Unsolicited Advice

Top Gear is one of those things that's much easier to watch than to describe. You start out telling people, "It's about cars," and twenty minutes later you find yourself trying to explain why the BBC is sending an automotive journalist to the North Pole on a dogsled. They have used cars as a flimsy excuse to go to so many exotic places that Top Gear is now better at being the National Geographic Society than the actual National Geographic Society. The three of them have bickered like children in some of the most gorgeous spots on the face of the planet, usually while Clarkson is trying to fix his car with a very large hammer. Moggie has just finished her physics homework and needs something to stop the weeping, so I'm going to talk about Richard Hammond for a while. The bookseller from whom I attempted to order  On The Edge  somehow managed to be out of copies before they got around to shipping mine, so I'll just be doing my usual semi-baseless speculation...

I'm not a gearhead. Everything I know about cars, I learned from Car Talk and Top Gear -- so it's probably a good thing I don't drive. Both of these programs are nevertheless entertaining, so I keep up with them anyway. I watch Top Gear  mainly because the three presenters -- Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May -- are hilarious. The show is partly scripted and partly edited segments of live camera commentary, which means both a lot of interesting ad-libs and a lot of interesting gag reels. The three of them do play characters, which have a sort of "based on a true story" relationship with their actual personalities; Clarkson is a bit of a curmudgeon, Hammond is a bit of a scrapper, and May is a bit of an obsessive geek, but it's exaggerated quite a lot for comic effect. They spend a lot of time dreaming up creative ways to be total cocks to one another without actually getting anyone killed -- pay attention and you'll notice that, while they ...

The First Doctor: William Hartnell First serial: 100,000 BC Last serial: The Tenth Planet Costume details: A gentleman's day wear from roughly the Victorian era, with an appropriate shoulder-length hairstyle. Frock coat with astrakhan collar and karakul hat, dark cloak, long scarf. Wears an ornate ring on one finger. Companions: Susan , Ian Chesterton , Barbara Wright , Vicki , Steven Taylor , Katarina , Dodo Chaplet , Polly , Ben Jackson At first glance, the First Doctor is egotistical and imperious. At second glance, he's egotistical, imperious, and also flubs his lines a lot. This is because the Doctor was not initially supposed to be the focus character of the show. Originally, the show that we know as Doctor Who  was conceived of as less a science-fiction serial, and more of an edutainment program -- you will notice, if you watch the very early stories, that they're rather heavy on history, and comparatively light on stuntmen in giant rubber suits. The audien...