h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Hats in Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor - A87827052
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

Almost certainly the most important article on h2g2 that you will ever read!*

This article picks up where Terran's (U201249, a sadly ed researcher) article: A30777366 left off.

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*Provided that you never read any other articles on h2g2, and even then, only just.

I can't believe you wrote this whole article without mentioning who played the eleventh Doctor.

Actually, as it's a Doctor Who article, I can believe it.

Obviously I thought it went without saying...

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I enjoyed this and I learned a lot, too.

I have seen The Fez, and didn't understand its full significance at the time...

I also saw Closing Time the other day, and also didn't understand the significance of Craig giving the Doctor a hat at the end, as that's the only Matt Smith episode I've seen so far, but now I do

Tweaked as I missed out 'Death is the Only Answer'

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Is there any connection between the Doctor's fez and that of the Shopkeeper in Mr Benn?

For those who haven't seen the children's show Mr Benn, each week Mr Benn leaves his suburban life and goes to a fancy dress costume shop. He is met by a shopkeeper wearing a fez, who "appears as if by magic". Mr Benn tries out a costume and is sent on an adventure through space or time. When he returns, the shopkeeper always knows what has happened.

The following footnote will need to be rewritten:

"Steven Moffat is not only the showrunner of Doctor Who but also Sherlock, although the fourth Doctor had worn a deerstalker in 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' (1977), another story set in Victorian London."

The first part of it says that not only is Stephen Moffat the showrunner of Doctor Who, he is also Sherlock. The second half doesn't seem to be connected to the first.

I don't think there is such a word as showrunner - I'm sure there's a perfectly adequate existing title.

{Is there any connection between the Doctor's fez and that of the Shopkeeper in Mr Benn?}

Were both written with the aid of mind-altering substances?

Magic? fez? Surely he's Tommy Cooper.

I think the main connection would probably through the idea that magicians wear fezzes. I'm not actually sure that it's true that many magicians ever did, apart from Tommy Copper, obviously, but I remember being told the a fez is a traditional party of a magician's wardrobe.

So, Mr Benn's shopkeeper's fez illustrates his magic qualities, and the same is true of the Doctor. The Doctor's methods are all grounded in science (well, his science if not ours), but the image he presents, and the effect his has on others, is magical.

My favourite fez moment came during the 50th anniversary show. When the interface of the Moment opens the portal to the War Doctor's future, and a fez drops through it.

And at that point the interface of the Moment, a machine that can see the future, and re-write time, and is therefore potentially omniscient and omnipotent, and the closest thing to God that is every likely to appear in the series says:

"Well, I wasn't expecting that."

No matter who you are, no matter what you know, the Doctor is always unpredictable.


Geggs

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/427/2044/1600/mr-benn.jpg

Presumably 'Mr Benn' is the Doctor's true name, the secret name that only River Song knows and will have dire consequences for the entire Universe if ever told?

I've split the footnote up so it should make more sense.

The title 'showrunner' is an American television term for someone who combines the roles of both a producer and script/story editor, but also becoming increasingly used in the UK, with Russell T Davis one of the first to use it. Steven Moffat defines himself as being a showrunner, so that's how I've described him. See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/meet-the-showrunners-from-steven-moffat-to-toby-whithouse-how-did-writers-end-up-seizing-the-reins-of-british-drama-9386825.html

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Tweaked.

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Hats and the 11th Doctor

I think this is rather overpowered by the list of quotes. It's starting to look a lot like a list entry. Could you thin down the quotes a bit, do you think?

You say 'National Museum'. What museum is that? What nation? Does it correspond with an actual museum in real life?

Minor details:

His love of hats continues, with a serious case
-- remove the comma

The Doctor, The Widow and Wardrobe
-->
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

In the same episode he was also determined to wear a circlet crown, despite being warned by the forest that it was not for him.
-- put into present tense

Changes made to cut down the number of quotes, to explain that the National Museum is a fictional museum (without going into unnecessary detail that it is a fictional museum located in an unknown city, quite possibly London, but as it is in a parallel universe we don't know one way or another whether London exists or what additional differences there are between the parallel universe and the main fictional universe other than the parallel universe's lack of stars) and tenses and spellings corrected.

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I read this again and have a couple more comments:

In the Quotes section, is "Smart bunch, Time Lords. No dress sense, dreadful hats, but smart." said by the Doctor? Seems like it wouldn't be something he would say, but I don't know.

The Hat Attack and Handles sections are a bit confusing to me - is a cyberhead and Cyberman head the same thing?

Thanks for looking at this again. I remember the days when we had an 11th Doctor - the 12th just doesn't seem to be interested in hats so far.

Yep, the Doctor said that quote - he is often quite critical of the Time Lords, which is probably why he went on a self-imposed exile in the in the first place. If you watch Commander Maxil in the story 'Arc of Infinity' (played by Colin Baker before he was cast as the Sixth Doctor) his hat is so dreadful he spends most of the time carrying it around rather than actually wearing it...

I've reworded the hat attack and Handles sections so hopefully that is clearer now.

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Ah, I understand the quote about the Time Lords and their terrible hats now

The Cyberhead sections read better now, but the bit "If the metal remains of a Cyberhead can be considered to be a hat" needs to be in the first section that mentions a Cyberhead (so whether you switch the order of the sections or move the sentence fragment, I don't mind).

Good point, moved that fragment up a bit.

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I don't really like this entry - it's a bit too obsessive for my liking, but then, I obsess about different things. On the other hand, if a scout does like it, then it is almost ready for publication. Just a few little changes, to make the job of the sub-editor easier...

"but number one is this; What in the name of sanity have you got on your head"

Change the semicolon to a colon because it introduces the next section of the sentence. Change the capital W on What to lowercase.

series five's finale

-- It might be worth adding a footnote that recent Doctor Who series are numbered from the return of the show in two thousand and whatever, rather than from its first production in 1963. To do this, remove the apostrophe s on five and put the the footnote there.

he finds a fashion faux pas -->
he makes a fashion faux pas
or
he commits a fashion faux pas

a deerstalker, the hat popularised by detective Sherlock Holmes

-- might it be worth mentioning that it was Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes that popularised the deerstalker? The original Holmes had no particular affinity for deerstalkers. You could say "poularised by Basil Rathbone's portrayal of detective Sherlock Holmes".

The episode... shares similarities with an Avengers episode.
-- do you mean that it is similar to a particular Avengers episode, or that it is the same style as a typical Avengers episode?

Well done, Bluebottle.

I love getting comments that begin 'I don't really like this entry' and end with 'Well done, Bluebottle'. I'd like to think I've managed to change your mind through a persuasive argument, but I suspect the end comment is just being polite

I've made changes and added a footnote about series 5. I've added the simple comment 'though not featured in Conan Doyle's stories' about Sherlock Holmes and the deerstalker, as I don't want to open a about that - the story of who came up with the deerstalker for Sherlock Holmes deserves an entry to itself, with illustrations in American magazines, Gillette's stage play that gave the world Holmes' curved pipe (introduced purely so the audience could see what he was saying) and especially the famous 1905 picture in 'The Strand' etc predating Basil Rathbone (although as you say, Basil Rathbone did indeed popularise and define the character for generations).

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