Tom Baker is an actor, writer, wit, bon viveur and raconteur. He is best known as the fourth Doctor Who—if not the best Doctor Who. Tom Baker has one of the most recognizable voices on the planet. His sonorous tones can be heard on innumerable voice-overs, adverts and hit TV shows like Little Britain.

Baker is adored by millions. And there are many who believe Tom Baker walks on water and turns it into wine. For them, Tom Baker is a god.

Thankfully, Mr. Baker doesn’t disabuse such people of this opinion. Why should he spoil their fun? But even gods have an off day especially when dealing with idiots. How do we know this? Well, take a listen to this delightfully amusing recording of Baker discussing the merits and demerits of a voice-over script for some advertising jingle and all will become apparent. I won’t spoil it by quoting some of his choice phrases, but suffice to say it becomes quickly known that Mr. Baker is right about everything. Which will be further proof of his godlike status—for only gods are ineffably right.
 

 
In 1990, Douglas Adams wrote and presented a “fantasy documentary” called Hyperland for the BBC. In it Adams dreamt of a future where he would be able “to play a more active role in the information he chooses to digest.” Adams throws away his TV and is met by:

[a] software agent, Tom (played by Tom Baker), [who] guides Douglas around a multimedia information landscape, examining (then) cuttting-edge research by the SF Multimedia Lab and NASA Ames research center, and encountering hypermedia visionaries such as Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson. Looking back now, it’s interesting to see how much he got right and how much he didn’t: these days, no one’s heard of the SF Multimedia Lab, and his super-high-tech portrayal of VR in 2005 could be outdone by a modern PC with a 3D card. However, these are just minor niggles when you consider how much more popular the technologies in question have become than anyone could have predicted - for while Douglas was creating Hyperland, a student at CERN in Switzerland was working on a little hypertext project he called the World Wide Web…

Hyperland is an excellent film - prescient, fascinating and greatly entertaining.