Who reads this drivel?

The Times yesterday published a minor journalistic coup.

It revealed that the TARDIS which appears in Doctor Who is, in fact, a BBC prop and not a real time machine at all.

"Doctor Who's (sic) time-travelling Tardis (sic) hides a secret which may disillusion his legion of fans -- it is transported not by the intergalactic power of dilithium crystals but like an Ikea wardrobe, flat packed on the back of a lorry."

The idea that a large object might be transported in pieces and assembled in situ comes as a complete, jaw-dropping novelty to the poor hack. He stumbles around for a comparison, and the only one he can find is "Ikea wardrobe". Home assembly furniture is one of those things which the English find intrinsically funny like mothers-in-law and Milton Keynes. He makes this comparison three times in his 150 word piece. I suppose we can just be relieved he used the snappy headline "MYSTERIOUS SECRET OF THE TARDIS IS OUT: IT MATERIALISES LIKE AN IKEA WARDROBE" rather than the more traditional “Look Who's Back” “Look Who's Here” “Look Who's Got A Crap Sub-editor.”

Why do hacks writing about sci-fi adopt this style? No-one, for example, will be able to avoid the expression "Holy there's a new movie about about the long running comic book character Batman, Batman" in their reports about The Dark Knight. Note the word “intergalactic" in line three. It is doing absolutely nothing: you could replace it with "banana" and the sentence would still make as much, or as little sense. The next story on the page is about the launch of an Arabic news service: yet the writers doesn't feel the need to say "No-one had towels on their head, and few camels were in evidence, but desert BBC yesterday palm-trees launched kebabs an arab oil-well news service.” The next one is about the discovery of a possible painting of Catherine Howard, but it doesn't contain phrases like "Off with her head....'enry the 'eighth I am....sucking his fingers after throwing the chicken bones over his shoulders..." Claiming that the TARDIS runs on dilithium crystals is at exactly the same level as thinking that the Rovers Return is in Ambridge or that Dr. Watson is Miss Marples' assistant.

What's particularly galling is that they managed to find some fans who were prepared to roll over and dance for the amusement of the straight folk: "I expected the Tardis (sic) to beam down from some far-off galaxy" says one Sue Bishop. Did you, Sue? Did you really? "But it looked more like some flat-pack furniture from Ikea when it was pulled from the back of the lorry to be screwed together. It's the last of my childhood fantasies shattered." It seems rather suspicious that a journalist who can't tell the difference between Doctor Who and Star Trek should find a fan who thinks that the TARDIS "beams down" rather than "materializes". The two people who provided the quotes both have female names, so we are spared the "Doctor Who fans har har don't have girlfriends must be gay har har" thing. Or is that only the Guardian?

Mr de Bruxelles has quite comprehensively missed the point. When Doctor Who was a 1960s children's programme, there was some attempt to maintain the illusion of reality. When William Hartnell appeared at a carnival, the organisers arranged for a light model police box to be parachuted in from a helicopter to give the impression, sort of, that the TARDIS had landed and the Doctor had emerged from it. Patrick Troughton thought that doing out-of-character interviews was like a conjurer revealing how his tricks are done. When Jon Pertwee appeared on Blue Peter or Junior Choice he did so in character. New-Who, on the other hand, continually draws attention to its illusory nature. The press are primarily interested in the back-stage soap opera: who's in, who's out (oh, god, I'm doing it now) who's staying, who's leaving. A week before each episode, we see a montage that reveals all the twists and surprises in advance. Straight after each episode, the actors take off their masks and explain that they were really only pretending and the techies show how the special effects were done. First, we see, out of context, the clip of the flying saucer destroying Big Ben. Then, we see it again. And again. Then we see photos in Radio Times of a technician making the model. Then, we see the actual episode, in which, sure enough, a flying saucer destroys Big Ben. Then we see the man on Doctor Who Confidential showing how he made the flying saucer destroy Big Ben. Then, on Thursday, the flying saucer man shows the nerdy kids on Totally Doctor Who how to make flying saucers, by when it's only a short wait for the DVD with the voice over by RTD explaining how he came up with the idea for Big Ben, Flying Saucers, and how silly it all is.

This is very much how movies work in the interweb age. The true buff finds the rumours about Indiana Jones, the teasers for Indiana Jones; the trailers for Indiana Jones; the official leaks about Indiana Jones; the supposed copies of the scripts for Indiana Jones -- the endless interviews and pre-release speculation about Indiana Jones extremely interesting. Once the actual film comes out, his interest goes away. The makers of Cloverfield cleverly did the pre-releiase hype but didn't bother to come up with an actual film to go with it.

By the time you see a new episode of Doctor Who, you feel you are watching it for the third time. The Making of Doctor Who is now more important than Doctor Who itself. Interest is focused, not on whether there is going to be a new story involving a fictitious character called Rose, but on whether or not an actress called Billie Piper has been voted back into the Big Brother House.

From a financial point of view it makes sense. If you can increase the value of your advertising space by putting Dalek Sec on the cover of Radio Times, then that's a good use of what's doubtless by Beeb standards a very expensive piece of animatronics: why should they care if it happens to spoil the ending of “Daleks in Manhattan” and therefore render the whole story pointless?

So the Times entirely missed the point. A picture of the TARDIS being assembled is vaguely interesting. But if you'd wanted an iconic image that summed up the modern programme, you'd have photographed the techies taking the TARDIS apart.

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there was an Observer colour supplement with a children's section with earnest debates about banning school uniform and old Flash Gordon strips; and there was two column inches about a game where you searched for treasure and a picture of a painted playing piece in the shape of a wizard

there was a pretentious black and white Hulk comic with a small-ads section and the stamped addressed envelope came back with a catalogue and photocopied reviews of games about aliens and red moons and dragons

there was a shop which sold joss-sticks and wooden toys for art-teachers' children and crystal coloured paperweights and unofficial Star Wars toys called force blades which had just stopped being new and a shrink wrapped box with a rule book, a set of dice and the first adventure; and even now the word polyhedral makes the room smell of Micronauts and Elfquest and The Eternals; and even if I had been able to afford it it wouldn't have been a good buy

I never did play Keep on the Boarderlands and never really wanted to

there was a shop in Finchley which sold toy trains and aeroplanes for grown ups and there was just one shelf which had maybe 20 metal models; a knight, a skeleton, a spider, some wizards, they came in small plastic bags with cardboard labels and handwritten descriptions; and next door there was a very small shop that only two or three people could fit in at a time that sold military wargames with hex boards for grown ups and I bought a red twenty sided dice with the numbers 0-9 on it twice and had to paint half the numbers with a dab of silver paint to make it serviceable for rolling 1 - 20

there was the blue book with the dragon on the front

there was me and Shaun and Jeffrey and Roger and Martin and green graph paper from the back of a maths books and a knight and a wizard and some skeletons and a spider and on the lowest level there was a small black dragon and when it finally died they all cheered and I was the referee

there was the temple of Tegas-fer-Rogan which was so epic that it needed three exercise books and ran for an entire weekend

there was Mormegil the Black who had tatoos on his face because of Acroyear in Micronanuts and for many years the only use for the Silmarillion was to pull out names at random for my characters; I read Lord of the Rings over and over but Shaun and Jeffery preferred Conan; I found Conan dull especially when he replaced The Avengers in their own comic but not as dull as Master of Kung Fu

there was Scorpion and the guild of assassins and Mormegil standing on his comrade's coffin fighting off the ninja so he could take it to town and buy a resurrection spell

there was Ken Livingstone and the idea that you should be able to afford to travel by tube which made Mrs Thatcher so angry but for 6 months I traveled from Cockfosters to Hammersmith for 50p every single Saturday and walked down the alley with a fence on either side and walked past the rows and rows of xeroxed pamphlets and said "Is the Dungeonmasters Guide out yet?" and it wasn't

there was a magazine with a yellow cover and line drawings of dwarfs and an article about Diplomacy and pictures of monsters and it was talking about rulebooks I had never heard of, Eldritch Wizards and Blackmoor and Ardiun Grimoire as if I they had been playing them forever and I have never felt so much like an outsider and never wanted more badly to be an insider and I never, ever was

there is a dining room table, and cups of tea and chocolate biscuits, and at lunch time there are tins of Co-Op vegetable soup and fresh rolls from the baker and exercise books and character sheets pulled sparingly off an official pad and coloured cardboard floor plans representing rooms and corridors and miniatures which were never quite painted and never quite matched the adventure and pencils and biros and rubbers and dice which had had all the good numbers rolled out of them and shouting and talking in funny voices

there is the part which says that this world of the lizard men who live in tunnels under the city and orcs who live in the caves and my sword with runes on it is like the trailer for the cartoon said a world more real than any other; and there is the part which says that it is all just dice and all just numbers; and I have read in The Beholder that there are betters ways with stories and cities and characters who make sense

one day, there will be college and Martin and Pod and Varos and Asmee and the special game that went on for years and years and after that there will be Star Wars and Pendragon and Southern Provinces and LARPs and freeforms

today, there 40 kobolds, AC 7 , hit on 11+ on the red dice with silver paint and against them stand Mormegil the fighter and Scorpion the assassin and Medalf the wizard and also an Elf.

"this must be the entrance to the dungeon: we will find what we're looking for here”

so let it be with Ceasar

More speech based local radio

Wind through to about 15 minutes

Davewatch part #94

I think I am going to go and lie down for a bit.