The Flux Capacitor grows in staff and sections as it returns to La 2’s screens for a third season. The journalist Raquel Martos repeats herself as moderator at the head of the team of historians and specialists, explaining to EL PAÍS by phone that there will be “more movement on the set, more dynamic” and games with elements that allow “touching history”. According to Martos, the key to the success of this distribution format – the program was first broadcast in January 2021 – is that it presents a fresh take on history, made of humor and passion, without losing rigor.
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To that end, the program has detailed scripts — “scriptwriters exist, they’re not urban legends,” jokes Martos — and very controlled informational content, as the creators aim for it to be taught in high schools as well. “With the exception of Goyo Jiménez, who is a beast of television and humor, Miguel Iríbar and I, who come from the media, the rest of the collaborators come from academia. They were fish out of water when they made the first season. We’re breaking with this very erroneous notion that disclosure has to be boring, that you have to look down from a pedestal to teach them something,” explains the presenter, who believes The Condenser is part of a didactic coherence of public television is the leader of La 2 de TVE, in which they are, among other things, neighbors of the scientific dissemination program Órbita Laika.
Advertising poster for the historical dissemination program “El condensador de fluzo”.
A good example of this balance between entertainment and knowledge was Chef Gonzalo D’Ambrosio’s speech last Thursday in the second program of the season. On the same set, he inaugurated a historical cooking section and prepared medieval dishes while explaining how they were eaten and where these recipes came from. Even the name of the program – a production of Lacoproductora (by Grupo PRISA, publisher of EL PAÍS) – sums up this idea of fun. This is a reference to the cult comedy Back to the Future, in which the characters use this device – which should have been translated as “flux capacitor” but which the writers of the saga decided to avoid a possible sexual connotation – travel in time.
However, Martos is aware that this classic television format has to face the diversification of high-quality historical disclosure content in other media such as social networks, which have shown that there is another way to appeal to younger people. “It’s challenging, but I think The Flux Capacitor moves well between those two bodies of water. On the one hand there is the conventional format that the family can watch on the sofa. And at the same time there is this second life that he has on the Internet, for example on Twitter. It was very surprising for me to see that at the end of the program each of the staff kept adding information about what they had explained in the program. And then there are plenty of historians and fans posting their threads. It’s what Javier Traité [uno de los colaboradores] baptized as reflux,” he recounts.
Goyo Jiménez, Sara Rubayo, Raquel Martos and Miguel Iríbar on the set of the program.Luisma Reyes
The journalist attributes the good reception by the fluceros – the viewers of the show – to the fact that it is a very choral space: “I always tell the staff that they are very different, like characters in a sitcom where everyone of them they interpret a character profile. It’s just that they really are. And everyone brings something different. She also admits that she feels “at home”: “It’s the show I’ve felt most comfortable on TV so far. We laugh a lot together. Even though we work long hours, we have so much fun that the good vibes they tell us actually get broadcast.”
Martos recalls some moments this season when he couldn’t keep presenting because he couldn’t stop laughing: “I have a soft spot for Javier Traité. When he walks on the set he makes my life happy and sometimes it’s hard not to laugh with him because he’s so funny and has a few looks… Those rehearsal moments are magical. When he showed up dressed as a medieval chef on Thursday, he could barely start to speak. In another episode of the second season, the presenter was so absorbed in the story of Lucy the Australopithecus that she couldn’t help but squeal with excitement when she saw the wardrobe manager walk past in a furry coat. “I was so excited about what they were telling me that I caught a glimpse of hair out of the corner of my eye and thought Lucy would go through the story herself!” she exclaims.
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