So you know that twist at the end of the first Back To The Future, where it looks like Doc Brown still got gunned down by Libyan terrorists in a mall parking lot despite the best efforts of Marty McFly warning him in the distant past? And then it turns out that whilst he did get shot, he had taken Marty's advice and risked breaking the time-space continuum by wearing a body armour? That wouldn't have worked. Sorry. Doc Brown would still have been dead from having that amount of gunfire riddling his body at point-blank range. The fake out is a terrible action movie cliché, where a hero looks to have bitten the big one only to reveal they were secretly wearing a flack jacket that absorbed the fire. Which isn't how bullet-proof vests work. In fact, bullet-proof vest is something of a misnomer. In reality, they're handed out to police men and they can just about deal with low-to-medium calibre bullets, whilst that soft armour will be torn right through by shotguns and higher velocity rounds. They don't protect from stabbing, either. And even when bullets get stopped, they hurt like hell.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
