And he's back.

Right after I made a small deal about Lawrence Miles gaining in popularity, he pops up and posts to his secondary blog about Doctor Who. (Because everyone should have a secondary blog about Doctor Who.)

Of course, to us, the mad glut of Doctor Who merchandising available for Christmas 2007 is definitive proof that We Win. Let's be quite clear on this point: here in the latter '00s, Doctor Who is more popular than at any time in its prior history. Naturally, the viewing figures were higher in the late '70s. This is partly because there was nothing else to do in those days, when the TV set was the only leisure accessory that ran on electricity, and when "getting boozed up on a Saturday night" wasn't seen as a fit pastime for all ages, classes and genders. But it's also because viewers in the 1970s saw themselves as belonging to a wilfully captive audience. Saturday-night viewing was part of a complete entertainment experience, the stay-at-home descendant of the Music Hall, and you sat through the entire BBC schedule - or the entire ITV schedule, if you were a bit common - whether you liked all the programmes or not. You wouldn't have switched channels, even if you'd had one of those newfangled remote controls. In those days, before geek-scum tried to claim that Doctor Who should be just like Babylon-5, the series was part of the World of Showbiz. And yet…

…and yet it wasn't what the BBC now likes to call its "jewel in the crown" show. Doctor Who was halfway down the bill of the entertainment line-up, it was never the star attraction. The ratings may have been higher in the supposedly golden year of 1979, but even then - even at a time when you could rely on one-third of the population to have seen Julian Glover rip his face off and become a one-eyed seaweed-man - the importance that's attached to the series now would have been unthinkable. In 1979, it was taken for granted that it'd always be there. In 2007 (if slightly less so than in 2006), it matters. It's a lodestone of British pop-culture rather than a reassuringly ever-present quantity, the Beatles rather than One Man and His Dog. "Popularity" is measured by impact rather than ratings, and for the people of the 1970s, it'd beggar belief that "Sontarans Return" would qualify as a news headline. In a world where Showbiz was a rare and precious commodity, it was always going to be overshadowed by The Generation Game. In a world where celebrity culture seems somehow more banal than fly-on-the-wall footage, something as strange and as (potentially) unpredictable as Doctor Who is bound to thrive. For a while, anyway.

In a perfect world, there would already be statues of this man.