Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

During the Doctor Who special I mentioned yesterday they showed a clip from episode 4 of this year. (Not broadcast in either England or the US yet). The episode features the return of Alex Kingston as professor River Song who keeps meeting the Doctor in different relative timelines.

In the clip she points out something called “blue stabilizer” and insists they are needed to land TARDIS. When the says the ship has landed the Doctor disagrees pointing out there was no “Woosh, Woosh”. Song replies “It’s not supposed to make that sound, you leave the breaks on.”

Now this post isn’t about the canonity of that statement (Cough: episode 1 of the Pirate Planet 4th Doctor and Romana: Cough) nor the fact that the sound is the most unifying item in the show, constant since that first episode back in 1963. it’s about something more interesting.

Update: Well Luke cancels out the hole premise of the post in comments, but he’s right.

Shortly after the show I googled the phrase “you leave the breaks on” and the word “Tardis” to see what people were saying about it. Nothing, no results at all. I ended up falling asleep on the couch waking up just before 5 a.m. the next morning, the machine was on standby so I logged back in and repeated the search and this blog entry came up:

There’s a section in the special where they talk about the TARDIS, and they inserted the cutest scene where River lands the blue box and Eleven starts wondering where a certain noise was and he made the little sounds. Then River was like, “It’s not suppose to make that noise. You leave the breaks on.” Eleven replies, “It’s a brilliant noise.”

Mind you this was the ONLY entry that came up. Nothing else. Now I don’t know this blog from Adam but I do know that within a few weeks there will be hundreds upon hundreds of web sites with that phrase in it and by the end of the year it will be thousands or more.

It’s very rare to see the very first entry on something that will become part of Science Fiction pop culture, so proprietor of the blog Timey wimey, take a bow you, are the first ever blog to use the phrase. It’s an odd and in the scheme of things unimportant distinction; but it’s all yours.