text:
1987 Fijian coups d'état

The Fijian coups d'état of 1987 resulted in the overthrow of the elected government of Fijian Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, the deposition of Elizabeth II as Queen of Fiji, and in the declaration of a republic. The first coup d'état, in which Bavadra was deposed, took place on 14 May 1987; a second coup d'état on 25 September ended the monarchy, and was shortly followed by the proclamation of a republic on 10 October. Both military actions were led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, then third in command of the Royal Fiji Military Forces.

Background
Both before and after Fiji gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1970, tensions between the indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian ethnic groups (comprising an estimated 46% and 49% of the 1987 population, respectively) continually manifested themselves in social and political unrest. The Fijian general election of April 1987 resulted in the replacement of the indigenous-led conservative government of Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara with a multi-ethnic Labour-led coalition supported mostly by the Indo-Fijian plurality and Rabuka claimed ethnic Fijian concerns of racial discrimination as his excuse for seizing power. Many authorities doubt the veracity of this, however, given existing constitutional guarantees.

May coup
On the morning of 14 May, around 10 am, a section of ten masked, armed soldiers entered the Fijian House of Representatives and subdued the national legislature, which had gathered there for its morning session. Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, dressed in civilian clothes, approached Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra from his position in the public gallery and ordered the members of parliament to leave the building. They did so without resisting. The coup was an apparent success and had been accomplished without loss of life.

At around 11 am, Radio Fiji announced the news of the military takeover. Rabuka was reported to have gone to Government House to see the Governor-General, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau. He was seeking recognition of the military action and the overthrow of the Bavadra government. A caretaker government was to be named shortly, and the public was urged to "remain calm and continue with their daily work." At the meeting, the Governor-General (who was Rabuka's paramount chief) gave a mild rebuke to Rabuka. He asked him "What have you done?" and "You mean I have no job?" He added that Rabuka should have given the deposed government more time. The meeting ended with Ratu Sir Penaia stating "Good luck, I hope you know what you are doing."

Following the coup, the Governor-General commissioned a Constitution Review Committee, led by Sir John Falvey, to look at the "deficiencies" of Fiji's 1970 constitution.

The commission was to begin hearings on 6 July and deliver its recommendations to the Governor-General by 31 July. Its terms of reference were to "strengthen the representation of indigenous Fijians, and in so doing bear in mind the best interests of other peoples in Fiji." The Commission received 860 written and 120 oral submissions, and produced a report recommending a new unicameral legislature comprising 36 Fijians (28 elected and 8 appointed by the Great Council of Chiefs), 22 Indo-Fijians, 8 General electors, 1 Rotuman, and up to four nominees of the Prime Minister. National constituencies, ethnically allocated and elected by universal suffrage, were to be abolished, and all voting was to be communal. The Prime Minister's post was to be reserved for an indigenous Fijian.

The Governor-General dissolved Parliament and granted amnesty to Rabuka, while promoting him to the position of commander of the Royal Fiji Military Forces. The actions of the Governor-General were viewed with suspicion by the deposed government and Bavadra challenged Ratu Sir Penaia's decision in the Supreme Court of Fiji.

September coup
From independence in 1970, Fiji's head of state was the Queen of Fiji, Elizabeth II. The Fijian Supreme Court ruled the May coup to be totally unconstitutional, and the Governor-General attempted to assert executive reserve power. He opened negotiations known as the Deuba Talks with both the deposed government and the Alliance Party, which most indigenous Fijians supported. These negotiations culminated in the Deuba Accord of 23 September 1987, which provided for a government of national unity, in which both parties would be represented under the leadership of the Governor-General. Fearing that the gains of the first coup were about to be lost, Rabuka staged a second coup on 25 September. Rabuka then declared Fiji a republic on 10 October 1987, abrogating the Constitution of Fiji and stating that he had removed the Governor-General from office, and declaring himself Head of the Interim Military Government. Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau resigned as Governor-General on 15 October, although he was made the first President of Fiji on 6 December 1987.

International involvement
Australia and New Zealand, the two nations with foremost political influence in the region, were somewhat disquieted by the event, but ultimately took no action to intervene. They did, however, establish a policy of non-recognition regarding the new government, suspending foreign aid in concert with the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Australian labour movement, taking the ousting of a labour led government as an affront to the worldwide labour movement, instituted an embargo against shipments to Fiji. As Australia was Fiji's largest foreign trading partner, this resulted in a large diminution in Fiji's international trade.

Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath of the second coup, the United Nations denounced the coup, demanding that the former government be restored. The Commonwealth responded with Fiji's immediate expulsion from the association.

Fiji's economy contracted by as much as 7.8% between 1987 and 1988, due to a major downturn in tourism and sugar production.

A new constitution was ratified in 1990, in which the offices of President and Prime Minister, along with two-thirds of the Senate and a substantial majority of the House of Representatives, were reserved for indigenous Fijians. These racially discriminatory provisions were eventually overturned by a constitutional revision in 1997. Fiji became a republic in the Commonwealth of Nations in late 1997.

The coups triggered much emigration by Indo-Fijians (particularly skilled workers), making them a minority by 1994.

title: 1987 Fijian coups d'état


text:
Murder of Yvonne Fletcher

The murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a Metropolitan Police officer, occurred on 17 April 1984, when she was fatally wounded by a shot fired from the Libyan embassy on St James's Square, London, by an unknown gunman. Fletcher had been deployed to monitor a demonstration against the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and died shortly afterwards. Her death resulted in an eleven-day siege of the embassy, at the end of which those inside were expelled from the country and the United Kingdom severed diplomatic relations with Libya.

Between 1980 and 1984 Gaddafi had ordered the deaths of several exiled opponents of his regime; bombings and shootings, targeted at Libyan dissidents, occurred in Manchester and London. Five Libyans thought to be behind the attacks were deported from the UK. During the anti-Gaddafi protest on 17 April 1984, two gunmen opened fire from the first floor of the embassy with Sterling submachine guns. In addition to the murder of Fletcher, eleven Libyan demonstrators were wounded. The inquest into Fletcher's death reached a verdict that she was "killed by a bullet coming from one of two windows on the west side of the front on the first floor of the Libyan People's Bureau". Following the breaking of diplomatic relations, Libya arrested six British nationals, the last four of whom were released after nine months in captivity.

Two years after Fletcher's murder, the event became a factor in the decision by the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to allow the US bombing of Libya from bases in the UK. In 1999, a warming of diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya led to a statement from the Libyan government admitting culpability in Fletcher's shooting, and the payment of compensation. British police continued their investigation until 2017. Although sufficient evidence existed to prosecute one of the co-conspirators, no charges were brought as some of the evidence could not be raised in court due to national security concerns. As at 2024 no one has been convicted of Fletcher's murder, although in 2021 the High Court of Justice determined that Gaddafi's ally Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk was jointly liable for Fletcher's murder.

Yvonne Fletcher
Yvonne Joyce Fletcher was born on 15 June 1958 in the Wiltshire village of Semley, to Michael Fletcher and his wife Queenie ( Troke). Yvonne was the eldest of the couple's four daughters. At the age of three she told her parents that she wanted to join the police. By the time she was eighteen and a half—the minimum entry age into the Metropolitan Police Service—she was 5 ft tall, shorter than the 5 ft required. She applied to several police forces but was turned down on the basis of her height, and considered applying for entry to the Royal Hong Kong Police Force.

Despite the height restriction, in March 1977 Fletcher was accepted onto the Metropolitan Police 20-week training course. She passed and was placed on the standard two-year probation period with the warrant number 4257; she was posted to Bow Street police station, where she completed her probation and was confirmed as a regular Woman Police Constable (WPC). She was highly regarded by her colleagues, who nicknamed her "Super Fletch", and she became engaged to PC Michael Liddle, who also worked at Bow Street.

Relations between Britain and Libya
From 1979 there had been no Libyan ambassador appointed to the United Kingdom. A "Revolutionary Committee" was in control of the Libyan embassy in London, located at 5 St James's Square; the embassy was renamed the "People's Bureau". In 1980 Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi—the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council—saw many exiles from Libya as traitors and had given orders for several of them to be murdered. On his instructions, bombs were planted in London newsagents that sold newspapers critical of Gaddafi. Moussa Koussa was appointed as Secretary of the Libyan People's Bureau in London in 1979. He was expelled from the UK in 1980, after stating in an interview with The Times that the Libyan government planned to murder two opponents of Gaddafi's government living in the UK. The Lord Privy Seal, Sir Ian Gilmour, told the House of Commons that the government wished "to maintain good relations with Libya", but that "we are making it clear that the Libyan authorities must understand what can and cannot be done under the law of the United Kingdom, and that criminal actions in the United Kingdom must cease".

After several murders of Gaddafi's political opponents in the UK in 1980, there was a decrease in activity until 1983, when the Libyan General People's Congress—the country's legislature—began a campaign against what they saw as the bourgeois habits of staff at several of the People's Bureaux, particularly the office in London. In February 1983 the bureau chief and cultural attaché were recalled to Libya and replaced with a four-man committee of students who had all been involved in revolutionary activities in Libya. Soon after they were appointed, they gave a press conference at which they threatened action against Libyan dissidents. On 10 and 11 March 1984 there were a series of bomb attacks in London and Manchester targeted at critics of the Gaddafi regime. The Libyan government denied being involved, but on 16 March the British government deported five Libyans said to be connected to the attacks.

Vienna convention and diplomatic protection
The protection of diplomats and their official premises is based on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, an international treaty; it was signed by 141 countries, including the UK and Libya. It was incorporated into UK law in the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964. Among other measures, the act protects diplomats from prosecution for any crime unless the diplomat's home country waives their right to immunity. A country can declare a diplomat from another state to be persona non grata, and demand that they leave the country, but no other action can be taken against them. Diplomatic premises are also protected from entry by the police or security services, unless given permission by the country's ambassador.

Shooting: 16–17 April 1984
On 16 April 1984 two students—active opponents of Gaddafi's rule—were executed in public hangings at the University of Tripoli. In response Libyan dissidents in Britain—members of the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF)—decided to stage a demonstration outside the People's Bureau on St James's Square. During the evening of 16 April, the People's Bureau proposed three options to Tripoli on how to deal with the demonstration: to clash directly with the demonstrators from outside the bureau, to shoot at them from inside or to prevent the event by diplomatic means. The bureau tried the third option. During the night of 16–17 April a delegation from the People's Bureau attended a meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to complain about the forthcoming demonstration, and ask that it be stopped. The Libyans were told that the Metropolitan Police would be informed, but would be unable to prevent the demonstration from going ahead.

During the night, Tripoli authorised the bureau to open fire on the protestors. It has been reported that these messages were intercepted and decrypted by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), but not in time to avoid the shooting. The authorised history of MI5, while not specifying from where organisation received the information, says that "it was not until after the demonstration on the 17th that the Service learned" of the three options proposed by the People's Bureau to Tripoli. On the morning of 17 April, police workmen placed crowd control barriers in St James's Square in preparation for the demonstration. One of the Libyans from the People's Bureau told a workman that there were guns in the bureau and there would be fighting that day. The workman passed the message on to police, who decided not to take action.

A detachment of around 30 police officers was sent to St James's Square to monitor the demonstration; among them were Fletcher and her fiancé. They were accompanied by members of the Diplomatic Protection Group. About 75 LNSF protestors arrived from across the country, particularly northern England; the demonstration began at around 10:00 am. The demonstrators—many wearing masks or balaclavas, to ensure photographers from the People's Bureau could not record their identities—stayed behind barriers placed opposite the Bureau; they chanted anti-Gaddafi slogans and carried banners and placards. A counter-demonstration by Gaddafi supporters had been arranged by the People's Bureau and took place outside the building. The demonstrations were filmed by several international television crews invited by the Libyans.

At 10:18 am automatic gunfire was discharged from two windows of the People's Bureau in the direction of the anti-Gaddafi demonstration. The shots wounded eleven protestors; according to the post-mortem examination report, one round entered Fletcher's back, "10 in below the top of the right shoulder, 5+1⁄2 in to the right of the spine and 3+1⁄4 in behind the back fold of the right armpit". The bullet travelled right to left, through her thoracic diaphragm, liver and gall bladder before it was deflected by the spinal column out through the left side of the body, and then into the left elbow.

While the demonstrators were moved into Charles II Street, Fletcher was aided by her colleagues; as she lay in the road outside the People's Bureau, she advised them to "keep calm". She was moved to Charles II Street; she became unconscious and stopped breathing and a colleague gave her resuscitation. At 10:40 am an ambulance took her to Westminster Hospital. As she was being transferred from the ambulance to a hospital trolley, a single spent round of ammunition fell from her uniform. She was operated on, but died at approximately midday.

The police evacuated members of the public from the offices around the square, which they sealed off with a cordon; armed police took up positions facing the People's Bureau and on the surrounding rooftops. The garage entrance at the rear of the People's Bureau was not sealed off until at least ten minutes after the shooting, and in that time some of those inside departed the premises through that exit.

With Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, on an official visit to Portugal, and Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, in China, responsibility for handling the crisis fell to Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary. Events spread to Libya soon after the shooting, as around 60 members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps surrounded the British embassy in Tripoli, and put the premises under siege, trapping the staff of 25—including Oliver Miles, the ambassador. Three British nationals working in Tripoli were arrested on unspecified charges.

The post-mortem on Fletcher was undertaken in the evening of 17 April by the forensic pathologist Iain West. Examining the entry of the shot, he wrote that:

"The angle of the bullet wound indicates that she was shot in the back by a person who was situated at a considerably higher level. Assuming that she was standing upright at the moment she was shot, the track would indicate that she had been shot from one of the adjacent floors of an adjacent building."

From the angle of the entry wound, and Fletcher's position in the street—captured on news cameras seconds before she was shot—West established that the shot had come from the first floor of the embassy.

Siege: 18–27 April 1984
On 18 April, Miles was allowed to leave the British embassy to meet representatives of the Libyan government; the siege in Tripoli was lifted that day and one of the men arrested the previous day was also released. The following day Gaddafi appeared on Libyan television and blamed the British police and security forces for the attack; he said that "we are surprised how a responsible state like England carry on [sic] committing this crime". Over the next week five bombs were planted in London, four of which were defused; on 20 April the fifth bomb exploded in the baggage area of Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport, for which police suspected Libyan bombers. The British government's attitude towards Libya hardened as a result of the bombs, although they were also sensitive to Libya's behaviour in previous diplomatic impasses, whereby the regime would arrest citizens of a country and hold them until the normalisation of formal relations. There were 8,000 British workers in Libya, mostly working in the oil and construction industries.

The British government requested access to the People's Bureau, which was denied by the Libyan government. Two Libyan diplomats who were not in the embassy at the time of the shooting acted as intermediaries between police negotiators and those inside the building. The government also put the Special Air Service on standby; they flew from Stirling Lines, their base in Credenhill, Herefordshire, to London in preparation. Negotiations did not progress well, and on 22 April Britain informed the Libyan government that diplomatic ties were broken; the diplomats in the embassy were given until midnight on 29 April to leave the country, and Britain instructed its embassy staff to leave Tripoli by the same time.

Fletcher's hat and four other officers' helmets were left lying in the square during the ensuing siege. In the days that followed, images of them were repeatedly shown in the British media. In the early morning of 27 April a policeman acted against orders and retrieved the hat from the square. It was placed on Fletcher's coffin for her funeral, which took place the same day at Salisbury Cathedral. In addition to 600 police officers, Leon Brittan attended, as did Lawrence Byford, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Kenneth Newman, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

On the same day as Fletcher's funeral the evacuation of the embassy began with the dispatch of diplomatic luggage—four canvas bags, marked with a diplomatic seal, and immune from search or seizure by the British police. Neutral intermediaries from Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey oversaw the exit of goods and staff. The 30 staff in the embassy were allowed out in groups of five, instructed to walk in single-file with a gap between each of them; there was a 15-minute pause between each group exiting the building. Each person was frisked, photographed and questioned, but when attempts were made to fingerprint the men, they objected and the neutral intermediaries advised the police that this was not allowed. After being taken to the Civil Service College at Sunningdale where they were held for the day and questioned, the Libyans were put on a flight to Tripoli just before 8:00 pm. The same day, the remaining members of staff from the British embassy, including the ambassador, returned to London.

Aftermath: 27 April 1984 – 5 February 1985
Once the Libyans had left the People's Bureau, police forensics teams entered and searched the square and the embassy building. Within the building—where they spent four days searching—gunshot residue was found at two windows on the first floor and a spent cartridge. With that evidence, and from the location of the bullets in the square, the police ascertained that two Sterling submachine guns had been fired, one pointing down at the demonstrators and one on a flatter trajectory across the square. The police search of the bureau found 4,367 rounds of ammunition, three semi-automatic pistols, four .38 revolvers and magazines for Sterling submachine guns. The search of the embassy was made by civilian experts employed by the police, accompanied by observers from Saudi Arabia.

The inquest into Fletcher's death opened on 25 April but was adjourned to allow for the police to undertake further investigations. When it reconvened, police reported that they had 400 lines of enquiry open into the murder, but had not narrowed the field of suspects down from any of the 30 Libyans in the embassy. Iain West stated that the bullet entered Fletcher's body at an angle of between 60 and 70 degrees. Paul Knapman, the coroner heading the inquest, considered the angle too steep to have been fired from the first floor and questioned West on the point. The pathologist stated that Fletcher must have been turning when she was shot which, he said, would have reduced the angle. The jury concluded that Fletcher "was killed by a bullet coming from one of two windows on the west side of the front on the first floor of the Libyan People's Bureau".

In April and May 1984 six British men working in Libya were rounded up and detained as hostages by a Revolutionary Committee. The Libyans demanded the restoration of diplomatic relations and the release of Libyans arrested on terror offences. Two of the men were freed in September, and in October Terry Waite—special envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury—visited Libya in an attempt to negotiate the release of the remaining men, the first of his four visits. The hostages were freed on 5 February 1985, after nine months in detention.

Gaddafi era: 1985–2011
Although there were rumours that four members of the embassy had been executed on their return to Libya, the reports were not considered reliable by the British government. The government did not try to re-open diplomatic relations with Libya for several years, and interaction between the two governments remained poor. In 1986 Thatcher agreed to the use of Royal Air Force bases by American aircraft involved in the bombing of Libya; she said in the House of Commons that the murder of Fletcher weighed in her decision. In 1991 the warrants issued to two Libyan men for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing further damaged British–Libyan relations. Abdul Fatah Younis, Libya's Minister for Public Security, met Christopher Long, Britain's ambassador to Egypt in 1992. Younis apologised for his country's role in Fletcher's murder, and offered to assist with the extradition of her killers; the offer was not accepted, but led to discussions between the two countries, which were kept secret.

The Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, broadcast in April 1996, posited that the shots were fired from a different building, from an upper floor that had been rented by MI5, and that the shots had been from agents of MI5 or the American CIA, to discredit the Libyan regime. The contents of the programme were raised in question in the House of Commons by Tam Dalyell, and answered by David Maclean, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, who stated that "The programme asks us to believe that WPC Fletcher was murdered by, or with the connivance of, a British or American intelligence officer. If it were not so offensive and obscene, it would be laughable." He concluded that it was the Libyans in the bureau who should co-operate with the murder investigation.

In July 1999 the Libyan government publicly accepted responsibility for the murder, agreed to pay compensation of £250,000 to Fletcher's family and agreed to support the investigation into Fletcher's murder. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook announced:

"Libya accepts general responsibility for the actions of those in the Libyan People's Bureau at the time of the shooting. It expresses deep regret to the family of WPC Fletcher for what occurred and offers to pay compensation now to the family. Libya agrees to participate in and co-operate with the continuing police investigation and to accept its outcome."

On 24 February 2004 the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 reported that Shukri Ghanem, the Libyan prime minister, had claimed his country was not responsible for Fletcher's murder or for the Lockerbie bombing. Ghanem said that Libya had made the admission and paid compensation to bring peace and an end to international sanctions. The following day a statement on Libyan radio said that Ghanem's comment was "inaccurate and regrettable"; the Libyan government offered entry to Libya for the Metropolitan Police to undertake its investigation in Tripoli. Although they were able to undertake some steps during their four-day investigation, they were not allowed to arrest anyone. On their return it was announced that a joint investigation by British police and a Libyan magistrate would undertake a formal investigation under Libyan law.

British detectives were able to interview their main suspect for the murder in June 2007, following the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the UK and Libya. Detectives spent seven weeks in Libya interviewing both witnesses and suspects. Queenie, Fletcher's mother, described the developments as "promising". That year a senior Canadian lawyer undertook a review of the available evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service. He advised that Abdulmagid Salah Ameri, a junior diplomat in the People's Bureau at the time of the shooting, had been identified by witnesses who had observed him firing a weapon from the embassy window. The report also suggested that there was sufficient evidence for two men, Matouk Mohammed Matouk and Abdulqadir al-Baghdadi, to face charges of conspiracy to murder. Both had escaped out of the garage door of the embassy on the day of the shooting; neither had diplomatic status and could, therefore, face prosecution. The report was not publicly released, but a leaked copy was obtained by The Daily Telegraph in 2009.

In 2009 Gaddafi was interviewed by Sky News and apologised for the killing of Fletcher. The same year it was established that during trade negotiations between Britain and Libya in 2006, an agreement was reached that Fletcher's killer would not be extradited for trial in the UK. In a letter to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, the Police Federation said they were "appalled and disgusted" by the decision. A spokesman for the Foreign Office denied that there was a secret deal, and stated that "Libyan law did not allow for the extradition for trial in other countries so a trial in Libya was the only outcome that would reflect our determination to see justice done".

Post-Gaddafi era: 2011–2021
Following the 2011 Libyan civil war and the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in August that year, it was reported that one of the co-conspirators, Abdulqadir al-Baghdadi, had been killed during in-fighting among Gaddafi loyalists. In June the following year, two police officers flew to Libya to discuss developments in the case. The following month The Sunday Telegraph named Salah Eddin Khalifa, a high-level member of the former regime, as the pro-Gaddafi student who shot Fletcher. Within minutes of the shooting, he had left the embassy via a back door before it was surrounded by police. Khalifa was said to have moved to another north African city following the civil war.

In November 2015 the Metropolitan Police arrested Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, a former member of the Gaddafi government and a close ally of Gaddafi who was a key member of the revolutionary committee in control of the embassy on that day; in 2011 he claimed political asylum in the UK. Although initially arrested on charges of money laundering, he was bailed on charges of conspiracy to murder Fletcher. In May 2017 the charges against him were dropped as evidence against him could not be provided in court because of national security concerns.

In November 2019, Fletcher's former colleague John Murray said he was still trying to find the murderer; in November 2021 a civil case he brought against Mabrouk, was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Mabrouk was found to be jointly liable for Fletcher's death.

Legacy
In April 1984 the film director Michael Winner wrote to The Times to suggest that a memorial be placed in St James's Square "to commemorate not only the horrific death of this brave young girl, but also be a constant reminder to her killers of the feelings of the British people". After receiving sizeable donations, Winner set up the Police Memorial Trust on 3 May to erect memorials to honour British police officers killed in the line of duty.

Fletcher became the first police officer honoured by the Police Memorial Trust. On 1 February 1985 her memorial was unveiled in St James's Square by Thatcher, in a ceremony attended by the leaders of the main British political parties. During her unveiling speech, Thatcher said:

"This simple memorial, erected by the Police Memorial Trust, will be a reminder to Londoners and to visitors alike of the debt that we owe to Yvonne Fletcher and all her colleagues in the Police. Without them the law could not be upheld. Without them, indeed, there would be no law, and no liberty."

The granite and Portland stone commemorative pillar lies in the north-east corner of St James's Square, facing the former Libyan embassy. Westminster City Council altered part of the pavement with a rounded extension into the roadway to create an area for people to stand in front of it.

A cherry tree was planted in St James's Square in memory of Fletcher in 1984, and there is a memorial plaque in Charing Cross Police Station, London. In 1988 John Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury dedicated a stained glass window at St Leonard's Church, Semley, to Fletcher; the window was designed by the artist Henry Haig.

Following a government review into the law surrounding inviolability of diplomatic premises, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987 was introduced. Among other measures, the act allows the government to remove diplomatic status from premises which they consider to be misused.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Murder of Yvonne Fletcher


text:
List of planetary nebulae

The following is an incomplete list of known planetary nebulae.

title: List of planetary nebulae


text:
Maria Schneider (cartoonist)

Maria Schneider (born August 18, 1968) is an American humorist, cartoonist and illustrator best known for her work with the satirical online newspaper The Onion and her comic strip Pathetic Geek Stories.

Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Schneider moved to New York City with the staff of The Onion in 2001. Her contributions include writing humor columns as a variety of characters: T. Herman Zweibel, Jean Teasdale and Herbert Kornfeld.

Schneider's comic strip, Pathetic Geek Stories, illustrates tales of pain and humiliation, usually during adolescence, sent to her by readers. In 2004, Pathetic Geek Stories formally ceased to be a feature in The Onion, moving to its own website. The site had not been updated since November 2008.

Books
In 2010, The Onion Presents A Book of Jean's Own!, a book-length collection of new material written by Schneider as Jean Teasdale, was published by St. Martin's Griffin. The book's front cover was illustrated by Mort Drucker. Publishers Weekly gave it a mixed review.

title: Maria Schneider (cartoonist)


text:
Submanifold

In mathematics, a submanifold of a manifold $$M$$ is a subset $$S$$ which itself has the structure of a manifold, and for which the inclusion map $$S \rightarrow M$$ satisfies certain properties. There are different types of submanifolds depending on exactly which properties are required. Different authors often have different definitions.

Formal definition
In the following we assume all manifolds are differentiable manifolds of class $$C^r$$ for a fixed $$r\geq 1$$, and all morphisms are differentiable of class $$C^r$$.

Immersed submanifolds

An immersed submanifold of a manifold $$M$$ is the image $$S$$ of an immersion map $$f: N\rightarrow M$$; in general this image will not be a submanifold as a subset, and an immersion map need not even be injective (one-to-one) – it can have self-intersections.

More narrowly, one can require that the map $$f: N\rightarrow M$$ be an injection (one-to-one), in which we call it an injective immersion, and define an immersed submanifold to be the image subset $$S$$ together with a topology and differential structure such that $$S$$ is a manifold and the inclusion $$f$$ is a diffeomorphism: this is just the topology on $$N$$, which in general will not agree with the subset topology: in general the subset $$S$$ is not a submanifold of $$M$$, in the subset topology.

Given any injective immersion $$f: N\rightarrow M$$ the image of $$N$$ in $$M$$ can be uniquely given the structure of an immersed submanifold so that $$f: N\rightarrow f(N)$$ is a diffeomorphism. It follows that immersed submanifolds are precisely the images of injective immersions.

The submanifold topology on an immersed submanifold need not be the subspace topology inherited from $$M$$. In general, it will be finer than the subspace topology (i.e. have more open sets).

Immersed submanifolds occur in the theory of Lie groups where Lie subgroups are naturally immersed submanifolds. They also appear in the study of foliations where immersed submanifolds provide the right context to prove the Frobenius theorem.

Embedded submanifolds
An embedded submanifold (also called a regular submanifold), is an immersed submanifold for which the inclusion map is a topological embedding. That is, the submanifold topology on $$S$$ is the same as the subspace topology.

Given any embedding $$f: N\rightarrow M$$ of a manifold $$N$$ in $$M$$ the image $$f(N)$$ naturally has the structure of an embedded submanifold. That is, embedded submanifolds are precisely the images of embeddings.

There is an intrinsic definition of an embedded submanifold which is often useful. Let $$M$$ be an $$n$$-dimensional manifold, and let $$k$$ be an integer such that $$0 \leq k \leq n$$. A $$k$$-dimensional embedded submanifold of $$M$$ is a subset $$S \subset M$$ such that for every point $$p \in S$$ there exists a chart $$U \subset M, \varphi : U \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$$ containing $$p$$ such that $$\varphi(S \cap U)$$ is the intersection of a $$k$$-dimensional plane with $$\varphi(U)$$. The pairs $$(S\cap U, \varphi\vert_{S\cap U})$$ form an atlas for the differential structure on $$S$$.

Alexander's theorem and the Jordan–Schoenflies theorem are good examples of smooth embeddings.

Other variations
There are some other variations of submanifolds used in the literature. A neat submanifold is a manifold whose boundary agrees with the boundary of the entire manifold. Sharpe (1997) defines a type of submanifold which lies somewhere between an embedded submanifold and an immersed submanifold.

Many authors define topological submanifolds also. These are the same as $$C^r$$ submanifolds with $$r = 0$$. An embedded topological submanifold is not necessarily regular in the sense of the existence of a local chart at each point extending the embedding. Counterexamples include wild arcs and wild knots.

Properties
Given any immersed submanifold $$S$$ of $$M$$, the tangent space to a point $$p$$ in $$S$$ can naturally be thought of as a linear subspace of the tangent space to $$p$$ in $$M$$. This follows from the fact that the inclusion map is an immersion and provides an injection
 * $$i_{\ast}: T_p S \to T_p M.$$

Suppose S is an immersed submanifold of $$M$$. If the inclusion map $$i: S\to M$$ is closed then $$S$$ is actually an embedded submanifold of $$M$$. Conversely, if $$S$$ is an embedded submanifold which is also a closed subset then the inclusion map is closed. The inclusion map $$i: S\to M$$ is closed if and only if it is a proper map (i.e. inverse images of compact sets are compact). If $$i$$ is closed then $$S$$ is called a closed embedded submanifold of $$M$$. Closed embedded submanifolds form the nicest class of submanifolds.

Submanifolds of real coordinate space
Smooth manifolds are sometimes defined as embedded submanifolds of real coordinate space $$\mathbb{R}^n$$, for some $$n$$. This point of view is equivalent to the usual, abstract approach, because, by the Whitney embedding theorem, any second-countable smooth (abstract) $$m$$-manifold can be smoothly embedded in $$\mathbb{R}^{2m}$$.

title: Submanifold


text:
Monument

A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical, political, technical or architectural importance. Examples of monuments include statues, (war) memorials, historical buildings, archaeological sites, and cultural assets. If there is a public interest in its preservation, a monument can for example be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict gives the next definition of monument:"Monuments result from social practices of construction or conservation of material artifacts through which the ideology of their promoters is manifested. The concept of the modern monument emerged with the development of capital and the nation-state in the fifteenth century when the ruling classes began to build and conserve what were termed monuments. These practices proliferated significantly in the nineteenth century, creating the ideological frameworks for their conservation as a universal humanist duty. The twentieth century has marked a movement toward some monuments being conceived as cultural heritage in the form of remains to be preserved, and concerning commemorative monuments, there has been a shift toward the abstract counter monument. In both cases, their conflictive nature is explicit in the need for their conservation, given that a fundamental component of state action following the construction or declaration of monuments is litigating vandalism and iconoclasm. However, not all monuments represent the interests of nation-states and the ruling classes; their forms are also employed beyond Western borders and by social movements as part of subversive practices which use monuments as a means of expression, where forms previously exclusive to European elites are used by new social groups or for generating anti-monumental artifacts that directly challenge the state and the ruling classes. In conflicts, therefore, it is not so much the monument which is relevant but rather what happens to the communities that participate in its construction or destruction and their instigation of forms of social interaction."

Etymology
The word "monument" comes from the Latin "monumentum", derived from the word moneo, monere, which means 'to remind' or 'to warn', suggesting a monument allows us to see the past thus helping us visualize what is to come in the future. In English the word "monumental" is often used in reference to something of extraordinary size and power, as in monumental sculpture, but also to mean simply anything made to commemorate the dead, as a funerary monument or other example of funerary art.

Creation and functions
A formalist interpretation of monuments suggests their origins date back to antiquity and even prehistory. Archaeologists like Gordon Childe viewed ancient monuments as symbols of power. Historians such as Lewis Mumford proposed that the practice began with Paleolithic landmarks, which served as sites for communication with ancestral spirits. However, these perspectives often project modern uses of monuments onto ancient structures. In art history, monuments are seen as significant sculptural forms; in architecture and urban planning, they are crucial for city organization and mapping. These contemporary interpretations have been retroactively applied to ancient and non-Western structures. This modern concept of monuments aligns with how past constructions are labeled as monuments today. Françóise Choay highlights the distinction between these views: "The historic monument is a precisely datable invention of the West... exported and diffused beyond Europe from the late nineteenth century." Basically, the definition framework of the term monument depends on the current historical frame conditions. Aspects of the Culture of Remembrance and cultural memory are also linked to it, as well as questions about the concepts of public sphere and durability (of the one memorized) and the form and content of the monument (work-like monument). From an art historical point of view, the dichotomy of content and form opens up the problem of the "linguistic ability" of the monument. It becomes clear that language is an eminent part of a monument and it is often represented in "non-objective" or "architectural monuments", at least with a plaque. In this connection, the debate touches on the social mechanisms that combine with Remembrance. These are acceptance of the monument as an object, the conveyed contents and the impact of these contents.

Monuments are frequently used to improve the appearance of a city or location. Planned cities such as Washington, D.C., New Delhi and Brasília are often built around monuments. For example, the Washington Monument's location was conceived by L'Enfant to help organize public space in the city, before it was designed or constructed. Older cities have monuments placed at locations that are already important or are sometimes redesigned to focus on one. As Shelley suggested in his famous poem "Ozymandias" ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"), the purpose of monuments is very often to impress or awe.

Structures created for other purposes that have been made notable by their age, size or historic significance may also be regarded as monuments. This can happen because of great age and size, as in the case of the Great Wall of China, or because an event of great importance occurred there such as the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France. Many countries use 'ancient monument' or similar terms for the official designation of protected structures or archeological sites which may originally have been ordinary domestic houses or other buildings.

Monuments are also often designed to convey historical or political information, and they can thus develop an active socio-political potency. They can be used to reinforce the primacy of contemporary political power, such as the column of Trajan or the numerous statues of Lenin in the Soviet Union. They can be used to educate the populace about important events or figures from the past, such as in the renaming of the old General Post Office Building in New York City to the James A. Farley Building, after James Farley, former Postmaster General of the United States. To fulfill its informative and educative functions a monument needs to be open to the public, which means that its spatial dimension, as well as its content can be experienced by the public, and be sustainable. The former may be achieved either by situating the monument in public space or by a public discussion about the monument and its meaning, the latter by the materiality of the monument or if its content immediately becomes part of the collective or cultural memory.

The social meanings of monuments are rarely fixed and certain and are frequently 'contested' by different social groups. As an example: whilst the former East German socialist state may have seen the Berlin Wall as a means of 'protection' from the ideological impurity of the west, dissidents and others would often argue that it was symbolic of the inherent repression and paranoia of that state. This contention of meaning is a central theme of modern 'post processual' archaeological discourse.

Loss and destruction
While many ancient monuments still exist today, there are notable incidents of monuments being intentionally or accidentally destroyed and many monuments are likely to have disappeared through the passage of time and natural forces such as erosion. In 772 during the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne intentionally destroyed an Irminsul monument in order to desecrate the pagan religion. In 1687 the Parthenon in Athens was partially destroyed by a Venetian mortar round, which set off the store of gunpowder kept there by the Turkish defenders.

A recent archeological dig in central France uncovered the remains of a Megalithic monument that had been previously destroyed "Like some monuments, including Belz in Morbihan, the menhirs of Veyre-Monton were knocked down in order to make them disappear from the landscape. Pushed into large pits, sometimes mutilated or covered with earth, these monoliths have been destroyed. 'object of iconoclastic gestures, a sort of condemnation perhaps linked to some change of community or beliefs "

Protection and preservation
The term is often used to describe any structure that is a significant and legally protected historic work, and many countries have equivalents of what is called in United Kingdom legislation a Scheduled Monument, which often include relatively recent buildings constructed for residential or industrial purposes, with no thought at the time that they would come to be regarded as "monuments".

Until recently, it was customary for archaeologists to study large monuments and pay less attention to the everyday lives of the societies that created them. New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments. An example has been the United Kingdom's Scheduled Ancient Monument laws.

Other than municipal or national government that protecting the monuments in their jurisdiction, there are institutions dedicated on the efforts to protect and preserve monuments that considered to possess special natural or cultural significance for the world, such as UNESCO's World Heritage Site programme and World Monuments Fund.

Cultural monuments are also considered to be the memory of a community and are therefore particularly at risk in the context of modern asymmetrical warfare. The enemy's cultural heritage is to be sustainably damaged or even destroyed. In addition to the national protection of cultural monuments, international organizations (cf. UNESCO World Heritage, Blue Shield International) therefore try to protect cultural monuments.

Recently, more and more monuments are being preserved digitally (in 3D models) through organisations as CyArk.

Types

 * Benchmarks placed by a government agency or private survey firm.
 * Buildings designed as landmarks, usually built with an extraordinary feature, such being designed as the tallest, largest, or most distinctive design, e.g., the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest structure or the One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the United States, built to memorialize the attack on September 11.
 * Cenotaphs (intended to honour the dead who are buried elsewhere) and other memorials to commemorate the dead, usually war casualties, e.g., India Gate and Vimy Ridge Memorial, or disaster casualties, such as the Titanic Memorial, Belfast.
 * Church monuments to commemorate the faithful dead, located above or near their grave, often featuring an effigy, e.g., St. Peter's Basilica or the medieval church Sta Maria di Collemaggio in L'Aquila.
 * Columns, often topped with a statue, e.g., Berlin Victory Column, Nelson's Column in London, and Trajan's Column in Rome.
 * Eternal flames that are kept burning continuously, usually lit to honor unknown soldiers, e.g., at the Tomb of Unknown Soldier in Moscow or at the John F. Kennedy gravesite in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery.Washington Monument Dusk Jan 2006.jpg in Washington, D.C., which honors the first president of the United States, George Washington, is the world's tallest obelisk.]]
 * Fountains, water-pouring structures usually placed in formal gardens or town squares, e.g., Fontaines de la Concorde and Gardens of Versailles.
 * Gravestones, small monuments to the deceased, placed at their gravesites, e.g., the tombs and vaults of veterans in Les Invalides and Srebrenica Genocide Memorial.
 * Mausoleums and tombs to honor the dead, e.g., the Great Pyramid of Giza, Libyco-Punic Mausoleum of Dougga and Taj Mahal.
 * Monoliths erected for religious or commemorative purposes, e.g., Stonehenge.
 * Mosque Monuments, places of worship that generally have domes and minarets that stand out against the skyline. They also usually feature highly skilled Islamic calligraphy and geometric artwork, e.g., the Mosque of the Prophet.
 * Mounds erected to commemorate great leaders or events, e.g., Kościuszko Mound.
 * Obelisks, usually erected to commemorate great leaders, e.g., Cleopatra's Needle in London, the National Monument ("Monas") in Central Jakarta, and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.
 * Palaces, imposing royal residences designed to impress people with their grandeur and greatness, e.g., Forbidden City in Beijing, Palace of Versailles, and Schwerin Palace in Schwerin.
 * Searchlights to project a powerful beam of light, e.g., Tribute in Light in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, commemorating the September 11 attacks of 2001.
 * Statues of famous individuals or symbols, e.g., the Niederwalddenkmal (Germania) in Hesse, Liberty Enlightening the World (commonly known as the Statue of Liberty) in New York City, and The Motherland Calls in Volgograd.
 * Temples or religious structures built for pilgrimage, ritual or commemorative purposes, e.g., Borobudur in Magelang and Kaaba in Mecca.
 * Terminating Vistas, layout design for urban monuments on the end of an avenue, e.g., Opera Garnier in Paris.
 * Triumphal arches, almost always to commemorate military successes, e.g., the Arch of Constantine in Rome and Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.
 * War memorials, e.g., the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, VA, the Laboe Naval Memorial, the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in St Avold, and the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin.

title: Monument


text:
User:Cmkpl

zh:User:Cmkpl My website

title: User:Cmkpl


text:
Hypersurface

In geometry, a hypersurface is a generalization of the concepts of hyperplane, plane curve, and surface. A hypersurface is a manifold or an algebraic variety of dimension $n − 1$, which is embedded in an ambient space of dimension $n$, generally a Euclidean space, an affine space or a projective space. Hypersurfaces share, with surfaces in a three-dimensional space, the property of being defined by a single implicit equation, at least locally (near every point), and sometimes globally.

A hypersurface in a (Euclidean, affine, or projective) space of dimension two is a plane curve. In a space of dimension three, it is a surface.

For example, the equation
 * $$x_1^2+x_2^2+\cdots+x_n^2-1=0$$

defines an algebraic hypersurface of dimension $n − 1$ in the Euclidean space of dimension $n$. This hypersurface is also a smooth manifold, and is called a hypersphere or an $(n – 1)$-sphere.

Smooth hypersurface
A hypersurface that is a smooth manifold is called a smooth hypersurface.

In $R^{n}$, a smooth hypersurface is orientable. Every connected compact smooth hypersurface is a level set, and separates Rn into two connected components; this is related to the Jordan–Brouwer separation theorem.

Affine algebraic hypersurface
An algebraic hypersurface is an algebraic variety that may be defined by a single implicit equation of the form
 * $$p(x_1, \ldots, x_n)=0,$$

where $p$ is a multivariate polynomial. Generally the polynomial is supposed to be irreducible. When this is not the case, the hypersurface is not an algebraic variety, but only an algebraic set. It may depend on the authors or the context whether a reducible polynomial defines a hypersurface. For avoiding ambiguity, the term irreducible hypersurface is often used.

As for algebraic varieties, the coefficients of the defining polynomial may belong to any fixed field $k$, and the points of the hypersurface are the zeros of $p$ in the affine space $$K^n,$$ where $K$ is an algebraically closed extension of $k$.

A hypersurface may have singularities, which are the common zeros, if any, of the defining polynomial and its partial derivatives. In particular, a real algebraic hypersurface is not necessarily a manifold.

Properties
Hypersurfaces have some specific properties that are not shared with other algebraic varieties.

One of the main such properties is Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, which asserts that a hypersurface contains a given algebraic set if and only if the defining polynomial of the hypersurface has a power that belongs to the ideal generated by the defining polynomials of the algebraic set.

A corollary of this theorem is that, if two irreducible polynomials (or more generally two square-free polynomials) define the same hypersurface, then one is the product of the other by a nonzero constant.

Hypersurfaces are exactly the subvarieties of dimension $n – 1$ of an affine space of dimension of $n$. This is the geometric interpretation of the fact that, in a polynomial ring over a field, the height of an ideal is 1 if and only if the ideal is a principal ideal. In the case of possibly reducible hypersurfaces, this result may be restated as follows: hypersurfaces are exactly the algebraic sets whose all irreducible components have dimension $n – 1$.

Real and rational points
A real hypersurface is a hypersurface that is defined by a polynomial with real coefficients. In this case the algebraically closed field over which the points are defined is generally the field $$\mathbb C$$ of complex numbers. The real points of a real hypersurface are the points that belong to $$\mathbb R^n \subset \mathbb C^n.$$ The set of the real points of a real hypersurface is the real part of the hypersurface. Often, it is left to the context whether the term hypersurface refers to all points or only to the real part.

If the coefficients of the defining polynomial belong to a field $k$ that is not algebraically closed (typically the field of rational numbers, a finite field or a number field), one says that the hypersurface is defined over $k$, and the points that belong to $$k^n$$ are rational over $k$ (in the case of the field of rational numbers, "over $k$" is generally omitted).

For example, the imaginary $n$-sphere defined by the equation
 * $$x_0^2 +\cdots+x_n^2 +1=0$$

is a real hypersurface without any real point, which is defined over the rational numbers. It has no rational point, but has many points that are rational over the Gaussian rationals.

Projective algebraic hypersurface
A of dimension $n – 1$ in a projective space of dimension $n$ over a field $k$ is defined by a homogeneous polynomial $$P(x_0, x_1, \ldots, x_n)$$ in $n + 1$ indeterminates. As usual, means that all monomials of $P$ have the same degree, or, equivalently that $$P(cx_0, cx_1, \ldots, cx_n)=c^dP(x_0, x_1, \ldots, x_n)$$ for every constant $c$, where $d$ is the degree of the polynomial. The of the hypersurface are the points of the projective space whose projective coordinates are zeros of $P$.

If one chooses the hyperplane of equation $$x_0=0$$ as hyperplane at infinity, the complement of this hyperplane is an affine space, and the points of the projective hypersurface that belong to this affine space form an affine hypersurface of equation $$P(1, x_1, \ldots, x_n) = 0.$$ Conversely, given an affine hypersurface of equation $$p(x_1, \ldots, x_n)=0,$$ it defines a projective hypersurface, called its, whose equation is obtained by homogenizing $p$. That is, the equation of the projective completion is $$P(x_0, x_1, \ldots, x_n) = 0,$$ with
 * $$P(x_0, x_1, \ldots, x_n) = x_0^dp(x_1/x_0, \ldots, x_n/x_0),$$

where $d$ is the degree of $P$.

These two processes projective completion and restriction to an affine subspace are inverse one to the other. Therefore, an affine hypersurface and its projective completion have essentially the same properties, and are often considered as two points-of-view for the same hypersurface.

However, it may occur that an affine hypersurface is nonsingular, while its projective completion has singular points. In this case, one says that the affine surface is. For example, the circular cylinder of equation
 * $$x^2+y^2-1=0$$

in the affine space of dimension three has a unique singular point, which is at infinity, in the direction $x = 0, y = 0$.

title: Hypersurface


text:
Talk:List of Battlefield 1942 mods

RicK
I assume this is about a game? Could we make that clear? RickK | Talk 02:00, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This page needs work on formatting and wikification. Some problems: I'm going to start cleaning it up now. --Mrwojo 15:47, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) It's Battlefield 1942, not Battlefield:1942.
 * 2) There's issues with the table; listing the version numbers in the same column as the mod name is confusing.
 * 3) Titles of unreleased, inactive mods shouldn't be wikified. What are we going to say about them?

 * Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield:1942 are used interchangeably([]) a lot of places, though i agree it better to leave it out is probably better.

 * Version Numbers can go in new columns, certainly. I had moved some to that format but a lot are left. Intially i thouht it was ok as the list was much shorter when I did it intially- and a release version of a mods is nearly as important as its name also factored in.

 * I re-tablized the 'inactive/moved' list, as eventually I hoped there would be another column for whether it ever had a website, or released screenshots. I was going to remove the ones that had neither, once that information was assembled. The usefullness of the short list and the mini list are debatable but I never decided on them. I also removed wikilinks for those minimods and inactive mods, as I agree there not usefull.

 * I was thinking of adding some backround color to distingush between moved, ended, or just dead mods like in the bigger table. Also more of the active but unreleased mods in the upper table will have to be moved down, as they move or decide on no BF42 release and keeping the format the same can allow saving work put into formatting that entry.

 * Finally, the disambig for mods is still up in the air. I was thinking just "(mod)" may be the best as a lot of mods change game engine so cant be pinned down, though this may be to general. The few of the bigger mods I did I didn't choose a disambig for as they tend to have unique enough names, though there are a number of un-done ones that do have this problem. Look forward to have any more idea you have- good luck! Greyengine5 18:12, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks. All that sounds good to me. I personally think "(computer game)" would work fine, even for mods. The main problem I had with the colon is that there was no space following it ("Battlefield:1942" just didn't look right, "Battlefield: 1942" is better). Also, you only need to put one set of square brackets around a URL. If I can think of anything else that's important, I'll bring it up here. In the mean time though, I'll just make formatting tweaks. --Mrwojo 03:04, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopedic enough?
This list of Battlefield: 1942 mods seems to be striving for comprehensiveness, but I feel fails to understand the purpose of an encyclopedia. I do not believe listing mods that never amounted to anything is worth putting in an encyclopedia.

As an example: Many people have tried to climb everest. Should they all be listed? Or should those people of significance be listed?

I'm currently thinking about reorganizing how we list game mods. I will discuss that over at the Mod discussion. But the point I am making here is that this list of Battlefield mods needs to be pruned. Paitum 15:01, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I recommend leaving it alone, as its the only nearly comprehensive (for a time) list of mods for BF in existence. Determing which mods are truly not significant can be hard to do as mods can unexpectedly come out of dormancy, may have suggested a interesting idea only recognized in retrospect, etc..
 * Many in the second list released nothing more then a few screenshots, but within are old names, ideas, -and each making news items in its day and becoming part of the history of bf. I am against pruning this history away- which is much less arcane and insignficant then many other things listed on the 'pedia.
 * I do agree that the organization of mods and games in general needs a lot of work, but I would rather see work go into adding content in the many areas lacking it. Greyengine5 14:35, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Correction
Just to correct the author: under the dead mods you have Battlefield Firefighter. I am the Developer Leader and I can assure you the mod did not die. We decided to port to BF2 and abandon BF1942 and BFV. BF2 has features we need to do things we could never do with 1942 or Vietnam.

Move to Wikibooks?
I believe that this article would be unencyclopedic here, but would be better in a "book-type" format at Wikibooks, like other crufty lists.--Zxcvbnm 16:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

How is it non-encyclopedic?
I fail to see how it is not encyclopedic. Adding details on the mods would be nice. Simply because it is not something many people care about does not mean that it does not belong in an encyclopedia. It is factual and accurate information, and Wikipedia is intended to be a source of such. Icarus999 20:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

mod related material being proposed for deletion?
i have noticed lately that much mod related material has been proposed for deletion.Many of these mods have a website run directly by the modders so theres viable source on much information so why is so much mod related material either deleted or proposed for deletion.this annoys me in a way which i cant express without getting in trouble here —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.66.212.175 (talk) 22:40, 18 December 2006 (UTC).
 * Mod articles are usually not encyclopedic, as the editors just add the name and link to the mod site. Thus, a valid mod article becomes a hyperlink farm, which is against our policies. As for verifiable information, note that third party references are better than home pages, because a third party is usually neutral, while the home page of a mod usually says it is the "best mod ever". -- ReyBrujo 04:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the subject of the page should be adjusted
The list on this page could certainly use a little whittling-down; I propose the subject of the page be changed to "List of major BF1942 mods", and that only mods for which a dedicated server can be found at any given time be listed. The collumns of the table should include a name, a breif description, the latest version released and an "online popularity" column which displays the popularity of the mod based on how many of the internet dedicated servers, averaged over a period of time, have the mod listed under "Active Mods". A second list could include any mods which have any particular novelty value, and a third (not nesesarry as far as I'm concerned) may list the remaining mods (excluding those which the developer conceeds are "dead"). 66.79.240.162 00:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I think inclusion criteria for the mods should come down to the same two factors that affect everything on wiki Verfiability and Notability. If a mod is/was notable to receive the oh-so important multiple non-trivial independant third-party media coverage, and sources to these can be provided, then they can live on the list. Any reasonable objections? According to all the AfDs, you can't move round the net without constantly finding independent coverage about most of these mods (even if the sources never seem to turn up......) so it shouldn't be too hard, right? The Kinslayer 12:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Removal of mods
Non-notable mods should be removed from the list, and only notable by a third party should be kept. Any objections to this? Havok (T/C/e/c) 14:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, as long as the sources that prove notability actually turn up this time. After 8 or so months, the waits getting a bit old. The Kinslayer 14:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It can still be saved, and I would rather we do that then delete it. Havok (T/C/e/c) 14:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Saved how? Even if notability is established, what we essentially have is a list of 'Where to go to download X mod' which Wikipedia is not. The Kinslayer 14:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Remove the links if you feel like it, I don't care that much for external links anyway. A good example of a good list is List of Virtual Boy games. Which this list can become as well with work. Havok (T/C/e/c) 14:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it really can't, simply because the list of Virtual Boy games wasn't set-up solely to linkspam due to it being a dead system. This was, and going off the 'ready availability' of sources for this list, when it's done being cleaned, it's only going to have about 3 entries. The Kinslayer 14:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we can remove all mods not updated with 1.6 and that's not notable in some extraordinary way. Havok (T/C/e/c) 14:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you cut it down to those that reviewed by paper publications you had have more like 10-20. However, the article subject has collective notability (all the mods together). A individual mod need only establish it exists, which supports the overal article about a list. The articles that can establish a independent notablity might get there own article. Bfelite 16:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

 * No. If the mod merely exists it's not notable, it's not even worth a mention otherwise it's indiscriminate information, and in the case of this article, linkspam. This list provides no useful information in itself, relying on people actually leaving wikipedia to get their information. Where's the logic in that? If they have to leave to get any information they are after, what was the point in them coming here in the first place? Most of these mods seem to have solely been placed here in order to attract visitors to the individual sites. Without any sources to establish the notability of a mod, I don't see why good faith should be assumed. (And also, AGF is a guideline not a policy.) The Kinslayer 16:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

 * The point is to record history, it has nothing to with promotion. BF1942 mods attained notablity in their time, there collective existence is part of their notability. Formal references don't require AGF, because you can go look them up in a couple hours at a library! Bfelite 17:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, but we aim at verifiability, not truth. So, unless you can prove they are notable, it is false for Wikipedia. Also, the burden of evidence lies in the one adding or restoring the information, not the one removing it. So, I can remove them all and say none is notable, and you will have to prove that they are notable in order to restore them. -- ReyBrujo 19:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have removed all unreleased/dead mods. Discuss each of them here before massively readding. Unless it is notable enough, it should not stay. People compare it with List of Half-Life mods. Well, that article has 4 mods, each of them with an article in Wikipedia. I will be removing them again based on Verifiability unless a reliable source is used (that means, something other than the mod site itself or a forum post). -- ReyBrujo 19:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, I will be removing every mod that does not have an article in Wikipedia in the near future, so instead of trying to put "my friends' mod" back, get to work and find reliable sources to back them up. -- ReyBrujo 19:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have removed all the spam from the page, and created wikilinks for the mods. As you can clearly see, there are only four mods with articles (although three are pointing to the same article, and one has only a subsection that could be considered spam. If any of those mods are notable, create articles for them. I think we should take an approach similar to List of Half-Life mods and List of Half-Life 2 mods: a prose list, not a table (which invites spammers and friends of modders) with no external links and only wikilinks to mod articles. Either force those guys to demonstrate the mods are notable, or keep them as far from this article as possible. -- ReyBrujo 19:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The articles, and their refernces were deleted and merged here for the most part. Even the ones that have articles in the paper press written about them are rejected. Bfelite 01:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I should add, most of these should not HAVE wiki links, because part of the AFD of their orignal articles was that remaining content (a link, and a name) be merge to here. Bfelite 01:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it is obvious some people here have an agenda, so I am doing this: Deleting all the "uncertain" stuff, but letting the other spam. Sorry if I deleted your friend's freewebs mod, but it is not notable for Wikipedia. Tell him to put it in Dmoz if necessary. -- ReyBrujo 04:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Agenda?? I certainly do not know anybody who is involved with any of these mods (well not that I know, quite possible do have some friends who are though. But wouldn't know which or involved with what).Mathmo Talk
 * OK< not quite sure how a debate between two between people can be interpreted by a third person as being about him! Anyways, Rey the article looks much better now. Not sure if it's really worth keeping with only 2 mods on it, but at least they are verifiably notable and not just mods from people saying 'The games notable so our mods notable' like some lame Notability Leech. The Kinslayer 09:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Notable only
I suggest moving this article to "List of notable Battlefield 1942 mods". It is obvious that, while the people working at Half-Life have much less problems with spam, this article will stay the way it used to be before the AFD if we allowed it to. If notable means any mod that had been featured in important media, we would be able to remove 99% of them. -- ReyBrujo 05:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, that is POV pushing on your part. Mathmo Talk 05:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course. I am pushing Verifiability, Reliable sources and No original research to the maximun. Anything wrong with that? -- ReyBrujo 05:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Reference
Could someone with knowledge of the ref tag thing please change all the links to sources and use the ref tag for them, instead of using the Wiki external link style. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Havok (talk • contribs) 08:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC).
 * Sorry about that. Havok (T/C/e/c) 10:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging mods
Although this article contains referenced articles, it's a pretty small list. So, what I propose is to merge all the individual mod articles into here (in the process deleting any unencyclopedic lists) and do the same for the stub List of Battlefield 2 mods. Then, Category:Battlefield 2 modifications and Category:Battlefield 1942 mods will be deleted. That way, both lists will be expanded, any mod articles of questionable notability will be merged, this list will serve as the main mod list, and everyone is happy.--Zxcvbnm 21:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If nobody has any problems with it, I'll start merging.--Zxcvbnm 00:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I have a problem with both those ideas. Those lists would be better off merged to their respective articles (e.g. BF2 mods to the BF 2 article) not here, and the specific mods would clutter up this page. Bfelite 00:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The whole point of this article is to keep the mods away from the main article. They would take up too much space if merged into the main article, and would be regarded as unnecessary. Plus, the specific mods need to be trimmed to take out any extra, "promotional" material.--Zxcvbnm 00:32, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean merging this one to the 1942 page, but rather not merging anything to this page. For example, if the BF2 mods list is not big enough for article, it should be moved to the Battlefield 2 page, not here. Bfelite 00:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the BF2 mods list is unfinished, since there are a lot of other mods for Battlefield 2 than in the article. But there are only a few mods that have their own pages, so merging them might be easier to keep their content in check.--Zxcvbnm 01:24, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think its a good idea to merge BF2 stuff or mod articles here, if thats what you mean. Bfelite 01:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't say I was merging BF2 articles to this page, just the Battlefield 2 mods to their list page and the Battlefield 1942 mods to this page. Anyway, if you can clean up the individual mod articles, maybe they don't need to be merged.--Zxcvbnm 02:01, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Right, I don't think those merges would be appropriate. Bfelite 02:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I see what you're saying, but just look at some of these mod pages. For example, FinnWars is just a list of weapons and general info about the mod. This could easily fit into a list. The mod should rely on external links for that kind of stuff, since if it becomes defunct, what's the point of keeping a list of weapons anyway?--Zxcvbnm 03:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Weponslayoutwz0.png
The image Image:Weponslayoutwz0.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --02:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

More exhaustive
This article used to be an exhaustive list which went on for pages! Why has it been shortened so much? What's the point of a list page when some arbitrary person just decides which items are "notable" enough to keep!? I think it should be repopulated and restored to its formal pointfulness again. 199.212.11.176 (talk) 21:38, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of Battlefield 1942 mods


text:
Tombstone (film)

Tombstone is a 1993 American Western film directed by George P. Cosmatos, written by Kevin Jarre (who was also the original director, but was replaced early in production ), and starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, with Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, and Dana Delany in supporting roles, as well as narration by Robert Mitchum.

The film is loosely based on real events that took place in the 1880s in Southeast Arizona, including the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Earp Vendetta Ride. It depicts several Western outlaws and lawmen, such as Wyatt Earp, William Brocius, Johnny Ringo, and Doc Holliday. Tombstone was released by Hollywood Pictures in theatrical wide release in the United States on December 25, 1993, grossing $73.2 million worldwide. The film was a financial success, and for the Western genre, it ranks number 16 in the list of highest-grossing films since 1979. Six months later, the similarly themed film Wyatt Earp was released with far less commercial success. Critical reception was generally positive, with the story, directing, and acting receiving praise. Particular praise went towards Val Kilmer's memorable performance as the hard-drinking Doc Holliday. The film has become a cult classic since its release.

Plot
In 1879, members of an outlaw gang known to wear red sashes called the Cowboys, led by "Curly Bill" Brocius, ride into a Mexican town and interrupt a local police officer's wedding. They then proceed to massacre the assembled policemen in retribution for killing two of their fellow gang members. Shortly before being shot, a local priest warns them that their acts of murder and savagery will be avenged, referencing the biblical fourth horseman.

Wyatt Earp, a retired peace officer with a notable reputation, reunites with his brothers Virgil and Morgan in Tucson, Arizona, where they venture on toward Tombstone to settle down. There they encounter Wyatt's long-time friend Doc Holliday, who is seeking relief in the dry climate from his worsening tuberculosis. Josephine Marcus and Mr. Fabian are also newly arrived with a traveling theater troupe. Meanwhile, Wyatt's common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock, is becoming dependent on laudanum. Wyatt and his brothers begin to profit from a stake in a gambling emporium and saloon when they have their first encounter with the Cowboys.

As tensions rise, Wyatt is pressured to help rid the town of the Cowboys, though he is no longer a lawman. Curly Bill begins shooting at the sky after a visit to an opium den and is told by Marshal Fred White to relinquish his firearms. Curly Bill shoots the marshal dead and is forcibly taken into custody by Wyatt. The arrest infuriates Ike Clanton and the other Cowboys. Curly Bill stands trial but is found not guilty due to a lack of witnesses. Virgil, unable to tolerate lawlessness, becomes the new marshal and imposes a weapons ban within the city limits. This leads to a gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers are killed. Virgil and Morgan are wounded, and the allegiance of county sheriff Johnny Behan with the Cowboys is made clear. As retribution for the Cowboy deaths, Wyatt's brothers are ambushed; Morgan is killed, while Virgil is left handicapped. A despondent Wyatt and his family leave Tombstone and board a train, with Ike Clanton and Frank Stilwell close behind, preparing to ambush them. Wyatt sees that his family leaves safely, and then surprises the assassins. He kills Stilwell but lets Clanton live to send a message: Wyatt announces that he is a U.S. marshal and that he intends to kill any man he sees wearing a red sash. Wyatt, Doc, a reformed Cowboy named Sherman McMasters, Texas Jack Vermillion, and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson form a posse to seek revenge.

Wyatt and his posse are ambushed in a riverside forest by the Cowboys. Wyatt walks into the creek, miraculously surviving the enemy fire, and kills Curly Bill along with many of his men. Curly Bill's second-in-command, Johnny Ringo, becomes the new head of the Cowboys. When Doc's health worsens, the group is accommodated by Henry Hooker at his ranch. Ringo lures McMasters into the Cowboys' clutches under the pretense of parley and then sends a messenger (dragging McMasters' corpse) to tell Wyatt that he wants a showdown to end the hostilities; Wyatt agrees. Wyatt sets off for the showdown, not knowing that Doc has already arrived at the scene. Doc confronts a surprised Ringo, who was expecting Wyatt, and challenges him to a duel to finish their "game," which Ringo accepts (Doc and Ringo have already had a couple of stand-offs in Tombstone that were ultimately broken up). Wyatt runs when he hears a gunshot, only to encounter Doc, who has killed Ringo. They then press on to complete their task of eliminating the Cowboys, although Clanton escapes their vengeance by renouncing his red sash. Doc is sent to a sanatorium in Colorado, where he dies of his illness. At Doc's urging, Wyatt pursues Josephine to begin a new life.

Production
The film was shot primarily on location in Arizona. Shooting began in May 1993. The film was supposed to be screenwriter Kevin Jarre's first job as director but he was quickly overwhelmed by the job, failing to get needed shots and falling behind the shooting schedule. A month into filming, he was fired by producer Andrew Vajna and replaced with George P. Cosmatos. Michael Biehn, a close friend of Jarre, considered quitting. Biehn recalled feeling (director) Cosmatos "...had no understanding or appreciation of the screenplay." By the time of Cosmatos' arrival, though, all actors stayed on board. The new director brought a demanding, hard-nosed sensibility to the set, which led to conflicts with some of the crew members (most famously with cinematographer William Fraker). Meanwhile, Kurt Russell worked quickly with producer James Jacks to pare down Jarre's sprawling script, deleting subplots and emphasizing the relationship between Wyatt and Doc.

Russell has stated that it was he, and not Cosmatos, who directed the film, as Jarre's departure led to the studio's request. Russell stated that Cosmatos was brought in as a "ghost director" as a frontman because Russell did not want it to be known that he was directing. Co-star Val Kilmer has supported Russell's statements about working heavily behind the scenes and stating that Russell "essentially" directed the film, but stopped short of saying that Russell did the actual directing. Biehn stated that Russell never directed him personally.

Cosmatos was highly focused on accurate historical detail, including the costumes, props, customs, and scenery, to give them authenticity. All the mustaches in the movie were real except Jon Tenney's (Sheriff Behan) who had to be clean shaven for his prior project, and was thus the only fake mustache in the movie. Val Kilmer practiced for a long time on his quick-draw speed and gave his character a genteel Southern accent. Two locations were used to make the town of Tombstone look bigger. The scene in which Wyatt throws an abusive card dealer (Billy Bob Thornton) out of a saloon was to show that Wyatt was a man who used psychology to intimidate. Thornton's lines in the scene were ad-libbed, as he was only told to "be a bully".

Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Tombstone was originally released by Intrada Records on December 25, 1993. On March 16, 2006, an expanded two-disc version of the film score was also released by Intrada Records. The score was composed and produced by Bruce Broughton, and performed by the Sinfonia of London. David Snell conducted most of the score (although Broughton normally conducts his own scores, union problems mandated another conductor here), while Patricia Carlin edited the film's music.

The score contains strong echoes of Max Steiner's music for John Ford's The Searchers (1956) with variations on the 'Indian Traders' theme used midway through the Ford movie. The album begins with the Cinergi logo, composed by Jerry Goldsmith and conducted by Broughton.

Home media
Following its cinematic release in theaters, the film was released on VHS video format on November 11, 1994. The Region 1 Code widescreen edition of the film was released on DVD in the United States on December 2, 1997. Special features for the DVD only include original theatrical trailers. A director's cut of Tombstone was also officially released on DVD on January 15, 2002. The DVD version includes a two-disc set and features "The Making of Tombstone" featurette in three parts; "An Ensemble Cast"; "Making an Authentic Western"; and "The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral". Other features include an audio commentary by director George P. Cosmatos, an interactive Tombstone timeline, the director's original storyboards for the O.K. Corral sequence, the Tombstone "Epitaph" – an actual newspaper account, the DVD-ROM feature "Faro at the Oriental: Game of Chance", and a collectible Tombstone map. This DVD release is also THX certified and features a DTS 5.1 audio track.

The widescreen high-definition Blu-ray Disc edition of the theatrical cut was released on April 27, 2010, featuring the making of Tombstone, director's original storyboards, trailers, and TV spots. A supplemental viewing option for the film in the media format of video-on-demand is available, as well.

Box office
Tombstone premiered in movie theaters six months before Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp, on December 24, 1993, in wide release throughout the United States. During its opening weekend, the film opened in third place at the US box office behind The Pelican Brief and Mrs. Doubtfire, grossing $6,454,752 in business showing at 1,504 locations. The film's revenue increased by 35% in its second week of release, earning $8,720,255. For that particular weekend, the film stayed in third place, screening in 1,955 theaters. The film went on to gross $56,505,065 in total ticket sales in the United States and Canada. It ranks 20th out of all films released in 1993. Internationally, it grossed $16.7 million for a worldwide total of $73.2 million.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes reported that 72% of 47 sampled critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 6.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "If you're seeking a stylish modern western with a solid story and a well-chosen ensemble cast, Tombstone is your huckleberry." Following its cinematic release in 1993, Tombstone was named "one of the 5 greatest Westerns ever made" by True West Magazine. The film was also called "One of the year's 10 best!" by KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, California. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert of Siskel & Ebert originally thought they would have to miss reviewing the film, as they could not get a screening, but as Ebert explained, "... a strange thing started to happen. People started telling me they really liked Val Kilmer's performance in Tombstone, and I heard this everywhere I went. When you hear this once or twice, it's interesting, when you hear it a couple of dozen times, it's a trend. And when you read that Bill Clinton loved the performance, you figured you better catch up with the movie." Ultimately, Ebert recommended the movie while Siskel did not.

Ebert would later refer to Tombstone in future reviews, comparing it favorably to Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp ("It forced the comparison upon me.") and, in his review of Wild Bill, singling out Val Kilmer's portrayal as "the definitive saloon cowboy of our time." In his review of Kurt Russell's Dark Blue, he stated, "Every time I see Russell or Val Kilmer in a role, I'm reminded of their Tombstone, which got lost in the year-end holiday shuffle and never got the recognition it deserved."

In a mixed review, Chris Hicks writing in the Deseret News said, "aside from Russell and Val Kilmer's scene-stealing, sickly, alcoholic Doc Holliday, there are so many characters coming and going, with none of them receiving adequate screen time, that it becomes difficult to keep track of them all." But he did comment, "some very entertaining moments here, with Russell spouting memorable tough-guy lines". Overall, he felt, "Taken on its own terms, with some lowered expectations, Western fans will have fun." Emanuel Levy of Variety believed the film was a "tough-talking but soft-hearted tale" which was "entertaining in a sprawling, old-fashioned manner." Regarding screenwriter Jarre's dialogue, he noted, "Despite the lack of emotional center and narrative focus, his script contains enough subplots and colorful characters to enliven the film and ultimately make it a fun, if not totally engaging experience." He also singled out Val Kilmer as the standout performance. The film was not without its detractors. James Berardinelli writing for ReelViews offered a negative review, recalling how he thought, "The first half of Tombstone isn't an example of great filmmaking, but it is engaging. There's a sense of growing inevitability as events build to the shoot-out at the OK Corral. The melodramatic "serious" moments are kept to a minimum, and the various gunfights are choreographed with style and tension. Then, at the one-hour ten-minute mark, the Clanton gang and the Earps square off. From there, things get progressively worse. Not only is the last hour anticlimactic, but it's dull. Too many scenes feature lengthy segments of poorly-scripted dialogue, and, in some cases, character motivation becomes unclear. The gunplay is more repetitious than exciting. The result—a cobbled-together morass of silly lines and shoot-outs—doesn't work well."

Stephen Holden writing in The New York Times saw the film as being a "capacious Western with many modern touches, the Arizona boom town and site of the legendary O.K. Corral has a seedy, vaudevillian grandeur that makes it a direct forerunner of Las Vegas." He expressed his satisfaction with the supporting acting, saying, "[the] most modern psychological touch is its depiction of Josephine (Dana Delany), the itinerant actress with whom Wyatt falls in love at first sight, as the most casually and comfortably liberated woman ever to set foot in 1880s Arizona." Critic Louis Black, writing for The Austin Chronicle, viewed Tombstone as a "mess" and that there were "two or three pre-climaxes but no climax. Its values are capitalist rather than renegade, which is okay if it's metaphoric rather than literal. Worse, as much as these actors heroically struggle to focus the film, the director more successfully hacks it apart." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C− rating, calling it "preposterously inflated" at "135 minutes long". He observed the film as being a "three-hour rough cut that's been trimmed down to a slightly shorter rough cut" with "all that holds the film together is Kurt Russell's droll machismo." Author Geoff Andrew of Time Out commented, "Kilmer makes a surprisingly effective and effete Holliday". He negatively acknowledged that there was "a misguided romantic subplot and the ending rather sprawls" but ultimately exclaimed the film was "'rootin', tootin' entertainment with lots of authentic facial hair." Richard Harrington of The Washington Post highlighted the film's shortcomings declaring, "too much of Tombstone rings hollow. In retrospect, not much happens and little that does seems warranted. There are so many unrealized relationships you almost hope for redemption in a longer video version. This one is unsatisfying and unfulfilling." Alternately though, columnist Bob Bloom of the Journal & Courier openly remarked that the film "May not be historically accurate, but offers a lot of punch for the buck." He concluded by saying it was "A tough, guilty-pleasure Western."

Although Val Kilmer’s performance as Doc Holliday was praised, he did not get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated for Best Male Performance and Most Desirable Male at the MTV Movie Awards.

Books
A paperback novel of the same name adapted from Kevin Jarre's screenplay, written by Giles Tippette and published by Berkley Publishers, was released on January 1, 1994. The book dramatizes the real-life events of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Earp Vendetta Ride, as depicted in the film. It expands on Western genre ideas in Jarre's screenplay.

The Making of Tombstone, a book about the film, was published in 2018.

title: Tombstone (film)