The Cooke family from Redcar have boldly established a new tradition for Saturday night.
Every Saturday, at around 6.30pm, the family gathers in the lounge, in front of the television, to celebrate their new tradition of Not Watching Doctor Who.
‘We always used to watch Doctor Who together,’ says Mum, Alice. ‘But the show has gone right down the pan. It hasn’t really been any good since Matt Smith. Peter Capaldi was borderline OK. Jody Whittaker was bad. Ncuti Gatwa, I think, is pretty good. But the whole show is let down by really terrible writing, and by a dim-witted reliance on expensive special effects paid for with Disney money. The BBC has sold out. Russell T doesn’t care any more – he’s only doing it because he gets such a big paycheck.’
Daughter Kylie agrees. ‘The stories are rubbish and they are all the same. A monster does bad things to lots of people, ideally a whole planet or a whole galaxy. Doctor Who turns up, runs around a lot, waves his sonic screwdriver, and fixes things in a way that makes no sense at all. The monsters are all boring ones brought back from when Doctor Who was in black and white, but tarted up a bit.
Dad, Colin, complains that the whole show is just intergalactic wokery. ‘I’ll be impressed when we have an alcoholic doctor. Or when Doctor Who eats bad food on an alien planet and has to spend the whole episode in the toilet. That guy never eats – how does he do that?
‘Actually, I agree with Mum. It is the terrible writing that let’s it all down. If I had a time machine, I’d go back and erase Sylvester McCoy, and Peter Davidson and everything after David Tennant.
So, the new Cooke family tradition of Not Watching Doctor Who now focuses on rewatching old DVDs of Sapphire and Steel, and Blake's Seven and Tomorrow People – proper sci-fi that you can actually believe in.
image from pixabay
Elon Musk’s stated determination to have more children, on top of the 14 he has already, raises the possibility that in the future, all living human beings will have at least some Elon Musk in their DNA.Â
With this in mind, genealogy company 23andMe has said it plans to offer customers the option of knowing what percentage Elon Musk they are.Â
'Of course, this won’t be compulsory,' said the company. 'If you’d rather not know, we can just put it down as ‘South African heritage’.'
As this option isn’t available yet, we have produced this handy guide to determining whether you might be one of Musk’s offspring.
1) Do you have a ridiculous name? If your name is Techno Mechanicus, Seldon Lycurgus, Exa Dark Sideræl or X Æ A-Xii, it’s highly likely you are a child of Musk. However, this test is not considered conclusive, as you may also be a Geldof.Â
2) Do you find yourself paying court to vile people, pretending to be impressed by them just because they have power?
3) Do you often fire people for no reason, then frantically rehire them when you realise they were doing something important?
4) Do you spend a fortune building spacecraft which invariably blow up when you try to launch them?
5) Have you designed a road vehicle so ugly, it actually looks better after it’s been vandalised?
6) Is Amber Heard trying to sleep with you? (NB This only applies if you’ve inherited a lot of Elon’s money.)
7) Do you have a freakishly large puppet head?
8) Are you creepy as hell?
Image by amorimbiotec from Pixabay