"The Poofs will love us!"

It was of course the saintly and best beloved Jennifer Paterson who came up with the line, referring to herself and Clarissa Dickson Wright as they embarked on their short but remarkably successful career as The Two Fat Ladies. And she was absolutely right, of course.

But her prediction could just as well go for former Catholic choirboys Jedward.

And still not Merlin!

(Or 'You know you’re a serious Doctor Who geek when…')

The Novus Ordo Whovians out there will of course have immediately cross-referenced the new Matt Smith Doctor's opening comment about still not being ginger with the Tennant Doctor’s similar line from The Christmas Invasion. In fact Auntie hersef has been forced to do just that in order to rebuff charges of being "anti-ginger". (And after Tesco got into trouble just before Christmas for the same thing, as well! To think the Beeb would have dared!) We sad cases of arrested development hardliner traditionalists, on the other hand, will have detected quite a different in-joke.

For were we not promised a “Merlin” incarnation of the Doctor with a ‘head of unruly red hair’ (not to mention an embroidered Afghan coat) back in 1991, when Marc Platt did the “novelisation” of Battlefield? This, if one casts one's mind back, was long ago in the days when it was by no means certain that Doctor Who would actually have a future, at least on the small screen, and so inventing future incarnations of the Doctor was quite the sport. Perhaps even more infamously, Ian Briggs (writing at about the same time) produced a future ‘older gentleman’ Doctor complete with a waistcoat and pocket watch in his novelisation of (his own story) The Curse of Fenric. (Not quite the David Tennant Doctor, I suppose, but quite possibly the fairly anaemic Paul McGann incarnation!) And indeed Nick Briggs (no relation - so far as I know!), who now does all the Dalek voices on the new series, not only cast himself as a future Doctor in various homemade Doctor Who spinoff videos but even got his homemade incarnation featured in Marvel's Doctor Who comic strip a couple of times.

I just dug out an old interview with Platt from eighteen years ago.

The first question I [i.e. Gary Russell] ask him has nothing to do with The New Adventures but how he ended up writing the novelisation of [Ben] Aaronovitch’s Battlefield scripts?

“Basically, Ben asked me to do it. He was getting very tied up with a lot of other work back then and he just didn’t have time to do the book. I was incredibly flattered to be asked, I think it’s a great story. Probably over ambitious for television but it’s a terrific script needing a feature film budget! The adventure was full of potential for wonderful pastiches of styles, Tolkien and cyberpunk, things like that, which I had a whale of a time doing! For instance when I was suggesting the future version of the Doctor/Merlin I just wanted an image of the Doctor we hadn’t seen before. Most Doctors have outrageous hairdos and I thought we hadn’t had a red head so there we are.”

[Doctor Who Magazine, Issue 184]

And so there we have it! A cheery farewell wink from Uncle Russ to his fellow fans? Probably! (And not to laugh, either! Paul Cornell for one has set a lot of store by all that Merlin stuff over the years - as he concedes here, along with a confession that Excalibur is one of his favourite films - even though 'He's Merlin.' was one of the lines from his most popular New Adventure novel - now on line here - that didn't quite make it into Thomas Sangster's haunting little speech about the Doctor in its TV-version.) Indeed, now that he's back on telly (and, with a young and even more teen friendly actor in the lead, unlikely to be seriously off it again any time soon), can we saddos finally rest assured that the Doctor does have a future? Perhaps!

After all, in the end, in The End of Time 'Part Two' there was a good deal less to cringe at than one had feared. The Last Great Time War was finally expanded into something more than just a straight stand-off between the Time Lords and the Daleks. In fact it turns out that it was much more like all those Time Wars and Eternal Wars from The New Adventures (including, it just so happens, in Russell T Davies's own New Adventure). The Time Lords, it turns, weren't all killed: they were just trapped in some temporal paradox or something and could be let out again at almost any time. Timothy Dalton, it turns out, was Rassilon. (On reflection, presumably all that "narrator" stuff was just him carrying on with his Book of the Old Time, pseudo-Caesar-esque self-aggrandisement agenda - though I still half expected him to end up regenerating into Pierce Brosnan.) And, if the tabloids were to be believed, the Claire Bloom character was the Doctor's mum.

So if nothing else I suppose we can think what we've been spared! Looking on the more positive bright side though, if Steven Moffatt now decides he ever wants to pull a Time Lord or twenty out of the woodwork at any point in the new new series then, now the Time Lords have been officially "brought back", he will be free to do so. Whilst he's at it, the TARDIS control room could do with a "new" look (i.e. the old one from the original series would be pretty cute). And, as I've already noted, the TARDIS exterior and the Eleventh Doctor's costume are both going to be pretty trad (by modern standards).

So he's still not Merlin - yet, at any rate. But given that Doctor Who's already produced one Merlin in the shape of Colin Morgan (from 'Midnight'), perhaps that doesn't matter.

Fear of Choirboys?

There's no telling of course whether it was the Express being paedophobic or just incompetent that they couldn't quite bring themselves to post a picture of Geraint Llyr Owen without cutting his head off. (Presumably they want to celebrate British talent, in their narrow-minded little way, but showing a 13-year-old's face is just too smutty for their website!) The Daily Telegraph at least has a proper picture. He'll be singing at the Lincoln Centre in New York later this month. His YouTube vid is here.

Another "Real" Tintin

Congratulations ought to go to The Times, I suppose, for coming up with the goods today about Belgian Scout Henri Dendoncker (pictured in costume, aged 14). Their report finishes off with

Tintin was based on Hergé’s younger brother, Paul. When the brothers fell out, Hergé used Paul’s older self as the basis for the baddie Colonel Sponz[.]

Never come across this one before! I must say I prefer to think of Léon Degrelle in the role. On the other hand, I think I'd prefer almost anyone to Jamie Bell, seen here in the upcoming Eagle of the Ninth - which presumably will be to be at best another Last Legion and at worst, well, another Last Legion!