Now that we’re into July, let’s take a look at what people wanted to know from me in the month of June.
5. “Stephen Fry Doctor Who.” Stephen Fry was asked to write a script for Doctor Who‘s second season. Then it became the third season. It might have involved Vikings, or possibly King Arthur, or it might have been a World War I piece. Actually, maybe it involved all three; it is a show about time travel we’re talking about. But it never happened. Fry has long been a pick of mine to play the next Doctor, whether that was number nine (at the time I wrote that), or even number eleven today. Or, he could play the Minister of Chance, his Time Lord character from Death Comes to Time.
4. “Anakin Skywalker’s Father.” Shmi says he has no father. Palpatine talks about a Sith plan to create life. I think they’re both bogus. It’s obviously Qui-Gon Jinn.
3. “New Blackadder.” Once upon a time, there were rumors that the BBC was putting together a new Blackadder series. Well, that was three years ago, and nothing’s come of it. There’s an American version of Blackadder, by the way. I’ve never seen it.
2. “Lego Doctor Who.” Please, BBC? Please, LEGO Corporation? Please?
1. “Eleventh Doctor Who.” This one came out of nowhere, and what people are getting is this post, where I muse on what a great Doctor John Hurt would have been. Oh, he’s not likely to be cast, because Russell T. Davies believes that the Doctor works best as a young and active man. Does the sudden popularity of this search phrase mean that John Hurt is going to be the next Doctor, if and when David Tennant moves on? I very much doubt that — by contrast, “John Hurt” turned up exactly once in my logs for the month of June.
My own name came it at number 11. It’s interesting to me that 10 times as many people wanted to know about “the Eleventh Doctor” than wanted to know about me. Or nine times as many people wanted information on LEGO Doctor Who than me.
And this may be the greatest singleton search phrase of all time: “google please show me how to build temple of doom in lego.”
See, that makes me wonder. Long-time computer users may remember an old BASIC program called “Eliza,” where you could have a conversation with the computer. It worked, basically, by taking what you typed it, chopping it up, changing the pronouns, and spitting it back at you as a question. It occurs to me that, perhaps, search engines have become Super-Elizas, where there are people who type in elaborate questions, and have virtual conversations with search engines. That might be worth studying on a sociological level.