Serial 101 – Ruse
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' After Hours Evil
"YOA's Discontinuity Guides – Inaccurate But Caring."
Serial 101 – Ruse -
-------------Transcriber's Note-------------
Fandom went into an uproar when a mysterious figure known only as 'the Twat' stole the first cut of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who and then released it onto the internet like a particularly virulent strand of herpes.
Despite the best efforts of RTD, Christopher Eccleston, and that fat bearded asthmatic who actually knew anything about computers, well, the whole bloody world downloaded the pilot, watched it and ridiculed it.
This is a detailed description entirely by psycho fan Nigella Jay Verkoff and not me at all.
True, this so-called entry might just be a farrago of distortion that would have Ananias, Copernicus, Baron Munchhausen and Ralf the Liar blushing down to their very toenails at this xxx-rated fanfic, but deep, deep down... who cares?
--------------------------------------------
Tumbling end out of end and completely out of control, a battered blue police box hurtles through the stratosphere and crashes into a street corner alleyway near an adult variety store named Plastic Fantastic in Cardiff, Wales.
The door to this preposterous object opens and out staggers a tall, gangly hippy with long girly hair and dressed like the freakish offspring of Paddington Bear and Lord Byron.
He is accompanied by a floating cloud of blue mist he refers to affectionate as 'Smelly Ed' who doesn't say much but is distinguished by a bitchin' pair of shades.
The man looks around in delight and reveals in an overtly expositional manner that they are damn lucky to have escaped the destruction of Gallifrey and the exploding Dustbin battle fleets in the final Temporal Difference of Opinion.
"Y'know," the man says confidently, "things are looking so bright, it's good you're wearing shades. This is the first day of the rest of our lives!"
At this point, a bright yellow VW beetle with flames up the side turns the corner and strikes the man down. It bounces over him and continues on its way, its occupants far too busy singing "Because I Want To!" to notice the hit and run they have just committed.
Smelly Ed looks down at the dead body of its companion for a moment before floating off, bored.
Suddenly, an eerie yellow glow bathes the corpse before turning a brilliant white and the man sits bolt upright. He is now a rough-looking Northerner with a number one haircut and face full of clavicles you could carve a Sunday roast off.
The man blinks and watches the beetle drive off and scowls.
"Bitch!" he snaps. "You just wait, girly! You've pissed off the wrong person! Big mistake! I'll disseminate every bit of you! Down to the subatomic particles! I'm gonna grab every graviton and tau-meson you've got, chew em up and spit em back out! NOTHING WILL PREVENT THE CATHARSIS OF SPURIOUS MORALITY! YOU'RE DEAD, BITCH! DEAD!"
It is then he looks down at himself.
"What the fuck am I wearing?!? Screw revenge, I'm getting me a tailor! Where the hell are Queer Eye for the Time Guy when you need em?"
Parte The First
Earlier that day, at 7:30 Rose Tyler awakes in her way-too-pink bedroom surrounded by large stuffed animals and posters of boy band posters and wander over to change out of her stripy pajamas.
She's still a virgin (you can tell in scene 27 if you have a medical dictionary and a pause control). Though there was that nasty incident behind the bike sheds with Jimmy Stones that forced her to leave Jericho Street Junior School at the age of 18.
Now with no A-levels or hope for the future, she is forced to share a flat with her oversexed mother Jackie, who was damn hot in Nuns On The Run but has now fallen on hard times, spending the whole day watching Single White Female Attorney and eating chocolate. She used to be cool.
Rose meets her black boyfriend Mickey Smith, a quivering heap of testosterone waiting impatiently for Rose to be ready to consummate their relationship and, in the meantime, vents his sexual frustration via spectacular displays of road rage.
With Mickey struggling to contain himself and Rose playing with her hair, neither notice the sudden shower of glowing crème eggs, the curious rash of disappearances, or the sudden rise in plastic shares.
After running over some beatnik outside a police box, Mickey drops Rose off at Plastic Fantastic and orders her to get a wedding dress – if he has to go down on one knee, he's making damn sure Rose will as well on the honeymoon.
He kisses her goodbye but using a cunning series of stumbles and shifts manages to string out the kiss for a full three minutes and get a good grope in there as well.
Rose, who hadn't even realized Mickey had proposed, goes to work in Plastic Fantastic. Being so naive and innocent, Rose initially assumes that variety of perverts and nymphos who drop by need the 'marital aides' as presents to save their marriages and notes to herself that she might need quite a few such aides to deal with Mickey. Co-worker Molly agrees that this might be a good idea.
Behind the store, a crème egg lands and glows with malevolent evil. However, this does sweet FA to anything and Rose and Molly continue their work without any disruption whatsoever.
Rose and Molly cross to the local Shotgun Wedding Attire, and completely fail to notice that the mannequins on display are watching their every move.
Meanwhile, two disgusting Americans called Harold and Daisy DO notice the living dummies lurch slowly from the display stage and close in on them. Harold and Daisy get the dummies to pose for several photos before Harold's patronizing manner seems to drive on of them to reveal in-built handguns and gun him down.
Oblivious to this, Rose and Molly return to Plastic Fantastic and continue their shift. Rose decides to hold an engagement party at her flat. Outside, the living dummies march out on the street and kill absolutely everyone they can. Panic ensues on the streets of Cardiff, buses and taxis crash into pavements as more dummies blaze the ground with bullets.
Inside Plastic Fantastic, Molly and Rose draw up a guest list for the party and wonder on the developments on Single White Female Attorney. Molly pops in the back room for a smoke on her crack pipe (which she has told the naïve and innocent Rose is a silly straw) and discovers the inflatable dolls have come to life and begin to smother her.
Oddly, Molly seems to be enjoying it.
Rose notices that Molly has been gone a while, but thinks nothing of it. Molly once went missing for three days and was finally found dumped in the local tip speaking fluent Cantonese and insisting she was a fish. Rose notices Molly's wallet is on the table and promptly steals all the cash from it. Oooh. Feisty!
Outside, the streets have been wiped clean of human life and the animated plastic beings begin to close in on Plastic Fantastic. Outside the department store Henrik's, the police box materializes out of thin air. Dressed in the latest "Neo from The Matrix" leather jacket and pants, the guy-who-used-to-be-a-beatnik emerges to get his revenge.
He takes one look at the chaos around him, shakes his head, and returns to the police box which promptly vanishes again.
Inside Plastic Fantastic, Rose is attacked by the leather restraints and bludgeoned into submission by a flying dildo. She isn't particularly worried about things at the moment, as she is fairly certain that it's just another brief possession made by their wacky occult-using store manager, H. P. Lovecraft. The bondage-clad mannequins begin to move in, surrounding her.
Just as they're about to blow her to smithereens, however, one of the dummies rips off its plastic head to reveal it is the Doctor. With his cry of "The slut is mine!" he reveals a curiously-shaped buzzing device which seems to act like a crucifix on the advancing monsters.
He then grabs Rose and they flee to the alleyway outside. One of the mannequins reaches after them and grabs Rose's neck but, in a stunning impromptu display of kung-fu skills, the teenage girl grabs a metal 'sales' signpost and bashes the dummy in the face, and rips free.
She also takes the arm with her. Her rescuer pulls her to safety.
"Mr. Smith?!" she exclaims, aghast. "What are you doing here?"
Smith grins a feral grin. "I've come to kill you!"
He pulls out a gun and fires at her at point-blank range...
The rescuer-turned-assassin smacks his forehead. "No bullets!" he cries. "Knew I forgot something! Stupid post-regeneration-trauma-induced-amnesia!"
Rose is understandably confused why her lovable eccentric neighbor she has known her entire life is now determined to kill her. However, she's had a bitch of a day and thrashes the living daylights out of Smith and runs out into the street.
She nearly gets run over by a taxi being used by three of the plastic dummies to perform drive-by shootings and runs into the local police station. The desk officer, Sergeant Manfred, pooh-poohs her tales of homicidal mannequins, even if she still holding its severed arm as it tries to kill anyone in the vicinity.
True, these window dummies are streaming out of the Underground, out of the shopping centers, jumping out of third-storey windows and police and military are fighting them, but Sergeant Manfred is certain this is just some Candid Camera stunt gone horribly, horribly wrong and urges Rose to go home and have a nice cup of tea.
Despairing, Rose does just that – which is a pity as that is when the real desk officer arrives and realizes the schizophrenic has escaped the cells and is impersonating a police officer again.
Rose staggers back to her flat, where her mum has not moved from the sofa and the late night repeat of Single White Female Attorney. Jackie is not at all interested or indeed surprised that plastic life forms have come to life. Used to happen all the time when she was a child – plastic robots, alien sex ambassadors, an invasion of cartoon dinosaurs, you name it.
Rose shakes her head, puts it down to the wild drugs Jackie took in her youth and has a long shower scene. At this point Mickey starts banging on the bathroom door, showing concern for his girlfriend and insisting that she join him in bed for a sensual massage and possibly more, before finally giving up and going to ram-raid the off license.
The next morning, Rose awakes at 7:30 once again, but doesn’t need to rush off to work as half of Cardiff has been eliminated by plastic dummies. 'PROPER RIGMAROLE' scream the newspaper headlines.
Jackie tells Rose that she hasn't got a chance of selling her story to the papers. Attacked by living plastic is nothing worth printing. If she was having an affair with Andrew Marr, however...
Rose hears a rattling at the cat flap and is not surprised to find her wacky neighbor John Smith trying break into her flat. Smith explains he was just popping around to check that Rose and Jackie survived the apocalypse the night before and only loot the flat if they were confirmed dead. Or simply out to lunch.
Rose lets Smith enter and explains what happened to her last night. Smith says it's all happened before and has even got a copy of the X-rated docu-drama film Made In Singapore, based loosely on the events of the plastic-dummy-rampages of the 1970s to watch with them.
Jackie makes a not very subtle pass at Smith, and is irritated when he shows absolutely no interest in her. He has not aged a day in the 20 years he has been living in the housing estate, but Jackie has – frankly, he fancies her daughter more nowadays.
Rose admits she was attacked last night by a man identical to Smith, but he laughingly suggests it is just his evil twin and suddenly demands she make him a cup of coffee. As Rose does so, Smith looks around for a suitable murder weapon...
After rejecting a teen magazine, a copy of The Lovely Bones, and a mirror, Smith finds the mannequin arm and tries to use it to kill Rose, but in a laughable series of coincidences, just misses her.
Jackie wanders in and unintentionally melts the arm with her hairdryer, and neither she nor her daughter have any inkling of the events he has just witnessed.
Suddenly, Smith screams, picks up a knife out of the kitchen drawer and hurls it at Rose's head, but she miraculously manages to catch it. Whether this proves she is a potential Vampire Slayer or not is beside the point, for Smith flings his arms up in the air in fury.
"Right!" he screams. "That does it! I give up!"
"What do you mean, John?" asks Jackie, confused.
"I have spent the last twenty years planning my revenge on your airhead of a daughter. I went back in time, moved in next door and spent the best part of two decades cultivating a loveable-yet-eccentric persona so I could creep in here today, after my first, unsuccessful attempt to kill Rose, and I still can't manage it! I don't have to put up with this subtle ruse crap! I'm off!"
Smith strides out, screaming he is now going under the pro-wrestling tag of "the Doctor" and brags that he can escape Cardiff's imminent destruction when the living plastic hatches its plan to destroy the entire human race.
"What?" Rose gasps. "You mean, they're gonna attack again?"
"Yeah, probably. They have this really clever, long-winded plan to send out a thought signal to control all the plastic in Wales that's going on right under your nose. Last night... Well, they were just stir-crazy. I know how they feel."
The Doctor returns to his flat where a punk has spray-painted the words 'DONKEY MOLESTER' on the side of his antique blue box. The Doctor is furious and forces the boy to clean it off with his tongue.
Rose asks him just what the fuck he intends to do about the living plastic invasion and the Doctor announces that he can feel the world turning beneath their feet and rushing through space, and he knows just how fragile it all is.
So, when the Nestene Consciousness animate every single plastic thing on the planet Earth and wipe the sub-sentient human filth from the face of the galaxy, he is gonna get wasted on cheap Andromedan cocaine and make a Michael-Moore-style documentary on the carnage.
Rose walks out, shaking her head and the Doctor ducks inside the police box, which promptly fades away. The remaining graffiti slides off onto the floor – and the police box returns for the Doctor to announce to the boy that he made him lick most of it off on principle.
He then vanishes again.
Rose goes back to her ordinary life and convinces herself that the armies of death and destruction were just rag week students. She then drops round Mickey's place and tells him about the party they are having tonight.
Mickey locks her in his bedroom to use his staggeringly-vast collection of internet porn in the hope this will 'loosen her up' but Rose instead idly logs onto wierdoes.net.uk. and discovers several adult websites devoted to the mysterious blue box and with deliberately blurred photographs purporting to show the Doctor caught in compromising shots with various historical figures.
Mickey is delighted to learn that Rose has met a webmaster called Clive who wants her to come to his house with the plastic items in question and eagerly drives over there, running over several survivors in the process.
Unfortunately for Mickey, Clive is not a dangerous online lunatic but a friendly enough family man and part-time loan shark with a wife and young son who tolerate his bizarre hobby and thank the lord every day he doesn't like Star Trek.
Rose and Clive go to his back shed which, while at first glance seems to be nothing more than a hardcopy version of Mickey's porn collection, clearly means more than that. There are photos of ten different men all calling themselves the Doctor trying to seduce Felicity Kendell; recordings of a man in a long scarf visiting Soho strip clubs with the Loch Ness monster; a short man with a question-mark umbrella doing naughty things in a talkback radio show; and some nutter dressed like Ronald McDonald stalking a decrepit history tutor.
However, there is also photos of J. Edgar Hoover at a transvestite orgy, along with someone the spitting image of 'John Smith'! There is also a shot of him ruining a take of the nude scenes in Titanic – and a whole series of Manga novels shows him destroying Tokyo.
Furious at the fact his girlfriend still isn't up for sex, Mickey sits in his beetle outside Clive's house thinking dirty thoughts. Suddenly, the wheelie bin beside his car starts to flex and warp in a distinctly erotic manner.
By now up for anything, Mickey rushes to try an examine this unexpectedly elastic wheelie bin, only for a vital part of his anatomy to get caught inside it, followed shortly by the rest of him.
Inside the shed, Clive reveals he is certain that the Doctor is some kind of fictional character in a long-running television due for revival and that the entire universe is just a complicated excuse to get the Doctor back on the air.
Rose calls Clive 'fucking deranged' to his face and walks out back to Mickey in the car and asks him what food he'd like at their engagement party. Mickey stutters that he wants pizza and then drives off recklessly, running more people over.
Rose has not noticed that her boyfriend has been replaced by a Ninja Turtle action figure.
While she is not sleeping with the enemy (or indeed the guy she assumes the enemy to be), it's definitely cliffhanger time...
Parte The Second
The police box reappears in the quadrangle of the block of flats and the Doctor emerges, having abandoned his search for former companion Smelly Ed after five minutes. He spots the party happening in Rose and Jackie's unit and goes to gatecrash it.
Inside, the party is underway and the guests include most of the cast – Molly, Lovecraft, Suz, Clive, Clive's dog, Harold and Daisy. If Rose notices the fact that most of them were wiped out in the first episode, she doesn't comment upon it.
Mickey-Ninja Turtle is the life of the party and entertaining the others with stories about murdering 'bone heads' and conquering planets with flourishing plastic industries.
Rose simply thinks that 'Mickey' is growing up and is no longer dominated by his hormones. But the fact that he seems more interested in discussing the Doctor, where Rose met him, and what he's really up to suggest to Rose that her boyfriend might, in fact, be gay.
The Doctor turns up with a bottle of champagne and insists that the whole 'murder Rose and defeat Nestle Consciousness' stuff has been left at the door, and begins to dance the funky gibbon as Motorhead plays The Ace of Spades.
His wild dancing accidentally leads to firing a champagne cork directly into 'Mickey's' forehead - revealing that 'Mickey' is in fact a plastic lust replica! Just not a very good one!
Rose and Jackie realize that they have unwittingly allowed a Ninja Turtle possessed by alien energy into their party without getting him to throw in money for an extra keg. Muchos screaming.
The Doctor, an old hand at Ninja Turtle action figures, rips his head off. The faux Mickey instead starts going round in a headless killing spree, which most of the guests try to downplay, suggesting that Mickey is just a violent alcoholic who has 'lost his head'.
Refusing an interview with Clive (and threatening to kill him if the website is still online next week) the Doctor decides now is the time to run for his life.
The Doctor tries to leave the party but Rose stops him on her balcony to ask where he's going. He explains he is going to run for his life and invites her wants to come too.
They rush back to the police box to find someone has graffiti'd 'OVER-SENSITIVE PRICK' on the side. However, the headless Ninja Turtle, Molly, Lovecraft, Harold and Daisy are already advancing mercilessly on them. The Doctor vows to get that vandal at a later date (or perhaps, an earlier one) and, waving his all-purpose humming tube at the plastic lust replicas, dives into the blue box.
Rose runs inside to tell the Doctor not to be stupid and hide in a tacky BBC prop, and discovers a ramshackle bronze interior – walls covered in VW headlights, huge support struts made out of potato, a huge pile of unread Playbeing magazines and the Doctor operating glowing central console built entirely out of lego and coral.
The Doctor sits down on his chaise lounge and announces that he's been pissing about too much and the time has come for him to head for the source of the Nestle energy control signal. Luckily, he has the location in his electronic address book and sets his badly-designed ship hurtling through time and space and Cardiff to the source.
He then hands Rose another electronic book entitled 'How To Be A Good Companion' – with the words 'STOP SCREAMING' inscribed on the cover in large, friendly letters. Rose discovers that the Doctor is an immortal alien from another planet and the machine she is in is called the TARDIS (short for Time And Relative Dimension In Space and not, repeat not DIMENSIONS!).
The TARDIS re-materializes in the deserted warehouse district beside a large complex marked LeNest Industries. The Doctor and Rose emerge and the alien admits that yes, the replicas will probably have killed her mother and everyone she knows. As an orphan, he is prepared to take her under his wing and explore the universe with her.
Rose reminds him that they are there to stop the Nestle invasion and the Doctor insists that he knows that, he's just trying to make sure he doesn't get distracted by the big bust... picture. Sorry. Picture. Big picture.
Embarrassed, he and Rose suddenly decide to play 'Tag' and before you can say 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' they are standing inside the main warehouse.
The Doctor explains that the alien Nestle Consciousness is a kind of glowing mass of liquid confectionery – something exactly like the vat full of caramel behind him, in fact, although it takes Rose several tries to point out to the Doctor, who is remarkably thick today.
The Doctor gets a step-ladder and Doctor requests permission to parlay with the gigantic vat of seething, glowing fudge. As per Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamations, he must pretend to be a tea-pot and sing The Birdy Song.
The Doctor addresses the Nestle on behalf of humanity and demands to know just what is the alien's problem. It has tried to conquer the Earth on no less than ten separate occasions and the Doctor has defeated them all!
The initial Lust Replica invasion in 1970s, the follow-up tour with the Bastard and Willy Wonka, the abortive Singapore vacation, the three weeks he wasn't saving UNIT's sorry ass from their own incompetence, that time he met Melanie Bush, the occasion where the Nestle Consciousness became stunt doubles on Dynasty in order to make ends meet, the time they nicked a Stingray plot and used air duct insulation to drive humanity insane, or their most recent and definitely most pathetic attempt: "Operation – Invasion of the Traffic Cones".
"Why don't you arseholes just take a hint?!" the Doctor demands.
In a strange series of interpretive dance moves, the Nestle reveals that when it had its collective arse soundly kicked in a massive war, it found a working time-space machine in 2089 and they have been simply re-writing history around their first invasion attempt in order to win the day at last. Earth's atmosphere is rich in the chocolate and plastic it needs to survive.
The Doctor is suddenly taken roughly from behind by two shop dummies and one of the mannequins finds the alien's driving license. This is the Doctor, their oldest and deadliest enemy after Paddy Kingsland. The Nestle begins to scream and gibber and send out crackling sparks of energy in all directions.
When Rose asks what's happening, the Doctor replies that he thinks negotiations are going quite well.
Jackie then rings Rose on her mobile and says that, as it is a Saturday, there is quite likely to be a plastic revolution in the Queens Arcade shopping centre – it's just the sort of thing that happens in Cardiff on a weekend.
As her mother begins to bitch that the last time this happened the TV stations were blown up right in the middle of The Goodies, Rose rolls her eyes and hangs up.
The Doctor admits that the invasion has begun and Earth is completely screwed – every plastic and/or chocolate thing is now turning hostile and murdering any non-plastic and/or chocolate thing.
Suddenly, the Nestle Consciousness shrieks in agony and the activation signal cuts off. Cracks appear in the surface of the confectionery blob as it is revealed that someone is EATING the alien invader!
It is Mickey!
As chocolate is the only possible substitute for sex, Mickey has been eating every last piece he can get – the aliens are really regretting keeping him alive so they've got someone to play Monopoly with.
Mickey consumes the Nestle and the ceiling of the warehouse inexplicably begins to collapse. The Doctor grabs Rose and bolts for the TARDIS before the lair explodes completely.
Meanwhile, Jackie is completely unaware that the party guests have killed Clive and are about to murder her. So engrossed is she in Single White Female Attorney, Jackie doesn't notice her would-be assailants have collapsed and melted into puddles of plastic.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor assures Rose that, if he can eat an alien invader, Mickey should be able to survive an exploding warehouse. He and Rose emerge from the police box and discover to the Doctor's indescribable annoyance, that Mickey has survived!
Composing himself, the Doctor smugly admits that this whole scenario has been engineered by himself – getting run over, the revenge plot, the party – just so Mickey would be in the right place and the right time to eat the Nestle Consciousness. It was all a ruse!
Rose gets him to admit he's talking crap.
The Doctor waspishly announces that he must be on his way, but before he goes, he offers Rose the opportunity to travel with him and see the Universe. She tells him to piss off and get a life.
Disappointed, the Doctor closes the door of the TARDIS, and Mickey and Rose watch happily as it dematerializes before their eyes.
Mickey turns to Rose and begs her not to waste her life, but embrace the now – more specifically, embrace him now and do the squelchy.
Suddenly, the TARDIS reappears and the Doctor, soaked to the skin and wearing a life saver marked SS TITANIC, emerges and spits out a fish. "Stupid iceberg!" he grunts and idly asks if Rose is sick of her ordinary, unfulfilling life yet?
Mickey tells the Doctor to get lost and he leaves in the TARDIS. Rose admits she will but learnt a nasty lesson from her parents and refuses to shag him until they are married.
Mickey is up for that, and has been ever since his mate, Psycho Verkoff, convinced him Jackie was making moves on him.
This tender moment is broken when the TARDIS materializes again and the Doctor pops his head back out and asks Rose if dry-cleaning can get rid of JFK's brains, which have soiled his jacket.
"Look, sod off will you?" Rose snaps and the Doctor leaves again, almost to instantly appear with a small legion of Manga artists, who he kicks out of the time machine,
Mickey asks the Doctor if the time traveler has ever become ordained as a priest in his wacky adventures. The Doctor admits this is true, but it was Charley who shagged choirboys, not him.
Delighted, Rose rushes to him and asks him to marry her.
"Sure," the Doctor says and drags Rose inside the TARDIS, which vanishes again and this time does not return.
"Damn it, Doctor!" Mickey roars. "She meant, 'Would you marry her... to ME!!'" He turns and glares directly into camera.
"Just who was that time-traveling son of a bitch?"
Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who Supposes His Roses Does Dozes, But Doctor Who Supposes Erroneously
The Lonesome Gunmen And Other Shitty Conspiracy Theorists
H.P. Lovecraft's Guide to Harrods
Fluffs - Christopher Eccleston seemed slightly confused in this story.
"My dear Jackie, this is not the time for seriousness! This is very levity!"
"I never make stupid mistakes - and clever ones, either. I should say so, yes. Hmm."
Fashion Triumphs –
The completely anatomically-correct lust replicas. Is it suitable for family viewing? Is it fuck!!
Goofs –
Mickey. More to the point, in the original broadcast version, a Happy Days episode can be heard, meaning Mickey gets Fonzie-style applause whenever he appears.
The store where Rose works, Plastic Fantastic, is spelt [INSERT STORE'S NAME HERE] on the BBC News Report on adult fetish proprietors. Also, the massive explosion that destroys Plastic Fantastic clearly doesn't harm the building in any way, shape or form.
Why does the Doctor let Rose escape with the plastic arm to Rose when he should be aware of the danger it poses? Surely he wants to kill the bimbo himself?
Rose's mum tapes over the repeat of Single White Female Attorney with the original airing. Not sure how that works exactly.
When the Doctor shakes the champagne bottle and pulls the cork, we discover the bottle was empty. {Either the Doctor is a serious piss-head, or he has taken up filling bottles with helium for his own perverted purposes.}
A little while later, Rose smashes a beer bottle and playfully tries to stab her boss, the glass is still intact.
The TARDIS goes from having one pair of furry dice to two. Furthermore, the elastic snaps when Rose enters the TARDIS.
When the mannequins are attacking Jackie, we see a shot three Brazilian tapirs, cut back to Rose's mum, and then a shot of Happy Days for no real reason whatsoever.
There are a number of scenes where the Doctor seems to shift his mood a bit too quickly to be plausible, but this could be intentional.
Why are the Nestles afraid of the sonic screwdriver? What did the Doctor do to them to make them so scared or it? And do we really want to know?
Technobbable - "What you got there, Doctor?"
"Anti-CGI."
"Anti-CGI?"
"Anti-CGI, my old hedge-bath-lemon-juggler-seamstress-milkman!"
Dialogue Disasters -
Rose: So you're an alien?
Doctor: Yes
Rose: But you sound like you're from the North!
Doctor: And you sound like you're from Telephone Sex Gardening Division! Other planets have a North, you know. Trouble is, I come from SOUTH Gallifrey... Anyway, this is all your fault, you slag. I had a decent Liverpool lilt before you ran over me!
(The plastic hand has melted)
Doctor: Damn. It's armless now.
Rose: How armless?
Doctor: Mostly armless.
Doctor: If I might observe, you infiltrated this civilization by means of warp shift technology, so may I suggest with the greatest respect that you just FUCK OFF?!
Doctor: So, Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton simply couldn't apply that much baby oil on each other, so they turned to yours truly for help. Do you believe me?
Rose: No.
Doctor: But you're still listening.
Jackie: You are right. You are Northern.
Doctor: Fan-TAS-tic!!!
Doctor: Look, if I did forget trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering about on top of this planet, it's because I'm busy trying to get my leg over here!
Mickey: He's an alien! A thing! But, more to the point, exactly why won't you sleep with me, Rose?
Clive's last words –
"Hmmm. Plastic coming to life. Window dummies on the rampage. Lust replicas replacing people... It must be the Cybermen!"
Dialogue Triumphs -
Jackie: She's lucky to be alive. Honestly, it's aged her - skin like an old bible. Walking in now you'd think I was her daughter.
Doctor: No, I wouldn't.
Clive: The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history like a blind refugee tailor. When erotica comes, he's there. He brings a storm in his wake. And his one constant companion... Question marks. Thousands of them. QUESTION MARKS!!!
Doctor: What you doing here?
Rose: I work here.
Doctor: What do you do that for?
Rose: Money.
Doctor: OK, fair enough.
The Doctor on the wedding betwixt Charles and Camilla –
"That won't last. He's gay and she's an alien."
The Nestle's triumphant war cry can be mistaken by moronic philistines as a wheelie bin burping.
Doctor: Think of it - plastic - all over the world - every artificial thing waiting to come alive - the shop window dummies, the phones, the wires, the cables, the breast implants...
Rose: The what?
Doctor: Damn it, you really are clueless, aren't you?
Rose: Is it always this perverse?
Doctor: [cheerfully] Yeah.
Rose: Really though, Doctor, who are you?
Doctor: Well, Rose, let me just say this...
Just remember that you're standing
On a planet that's evolving
And revolving
At nine hundred miles an hours
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second
So it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power!
The sun and you and me
And all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm
At forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way!
Rose: That's not answering my question, is it?
Doctor: What do you mean?
Rose: You just stole that crap from Monty Python.
Doctor: It may be crap, but it sounds good!
Rose: It's nonsense!
Doctor: Ah, but lyrical nonsense!
Clive: What happened to you, Doctor! You used to be cool and now you look like an extra in The Matrix!
Doctor: Piss off, you sad anorak!
Rose and the Doctor on the TARDIS –
"It's..."
"I know. The decor really gives that impression of space."
UnQuotable Quote –
Fake Mickey: Sweetheart. Babe. Darling. Sugar. Babe. Sugar. Nonspecific term of affection. You gonna finish that pizza? No? Cowabunga!!
Links and References -
This show is connected to a TV series also entitled Doctor Who, which ran from 1963 to 1989. I know. Weird, huh?
Untelevised Misadventures -
The Ninth Doctor's whistle tour of history includes watching JFK get shot from Deeley Plaza, attending the filming of Titanic and crashing the genuine article in 1912, and getting his own line of Manga comics.
"The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get though the TARDIS door and believe me, they've tried! OK, a couple of Mongol foot soldiers did sort of break in during that stopover in Kiev, but that was different. Dodo left the door open, the silly bitch."
K9 Conspiracy -
In a trend leading up to the series finale, each episode of the series contains references to K9.
In this episode, Clive wears a "K9's Bitches" T-shirt and the Nestle screams the words "K9!" upon seeing the TARDIS in the corner of the warehouse.
Subtext? WHAT Subtext? -
The Doctor complains to Rose about how the bulk of people on Earth simply live their lives eating, sleeping and working, not caring about anything outside of this simple, Darwinian daily round, or looking for anything different.
At the end of the story, the Doctor offers Rose a choice to come with him, in which the alternative is staying at home, finding a new job in a shop or hospital canteen, taking care of her unintelligent mother and ungrateful boyfriend, and, significantly, she very nearly accepts the second option rather than look for adventure.
The story is thus a wake-up call to people who aren't living up to their full potential, or who are not willing to have their preconceptions shaken up or to look beyond the obvious.
Especially blondes.
Groovy DVD Extras –
A completely new opening sequence to the series...
{To a rhythmic ticking, sub-atomic particles wheel and spin, interlocking with each other and continuing the dance...}
Doctor: (VO) Time. Space. Atoms. Molecules. John Travolta. The very stuff of the universe. Everything fits together so perfectly doesn't it? Like some huge machine beyond understanding. Your understanding, of course, not mine. I'm bloody brilliant, I am. You, on the other hand, could look at the workings of the
universe for a thousand years and not know anything about it but this: it's dead sexy.
{We pull out seeing the dance repeated with molecules which mesh and merge as they move...}
Doctor: (VO) You know what the odds are of a particular sun forming in a particular galaxy; and a particular ball of mud with all the right ingredients being caught in its gravity. Of the right amino acids meeting and settling down together in the subarbs of the primordial slime; of millions of years of evolution happening just so and of your parents finding each other out of six billion people on their planet. Are you jammy or what?
{We pull out further and the molecules begin to look like bubbles which then blend together into an image of cogs and gears moving slowly against one another.}
Doctor: (VO) Sexy. Life is sexy. You are sexy. Everyone of you. But not you, you ugly bastard, sit back down again!
{Now we pass by the gears and cogs and out of the face of an alarm clock. Which goes off. Loudly. Rose jerks awake, checks the clock and groans. Rose likes like an extra from a zombie movie. She tries to pull on a pair of jeans, but stumbles going tits over arse onto the floor.}
Rose: Shit.
Doctor: (VO) This is Rose Tyler. Maybe it's irrational of me, but she's quite my favorite desert topping...
Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I was aghast when I found out all the fans thought the wheelie bin burping was 'funny'! Well, buster, when was the last time you swallowed a human being whole and didn't feel a bit gassy afterwards?!"
Viewer Quotes -
"A slick opening episode mixing the best from the opening stories for the first and third Doctors. Eccleston and Piper make great cocktails, but the sudden jarring end as Rose vomits on the TARDIS isn't quite the best cliffhanger moment. The Auton invasion is fantastic until we learn they are only doing this out of 'polymer envy'. A reasonable start."
- Ewen Campion-Clarke's Unnervingly Accurate Predictions (2004)
"The fact that the Doctor was present at the Kennedy assassination made me want to kick my television in. Fictional time travelers have shown up on that fucking grassy knoll so often over the years, there's probably a waiting list for temporal tourists to get in! When will people realize that Kennedy shot himself?!"
- Frustrated Red Dwarf fan (2006)
"I can't believe it! That police box is far too squat to be the TARDIS! And it's a bit taller and thinner. The windows are too brightly lit! That's it! None of this stupid series is canon!"
- Denis Brent (2005)
"The tone of the story, like Eccleston's Doctor, lurches wildly. Like an inebriated stilt walker without falling completely on flat on its face. His arse, maybe, but never the face. In short? Compared to "An Unruly Child" it was utter CRAP!"
- Andrew Beeblebrox (2005)
"Ultimately, Ruse is a serviceable introduction to the family audiences, hopefully paving the way for deeper, more naughty stories later in the season. The real cause for optimism is Billie Piper – the only woman sexier than India Fisher. Who saw this coming, cause I sure as hell didn't! But I'm afraid that unless Rose bares her tits by episode 2 that the show is not going to make it! As for Rose's mother, well I can't even begin to describe her. There aren't enough negative adjectives in the world to successfully capture the sheer awfulness of her performance. She didn't even strip!!"
– Nigel Verkoff (2005)
"The kids are gonna totally flip over Eccleston. He's going to be an intergalactic pied piper inviting millions of child television viewers to join him on his voyage every week. And when he ditches them next year, there'll be a triple increase in suicide rates. Hahaha."
- Sadistic Sci-Fi Supplement (2004)
"Christopher Eccleston was certainly an odd choice for the role of Doctor Who. We asked his private brain care specialist, Gag Halfrunt, his opinion in the matter – 'Vell, Chris is just zis guy, you know?'"
- Dave Restal trying to be cool (2006)
"A companion so annoying you want to smash their head in with a beer bottle and is only capable of one really irritating facial expression? Check. Irritating and annoying music that drowns out the dialogue and just seems vaguely absurd? Check. A Doctor whose lines seem totally incomprehensible? Check. Reusing old monsters? Check. Incredibly dull action sequences where not much actually happens, but everyone rolls their eyes a lot? Check. A totally crap monster voiced by Nick Briggs? Check. Going out onto the streets and randomly kidnapping passing strangers to be minor characters instead of employing people who can actually act? Check. Not much actual story? Check. Yup, this is Doctor Who all right." – DIY Sheep (2005)
"What crap. Now, if I was writing the first episode, it'd be classy. The Doctor (a Peter Cushing lookalike) would saves Omigod from the space-time vortex, and Lavros makes an appearance as a extra during one of the Bastard's 'carnival' scenes and there would be lots of flashback to Head from Ace and Error of the Autons until the Time Lords appoint the Doctor as Savior of the Universe. Also, it turns out that Rose is 'Romana', but with a different spelling. Tell me THAT wouldn't work!"
- Gay Russell (2004)
"A new series of Doctor Who? It's a trap! Christopher Eccleston is not the Doctor – it's Kenneth Brannah, and there has to be at least two seasons featuring Paul McGann! None of this series is canon – it's written by a poofter, set in Wales and features a companion with an IQ higher than a grape! This is nothing but a mass hallucination! And that's correct! WE'RE correct! AGAIN!"
- eyeofsauros.com.uk (2005)
Paul McGann Speaks!
"I think it's high time that Doctor Who be a woman – and that's not just because I didn't want the job myself. There is nothing in the stories to say that the Doctor can't be female, and anyone who says otherwise is a communist sympathizer. For far too long the Doctor has been played as a very heavy, melancholic man with Victorian gravitas and a tendency towards pedophilia. The Ninth Doctor shouldn't be just the usual white male, but a highly intelligent and gorgeous Amazon – Diana Rigg, Rachel Stirling, Maggie Smith, James Nesbitt ANYONE! EXCEPT FUCKING ME!!!!"
Billie Piper Speaks!
"No comment. Now get out of my garbage bin."
Christopher Eccleston Speaks!
"I'm very excited – it's one of the proudest moments of my career. I'm a fan of the series and the author. The character is unlike anything I've ever done. I'm fascinated by his origins and I want to honor his beginnings and bring something new. I'm gonna give The Prisoner some real groove and forget all about Doctor bloody Who."
Russell T Davies Speaks!
"I missed the first episode screening. Ant and Dec was on."
Trivia –
By cutting a scene where the Doctor uses a £10,000 note to light his cigar, RTD was able to save £10,000 and not harm the plot one iota.
Rumors & Facts -
Doctor Who was re-commissioned by the BBC at the behest of BBC1 Controller Lorraine Heggessy. Heggessy, a power-crazed ruthless bitch, had seized control of the corporation in a bloody coup and now planned to replace her sacrificed mercenaries with a fresh army of sci-fi fans – and all was needed was to make a new series of Doctor Who.
This plan for world domination was delayed by two years as a Doctor Who movie had been on the cards with BBC Films, who wanted their own private army of scarf-wearing fanatics.
Chosen at random to be executive producer of the new series of Russell 'Terror of the Bygones' Davies, who had been forced to create new and diverse TV series since fandom disowned him for his 1996 New Adventure Domaged Goods was been panned for being nothing more than excuse to set a story with a Tyler family in a housing estate, trick Chris Cwej into experimenting with bisexuality and the terrible menace of the 'Moxx B'.
Since then RTD had created Queer as Fans (an autobiographical account of RTD's experience with fandom), Bob and Rose (about a gay time traveler who seduces a woman called Rose Tyler), Mine All Mine (about a fan writer who gets to control his favorite TV series) and The Second Coming (where Christopher Eccleston appeared as a godlike figure with worldwide followers who announced his departure from life one week after his first television appearance).
The series was commissioned as eight 45-minute episodes to be produced by John Satan-Turner, but RTD managed to haggle upwards to thirteen produced by Phil Collinson. Then, in a fit of pique, inserted cliffhangers half way through each episode, making every story a two parter. In another bid to gain control of fandom, Heggessy agreed to show the story on Saturday evenings.
RTD ordered a media black out on plot details, mainly because his ideas were regularly being denounced as shite. His opening story for the season, Planet of the Garms introducing the Ninth Doctor (who wore a bee-keepers outfit and was accompanied by a talking cat) was met with a less than enthusiastic receptions by fellow executive producers Mal Young, BBC Controller of Continuing Drama Series, and Julie Gardner, Head of Drama and Sheep for BBC Wales.
RTD, in a flash of originality, scrapped the talking cat idea and replaced it with a blonde teenager answering to the name of Rose Tyler. He also decided to scrap the angle of the Doctor being marooned in contemporary Cardiff and decided to ignore the fact the entire series was set there and hope no one else would notice. An explanation for why the Doctor can't seen to escape Wales is found in the Big Finish story 'Cardiff' starring the Eighth Doctor as played by Paul McGann.
The series was taking shape, with the pink-shirt and chiffon-scarf wearing Doctor and Rose Tyler facing off the Dustbins and their evil overload, a being known only as the Moxx of Baloon. Unfortunately, rights to Dustbins fell through and Sir Derek Jacobi wasn't going to fall for the casting trick again.
By now, the series was focussed on the Ninth Doctor (wearing a 1940s suit and a long coat) teaming up with Rose Tyler, World War 2 fighter pilot who once traveled with the Richard E Grant Doctor in Bessie, which could now travel through time and space. The first story, directed by Graham Harper, would revolve around the Dustbins being killed off by a race of invisible spider beings called the Ak-Ountants that run at the speed of sound. The second involved the Moxx of Baloon, an evil scarecrow eating the flesh of babies; the third was a musical set during the eruption of Pompeii; and the fourth was a Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy parody written around the lyrics of a Carpenters song featuring a giant mutant star goat.
It was decided at this point that getting RTD to pen the entire season was not so much a bad idea but preferable to a night of passion with Hannibal Lector.
Thus, Paul Abbot, Charlie Higson, J.K. Rowling and a bunch of sad Doctor Who fans were rounded up by Mal Young with electric cattle prods, but all bar the Who fans managed to escape. Helen Raynor and Elwen Rowlands were brought in under armed guard and ordered to become script editors or die trying.
Luckily, after much soul searching, hostage situations and throwing of darts into resumes, RTD decided to cast Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor. When one of the tabloids claimed they had managed to predict this, RTD took offence and, despite the protestations of the production team decided to suit the entire TV series to suit said rag's predictions.
This lead to the casting of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler and a story about Joan of Arc starring Audrey Tautou and Alfred Molina. The latter story was ultimately abandoned when the scripts and contracts were commandeered by the special effects team.
Fans of India Fisher lead by the Godhead Nigel Verkoff, fought valiantly for her inclusion in the TV show as Charley Pollard, Rose Tyler, or 'heck bloody anyone'... at least until nude photos of Billie became available on the net.
As Michael Grade stole the seat of BBC Chairman in a desperate attempt to stop Lorraine Heggessy's plan to take over the planet Earth, RTD sorted through a heap of prospective logos and found one that did not scream the 1960s, Alien, Open University, light entertainment or Angel.
It was the Farscape logo. After changing the letters F A R S C A P E to D O C T O R * W H O, RTD took the afternoon off and said that he couldn't be arsed thinking about costume designs and told Eccleston and Piper to wear their casual clothes to work.
A similar method created the theme music for the series. Instead of a conventional title sequence to herald the introduction, it was decided that every episode would begin with Rose attending a Slipknot concert when the band begin firing machine guns into the crowd. Rose runs out in terror as the band play the theme music.
Luckily, such a title sequence was already on the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/slipknotmassacre/index.shtml and used on desktops throughout 2001.
After finding a TARDIS prop at the BBC canteen, recording began on the first story of the new series, The Plastic Fantastic Menace. By cut and pasting whole wadges of script from An Unruly Child, Head from Ace and the 1996 telemovie – not to mention the contents of his out tray, RTD was able to script the first episode in under three hours.
However, the script itself went through a number of stages. The first draft had the Eighth Doctor making a bit of a scene when he is caught breaking into the Police Recruitment Week display police box believing it to be the TARDIS – especially as he was hoping to escape in there with the pile of clothes and candy he has just shoplifted.
He bumps into shop assistant Rose Tyler and gets invited to her party along with Clive the loan shark – who is killed in his first scene when his free LeNest mobile box brutally smothers him. This causes a great amount of tasteless jokes at Rose's party, mainly made by the Doctor and Mickey before the former announces that this is a Nestle invasion and head back to loot department stores as window dummies go on the rampage. Rose follows out of a mixture of curiosity, concern and narrative convenience.
The denouement is the Doctor ripping off an Auton's arm and mentally head-butting the Nestle Consciousness by bombarding it with nudie pictures. The day is saved and the Doctor fakes spraining his ankle in order to lure Rose into the TARDIS and kidnap her.
When it became apparent Paul McGann would not be returning for the TV series, the script had to be reformatted for a new Doctor.
The script now began with the Doctor (who we do not see clearly) stealing his new leather bondage outfit from the back of Plastic Fantastic while Rose deals with the abuse of violent junkie Mickey and her sad alcoholic mother, who turned to drink ever since her late husband allowed some passing nutter to use their garage to park a police box.
As Mickey takes a hit of coke and watches a purple meteor storm, the Doctor returns to Jackie's place to reclaim the TARDIS. Rose and Jackie have been called to the hospital (Mickey has had an overdose). The Doctor enters the TARDIS and discovers that he will have to change to unleaded petrol as Gallifrey has been destroyed. Meanwhile, the Nestle Consciousness turns Mickey into an Auton using the Nestle cocaine he has been snorting and sets the window dummies on a murderous rampage, kill absolutely everyone and rule the galaxy.
This plot was abandoned as being 'a bit of a bummer' and the final draft was used by tearing up pages of the previous two drafts plus a pile of BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures and transcribing the heap that remained on the floor.
Other ideas abandoned was a lengthy sequence where the Doctor leaves a series of suggestive answerphone messages for Rose to distract her while a later version of him tries to bludgeon her to death, a sequence where Mickey is kidnapped by the binmen from Common As Muck, and the sight of Autons breaking into a chocolate shop. The biggest edit was the revelation that Mickey was in fact the Supreme Nestle, masquerading as a human for his own evil ends. This was dropped as it would inflate Noel Clarke's ego beyond all control.
In fact, more time was spent discussing the name of the episode than recording it – should the story stay The Plastic Fantastic Menance or perhaps the punchier Auton-omy For The People? The fancy The Polymers of Doom or simply Hard Plastic?
For a while, despite the risk of incurring even more wrath from the annoyed fan base, RTD decided to leave every single story untitled. Not only would this give him a longer lunch it would also save costs on title captions.
When it became clear that RTD and only RTD actually knew which story was for each episode, RTD renamed the first story "The Amazing New Adventures of Doctor Who: the Last of the Time Lords from The Journeys of Rose Tyler Being a Fantastical Tale of a Young Earth Wanderer and Interplanetary Explorer within The Environs of A Gentleman's TARDIS Part One: Act One - The Young Miss Tyler is Caught Up in an Exciting Adventure with Marauding Mannequins in a Boutique" and the second "The Amazing New Adventures of Doctor Who: the Last of the Time Lords from The Journeys of Rose Tyler Being a Fantastical Tale of a Young Earth Wanderer and Interplanetary Explorer within The Environs of A Gentleman's TARDIS Part Two: Act One - The Young Miss Tyler Suffers A Case of Mistaken Identity at a Five-Star Space Restaurant."
RTD claimed that he knew that these titles were far too long and convoluted and that the whole debate had just been a ruse to gain attention. This, the episode was titled Ruse with bitter laughter.
Serious promotional efforts on the part of the BBC began in earnest when the production office realized that the first teaser trailer had been lost on the BBC's Doctor Who website a month earlier, found it and released it.
(Space. The Moon. Slow pan to see the Earth. Caption appears, letter by letter:
"IT'S ALMOST TIME..."
Camera suddenly crash zooms through the clouds, plunging towards Wales
THE DOCTOR (V.O.): I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?
ROSE (V.O.): Rose.
THE DOCTOR (V.O.): Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!
ROSE (V.O.): What are you doing with that chainsaw?!
She screams. Theme tune (Pertwee) crashes in, followed by the logo
A darkly-lit street. The TARDIS stands under a street light, wreathed in fog. As we watch, the TARDIS dematerializes. Caption appears, letter by letter:
"...BUT NOT YET. HAHA! SUCKERS!")
Additional teasers followed:
(Shots of the Doctor escaping a horde of rampaging fans ala "A Hard Day's Night" by diving into the ladies toilet. Elsewhere, the Doctor is slowly stripping in the TARDIS.)
DOCTOR: D'you wanna sleep with me? Cause if you do, then I should warn you. You're gonna see all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past. Aliens from the future. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame. It won't be quiet. It won't be safe. And it won't be calm. But I'll tell you what it will be. The trip of a lifetime!
(We Rose is sitting in the bed before the Doctor, unimpressed.)
ROSE: Whatever. Shall I go on top?
(We see various euphemistic images as Time Lord screws Earth girl – the camera zooming on Wales, close ups of St. Paul's cathedral, a rocket taking off, a horse-drawn carriage going into a tunnel, a missile being fired, a chained-up Dustbin, the Hiroshima blast)
(The Doctor lies asleep in the bed. Rose is reading a book.)
ROSE: "Trip of a lifetime" my arse.
...and...
(The Doctor and Rose stand outside the TARDIS.)
ROSE: I've got a choice. Stay at home with my mum... my boyfriend... my job. Or chuck it all in for danger... and monsters... and life or death. What d'you think?
DOCTOR: (thoughtful) Hmmm. Tricky.
(He suddenly chloroforms Rose unconscious and drags her inside the TARDIS. His insane laughter can be heard as it fades away.)
The level of trust, respect and admiration given to RTD was most potently demonstrated on March 4th when, hours after RTD had written in his DWM column that fans were not, repeat not to download previews off the series and spoil the magic, a mysterious figure leaked a copy of Ruse onto the internet, three weeks before its official premiere.
This figure was ultimately revealed as Stephen Moffat on the piss and the result was an unprecedented storm of press and public attention paid to Doctor Who. This was not good, though. Bob Perkins' review of the internet preview in "Half-cocked Reviews Weekly" -
"'Ruse' is excrement. It feels nothing, nothing like Buffy the Vampire the Slayer, more like a cheap sitcom. The main fault is in the script, which is only about introducing the Doctor and Rose. OK, it does that fantastically, but why aren't the troubles of Northern Ireland mentioned? Hmm? Answer me that!
The episode deals with an tub of chocolate that can control anything in the world that is made of plastic. The Doctor - now looking about 30, with a leather jacket and an amphetamine habit – fights break-dancing shop mannequins attack, moving slower than a grannie in a zimmer frame.
The show is shot on video tape. Yes, video tape. If the BBC felt rebuffed that SciFi in the US passed on the show, maybe they should have spent a bit more money making it look like something that was actually produced by professionals. I'm surprised The Mill even took the job of providing the visual effects let along allow their name to appear in the credits!
Busty streetwise teenage sidekick, maverick leather-wearing Doctor, fast cutting and nonsensical dialog and plot. This steaming turd has "focus group" written all over it. It's only aim is to make the kids sexual deviants!
From the cheap opening credit sequence to the hammy and frequently inaudible dialog it feels like a fan-produced parody of the original series, and not worth downloaded off the net for. Cheap production values and muddled, silly plotting give it the feel of a Saturday evening sci-fi kids show.
What do you mean, I've missed the point?
Oh, and just one quick note to the producers: shoot it on FILM you cheap fuckers. Jesus Christ, your show looks like an episode of the god-damned East Enders!"
In order to try and steal some of the comeback vibe for the Christian church, Ruse broadcast on March 26th which prompted Jim Callahan to commit suicide. The end result was ten million viewers tuning in to see a buxom blonde working in a bondage store, thrashing the competition of Ant and Dec discussing economic theory with Tony Blair.
Doctor Who had the highest average audience since 1979's The Creature of Pittsburgh's scenes of alien fellatio changed the television landscape forever. The audience appreciation figure of 76% was the best in the program's history – though whether this is down to the close-up shower scenes with Billie Piper or not is pure conjecture.
In one final bid to secure control of geekdom itself, Lorraine Heggessy managed to order BBC Head of Drama Jane Tranter commissioned a 60-minute Christmas special and a new 13-part season before she was captured by the men in white coats and driven off in their little yellow van.
Doctor Who's extended and sometimes enjoyable hiatus from television screens had ended not with a whimper, but with a very, very loud bang and lots of post-coital cigarettes.
---------
Next Time...
---------
"This is the year 5 billion. And this is the day - hold on... THIS is the day the Sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world – and the ultimate gastronomic experience!"
"Who the hell are you?"
"Yes I am. The Doctor plus one Rose Tyler. Bring me some Old Janx Spirit please - I want it right here, right now, and in a pint glass. And put some of those dinky little umbrellas in it."
"Representing the Secret Gardens of Cheech And Chong we have... walking humanoid marijuana plants! The Moxx of Baloon! The Face of Bond! The Last Human - Miss Joan Collins!"
"Don't I look gorgeous?"
"Not particularly, no."
"Shut it, pixie!"
"Dear God, what *have* they been putting in the food?"
---------
...The Restaurant At The End of The World...
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BONUS! DOCTOR WHO AUDITIONS!
RTD was not so completely deranged when he cast Christopher "This Is Me Swanning Off!" Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. A dozen other artistes were considered for the role and their audition tapes are transcribed here to show you the alternatives that made Chris Eccleston seem like such a sensible choice.
For the first story, it was initially planned that Paul McGann would continue his televised existence as the Eighth Doctor. It is unknown whether Paul McGann actually appeared for the recording, as all the McGann brothers are essential interchangeable. Nevertheless, the McGann Doctor's existence was cut short after creative difference between actor and producer, especially when he called Russell T Davies "You filthy despicable back-stabbing arse hole bastard!"
"Doctor Who – Pictures of Plastic Men" Episode 1:
(Blackness. Fade up on a shot of space. The Earth comes into view and we zoom down towards it, down to Wales, to Cardiff and finally to a block of flats. We continue straight through the wall in a neato effect and out of a washing machine.
We now see hot blonde Rose Tyler [Billie Piper] and her less hot mother, Jackie [Camille Coduri], in the kitchen of their apartment as they watch "Single White Female Attorney". When Jackie isn't looking, Rose turns and runs out.)
Rose: Christ, I hate that show.
(Cut to: Rose hurrying down a high street, holding a distinctive orange mobile phone in her hand. She is not the only person with one.)
Rose: Hey, Mickey. Look, I've got to go to work now. What am I wearing? Clothes? Why do you ask? What do you mean? What's "so hard", anyway? Aren't you the least bit curious how come I'm ringing you on a mobile when I don't have one? Well... I do. Honest! They're handing them out everywhere – you out to get off that computer and get out of the house. No, I will not go down on you if you do!
(Rose hangs up. She pauses, noticing a blue police box sitting next to Plastic Fantastic that wasn't there yesterday. She shrugs, smiles, and banishes the thought from her miniscule brain.
Rose enters Plastic Fantastic. A man wearing a leather mask and metal spiked codpieces steps from behind the desk. This is H. P. Lovecraft [Mark Gattiss], owner and main client of the store.)
Lovecraft: Damn it, Rose! You're thirty seconds late! Be glad that you're not in the sex industry – prostitutes have been shot for less!
Rose: (confused) What are prostitutes?
(Lovecraft sighs, very, VERY depressed)
Lovecraft: You even take the fun out of intellectual sadism, Rose Tyler. Now, be a good girl and clock on... stupid bimbo.
(Rose shrugs and does that. There she bumps into a masculine figure we never see clearly, but is wearing a strapless PVC dress. This is Suz [Mal Young], a butch transsexual.)
Rose: Hey, Suz.
Suz: Hey, Rose. Any sign of Molly, then?
Rose: Na. Two days, gone without a trace. Last time I let her off the safety harness. She's probably in an acid house party in Llanfairfachbiscuit by now...
Lovecraft: Oi! Open mouths are bad in this business! If you've got enough time to be talking than you can go down to the stockroom and pick up a box of till rolls or so help me I'll spank your bottom!
(Rose leaves without comment. Lovecraft lights a cigarette.)
Lovecraft: Oh, that SO worked for me.
(Down in the department store's basement Rose notices a person at the other end of the corridor doing something to a padlocked door.)
Rose: Ere! Who are you? What you doing down ere?
(The man turns around. It is the Eighth Doctor.)
Doctor: Trying to break into the back room of an adult bookshop, Rose. (grins inanely) It's the story of my life.
Rose: Hey, how d'you know my name?
Doctor: I saw your photo.
Rose: Where?
Doctor: When I was getting pissed at Molly's parents' place. Those poofy bastards couldn't hold their liquor in the sixties, and they can't now.
Rose: Are you a friend of the family?
Doctor: Sort of. More kind of like a stalker they can't lose. Anyway, Molly owes me twenty-three quid from 1987 so if she thinks I'm gonna let her vanish into thin air, she's got another thing coming!
Rose: But the police already searched the store when Molly disappeared. I was on shift at the time – me and that creepy bloke playing with his balls, we saw the whole thing!
Doctor: (ignores her) What's behind this door, anyway?
Rose: It's a storeroom – nothing in there but junk.
Doctor: Oh, pity. Charley'll have to go without those crotchless leather panties, then. Anything else?
Rose: Nah. Molly and Suz sometimes creep down here for a smoke when the weather's too bad to nip out the back, but they don't now cause the management stopped it.
Doctor: Hence the padlock, I assume.
Rose: Wow. You're clever.
Doctor: Anyone's clever compared to you. When did this happen?
Rose: A couple of days ago.
Doctor: And that would have been the day after Molly disappeared.
(The Doctor pulls the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and uses it with a flourish. The padlock undoes itself.)
Rose: How did you do that?
Doctor: (stares at her) Magic, Rose, magic.
Rose: Wow. Magic. (Brightly) The ones upstairs just buzz. I didn't know you could unlock doors with them!
(The Doctor coughs awkwardly and enters the storeroom. The lights are not fully on, but we can make out junk, boxes and a few ashtrays. Rose follows the Doctor into the room.)
Rose: Look, this is a waste of time.
Doctor: Rather like talking to you. Ah-ha!
(He bends forward and snatches up an orange mobile phone from where it was wedged between two boxes. It has a sticker on its back saying PROPERTY OF MOLLY – TOUCH AND DIE)
Rose: Ooh! That's Molly's phone.
Doctor: (sighs) Well done, Rose.
Rose: No wonder she threw it away. Last thing she said to me was that the phone wasn't working. She was going to get another one, you know?
Doctor: What? Just like that?
Rose: Yeah, they're handing them out all over the place...
(The Doctor takes the back off the phone and reacts in surprise.)
Doctor: Rose, does that look right to you?
Rose: How would I know?
Doctor: Good point, airhead.
(The Doctor fiddles about with the phone with the aid of his Sonic Screwdriver for a few seconds after which it starts to emit a high pitched sound.)
Rose: That's the problem she was having with it, though it wasn't that loud... I said...
(The Doctor is staring into the darkness on the far side of the room)
Rose: What is it?
Doctor: (To Himself) Well, THAT was quite amazingly stupid Doctor.
(A trio of Autons march out of the shadows towards our heroes...)
(Roll Credits)
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