"O.M."
- You may be looking for O.M. Burdett.
"O.M." was a time-active individual associated with the Celestial Department Store.
History
"O.M." once placed an advertisement in an issue of The Druimport Entwister, noting that they were looking to expand staffing, at the Celestial Department Store, and were currently "severely" overworked. He apparently had storefronts on various planets and time-zones, including one on Earth on 24 Duncan Street, open "from 1 February 1921". (PROSE: "Notices & Classifieds" [+]Part of The Druimport Entwister No. 276, Loading...{"namedep":"Notices & Classifieds","1":"The Druimport Entwister No. 276 (short story)"})
Behind the scenes
"O.M.", short for "Old Man", is a nickname of the titular character from The Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Toymaker (TV story)"], an episode of Lost in Space, where he was played by Walter Burke.
This Toymaker is depicted as being much more benign than the Doctor Who character of the same name, but, like him, is a nonhuman but human-like alien being with the ability to reach through time and space and to create living toys. After accessing his derelict workshop in the Celestial Department Store (run by more of the same unnamed, Time Lord-like species of powerful human-like aliens) through a transdimensional catalogue-machine, the main cast of Lost in Space end up befriending O.M., who they discover had been laid off by the Store against his will but stayed in his abandoned workshop to try and continue providing the children of the universe with toys. At the end of the story, the head of the Store is made aware of the level of O.M.'s talents as a toymaker and hires him anew with an increase in prestige and salary.
The Toymaker depicted O.M.'s Workshop as containing gateways to various inconspicuous-looking toyshops on various planets, including one on Earth, although the Earth shop was shown to have closed down by the series' present day of the late 1990s. This is presumably the shop at 24 Duncan Street, "open from 1921 onwards". The detail of the shop having opened in the 1920s adds a further parallel to the villainous Doctor Who Toymaker, shown in TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"] to have once disguised his Celestial Toyroom as an innocuous-looking toyshop in 1925.
External links
- O.M. at the Lost in Space Wiki
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