Editor’s Note: Style Desk intern George Bragdon has been sporting some snappy scarves of late. He shares his love of the long striped numbers worn by the fourth Doctor Who in the British sci-fi television series.

I’m obsessed with scarves. While admitting such a thing completely robs me of any and all masculine pride, it’s true. Of course, it has to be just the right kind of scarf. No foofy silk neckerchiefs, nor some short, utilitarian outdoor fleece thingy. No, give me a long one, wide and with stripes, please. It’s a fetish, I know, and like all weirdo kicks, it comes from childhood.

I was an adolescent “Doctor Who” fanatic, you know, the cult British television series that began in the ’60s. That fact in and of itself is more embarrassing than my scarf jones.

Somewhere in the misty “Doctor Who” storyline, the good Doctor morphed for a fourth time – don’t ask how or why – into a mop-headed madman in a camelhair coat with a signature long striped scarf. I later found that the “fourth” Doctor, played by British actor Tom Baker, was a favorite among both hardcore and casual fans, perhaps influencing a generation of late-night Public Broadcasting System watchers. I mean, has any one looked closely at those guys in the rock band The Strokes? Closet “Who” watchers if there ever were any.

For more than a decade I’ve been searching for a scarf like Doctor Who’s. Last winter the scarf came into its own. The purveyor of over-priced plain, The Gap, seemed to be taking its cues from Doctor Who at least for the season. Finally, all of us closet “Whovians” could possess our great woolly Grail. If worst comes to worst, we could always cut out the tag and coyly pretend that we got it somewhere else.

This holiday season, every chain store had its take on scarves. In movies, Kieran Culkin sported one like a hunting cap as a would-be Holden Caulfield in “Igby Goes Down.” That Potter kid wore one in his movie, too.

But does this, could this, new-wave scarf craze mean a triumphant return of “Doctor Who” in full nostalgic glory, complete with retro repackaging at an inflated price? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, the search for my coveted prize was a bizarre Goldilocks-meets- Who series of events.

The first scarf, a Christmas present in 2001, was too big. Still, I proudly wore the hairy black-and-white-ringed behemoth weighing in at a good 5 pounds, which prompted chiropractic visits in the spring. It has since been retired to my sock drawer, occasionally spooking me when it peeks out from its quiet hiding place like a wool-blend anaconda ready to take revenge if I linger too long. Creepy.

In September, I found a pathetic hand-knit job for a quarter at a thrift store. That one I reverently loved, though in retrospect, it may have looked like a sad, old sock monkey found in the road and wound around my neck; or, worse, like a mob of grandmothers had dressed me. It lurks alone, somewhere in the coat closet.

Ah, but just last week, I found it, the one, just right, at Old Navy. Ugly stripes, light wool, and long enough to dangle dangerously, tempting car doors and anything with exposed moving parts. Perfect.

I get compliments on it. It’s made me haughty, constantly whipping one end around my shoulder with dramatic flourish. I love it.

Now, my daydreams are once again psychedelic sci-fi sagas in which my striped scarf somehow saves me and my crew from evil robots so we can make it back to our blue police callbox-spaceship-time machine and disappear into untold galaxies. Life is good.

Even though my quest is over, I still gaze longingly when I pass through the mall or the Salvation Army. On TV, the new Gap commercial with the impossibly beautiful people lip-synching “Love Train” in striped scarves and sweaters has become a guilty pleasure. Of course, so are all the Old Navy ads with the strangely alluring “Dallas” star Morgan Fairchild, but that’s another story.