I’m going to look terribly silly here. But that’s okay. I usually do. I just don’t normally make a virtue of it.
The other day I tweeted a link to what I took to be the official BBC trailer to the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. I did so in good faith – after all, it’s pretty much the first link that jumps up for those search criteria on YouTube. And damn if it doesn’t look good.
Admittedly, some of the scenes with multiple Doctors look a bit ropey but then I put that down to the fact that there’s really only so much you can do with CGI, even these days. And I hadn’t seen any chatter on the fan sites but then it wouldn’t be unusual for me to miss something. Plus that box that you have to “x” to get off the screen is annoying but so what?
What sold it, without my having even a hint of doubt, is that marvellous clip of a scene where a decidedly superior Eleventh Doctor, his bowtie (bowties are cool) undone, leans proprietorially against his TARDIS and greets his younger self, almost disdainfully, “Hello again”. The Tenth Doctor regards him, suspiciously, incredulously, himself standing outside his own subtly-different TARDIS. He looks seconds away from erupting “What? What?? WHAT.”
I tweeted the link, along with a joke about the now seemingly ubiquitous “Inception” noise.
I then received a reply from Al Graham (@Trubshawe1) saying: “it’s a fan produced fake trailer, though.” There followed some back-and-forth, before I, astride my high horse, condescended “And where, pray tell, did they get a never-before-seen, professionally-shot scene featuring Matt Smith and David Tennant?”
He replied, rather foolishly, I felt, “by cleverly inventing it“.
Frankly, I decided, I had better things to do with my time and Al could be just as wrong on the internet without my participation. As I said, there really is only so much you can do with CGI, even these days, and Al was being very silly indeed if he expected me to believe mere fans could fake something like that.
So thank you very, very much for this, Sean Jones (@seany180).
No, really, thank you. Thank you so much.
Now I trust nothing and nobody.
Nothing and nobody.
PS: While I have you, “The Doctor Puppet” is something you need to see immediately. Trust me. Puppets are cool.
140 characters is usually enough 