I always have been, even before I self-identified as such. I like sci-fi, I have a comic collection, I’m socially awkward at times. With the exception of having great knowledge of science, engineering and computing, I tick most of the geek boxes. And that, my friends, is why I love The Big Bang Theory.

See, too many shows try to portray geekdom and they get it wrong. They have scenes with a computer hacker, and while they get the stereotype down pat, they get the details wrong; either that or the hackers are really cool and spend most of their day skateboarding. They rush a scientist character into frame and he spouts some technobabble that is utterly incomprehensible, but that’s considered appropriate exposition. Or they focus on what was geeky when the writer or director was 16, and therefore they’re attacking stuff that hasn’t been realistic for twenty years.

And so this is one of the reasons TBBT rules – attention to detail. Look at the comic books on display; they’re all fairly up to date. And because the characters seem to prefer DC over Marvel, you’ll notice that Sheldon’s bookcase is full of DC collected editions. I can’t see them well enough to swear to this, but I’m willing to bet they’re shelved in a logical order as well. And while I’m not smart enough to be able to comment on the science used in the show, the fact that they use a consultant who’s worked on the Large Hadron Collider makes me think that it’s fairly watertight (there’s an interview with the consultant, David Saltzberg, over at Wired).

The reason they put this effort in is, I think, their audience. The producers, writers and actors know full well that a significant chunk of the viewers will relate to the characters, and that means it’s an audience that will spot this sort of thing. Get a detail about Battlestar Galactica wrong and you can bet there are letters or, more realistically, emails. Probably Tweets.

But those Tweets are probably good natured, because the show is a celebration of geekiness, not an attack on it. Most of us could probably find something to relate to in underdog Leonard, cripplingly shy Raj or eternal adolescent Howard. I recognise these people; I am these people, at least some of the time. I’m laughing with them, not at them – they know settling things through a game of ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock’ is needlessly complicated but they don’t care. It’s fun.

That said, I’m not a geek all the time. I like to think that I’m not totally a stereotype. That’s where Penny comes in – the one who’s not as intellectual as her neighbours, but who’s the voice of common sense. The core group may be making her just a little nerdier, but she’s helping them become a little more… I dunno, social. The fact that they’re now a pretty tight group of friends is important – it’s not about a bunch of nerds and a ‘normal’ person who mocks them. It’s more affectionate than that.

Then, of course, there’s Sheldon. He fills a particular role, the traditional sitcom monster. In some ways he’s Basil Fawlty or Homer Simpson, the character who’s exaggerated enough to make him the outrageously funny one, the one that defies social conventions. Sheldon is annoying, arrogant and rude. We should hate him.

And yet… Well, maybe it’s because Jim Parsons plays him with just enough vulnerability. Maybe it’s because his OCD and other traits make him sympathetic. Maybe it’s because we know that deep down he doesn’t mean to upset anyone, he just doesn’t work to the same social conventions as everyone else. Whatever it is, it works in the show’s favour – the almost-sibling relationship he has with Penny isn’t unbelievable, it’s sweet.

But this is over-analysing the whole thing. You know the main reason I love The Big Bang Theory?

It’s because it’s funny.

Sure, that’s a prerequisite for a sitcom. But TBBT really makes me laugh. It has one of my favourite TV moments of the last few years, which moves within a couple of minutes from a joke about cloning Leonard Nimoy to a perfect moment of visual comedy. I howled. My neighbours probably thought I was being murdered, but they didn’t bother to make sure so I could watch the rest of the episode uninterupted.

Heck, it also doesn’t hurt that you can learn something by singing along to the theme song. A lot of shows don’t even have theme songs any more. I want them back, darnnit!

And so kudos to all involved in my favourite comedy show. You do a fantastic job, and I hope you continue to do so for a good while yet. May you continue to get your geek on, and may there be many more bright bazingas in your future.

Dear sir,

We have recently completed our audit of events that lead to the domination of the galaxy under the yolk of the Empire, enforced by Darth Vader (formerly known as Anakin Skywalker). During the course of our deliberations, we found that…

No, wait. We can’t go on like this. Normally we would maintain a veneer of professionalism and neutrality, but alas this is now impossible. Sometimes we conduct an investigation where the findings are so atrocious that experienced and hardened auditors have been known to spontaneously combust at the stupidity of it all.

This is one of those cases.

Therefore, we have no choice but to hold one group responsible for the oppression of billions of innocent lives, countless civil rights violations and the destruction of whole planets.

That group is not the Galactic Empire, although they carried out these atrocities. They were, however, enabled and empowered in this by the Jedi Council.

Yes, we are aware that Jedi such as Luke Skywalker played a significant part in our liberation. We do not deny this, and would not wish to cast aspersions on his heroism. However, the majority of his predecessors were, in the words of our chief investigator, “A bunch of loon weasels”.

The following summarises our findings:

Age Discrimination

If a child is deemed “Unteachable”, it is not because he is too old. It is because you are bad teachers.

Child Protection

Separating a child from his parents permanently is only to be done in the most extreme cases. Buying a child from a scrap dealer is slave trading. Forbidding him from seeing his mother is kidnapping. Some would consider these activities to be cultic. We could not possibly comment, except to say that not one of our investigators has seen evidence of a ‘Force’ or tiny parasitic microbes that allow you to levitate rocks.

Duty of Care

If one of your staff approaches you, claiming prophetic visions of the death of his beloved, you have two options – have him committed (it’s quicker) or work with him to resolve the problem. Effectively saying “There there, don’t worry about it” is sure to end badly. Just because your HR department is sociopathic, doesn’t mean the rest of us should suffer the resulting decades of oppression.

Workplace Relationships

People fall in love. Get over it. Do not say “Purge your emotions as your girlfriend dies horribly.” This will get you lightsabered to death. Frankly, you would deserve it.

Human Rights

When the aggressors in a political situation use battle droids to achieve their aims, you are not maintaining the moral high ground by using an army of clones as your response. An interview with one of the survivors revealed that he really wanted to be a graphic designer; instead he was forced into becoming an Imperial Stormtrooper. He had the luxury of constantly shooting to miss his targets; how many more were forced to shoot anthropomorphic teddy bears in the back.

Honesty and Transparency

In the event that you learn personal information about a young person in your care, it is incumbent upon you, when appropriate, to share this information with your charge. Otherwise, he may find himself in a situation where hearing that, for instance, his father was in fact a dictatorial cyborg. This will not result in optimum performance; indeed, it could lead to decades of psychological issues. In some extreme cases, it has lead to people kissing siblings, although we are certain this is not the case here.

Staff Development

It has been a long time since helping a colleague face their fears involved inserting them into a tree.

Encouragement

“Do or do not, there is no try” is not encouraging. It would be quicker to simply shout “LOSER!”

The above are just a few of our findings; a full report will be made available in due course, suffice to say this is the worst example of institutional abuse and incompetence since we investigated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It has since come to our attention that the Jedi Council is being reformed; upon hearing this news, our chief investigator had just one comment prior to handing in his notice:

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

Yours sincerely….

This success was by no means guaranteed, and can’t be ascribed to any one individual – any list of names would have to include Russell T. Davies, Billie Piper, Julie Gardner, Phil Collinson, Lorraine Heggessey and many more – but one person sometimes gets overshadowed. Step forward Christopher Eccleston.

Now, I’ll admit I was surprised to hear of Eccleston’s casting, and when I say “surprised” I actually mean “had to read the news reports twice because I thought I was going mad.” Eccleston is a great actor, committed and intense, but he’s known for powerful, socially-relevant roles, and with the best will in the world, the Doctor isn’t one of those. Then came pictures of the Doctor’s costume – t-shirt, leather jacket, pretty standard for a night down the pub but not the eccentric, not-quite-normal look that the character’s known for. And, because I’m a geek, I got worried. And while the 2005 season of the show was great, I wasn’t convinced by the characterisation of the Doctor. In some ways he was ineffective, other people saving the day around him. I couldn’t quite believe he was the same person as, say, Tom Baker.

Thing is, I was wrong.

I was wrong because Christopher Eccleston wasn’t playing the Doctor I knew from years of being a fan. He was playing a character who had been through hell. Those missing years? They changed him. Narratively, that was because of the Time War, a temporal conflagration that the Doctor could only stop by wiping out both sides, one of them being his own race. In the real world? The years when Doctor Who wasn’t on TV had done damage to the show’s reputation – could it be a going concern again, not just for a handful of fans but for millions of people who wanted to watch something on a Saturday night before the lottery results were announced? The Doctor couldn’t come back as the same man.

And so the 9th Doctor was damaged, and that’s how Eccleston played him, a man who could put on a goofy smile to mask anger, depression and bitterness. And yet that’s only a part of it – there was almost a sense that the Doctor was no longer happy with who he was. That’s why he dressed as a bloke from the pub – he was running from the trappings of being the Doctor, the hero who saved people from the monsters because, when it came down to it, he couldn’t save his own people – worse, he couldn’t save them and he was the one who pulled the trigger. That’s why the 9th Doctor needed an actor like Eccleston, someone who could sell the idea of a broken-down hero who was trying to be true to himself whilst being haunted by a war full of ghosts. And so his story arc was to find redemption – when faced with a near-identical situation to that which forced him to wipe out the Time Lords, he manages to win – sure, it’s because of his influence on a single individual rather than a grand plan, and it costs him his current incarnation in the process, but he wins – he wins and in doing so he fully becomes the Doctor again.

(Of course, the 10th Doctor’s biggest problem was that he was too confident in himself, leading to hubris, but that’s another post.)

In many ways, the story of the 9th Doctor runs parallel to that of the first – someone who, as the TARDIS Eruditorum blog points out, had to learn how to be a hero in order for the show to move to its next stage. And to really sell that, you don’t need a leading man, you need a powerful, dedicated character actor who’ll take a role that tabloids feel should go to some random celebrity and bring the actor’s craft to bear. Get that and you get something special. And that’s why, when Christopher Eccleston delivers the 9th Doctor’s last words, it’s a real lump in the throat moment:

“Rose,  before I go, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic, absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I.”

The Prodigal Son

Jonah

The Book of Nahum

Feeding the Five Thousand

Workplace ethics

I’ll be alternating that blog with this one, so please check it out…

My favourite radio-related story is the famous tale of how Orson Welles panicked America with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds. What’s less known is that there were copycat panics following radio broadcasts in Ecuador and Chile. That was back in the day, of course, when radio ruled and TV was still in its infancy. Radio was the trusted medium, let into everyone’s home, and while that role now belongs to 24-hour news channels, radio is still king in other territories – our cars, for instance, or our offices. My morning commute is soundtracked by Kerrang Radio; there’s nothing like starting the day with a howled singalong to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ or ‘With Or Without You’. Music is a fundamental part of our culture, and despite iTunes and Spotify, radio is still a fantastic medium for getting music out there – the shuffle function on an iPod still isn’t as good as radio at hitting us with songs we haven’t heard for ages, and radio stations with a commitment to promoting unsigned bands will still have an edge on getting that music out there, simply through weight of audience numbers. After all, radio is a medium that the UK does really well – heck, the BBC channels alone, especially Radio 4 and the World Service, support this, but that’s before we get onto the talent involved in local stations.

(And isn’t podcasting basically DIY radio?)

My other favourite radio-related story is how some of the earliest celebrities working in the medium were ventriloquists like Edgar Bergen and Peter Brough. I guess you couldn’t see their lips move… And yet, this is another example of radio’s power – its ability to engage the imagination. Because if you’re listening to a ventriloquist on the radio, you can fill in the gaps for yourself – the skill of the performer, his interaction with the dummy. The script may be the same for everyone, but the performance in your mind’s eye is unique.

(That’s probably another reason for the War of the Worlds panic.)

The intimacy of radio grows out of this, I think; bigger music fans than I talk about lying under the sheets at night listening to crackly broadcasts from pirate radio stations. I remember messing around with the Long Wave dial on my first proper stereo and picking up mysterious transmissions in French and German – sure, they were probably just a regional late-night phone-in show, but it proved there was a whole world out there, with radio stations and music and opinions, not just information culled from the Weetabix Wonderworld Atlas.

(Actually, that just fired another radio memory – staying up later than I should and listening to the Midnight Line phone-in on Beacon Radio. People who sounded like me, only talking about subjects I was only vaguely aware of, like conspiracy theories and Marxism. There’s a fantastic tribute to the show here.)

(And it all ties in to my other other favourite radio story – number stations, Cold War era transmissions just broadcasting numbers for no officially acknowledged reason.)

Sure, radio entertains the world but it also enchants it – the moments when an unexpected broadcast breaks through the static as you’re driving at night, or when your favourite song kicks in just as you drive towards the sunrise. Television lacks the ability to do this – it lacks the ubiquity – and so does the Internet, which is getting too tailored to our preferences, hurting its potential to surprise.  Radio still has a place in our world, because it’s not so much what it delivers, it’s how it delivers- music spun out of air and bringing a world into a teenager’s bedroom.

Today is CBeebies 10th birthday, so many happy returns! Below is a repost of a piece I wrote in praise of the channel…

Anyone who spends a lot of time with under six-year-olds in will have encountered one of the great innovations of British TV, one of the jewels in the BBC’s publically funded crown. I’m talking about CBeebies.

If you haven’t got kids, or if you’re not in the UK, then what follows may not make much sense. Indeed, it may seem like the hallucinatory ramblings of a madman. Stick with it though – CBeebies is something special.

I think the moment I learned to love Twitter was when Simon Pegg came out fighting in support of Justin Fletcher after snarky comments were made in a gossip magazine. There was an outpouring of support and follow-up tweets that brought a lump to the throat, because Justin Fletcher is one of the heroes of children’s broadcasting. It’s obvious from his shows – he has an amazing rapport with children, especially those with special needs; he’s the voice of Timmy the Sheep; he promotes Makaton sign language; and he’s the man behind Mr. Tumble. Frankly, in a world dominated by ‘celebrities’ who seem to have emerged by doing nothing more than coming third in a reality TV show, Justin Fletcher is a national treasure and he deserves his CBE.

But although he’s undoubtedly one of its lynchpins, Justin isn’t the only reason for the success of CBeebies. It only occurred to me yesterday, but the channel has some similarities with comic book shared universes – sure, everyone has their own shows, but now they’ve started showing up in each other’s. It gives the image of them being an eccentric extended family – you can believe that the four main continuity announcers (Sid, Cerrie, Andy and Alex) all live in a house together; Katy from I Can Cook gets organic produce from Mr. Bloom’s nursery; Mr. Maker helps decorate Justin’s House while Nina and the Neurons build a green energy installation next door to power the tower block from Show Me, Show Me. Somehow it works – on a recent episode of Justin’s House, the very implication that Mr. Bloom would be appearing was enough to send the children in the audience into open-mouthed fits of joy.

(And this is before I cover my theory about the Tumble family – due to some terrible clowning related accident, Mr. Tumble was left to be raised by Grandad Tumble; they’re funded by Lord Tumble, and Aunt Polly keep a matronly eye on them all. They all wish that Cliff Tumble would visit more. I haven’t quite figured out why they all look like the aforementioned Justin Fletcher, or where Baby Tumble came from.)

(Wait, I’ve been informed that I’m misremembering the episode and that Baby Tumble turned out to be a kitten. Mystery solved!)

It’s not just the human presenters that make the channel – the puppet vegetables in Mr. Bloom’s Nursery have more personality and charisma than many of those employed by mainstream channels, and the stop motion cast of Timmy Time baa-ing, barking and quaking ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ is a thing of beauty. That said, my absolute favourite CBeebies show is Big and Small, the anarchic tale of two friends who happen to have Dudley accents (thanks to Lenny Henry); not only is the show hysterical, but the musical numbers are awesome, especially when they riff on artists such as Kate Bush and Bob Dylan. I swear, Big and Small is worth ten minutes of anyone’s time, and my impression of Small is epic.

So that’s my tribute to CBeebies, and effectively my argument for the importance of the BBC being allowed to cater to niche audiences. If you don’t have kids, this channel may well be lost on you, but regardless, it’s vital that it’s there. I used to say I’d pay my licence fee just for Doctor Who – well, add CBeebies to that list as well. I hope it continues to bring joy and smiles to five year olds for years to come.

Viva La Tumble!

]]> http://matthewhyde.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/happy-birthday-cbeebies/feed/ 0 matthewhyde 300px-cbeebies-svg http://matthewhyde.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/doctor-who-meets-star-trek/ http://matthewhyde.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/doctor-who-meets-star-trek/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:32:58 +0000 matthewhyde https://matthewhyde.wordpress.com/?p=2299 ]]> So apparently the Bleeding Cool news/gossip site has uncovered a scoop – IDW Comics will be releasing a Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover in the near future. This is big – two of the three big sci-fi franchises getting together in a full-on, officially sanctioned get-together is an awesome piece of news. All the best to everyone involved.

And yet I can’t quite see how it’s going to work. Despite superficial similarities – aliens, spaceships, random acts of time travel – the two franchises are actually quite different.

Star Trek, for instance, exists in a techno-utopia, where science has helped eliminate some of humanity’s darker angels. The technobabble used by the show is largely meaningless, from what I hear, but an effort is made to at least use the right words. Combine that interest in progress with a fundamental optimism, and you’ll find many people working in science, engineering and computing were inspired by Trek – heck, look at some of the show’s gadgets and compare them to mobile phones and iPads.

Doctor Who exists at the opposite end of the spectrum – while science is important, it’s more about a way of thinking, a celebration of intelligence and imagination over conformity and homogeneity. It’s not exactly a metaphor for the Enlightenment getting us out of the Dark Ages, which is more Trek‘s deal; rather it’s the fire that gets us safely out of the haunted forest in a child’s fairytale. It’s more about the story and storytelling – look at how many Doctor Who stories are rip-offs of other stories and genres. And so, if Trek inspires scientists, Who inspires writers – look at how many people working in TV, novels and comics got their start in Doctor Who fandom and fanfic.

Star Trek is the culmination of the American Dream; Doctor Who is about beating childhood nightmares. It’s hard to see how they’ll fit together.

And yet, when I saw this piece of art, I smiled a big geeky smile and all my worries went away…

And if you don’t like Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, well, check it out anyway. Go on, give me a second chance. You know you want to…