Advocate Jan 2014

THE ADVOCATE VOL. 72 PART 1 JANUARY 2014
53
ADVOCATE NEWS
By D. Michael Bain*
TIME FOR CHANGE
The BBC recently celebrated 50 years of Doctor Who, the world’s longestrunning
science fiction television series. The series involves a quirky,
eccentric Time Lord flying through space and time in a device known as the
TARDIS (which stands for “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” but
looks suspiciously like a blue police call box) and saving people, places and
things from almost certain destruction, episode after episode. The faces of
12 different actors playing the Doctor over that 50-year period is explained
away by a process called “regeneration”, in which through the magic of special
effects (which have improved remarkably in the last half century) one
actor’s features morph into the other and the new actor simply picks up
where the last one left off. Each Doctor is aware of his past incarnation, but
he emerges infused with a new character with his own quirks (and quarks).
I feel a bit like Doctor Who these days—in the 72 years of the Advocate’s
history, I have suddenly (or perhaps not so suddenly) become the sixth
incarnation of The Editor of this magazine. This might not be the best analogy,
since the actor playing the sixth Doctor was the only one to get fired
from his position; nevertheless, like the Doctor, I have obligations to the past
and yet a desire to do things a bit differently as I steer this ship through space
and time. Initially I thought of wearing a bow tie (“bow ties are cool”) or a
fez, but that’s all been done before (or hence—it’s never really clear with
time travel). I pause here to note that I am actually wearing a scarf at the
moment. I just drove at maniacal speed to the courthouse to drop off a written
submission (with four minutes to spare) and haven’t bothered to remove
either my trench coat or my scarf. I shall build a robotic dog immediately.
So … 21st century. Hello! Here we are! The Advocate has arrived with a
newly updated website, , which you ought to visit
* D. Michael Bain is the editor of the Advocate.