa not required provided arriving at Phu Quoc (PQC) or connecting flight to Phu Quoc via Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City for a maximum stay of 30 days.

 Yemen
Visa required[213]

 Zambia
eVisa[214]

 Zimbabwe
eVisa[215]

text: Vaccination[edit]

text: Many African countries, including Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia require all incoming passengers to have a current International Certificate of Vaccination. Some other countries require vaccination only if the passenger is coming from an infected area.[216]

text: Passport validity[edit]

text: Many countries require passport validity of no less than 6 months and one or two blank pages.[217]


document_title: Protoplasm

question_text: who coined the term protoplasm for the fluid substance of the cell

root

text: Protoplasm

text: History[edit]

text: The word "protoplasm" comes from the Greek protos for first, and plasma for thing formed, and was originally used in religious contexts.[8] It was used in 1839 by J. E. Purkinje for the material of the animal embryo.[9][10] Later, in 1846 Hugo von Mohl redefined the term (also named as Primordialschlauch, "primordial utricle") to refer to the "tough, slimy, granular, semi-fluid" substance within plant cells, to distinguish this from the cell wall and the cell sap (Zellsaft) within the vacuole.[11][12][13] Thomas Huxley (1869) later referred to it as the "physical basis of life" and considered that the property of life resulted from the distribution of molecules within this substance.[14] The protoplasm became an "epistemic thing".[15] Its composition, however, was mysterious and there was much controversy over what sort of substance it was.[16]

tag: p

text: In 1872, Beale created the vitalist term "bioplasm", to contrast with the materialism of Huxley.[17][18] In 1880, term protoplast was proposed by Hanstein (1880) for the entire cell, excluding the cell wall,[19][20] and some authors like Julius von Sachs (1882) preferred that name instead of cell.[21]

text: In 1965, Hardy introduced the term "cytosol", later redefined to refer to the liquid inside cell.[22]

text: Other related terms are:[23] Urschleim (Oken, 1802, 1809),[24][25] sarcode (Dujardin, 1835, 1841),[26][27] Grundsubstanz (ground substance, Cienkowski, 1863),[28] enchylema/hyaloplasma (Hanstein, 1880), paramitome (Flemming, 1882),[29] inter-filar substance (Velten, 1876)[30] and inter-alveolar substance (Bütschli, 1892).[31]

text: By the time Huxley wrote, a long-standing debate was largely settled over the fundamental unit of life: was it the cell or was it protoplasm? By the late 1860s, the debate was largely settled in favor of protoplasm. The cell was a container for protoplasm, the fundamental and universal material substance of life. Huxley's principal contribution was to establish protoplasm as incompatible with a vitalistic theory of life.[32] Attempts to investigate the origin of life through the creation of synthetic "protoplasm" in the laboratory were not successful.[33]

text: The idea that protoplasm of eukaryotes is simply divisible into a ground substance called "cytoplasm" and a structural body called the cell nucleus reflects the more primitive knowledge of cell structure that preceded the development of electron microscopy, when it seemed that cytoplasm was a homogeneous fluid and the existence of most sub-cellular compartments, or how cells maintain their shape, was unknown.[34] Today, it is known that the cell contents are structurally very complex and contain multiple organelles.

text: Description[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

tag: table

text: Protoplasm is composed of a mixture of small molecules such as ions, amino acids, monosaccharides and water, and macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, lipids and polysaccharides.[35] In eukaryotes the protoplasm surrounding the cell nucleus is known as the cytoplasm and that inside the nucleus as the nucleoplasm. In prokaryotes the material inside the plasma membrane is the bacterial cytoplasm, while in Gram-negative bacteria the region outside the plasma membrane but inside the outer membrane is the periplasm.

text: Protoplasm was said to exist in two forms: a liquid-like sol state or a jelly-like gel state.


document_title: Hemispherectomy

question_text: how can someone live with half a brain

question_tokens: how can someone live with half a brain

text: Hemispherectomy

text: History and Development[edit]

text: Hemispherectomy was first performed on a dog in 1888 by Friedrich Goltz. The first such operation on humans was done by Walter Dandy in 1928[3] for glioblastoma multiforme. Hemispherectomy was revitalized in children in the 1980s by John M. Freeman and Ben Carson [4] at Johns Hopkins Hospital.[5]

text: In the 1960s and early 1970s, hemispherectomy involved essentially removing an entire half of the brain. This procedure is known as anatomical hemispherectomy. Anatomical hemispherectomy decreases the likelihood that seizures will return, as there is no longer any part of the identified epileptic brain area left to cause seizures. A second type of hemispherectomy, known as functional hemispherectomy, has become more prevalent in recent years. In this procedure, only the epileptic portions of that side of the brain are removed, as opposed to the entire hemisphere. If a functional hemispherectomy is chosen over an anatomical hemispherectomy, it is likely because it allows for less blood loss and greater chance of resilience for the patient.[6][7] Additionally, functional hemispherectomy is less likely to cause hydrocephalus, the “excessive accumulation of (cerebrospinal) fluid in the brain,” which leads to complications from harmful pressure on brain tissues.[8]

text: Within the last fifteen years, a few types of functional hemispherectomies have emerged. One such procedure is known as peri-insular hemispherectomy. Peri-insular hemispherectomy has been developed to allow for seizure relief with minimal brain tissue removal. In this procedure, the surgeon aims to disconnect (rather than remove) the hemisphere, in order to minimize long term complications.[9] Another procedure relatively new to epilepsy surgery is endoscopic surgery (see endoscopy), surgery performed using small camera scopes and little incision sites. Its appeal lies in its minimally invasive nature, which generally decreases chance of infection and increases speed of physical recovery.[10]

text: Patient Criteria[edit]

text: Because of the dramatic alteration of brain composition and the inherent risk that hemispherectomies pose, there are criteria that must be met in order for a person to qualify for the procedure. Criteria include no successful control of seizures throughout a variety of drug trials, and a reasonable to high chance of procedural success.[11]

text: One such predictor of success is often the age of the patient. This procedure is almost exclusively performed in children because their brains generally display more neuroplasticity, allowing neurons from the remaining hemisphere to take over the tasks from the lost hemisphere. This likely occurs by strengthening neural connections which already exist on the unaffected side but which would have otherwise remained small in a normally functioning, uninjured brain.[12] In one study of children under 5 who had this surgery to treat catastrophic epilepsy, 73.7% were freed of all seizures.[13]

text: Success of the procedure is not, however, limited to children. A study in 2007 indicated the long-term efficacy of anatomic hemispherectomy in carefully selected adults, with seizure control sustainable over multiple decades.[14] A case study published in 2015 of 2 adults aged 48 and 38 demonstrated the success of functional hemispherectomy in treating status epilepticus (SE), an epileptic condition in which seizures are prolonged or occur closely together.[15] In 2012, a case study following 30 individuals having undergone some form of hemispherectomy in adulthood found that 81% of individuals were seizure free post-procedure. Furthermore, almost all participating patients reported improved quality of life. The conclusion: “(a)dult patients do not have to expect more problems with new deficits, appear to cope quite well, and mostly profit from surgery in several quality of life domains.”[16]

text: Ultimately, the chances of benefit and improvement to the individual must outweigh the costs. For example, a neurosurgeon would not recommend hemispherectomy in a patient who still possessed significant functionality, despite frequent seizures. Such a patient would risk losing their remaining functionality. Likewise, hemispherectomy likely would be recommended to a patient with debilitating seizures. A patient with little or severely deteriorating functioning does not have as much to risk by having the procedure, thus the chance of benefit to them is greater.[17] Depending on the case, a recommendation for a hemispherectomy could be more risky for a child than for an adult. Thus, age is not always the deciding success factor for hemispherectomies.

text: Results[edit]

text: Overall, hemispherectomy is a successful procedure. A 1996 study of 52 individuals who underwent the surgery found that 96% of patients experienced reduced or completely ceased occurrence of seizures post-surgery.[18] Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor,[19] and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.[20] For example, one case followed a patient who had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests after undergoing this procedure at age 5.5. This patient eventually developed "superior language and intellectual abilities" despite the removal of the left hemisphere, which contains the classical language zones.[21]

text: When resecting the left hemisphere, evidence indicates that some advanced language functions (e.g., higher order grammar) cannot be entirely assumed by the right side. The extent of advanced language loss is often dependent on the patient's age at the time of surgery.[22] One study following the cognitive development of two adolescent boys who had undergone hemispherectomy found that “brain plasticity and development arise, in part, from the brain’s adaption of behavioral needs to fit available strengths and biases…The boy adapts the task to fit his brain more than he adapts his brain to fit the task.”[23] Neuroplasticity after hemispherectomy does not imply complete regain of previous functioning, but rather the ability to adapt to the current abilities of the brain in such a way that the individual may still function, however differently the new way of functioning is.

text: Along with neuroplasticity, people who undergo hemispherectomies remarkably recover due to resilience. Resilience is the ability, in this case, of the brain being able to recover from a tough situation and take back its shape. Neuroplasticity resilience explains why the hemisphere that is still intact is able to recover many of the functions that were once the removed hemisphere's job. Resilience here is an action in patients with hemispherectomies in which they recover and navigate back to health.[24]

text: Traumatic Hemispherectomy[edit]

text: There are cases where a person that received major trauma to one side of the brain, such as a gunshot wound, has required a hemispherectomy and survived. The most notable case is that of Ahad Israfil, who lost the right side of his cerebrum in 1987 in a gun-related work accident. He eventually regained most of his faculties, though he still required a wheelchair. It was noted that reconstructive surgery was difficult due to the gunshot shattering his skull, and he is living with a large indentation on that side of his head.


document_title: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

question_text: who owns the rights to rocky horror picture show

text: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

text: Plot[edit]

text: A criminologist narrates the tale of the newly engaged couple Brad Majors and Janet Weiss who find themselves lost and with a flat tire on a cold and rainy late November evening, somewhere near Denton, Ohio. Seeking a telephone, the couple walk to a nearby castle where they discover a group of strange and outlandish people who are holding an Annual Transylvanian Convention. They are soon swept into the world of Dr. Frank N. Furter, a self-proclaimed "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania". The ensemble of convention attendees also includes servants Riff Raff, his sister Magenta, and a groupie named Columbia.

text: In his lab, Frank claims to have discovered the "secret to life itself". His creation, Rocky, is brought to life. The ensuing celebration is soon interrupted by Eddie (an ex-delivery boy, both Frank and Columbia's ex-lover, as well as partial brain donor to Rocky) who rides out of a deep freeze on a motorcycle. Eddie then proceeds to seduce Columbia, get the Transylvanians dancing and singing and intrigue Brad and Janet. When Rocky starts dancing and enjoying the performance, a jealous Frank kills Eddie with an ice pick. Columbia screams in horror, devastated by Eddie's death. Frank justifies killing Eddie as a "mercy killing" to Rocky and they depart to the bridal suite.

text: Brad and Janet are shown to separate bedrooms, where each is visited and seduced by Frank, who poses as Brad (when visiting Janet) and then as Janet (when visiting Brad). Janet, upset and emotional, wanders off to look for Brad, who she discovers, via a television monitor, is in bed with Frank. She then discovers Rocky, cowering in his birth tank, hiding from Riff Raff, who has been tormenting him. While tending to his wounds, Janet becomes intimate with Rocky, as Magenta and Columbia watch from their bedroom monitor.

text: After discovering that his creation is missing, Frank returns to the lab with Brad and Riff Raff, where Frank learns that an intruder has entered the building. Brad and Janet's old high school science teacher, Dr. Everett Scott, has come looking for his nephew, Eddie. Frank suspects that Dr. Scott investigates UFOs for the government. Upon learning of Brad and Janet's connection to Dr. Scott, Frank suspects them of working for him. Frank, Dr. Scott, Brad, and Riff Raff then discover Janet and Rocky together under the sheets in Rocky's birth tank, upsetting Frank and Brad. Magenta interrupts the reunion by sounding a massive gong and stating that dinner is prepared.

text: Rocky and the guests share an uncomfortable dinner, which they soon realize has been prepared from Eddie's mutilated remains. Janet runs screaming into Rocky's arms, provoking Frank to chase her through the halls. Janet, Brad, Dr. Scott, Rocky, and Columbia all meet in Frank's lab, where Frank captures them with the Medusa Transducer, transforming them into nude statues. After dressing them in cabaret costume, Frank "unfreezes" them, and they perform a live cabaret floor show, complete with an RKO tower and a swimming pool, with Frank as the leader.

text: Riff Raff and Magenta interrupt the performance, revealing themselves and Frank to be aliens from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania. They stage a coup and announce a plan to return to their home planet. In the process, they kill Columbia and Frank, who has "failed his mission". An enraged Rocky, impervious to Riff Raff's laser gun, gathers Frank in his arms, climbs to the top of the tower, and plunges to his death in the pool below. Riff Raff and Magenta release Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott, then depart by lifting off in the castle itself. The survivors are then left crawling in the dirt, and the narrator concludes that the human race is equivalent to insects crawling on the planet's surface, "lost in time, and lost in space... and meaning."

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter, a scientist.
Susan Sarandon as Janet Weiss, a heroine.
Barry Bostwick as Brad Majors, a hero.
Richard O'Brien as Riff Raff, a handyman.
Patricia Quinn as Magenta, a domestic.
Nell Campbell as Columbia, a groupie.
Jonathan Adams as Dr. Everett V. Scott, a rival scientist.
Peter Hinwood as Rocky Horror, a creation.
Meat Loaf as Eddie, an ex-delivery boy.
Charles Gray as The Criminologist, an expert.

tag: ul

text: Production[edit]

text: Concept and development[edit]

text: Richard O'Brien was living as an unemployed actor in London during the early 1970s. He wrote most of The Rocky Horror Show during one winter just to occupy himself.[6][7] Since his youth, O'Brien had loved science fiction and B horror movies. He wanted to combine elements of the unintentional humour of B horror movies, portentous dialogue of schlock-horror, Steve Reeves muscle flicks, and fifties rock and roll into his musical.[8] O'Brien conceived and wrote the play set against the backdrop of the glam era that had manifested itself throughout British popular culture in the 1970s.[9] Allowing his concept to come into being, O'Brien states "glam rock allowed me to be myself more".[10]

text: O'Brien showed a portion of the unfinished script to Australian director Jim Sharman, who decided to direct it at the small experimental space Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, Chelsea, London, which was used as a project space for new work.[6] O'Brien had appeared briefly in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar, directed by Sharman, and the two also worked together in Sam Shepard's The Unseen Hand. Sharman would bring in production designer Brian Thomson.[11] The original creative team was then rounded out by costume designer Sue Blane, musical director Richard Hartley, and stage producer Michael White, who was brought in to produce. As the musical went into rehearsal, the working title, They Came from Denton High, was changed just before previews at the suggestion of Sharman to The Rocky Horror Show.[6][12]

text: Having premiered in the small sixty-seat Royal Court Theatre, it quickly moved to larger venues in London, transferring to the 230-seat Chelsea Classic Cinema on Kings Road on 14 August 1973, before finding a quasi-permanent home at the 500-seat King's Road Theatre from 3 November 1973, running for six years.[13] The musical made its U.S. debut in Los Angeles in 1974 before being played in New York City as well as other cities.[11] Producer and Ode Records owner Lou Adler attended the London production in the winter of 1973, escorted by friend Britt Ekland. He immediately decided to purchase the U.S. theatrical rights. His production would be staged at his Roxy Theatre in L.A.[14] In 1975, The Rocky Horror Show premiered on Broadway at the 1,000-seat Belasco Theatre.[15]

text: Filming and locations[edit]

text: The film was shot at Bray Studios and Oakley Court, a country house near Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, and at Elstree Studios[16] for post production,[17] from 21 October to 19 December 1974. Oakley Court, built in 1857 in the Victorian Gothic style, is known for a number of Hammer films.[18][19] Much of the location shooting took place there, although at the time the manor was not in good condition.[20] Much of the cast were from the original London stage production, including Tim Curry, who had decided that Dr Frank N. Furter should speak like the Queen of England, extravagantly posh.[10] Fox insisted on casting the two characters of Brad and Janet with American actors, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon.[11] Filming took place during autumn, which made conditions worse. During filming, Sarandon fell ill with pneumonia.[8] Filming of the laboratory scene and the title character's creation occurred on 30 October 1974.[21]

text: The film is both a parody and tribute to many of the science fiction and horror movies from the 1930s up to the 1970s.[6] The film production retains many aspects from the stage version such as production design and music, but adds new scenes not featured in the original stage play.[11] The film's plot, setting, and style echo those of the Hammer Horror films, which had their own instantly recognizable style (just as Universal Studios' horror films did).[22] The originally proposed opening sequence was to contain clips of various films mentioned in the lyrics, as well as the first few sequences shot in black and white, but this was deemed too expensive and scrapped.[11]

text: Costumes, make-up, and props[edit]

text: In the stage productions, actors generally did their own make-up; however, for the film, the producers chose Pierre La Roche, who had previously been a make-up artist for Mick Jagger and David Bowie, to redesign the make-up for each character.[23] Production stills were taken by rock photographer Mick Rock, who has published a number of books from his work.[24] In Rocky Horror; From Concept to Cult, designer Sue Blane discusses the Rocky Horror costumes' influence on punk music style. "[It was a] big part of the build-up [to punk]." She states that ripped fishnet stockings, glitter, and coloured hair were directly attributable to Rocky Horror.[6]

text: Some of the costumes from the film had been originally used in the stage production. Props and set pieces were reused from old Hammer Horror productions and others. The tank and dummy used for Rocky's birth originally appeared in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958). These references to earlier productions, in addition to cutting costs, enhanced the cult status of the film.[25]

text: Costume designer Sue Blane was not keen on working for the film until she became aware that Curry, an old friend, was committed to the project. Curry and Blane had worked together in Glasgow's Citizens Theatre in a production of The Maids, where Curry had worn a woman's corset in the production. Blane arranged it with the theatre to loan her the corset from the other production for Rocky Horror.[26] Blane admits that she did not conduct research for her designing, had never seen a science fiction film, and is acutely aware that her costumes for Brad and Janet may have been generalizations.

text: "When I designed Rocky, I never looked at any science fiction movies or comic books. One just automatically knows what spacesuits look like, the same way one intuitively knows how Americans dress. I had never been to the United States, but I had this fixed idea of how people looked there. Americans wore polyester so their clothes wouldn't crease, and their trousers were a bit too short. Since they're very keen on sports, white socks and white T-shirts played an integral part in their wardrobe. Of course, since doing Rocky I have been to the United States and admit it was a bit of a generalization, but my ideas worked perfectly for Brad and Janet."[26]

text: The budget for the film's costumes was $1,600,[26] far more than the stage production budget, but having to double up on costumes for filming was expensive. For filming, corsets for the finale had to be doubled for the pool scene, with one version drying while the other was worn on set. While many of the costumes are exact replicas from the stage productions, other costumes were new to filming, such as Columbia's gold sequined swallow-tail coat and top hat and Magenta's maid's uniform.[26]

text: Blane was amazed by the recreation and understanding of her designs by fans.[26] When she first heard that people were dressing up, she thought it would be tacky, but was surprised to see the depth to which the fans went to recreate her designs. Rocky Horror fan Mina Credeur, who designs costumes and performed as Columbia for Houston’s performance group, states that "the best part is when everyone leaves with a big smile on their face", noting that there's "such a kitschiness and campiness that it seems to be winking at you".[27] The film still plays at many theatre locations and Rocky Horror costumes are often made for Halloween, although many require much time and effort to make.[28]

text: Title sequence[edit]

text: The film starts with the screen fading to black and oversized, disembodied female lips appear overdubbed with a male voice,[25][29] establishing the androgynous theme to be repeated as the film unfolds.[30] The opening scene and song, "Science Fiction/Double Feature", consists of the lips of Patricia Quinn (who appears in the film later as the character Magenta [in addition to the latter, appeared as 'Trixie' the Usherette in the original London production who sang the song]), but has the vocals of actor and Rocky Horror creator, Richard O'Brien (who appears as Magenta's brother Riff Raff). The lyrics refer to science fiction and horror films of the past and list several film titles from the 1930s to the 1970s, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Flash Gordon, The Invisible Man, King Kong, It Came from Outer Space, Doctor X, Forbidden Planet, Tarantula, The Day of the Triffids, Curse of the Demon, and When Worlds Collide.[6] The disembodied lips of model Lorelei Shark[31] are featured on posters and other merchandise for the film, with the tagline "A Different Set of Jaws", a spoof of the poster for the film Jaws (which was also released in 1975).[25]

text: Music[edit]

text: The soundtrack was released in 1975 by Ode Records and produced by Richard Hartley. The album peaked at #49 on the Billboard 200 in 1978.[32] It reached No. 40 on the Australian albums chart[33] and No. 11 on the New Zealand albums chart.[34] The album is described as the "definitive version of the [Rocky Horror] score."[35]

text:
"Science Fiction/Double Feature" – The Lips (those of Patricia Quinn; voice of Richard O'Brien)
"Dammit Janet" – Brad, Janet, and Chorus
"There's a Light (Over at the Frankenstein Place)" – Janet, Brad, Riff Raff, and Chorus
"The Time Warp" – Riff Raff, Magenta, The Criminologist, Columbia, and Transylvanians
"Sweet Transvestite" – Frank
"The Sword of Damocles" – Rocky and Transylvanians
"I Can Make You a Man" – Frank with Brad, Janet, Riff Raff, Magenta, and Columbia
"Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul" – Eddie and Transylvanians
"I Can Make You a Man (Reprise)" – Frank, Janet, and Transylvanians
"Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" – Janet with Magenta, Columbia, Rocky, Brad, Frank, and Riff Raff
"Once in a While" (deleted scene) – Brad
"Eddie" – Dr. Scott, The Criminologist, Janet, Columbia, Frank, Rocky, Brad, Riff Raff, and Magenta
"Planet Schmanet Janet (Wise Up Janet Weiss)" – Frank
"Planet Hot Dog" – Janet, Brad, and Dr. Scott
"Rose Tint My World" – Columbia, Rocky, Janet, and Brad
"Fanfare/Don't Dream It, Be It" – Frank with Brad, Janet, Rocky, and Columbia
"Wild and Untamed Thing" – Frank with Brad, Janet, Rocky, Columbia, and Riff Raff
"I'm Going Home" – Frank and Chorus
"The Time Warp (Reprise)" – Riff Raff and Magenta
"Super Heroes" (only present in the original UK release) – Brad, Janet, and Chorus
"Science Fiction/Double Feature (Reprise)" – The Lips

tag: ol

text: Release[edit]

text: The film opened in the United Kingdom at Rialto Theater in London 14 August 1975 and in the United States on 26 September at the UA Westwood in Los Angeles, California. It did well at that location, but not elsewhere.[36] Before the midnight screenings' success, the film was withdrawn from its eight opening cities due to very small audiences, and its planned New York City opening on Halloween night was cancelled.[37] Fox re-released the film around college campuses on a double-bill with another rock music film parody, Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise, but again it drew small audiences.[37]

text: With Pink Flamingos (1972) and Reefer Madness (1936) making money in midnight showings nationwide, a Fox executive, Tim Deegan, was able to talk distributors into midnight screenings,[30] starting in New York City on April Fools' Day of 1976.[37] The cult following started shortly after the film began its midnight run at the Waverly Theater in New York City.,[36] then spread to other counties in NYC, and to Uniondale, L.I. Rocky Horror was not only found in the larger cities but throughout the United States where many attendees would get in free if they arrived in costume. The western division of the film's release included The U.A. Cinemas in Fresno and Merced, The Cinema J in Sacramento, California, and the Covell in Modesto. In New Orleans, an early organised performance group was active with the release there as well as in such cities as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Chicago (at the Biograph Theater). Before long nearly every screening of the film was accompanied by a live fan cast.[36]

text: The film is considered to be the longest-running release in film history.[38] It has never been pulled by 20th Century Fox from its original 1975 release, and it continues to play in cinemas.[39][40]

text: Home media[edit]

text: A Super 8 version of selected scenes of the film was made available.[41] In 1983, Ode Records released "The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Audience Par-Tic-I-Pation Album", recorded at the 8th Street Playhouse. The recording consisted of the film's audio and the standardised call-backs from the audience.[42]

text: A home video release was made available in 1987 in the UK.[43] In the US, the film (including documentary footage and extras) was released on VHS in 1990, retailing for $89.95[44] and had its US broadcast premiere on the Fox Broadcasting Company, including audience participation edited into the film, on 25 October 1993.

text: The film was released on DVD in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary. A 35th Anniversary edition Blu-ray was released in the US on 19 October 2010. The disc includes a newly created 7.1 surround sound mix, the original theatrical mono sound mix, and a 4K/2K image transfer from the original camera negative. In addition, new content featuring karaoke and a fan performance were included.[45]

text: Reception, reaction and legacy[edit]

text: Critical reception[edit]

text: Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert noted that when first released, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was "ignored by pretty much everyone, including the future fanatics who would eventually count the hundreds of times they'd seen it". He considered it more a "long-running social phenomenon" than a movie, rating it 2.5 out of 4 stars.[46] Bill Henkin noted that Variety thought that the "campy hijinks" of the film seemed labored, and also mentioned that the San Francisco Chronicle's John Wasserman, who had liked the stage play in London, found the film "lacking both charm and dramatic impact". Newsweek called the film "tasteless, plotless and pointless" in 1978.[47]

text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 80% based on 41 reviews.[48] A number of contemporary critics find it compelling and enjoyable because of its offbeat and bizarre qualities; the BBC summarised: "for those willing to experiment with something a little bit different, a little bit outré, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has a lot to offer".[49] The New York Times called it a "low-budget freak show/cult classic/cultural institution" and considered the songs featured in the film to be "catchy".[50] Geoff Andrew of Time Out noted that the "string of hummable songs gives it momentum, Gray's admirably straight-faced narrator holds it together, and a run on black lingerie takes care of almost everything else", rating it 4 out of 5 stars.[51] Dave Kehr of Chicago Reader on the other hand considered the wit to be "too weak to sustain a film" and thought that the "songs all sound the same".[52]

text: In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[53][54]

text: Cult phenomenon[edit]

text: New York City origins[edit]

text: The Rocky Horror Picture Show helped shape conditions of cult film's transition from art-house to grind-house style.[55] The film developed a cult following in 1976 at the Waverly Theatre in New York, which developed into a standardised ritual. According to J. Hoberman, author of Midnight Movies, it was after five months into the film's midnight run when lines began to be shouted by the audience. Louis Farese Jr., a normally quiet teacher who, upon seeing the character Janet place a newspaper over her head to protect herself from rain, yelled, "Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch". Originally Louis and other Rocky Horror pioneers, including Amy Lazarus, Theresa Krakauskas, and Bill O'Brian, did this to entertain each other, each week trying to come up with something new to make each other laugh. This quickly caught on with other theater goers and thus began this self-proclaimed "counter point dialogue", which became standard practice and was repeated nearly verbatim at each screening.[7] Performance groups became a staple at Rocky Horror screenings due in part to the prominent New York City fan cast.[36] The New York City cast was originally run by former schoolteacher and stand-up comic Sal Piro and his friend Dori Hartley. Dori was one of several performers in a flexible, rotating cast to portray the character of Frank N. Furter, shadowing the film above.[36] The performances of the audience was scripted and actively discouraged improvising, being conformist in a similar way to the repressed characters.[56]

text: On Halloween in 1976, people attended in costume and talked back to the screen, and by mid-1978, Rocky Horror was playing in over 50 locations on Fridays and Saturdays at midnight. Newsletters were published by local performance groups, and fans gathered for Rocky Horror conventions.[37] By the end of 1979, there were twice-weekly showings at over 230 theatres.[37] The National Fan Club was established in 1977 and later merged with the International Fan Club. The fan publication The Transylvanian printed a number of issues, and a semi-regular poster magazine was published as well as an official magazine.[55]

text: Los Angeles, Hollywood[edit]

text: The Los Angeles area performance groups originated in 1977 at the Fox Theatre, where Michael Wolfson won a look-alike contest as Frank N. Furter, and won another at the Tiffany Theater on Sunset Boulevard. Wolfson's group eventually performed in all of the L.A. area theaters screening Rocky Horror, including the Balboa Theater in Balboa, The Cove at Hermosa Beach, and The Sands in Glendale. He was invited to perform at the Sombrero Playhouse in Phoenix, Arizona.

text: At the Tiffany Theatre, the audience performance cast had the theater's full cooperation; the local performers entered early and without charge. The fan playing Frank for this theatre was a transgender performer,[36] D. Garret Gafford, who was out of work in 1978 and trying to raise the funds for a gender reassignment while spending the weekends performing at the Tiffany.[57]

text: San Francisco[edit]

text: In 1978 San Francisco, Rocky Horror moved from an earlier location to the Strand Theatre located near the Tenderloin on Market Street.[58] The performance group there, Double Feature/Celluloid Jam, was the first to act out and perform almost the entire film, unlike the New York cast at that time. The Strand cast was put together from former members of an early Berkeley group, disbanded due to less than enthusiastic management. Frank N. Furter was portrayed by Marni Scofidio, who, in 1979, attracted many of the older performers from Berkeley. Other members included Mishell Erickson and her twin sister Denise Erickson as Columbia and Magenta, Kathy Dolan as Janet, and Linda "Lou" Woods as Riff Raff. The Strand group performed at two large science fiction conventions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, were offered a spot at The Mabuhay, a local punk club, and performed for children's television of Argentina.[36]

text: Fan following[edit]

text: Rocky Horror is one of the last few western rites left that pertain to the carnivalesque.[59] Annual Rocky Horror conventions are held in varying locations lasting days. Tucson, Arizona has been host a number of times, including 1999 with "El Fishnet Fiesta", and "Queens of the Desert" held in 2006.[60] Vera Dika wrote that to the fans, Rocky Horror is ritualistic and comparable to a religious event, with a compulsive, repeated cycle of going home and coming back to see the film each weekend.[7] The audience call backs are similar to responses in church during a mass.[7] Many theatre troupes exist across the United States that produce shadow-cast performances where the actors play each part in the film in full costume and props as the movie plays on the big screen in a movie theatre.[61][62] These showings are typically once a week or once a month on a Saturday at midnight.

text: The film has a global following and remains popular.[63] Sub cultures such as Rocky Horror have also found a place on the internet.[64] Audience participation scripts for many cities are available to download on the Internet.[25] The internet has a number of Rocky Horror fan run websites with various quizzes and information specializing in different content allowing fans to participate at a unique level.[30]

text: Cultural influence[edit]

text: The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been featured in a number of other feature films and television series over the years. Episodes of The Simpsons, The Venture Bros., The Boondocks, Glee, The Drew Carey Show, That '70s Show, and American Dad! spotlight Rocky Horror, as well as films like Vice Squad, Halloween II (2009), and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.[44] The 1980 film Fame featured the audience reciting their callback lines to the screen and dancing the Time Warp,[65] the dance from the stage show and film, which has become a novelty dance at parties.[66]

text: "The Rocky Horror Glee Show" aired on 26 October 2010, as part of the second season of the TV series Glee, which recreated several scenes from the film, including the opening credits. It featured Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf in cameo roles.[67]

text: "Bisexuality, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Me", by Elizabeth Reba Weise, is a piece in Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (1991), an anthology edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka'ahumanu which is one of the seminal books[68][69] in the history of the modern bisexual rights movement.[70]

text: The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains a cultural phenomenon in both the U.S. and U.K.[71][72] Cult film participants are often people on the fringe of society that find connection and community at the screenings[73] although the film attracts fans of differing backgrounds all over the world.[74]

text: Comments and jokes shouted out by the audience can also be seen in the "riffing" of awful films in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its spinoffs RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic. These have also been featured in theatre appearances by the cast, reacting to movies being shown.

text: Sequels[edit]

text: In 1981, Sharman reunited with O'Brien to do Shock Treatment, a stand-alone feature that was not a direct sequel to the original film.[2] This film reunites characters Brad and Janet and was originally conceived and written to depict the characters filmed in normal settings until the production changed to work around a Screen Actor's Guild strike. The eventual production would now entail the full film being shot entirely within a sound stage and purposely blending that into the story line. Shock Treatment has a cult following but not nearly as strong as the first film, and was a commercial failure in no small part due to the principal cast of Curry, Sarandon and Bostwick not returning.[75]

text: Ten years later, O'Brien wrote another script intended as a direct sequel to the cult classic entitled Revenge of the Old Queen.[76] Producer Michael White had hoped to begin work on the production and described the script as being "in the same style as the other one. It has reflections of the past in it."[77] Although the script has not been published, bootleg copies can be read on the Internet. The script is currently owned by Fox, which produced the two original films. Most individuals associated with the project, including O'Brien, agree that the film will probably never be made, owing to the failure of Shock Treatment and the aging of the cast.[78]

text: In 2014, it was announced that O'Brien would produce Shock Treatment for the theatrical stage. The production will premiere at the King’s Head theatre in Islington, London in the United Kingdom in the spring of 2015.[79][timeframe?]

text: Remake[edit]

text: On 10 April 2015, it was announced that the Fox Broadcasting Company would air a modern-day reimagining of the film, titled The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again.[80][81] On 22 October 2015, it was announced that the role of Dr. Frank N. Furter would be played by actress Laverne Cox.[82] Ryan McCartan and Victoria Justice play the roles of Brad and Janet, alongside Reeve Carney as Riff Raff and singer/model Staz Nair as Rocky.[83] Adam Lambert portrays Eddie.[84] Tim Curry, who portrayed Dr. Frank N. Furter in the film, portrays The Criminologist.[85] On 1 February 2016, it was announced that Broadway veteran Annaleigh Ashford would portray Columbia.[86] On 5 February 2016, Ben Vereen joined the cast as Dr. Everett von Scott.[87]

text: Kenny Ortega, best known for the High School Musical franchise and Michael Jackson's This Is It, directed, choreographed and executive-produced the remake; Lou Adler, who was an executive producer of the original film, has the same role for the new film. The film premiered on Fox on 20 October 2016.[88]


document_title: Black Death

question_text: what parts of europe were least affected by the black plague

text: Black Death

text: Chronology

text: Origins of the disease

text: The plague disease, caused by Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, Northern India and Uganda.[10] Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease.[11] Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague and are thought by many epidemiologists to mark the outbreak of the epidemic, from which it could easily have spread to China and India.[12] In October 2010, medical geneticists suggested that all three of the great waves of the plague originated in China.[13] In China, the 13th-century Mongol conquest caused a decline in farming and trading. However, economic recovery had been observed at the beginning of the 14th century. In the 1330s, a large number of natural disasters and plagues led to widespread famine, starting in 1331, with a deadly plague arriving soon after.[14] Epidemics that may have included plague killed an estimated 25 million Chinese and other Asians during the 15 years before it reached Constantinople in 1347.[15][16]

text: The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders or it could have come via ship.[17] By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies".[18]

text: Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders at the port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering from the disease, the army catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants. The Genoese traders fled, taking the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, whence it spread north.[19] Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death.

text: European outbreak

text:
The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.
... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.

Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae

tag: div

text: There appear to have been several introductions into Europe. The plague reached Sicily in October 1347, carried by twelve Genoese galleys,[20] and rapidly spread all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseille.[21]

text: From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland.[22] Finally it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351. The plague was somewhat less common in parts of Europe that had smaller trade relations with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated alpine villages throughout the continent.[23][24]

text: Modern researchers do not think that the plague ever became endemic in Europe or its rat population. The disease repeatedly wiped out the rodent carriers so that the fleas died out until a new outbreak from Central Asia repeated the process. The outbreaks have been shown to occur roughly 15 years after a warmer and wetter period in areas where plague is endemic in other species such as gerbils.[25][26]

text: Middle Eastern outbreak

text: The plague struck various regions in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. As it spread from China with the Mongols to a Chinese trading post in Crimea, called Kaffa, used by the Republic of Genoa. From there the disease, infected rodents infecting new rodents, entered the region from southern Russia also. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, through the port's trade with Constantinople, and ports on the Black Sea. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Ashkelon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, However most of them ended up dying during the journey.[27]

text: Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease.

text: Signs and symptoms

text: Contemporary accounts of the plague are often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened.[28] Boccaccio's description is graphic:

text: In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg...From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves.[29]

text: The only medical detail that is questionable in Boccaccio's description is that the gavocciolo was an 'infallible token of approaching death', as, if the bubo discharges, recovery is possible.[30]

text: This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes,[31] which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of the plague.

text: Some accounts, like that of Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of the plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems[28] and is identified with pneumonic plague.

text: It is said that the plague takes three forms. In the first people suffer an infection of the lungs, which leads to breathing difficulties. Whoever has this corruption or contamination to any extent cannot escape but will die within two days. Another form...in which boils erupt under the armpits,...a third form in which people of both sexes are attacked in the groin.[32]

text: Causes

text: Medical knowledge had stagnated during the Middle Ages. The most authoritative account at the time came from the medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France that blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air".[34] This report became the first and most widely circulated of a series of plague tracts that sought to give advice to sufferers. That the plague was caused by bad air became the most widely accepted theory. Today, this is known as the miasma theory. The word plague had no special significance at this time, and only the recurrence of outbreaks during the Middle Ages gave it the name that has become the medical term.

text: The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century; until then it was common that the streets were filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding. A transmissible disease will spread easily in such conditions. One development as a result of the Black Death was the establishment of the idea of quarantine in Dubrovnik in 1377 after continuing outbreaks.[35]

text: The dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to Yersinia pestis, also responsible for an epidemic that began in southern China in 1865, eventually spreading to India. The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Yersinia pestis.[36] The mechanism by which Y. pestis was usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage results in starvation and aggressive feeding behaviour by the fleas, which repeatedly attempt to clear their blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lack resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.[36]

text: The historian Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893[37] and suggested that "it would appear to be some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". He was able to adopt the epidemiology of the bubonic plague for the Black Death for the second edition in 1908, implicating rats and fleas in the process, and his interpretation was widely accepted for other ancient and medieval epidemics, such as the Justinian plague that was prevalent in the Eastern Roman Empire from 541 to 700 CE.[36]

text: An estimate of the mortality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.[38] Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 per cent die within eight days.[39] Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 per cent. Symptoms include fever, cough, and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red. Septicemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.[40]

text: A number of alternative theories – implicating other diseases in the Black Death pandemic – have also been proposed by some modern scientists (see below – "Alternative Explanations").

text: DNA evidence

text: In October 2010, the open-access scientific journal PLoS Pathogens published a paper by a multinational team who undertook a new investigation into the role of Yersinia pestis in the Black Death following the disputed identification by Drancourt and Raoult in 1998. They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany,[41] "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages".[42]

text: The study also found that there were two previously unknown but related clades (genetic branches) of the Y. pestis genome associated with medieval mass graves. These clades (which are thought to be extinct) were found to be ancestral to modern isolates of the modern Y. pestis strains Y. p. orientalis and Y. p. medievalis, suggesting the plague may have entered Europe in two waves. Surveys of plague pit remains in France and England indicate the first variant entered Europe through the port of Marseille around November 1347 and spread through France over the next two years, eventually reaching England in the spring of 1349, where it spread through the country in three epidemics. Surveys of plague pit remains from the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom showed the Y. pestis genotype responsible for the pandemic that spread through the Low Countries from 1350 differed from that found in Britain and France, implying Bergen op Zoom (and possibly other parts of the southern Netherlands) was not directly infected from England or France in 1349 and suggesting a second wave of plague, different from those in Britain and France, may have been carried to the Low Countries from Norway, the Hanseatic cities or another site.[42]

text: The results of the Haensch study have since been confirmed and amended. Based on genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England, Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist."[43] A study published in Nature in October 2011 sequenced the genome of Y. pestis from plague victims and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of the disease.[44]

text: DNA taken from 25 skeletons from the 14th century found in London have shown the plague is a strain of Y. pestis that is almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013.[45][46]

text: Alternative explanations

text: The plague theory was first significantly challenged by the work of British bacteriologist J. F. D. Shrewsbury in 1970, who noted that the reported rates of mortality in rural areas during the 14th-century pandemic were inconsistent with the modern bubonic plague, leading him to conclude that contemporary accounts were exaggerations.[36] In 1984 zoologist Graham Twigg produced the first major work to challenge the bubonic plague theory directly, and his doubts about the identity of the Black Death have been taken up by a number of authors, including Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. (2002 and 2013), David Herlihy (1997), and Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (2001).[36]

text: It is recognised that an epidemiological account of the plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the plague in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken between the time of publication of the Domesday Book and the year 1377.[47] Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures from the clergy.

text: In addition to arguing that the rat population was insufficient to account for a bubonic plague pandemic, sceptics of the bubonic plague theory point out that the symptoms of the Black Death are not unique (and arguably in some accounts may differ from bubonic plague); that transference via fleas in goods was likely to be of marginal significance; and that the DNA results may be flawed and might not have been repeated elsewhere, despite extensive samples from other mass graves.[36] Other arguments include the lack of accounts of the death of rats before outbreaks of plague between the 14th and 17th centuries; temperatures that are too cold in northern Europe for the survival of fleas; that, despite primitive transport systems, the spread of the Black Death was much faster than that of modern bubonic plague; that mortality rates of the Black Death appear to be very high; that, while modern bubonic plague is largely endemic as a rural disease, the Black Death indiscriminately struck urban and rural areas; and that the pattern of the Black Death, with major outbreaks in the same areas separated by 5 to 15 years, differs from modern bubonic plague—which often becomes endemic for decades with annual flare-ups.[36]

text: McCormick has suggested that earlier archaeologists were simply not interested in the "laborious" processes needed to discover rat remains.[48] Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities.[49] Similarly, Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague.[50]

text: A variety of alternatives to the Y. pestis have been put forward. Twigg suggested that the cause was a form of anthrax, and Norman Cantor thought it may have been a combination of anthrax and other pandemics. Scott and Duncan have argued that the pandemic was a form of infectious disease that they characterise as hemorrhagic plague similar to Ebola. Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of a large number of rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the plague spread too quickly to support the thesis that the Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person.[51][52] This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and human fleas during the Second Pandemic.[53]

text: However, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance.[36] Many scholars arguing for the Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of the plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms.[28] In 2014, scientists with Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed from the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis.[45]

text: Consequences

text: Death toll

text: There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality. In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality.[54] It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia.[1][2][3] According to medieval historian Philip Daileader in 2007:

text: The trend of recent research is pointing to a figure more like 45–50% of the European population dying during a four-year period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75–80% of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20%.[55]

text: A death rate as high as 60% in Europe has been suggested by Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow:

text: Detailed study of the mortality data available points to two conspicuous features in relation to the mortality caused by the Black Death: namely the extreme level of mortality caused by the Black Death, and the remarkable similarity or consistency of the level of mortality, from Spain in southern Europe to England in north-western Europe. The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 per cent of Europe's population. It is generally assumed that the size of Europe's population at the time was around 80 million. This implies that around 50 million people died in the Black Death.[56]

text: The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death rate of about a third.[57] The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population.[58] Half of Paris's population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished,[59] and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well.[45] In London approximately 62,000 people died between the years between 1346 and 1353.[11] While contemporary reports account of mass burial pits being created in response to the large numbers of dead, recent scientific investigations of a burial pit in Central London found well-preserved individuals to be buried in isolated, evenly spaced graves, suggesting at least some pre-planning and Christian burials at this time.[60] Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450.[61] In 1348, the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die.[36] The disease bypassed some areas, and the most isolated areas were less vulnerable to contagion. Monks and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for victims of the Black Death.[62]

text: Persecutions

text: Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims",[63] lepers,[63][64] and Romani, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis. Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.

text: Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.[65] The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins. This belief led to the idea that the cure to the disease was to win God's forgiveness[66]

text: There were many attacks against Jewish communities.[67] In February 1349, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews.[67] In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.[68] These massacres eventually died out in Western Europe, only to continue on in Eastern Europe. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland and Russia, receiving a warm welcome from King Casimir.[69]

text: Recurrence

text: The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[70] According to Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671.[71] The Second Pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–1363; 1374; 1400; 1438–1439; 1456–1457; 1464–1466; 1481–1485; 1500–1503; 1518–1531; 1544–1548; 1563–1566; 1573–1588; 1596–1599; 1602–1611; 1623–1640; 1644–1654; and 1664–1667. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century).[72] According to Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31."[73]

text: In England, in the absence of census figures, historians propose a range of preincident population figures from as high as 7 million to as low as 4 million in 1300,[74] and a postincident population figure as low as 2 million.[75] By the end of 1350, the Black Death subsided, but it never really died out in England. Over the next few hundred years, further outbreaks occurred in 1361–1362, 1369, 1379–1383, 1389–1393, and throughout the first half of the 15th century.[76] An outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10–15% of the population, while the death rate of the plague of 1479–1480 could have been as high as 20%.[77] The most general outbreaks in Tudor and Stuart England seem to have begun in 1498, 1535, 1543, 1563, 1589, 1603, 1625, and 1636, and ended with the Great Plague of London in 1665.[78]

text: In 1466, perhaps 40,000 people died of the plague in Paris.[79] During the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was present in Paris around 30 per cent of the time.[80] The Black Death ravaged Europe for three years before it continued on into Russia, where the disease was present somewhere in the country 25 times between 1350 and 1490.[81] Plague epidemics ravaged London in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665,[82] reducing its population by 10 to 30% during those years.[83] Over 10% of Amsterdam's population died in 1623–1625, and again in 1635–1636, 1655, and 1664.[84] Plague occurred in Venice 22 times between 1361 and 1528.[85] The plague of 1576–1577 killed 50,000 in Venice, almost a third of the population.[86] Late outbreaks in central Europe included the Italian Plague of 1629–1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty Years' War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. Over 60% of Norway's population died in 1348–1350.[87] The last plague outbreak ravaged Oslo in 1654.[88]

text: In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims in Italy, or about 14% of the population.[89] In 1656, the plague killed about half of Naples' 300,000 inhabitants.[90] More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.[91] The plague of 1649 probably reduced the population of Seville by half.[92] In 1709–1713, a plague epidemic that followed the Great Northern War (1700–1721, Sweden v. Russia and allies)[93] killed about 100,000 in Sweden,[94] and 300,000 in Prussia.[92] The plague killed two-thirds of the inhabitants of Helsinki,[95] and claimed a third of Stockholm's population.[96] Europe's last major epidemic occurred in 1720 in Marseille.[87]

text: The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[97] Plague was present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year between 1500 and 1850.[98] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–1621, and again in 1654–1657, 1665, 1691, and 1740–1742.[99] Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800.[100] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.[101]

text: Third plague pandemic

text: The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.[102] Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis.[103]

text: The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908.[104][105][106][107][108][109][110] From 1944 through 1993, 362 cases of human plague were reported in the United States; approximately 90% occurred in four western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, and New Mexico.[111]

text: Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. The plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995.[112] A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014.[113] In October 2017 the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.[114]

text: Names

text: The phrase "black death" (mors nigra) was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino or Couvin, a Belgian astronomer, who wrote the poem "On the Judgment of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.[115] In 1908, Gasquet claimed that use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocatibant).[116] The name spread through Scandinavia and then Germany, gradually becoming attached to the mid 14th-century epidemic as a proper name.[117] However, atra mors is used to refer to a pestilential fever (febris pestilentialis) already in the 12th-century On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (Latin: De signis et sinthomatibus egritudinum) by French physician Gilles de Corbeil.[118] In England, the phrase "Black Death" is first used to refer to the 14th-century epidemic in 1823.[119] Writers contemporary with the plague described the event as "great plague"[65] or "great pestilence".[120]


document_title: Boston Legal

question_text: boston legal was a spinoff of what show

question_tokens: boston legal was a spinoff of what show

text: Boston Legal

text: Plot[edit]

text: A spin-off of the long-running Kelley series The Practice, Boston Legal follows the exploits of former Practice character Alan Shore at the legal firm of Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

text: Cast[edit]

text: The Practice characters[edit]

text:
James Spader as Alan Shore (seasons 1-5; The Practice season 8)
William Shatner as Denny Crane (seasons 1-5; The Practice season 8)
Rhona Mitra as Tara Wilson (season 1, recurring 2; The Practice season 8)
Lake Bell as Sally Heep (season 1, guest 3; The Practice season 8)

text: Main characters[edit]

text:
Candice Bergen as Shirley Schmidt (episodes 11-101)
René Auberjonois as Paul Lewiston (seasons 1-3, recurring 4-5)
Mark Valley as Brad Chase (seasons 1-3, recurring 4)
Monica Potter as Lori Colson (season 1, recurring 2)
Julie Bowen as Denise Bauer (seasons 2-3, guest 5)
Ryan Michelle Bathe as Sara Holt (season 2)
Justin Mentell as Garrett Wells (season 2)
Christian Clemenson as Jerry Espenson (seasons 4-5, recurring 2-3)
Constance Zimmer as Claire Simms (season 3)
Craig Bierko as Jeffrey Coho (season 3)
Gary Anthony Williams as Clarence Bell (seasons 3-4)
Taraji P. Henson as Whitney Rome (season 4)
Saffron Burrows as Lorraine Weller (season 4)
Tara Summers as Katie Lloyd (seasons 4-5)
John Larroquette as Carl Sack (seasons 4-5)

text: Production[edit]

text: Development[edit]

text: Prior to the show's premiere, it had a working title of Fleet Street, an allusion to the real street in Boston where the fictitious Crane, Poole & Schmidt had its offices. The working title was later modified to The Practice: Fleet Street, but this title was dropped in favor of Boston Legal.[1] The real building shown as the law office is located at 500 Boylston Street, 1.4 miles away from Fleet Street.

text: The American producers of the series also hired British writer Sir John Mortimer, QC, (creator of the UK legal series Rumpole of the Bailey) as a consultant for Boston Legal.[2]

text: The show's pilot was originally produced with former The Practice stars James Spader and Rhona Mitra, guest stars William Shatner and Lake Bell, and Mark Valley. It featured an expanded storyline with Larry Miller as Edwin Poole and John Michael Higgins as senior partner Jerry Austin. Monica Potter was later cast as junior partner Lori Colson and René Auberjonois as senior partner Paul Lewiston, replacing John Michael Higgins. The pilot premiered on ABC on October 3, 2004.[3]

text: On November 30, 2004, it was announced that Candice Bergen would join the cast as senior partner Shirley Schmidt,[4] a character the producers had planned to introduce for several months.[5] Lake Bell left the series mid-season, and René Auberjonois was promoted to main cast member.[6][7][8] Anthony Heald and Betty White also made regular guest appearances, having both appeared as the same characters on The Practice.

text: On April 5, 2005, the series was renewed for a second season, although ABC chose not to screen the final five episodes of Season 1 until April 24, 2005 to allow greater exposure of mid-season series Grey's Anatomy to a larger audience.[9] The success of Grey's Anatomy placed Boston Legal on hold until autumn 2005, when it returned for an extended season of 27 episodes.[10][11] Both Rhona Mitra and Monica Potter left the series during the hiatus, while Julie Bowen was cast as Denise Bauer.[12] Ryan Michelle Bathe and Justin Mentell were later cast as junior associates Sara Holt and Garrett Wells.[13] The second episode of Season 3 introduced Craig Bierko as Jeffrey Coho and Constance Zimmer as Claire Simms. In Episode 11, guest star Gary Anthony Williams joined the cast, with Craig Bierko leaving in Episode 15.

text: On June 4, 2007, TV Guide announced that René Auberjonois, Julie Bowen, Mark Valley, and Constance Zimmer would not return for Season 4.[14] On June 13, 2007, it was announced that actor John Larroquette (former The Practice guest star) would join the cast as a senior partner transferred from the New York offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt, with actress Tara Summers joining as a young associate. Christian Clemenson (former The Practice guest star), who had guest-starred occasionally as Jerry Espenson (a brilliant but socially inept lawyer) – was promoted to main cast.[15] Production also stated that René Auberjonois, Mark Valley, Julie Bowen, and Constance Zimmer may return in guest roles.[16] On July 2, 2007, it was reported that both René Auberjonois and Mark Valley would return in recurring roles;[17] It was also announced that Taraji P. Henson would join the cast in Season 4, with Saffron Burrows appearing in a recurring role. Burrows later became a full-time cast member.[18]

text: On May 13, 2008, ABC announced that Boston Legal would return for a fifth (and final) season in the fall.[19][20] Saffron Burrows did not return as a series regular, having joined the cast of My Own Worst Enemy. The final season consisted of 13 episodes to reach the "100" episode mark, which facilitated successful syndication.[21] There was speculation that Boston Legal might receive an additional episode-order if the show had another strong showing in the Emmy Awards and produced solid ratings in its new fall time slot.[22] The season began airing on September 22, 2008.

text: On June 18 and June 20, 2008, it was reported that Gary Anthony Williams and Taraji P. Henson would not return for Season 5 as Clarence Bell and Whitney Rome, respectively.[23][24] On July 17, 2008, Boston Legal was nominated for a series-high seven Emmy nominations, including for Best Drama Series for the second consecutive year. Spader, Bergen, and Shatner were each nominated for their respective roles.

text: Boston Legal's two-hour-long series finale aired on Monday, December 8, 2008, at 9:00PM Eastern/8:00PM Central. David E. Kelley stated in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on December 7, 2008 that it was ABC's decision to end Boston Legal, and that he "had to fight to bring it back for a short season of 13 episodes".[25]

text: The series features a trademark routine whereby characters would occasionally break the fourth wall and make comments implying they are aware that they are characters in a television show. Shatner, being famous for portraying Captain Kirk, also makes occasional Star Trek references.[26]

text: The series aired on TV Land in the past[when?].

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
Season
Episodes
Originally aired

First aired
Last aired

1
17
October 3, 2004 (2004-10-03)
March 20, 2005 (2005-03-20)

2
27
September 27, 2005 (2005-09-27)
May 16, 2006 (2006-05-16)

3
24
September 26, 2006 (2006-09-26)
May 29, 2007 (2007-05-29)

4
20
September 25, 2007 (2007-09-25)
May 21, 2008 (2008-05-21)

5
13
September 22, 2008 (2008-09-22)
December 8, 2008 (2008-12-08)

text: Reception[edit]

text: Ratings and audience profile[edit]

text: According to Nielsen Media Research, Boston Legal drew the richest viewing audience on television, based on the concentration of high-income viewers in its young adult audience (Adult 18–49 index w/$100k+ annual income).[27]

text: Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Boston Legal on ABC.

text: Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps. All times mentioned in this section were in the Eastern and Pacific time zones.

text:
Season
Timeslot
Season Premiere
Season Finale
TV Season
Season
Rank
Viewers
(in millions)

1
Sunday 10:00 pm
October 3, 2004
March 20, 2005
2004–2005
#28
12.53[28]

2
Tuesday 10:00 pm
September 27, 2005
May 16, 2006
2005–2006
#47
10.30[29]

3
September 19, 2006
May 29, 2007
2006–2007
#62
9.57[30]

4
Tuesday 10:00 pm
Wednesday 10:00 pm
September 25, 2007
May 21, 2008
2007–2008
#51
9.62[31]

5
Monday 10:00 pm
September 22, 2008
December 8, 2008
2008–2009
#47
9.62[32]

text: Awards[edit]

text: Primetime Emmy Awards:

text:
2005 Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (James Spader)
2005 Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (William Shatner)
2006 Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Christian Clemenson)
2007 Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (James Spader)

James Spader also won the 2004 Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the same role on "The Practice".

text: Golden Globe Awards:

text: 2004 Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie (William Shatner)

text: Peabody Awards

text: 2005, as David E. Kelley Productions, in association with 20th Century Fox Television[33]

text: Home media[edit]

text:
DVD Name
Region 1
Region 2
Region 4

Season 1
May 23, 2006
July 24, 2006
August 9, 2006

Season 2
November 21, 2006
March 5, 2007
February 21, 2007

Season 3
September 18, 2007
January 14, 2008
October 10, 2007

Season 4
September 23, 2008
October 13, 2008
December 3, 2008

Season 5
May 5, 2009
May 11, 2009
August 5, 2009

The Complete Series
May 5, 2009[34]
May 11, 2009
November 18, 2009[35]