— read write play

BT’s leap into interactive marketing is spectacularly strange. We’re invited to vote on whether Jane is pregnant, or not. Why so strange? Is because we’re being clumsily directed to remotely inseminate a fictional character by popular decree? No, although that too is very strange.

The strangeness lies in BT’s own story arc. The entire relationship between Jane and her partner, Adam, has been defined by estrangement and distance, blighted by the unreliable reception and bandwith of inferior telecoms companies. They haven’t spoken face to face for months. Adam has certainly kept busy: repeatedly calling his mother, going on his stag weekend and participating in not-even-faintly-homoerotic sports fantasy involving Michael Owen and an underground carpark.

Despite this, we’ve been told the story of BT’s magical power to unite people whose busy lives and careers keep them cruelly apart, even though they wuv each other other vewy much. Please note that it is a land-line AND ONLY A LANDLINE which has these magical properties. I mean, how did Jane get pregnant / not pregnant, given that they’re never in the same room? Just what other powers does BT plan to reveal for its ball and chain, landline services?

Neil E. Hobbs (light and sound designer / collaborator for The Penny Dreadfuls, and general theatre wunderkind) has produced a beautiful and highly useful chart of relationships between Doctors, Companions and adversaries in the universe of Doctor Who. It is also, above all, a huge chart, and in that respect alone will fulfill most of your chart needs for the coming year.

I urge you to run over there to admire it in its full glory, and to nit-pick details.

I cannot remember when this conversation took place, but gmail chat transcripts do not lie:

Idil: may i ask your opinion on this picture [begins to upload file]

Steve: no, you do not look like jeff capes
PREEMPTIVE JOKE

Idil: booooooooo

Steve: UNLESS THAT’S WHAT YOU WERE GOING FOR
in which case
JEFF, WHEN DID YOU COME IN? I DID NOT HEAR THE DOOR

Idil: WHY STEVE, IT’S ONLY ME, IDIL CAPES

Steve: HOW EMBARRASSING
NICE CAPE, THOUGH