I would just like to make the next announcement.
The next person I meet who gives a rant as to how shithouse series two is and how it's gone to the dogs, I will murder in cold blood.
Don't say you were warned.
Now, that wholy remarkable book, The Completely Useless Encyclopedia, notes that fandom is a curious beast and that every fan decides that the current output of the show is crap, not half as good as it was x years ago. Despite the fact they said the exact same thing x years ago, when the show was crap and not half as good as it was y years ago, before they were born or even watching. Now, the reissue of TCUE rips the shit out of series two on many occasions but this is forgivable as a) they did the exact same thing to every other era and b) the book was specifically about them ripping the shit out of new stuff.
However, the number of "official" intellectual fans who are banging on about how Doctor Who is doomed bugs me. Especially as they were all screaming that this was the best TV one year earlier. Mike Morris - MIKE MORRIS! My guru, the bloke who's tossed around ideas inspire me to create story arcs! The guy who was impressed by my analysis of Planet of Fire! Who, unless he's reviewed a story, I refuse to comment on! A guy whose opinion I respect - has given two rants about the second series and Christmas special, and as for Kaldor "Subtext, you moron, SUBTEXT" City...
I'd just like to sum up the general criticism.
1) The new stuff is crap.
See my comment on this being part of being a fan.
2) David Tennant isn't half as good as I was expecting.
Bollocks. He just isn't what you were expecting, which is entirely different. Everyone points to shows where he plays gritty serious characters and goes, "Ah! THAT'S how he should play it!" Steven Moffat famously decided Tennant had the right stuff when he played Carlisle in Blackpool... a character who, on paper, was just like the Ninth Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston. Is it any wonder he plays it differently, rather than aiming for redoing his Cassanova or Carlisle or Fergus the Looney?
The fact is, David Tennant's Doctor is frankly, better for the show. There. I said it. Put the gun down, bitch, I ain't finished. Chris Eccleston was ... let's just say it... fantastic. The Ninth Doctor was brilliant. He shoulda stayed longer. Etc. But the fact is the Ninth Doctor couldn't last. An untrustworthy, morally-bankrupt character who can barely stay sane WITH a beautiful blonde teenager isn't going to work in the long run, and this is supposed to be a children's HERO!
Imagine Eccleston in Attack of the Graske. It wouldn't work. You wouldn't risk stepping aboard the TARDIS with him at the helm! You saw what happened to the last two, both abandoned without a second thought and given lots of crap in the meantime! The Ninth Doctor could screw up, get you killed, give up... arguably, that makes him the more interesting character, but, remember this sport's fans. Doctor Who is for kids. The ideal role model is not and never will be a bloke who wanders round threatening people with big fucking guns EVEN if he was never going to use it. The show itself said this guy wasn't up to it. That's why Rose was there, to make him better, to get us back/forward to David Tennant. It was the story of how the Doctor found his groove.
The Tenth Doctor is called smug, irritating, etc. But remember, the fictional character of the Doctor is having one of the best times of his ENTIRE life. He is happy! He's travelling with his best friend, having so much fun, who cares about what caused that hole in time or what "torch wood" means! And he pays for that. Like the fifth Doctor, the Tenth's confidence in himself was shattered when he lost his friend. Forever. And on top of that, he immediately started to devolve back to the harsher character before he met her - which is exactly what Rose BEGGED him not to!
Now the Doctor is trying to get on WITHOUT the massive blonde with the cute teeth... or visa versa. Now he's on the look out for repeated memes, trying not to let himself go ape shit and brutally abort spider babies. He's evolving as a character. Which is what the Ninth Doctor did. The only difference is, this one has more time to do it with.
He's the first Doctor since McCoy to have that chance as a given.
3) God damn it, Rose is a smug bitch!
Now, there IS some evidence to this and unsurprisingly it comes from the worse script in Series Two - The Idiot Lantern. Where, after losing a mother, a father and her boyfriend, who she only realized seconds before saying goodbye how rude she'd been to, how cruelly she'd treated him... and she's over it. Totally.
Would it have been so difficult to shove in a few lines? Have the trip to see Elvis a desperate attempt by the Doctor to make Rose smile again? Have the last scene with the toast also have Rose saying she'll not dwell in misery because Mickey would hate that?
Of course, this isn't ENTIRELY Gattis' fault. RTD grunted, "People move on" in justification and Gattis maybe thought TIL was set years after Rise of the Cybermen. Hell, TIL was, in the original running order, right after The Runaway Bride, which saw Rose... getting over Mickey. Yeah, she was pissed off when Mickey joined but look at all the reasons:
a) now Mickey will be in danger every time the TARDIS lands
b) it's not like Adam or Jack ended up happy
c) she thinks she'll have to live with "No, it's RICKY!" arguments
d) the Doctor asked her opinion as an afterthought
e) she won't be able to flirt with the Doctor any more...
And then she pulls herself together and gives Mickey the tour of the fifty-first century, getting a new hairdo, a tight T-shirt, and wrapping her arms around him every chance she gets!
The fact is, Rose is not so bad out of context. The trouble is we see her in The Christmas Invasion (were her confidence vanishes completely); New Earth (where she's possessed by a bitch); Tooth and Claw (where she is SUPPOSED to be smug); School Reunion (when she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch); The Girl in the Fireplace (where she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch); and Rise of the Cybermen (where she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch).
Imagine if Love and Monsters had been shown instead of TIL. When we see Rose as a hurt girl determined to protect her mother at any costs, and forgives Elton when she learns he's lost both the girl he loves and his mother. It makes sense.
If Rose WAS such a bitch, then I remind you of:
- wishing Cassandra luck
- calming down Flora
- inviting Sarah Jane aboard
- urging Tommy to reconcile with his father
- pulling together the team of SB6
- forgiving Elton
- trying to get Sec to exterminate her to save Mickey's life
- realizing that the Doctor won't cope without her.
She was willing to abandon everything she cared about for the man she loved. To sacrifice her life to stop evil. To risk brain damage to save a hospital full of hypocritical cats.
4) Torchwood is a crap arc
Indeed it is. Explaining what the word means on its second appearance is not good. Exploring the beginning of it in its third is dumb.
But the thing is, Bad Wolf was a mystery. Torchwood isn't. The Doctor's total ignorance of the organisation is a statement in itself! It's like the first episode of Destiny of the Daleks - we all know who's going to be behind the strange radioactive drilling, just as we know who's behind British Alien Defence. The Doctor doesn't. We can see him walking to his doom and, like in Earthshock, the niave cheer makes the crushing defeat all the worse.
However, all the signs are the Saxon arc will be better. Hopefully, the Doctor will actually try to find out who he is, much like Angel going on the offensive the moment he twigs that Wolfram and Heart are getting mixed up in his business. The fact the seeds have been sown in two different shows also says something.
Bad Wolf asked us "what is that?" Torchwood asked us "when will they come after the Doctor?"
5) Crap continuity
Yep. But look at the evidence! Read the pitch document for series one - everything makes sense, it all fits together neatly and the episodes happen the same way as we ultimately saw them. If RTD had stuck to his original outline, series two would have gone:
New Earth
The Girl in the Fireplace
School Reunion
Rise of the Cybermen
The Age of Steel
The Runaway Bride
The Impossible Planet
The Satan Pit
The Idiot's Lantern
Love and Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts
Doomsday
Tooth and Claw - the Christmas special where the ending would be a twist, the Doctor creating the very organization that just wrecked his life!
So the message to RTD is - first guess is the best.
Thankfully, Martha's intro suggests there will be a rigid order to Series Three.
6) It's childish now
No, you're just not being distracted by Slitheen flatulence and burping bins and vomit ice cubes.
7) It shows the total decline of western values that RTD is now doing 'play it safe'
Name one show that decides to tamper with a winning formula. Go on. Is 24 going to abandon the real time element? Supernatural forget the ghosts? The Bill focus on the plight of the Natterjack Toad?
This all reeks of the people who rubbished Season 17, then JNT and went back.
8) The music is too loud
Then fuck off. I don't want to talk to you no more you empty headed animal.
Showing posts with label Random Crap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random Crap. Show all posts
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The Five Minute Game
DOCTOR: Right, Adric...
ADAM: Adam.
DOCTOR: As you're new aboard the good ship TARDIS, I think we should treat you with kid gloves and try not to scar you emotionally for the rest of your stunted life. So, set course for the day the sun expands and the planet Earth boils away into space...
ROSE: Aw, I saw that already!
DOCTOR: Oh. OK. I shall take us to the far future then. To the year 2000!
ROSE: I'm from 2005, Doctor.
ADAM: And I'm from 2012.
DOCTOR: It always used to impress the 1960s chicks. OK, I shall take us to the far future - the year 2000 times 100! 200, 000 AD, if you will.
ADAM: Hey, this is just a fast-food retailer!
DOCTOR: A fast-food retailer in the year 200,000, Adam!
ROSE: Are we on Earth, then?
DOCTOR: No, for a change, I've taken us off Earth.
ROSE: How far off Earth?
DOCTOR: Well, we're closer to it than the moon is. We're on a spacestation overlooking Earth in the far future.
ROSE: This sounds suspiciously familiar.
DOCTOR: Hey, how much is a kronkburger, mate?
COOK: 2 credits 20.
DOCTOR: My god! That's far too expensive for Happy Hour! History must have changed! Humanity's vision is scuppered! Oh well, I'll just loot the local ATM and try to relax.
ADAM: If this is the far future, where are all the aliens.
DOCTOR: Good question. Excuse me? Hi, can you look at this blank piece of paper?
SUKI: Sure.
DOCTOR: Now, I am your superior. You worship and respect me and will not be at all suspicious that I have absolutely no idea what's happening and am asking painfully obvious.
SUKI: Hmm. That's what it says.
CATHICA: OK. You are on Satellite 5, floor 139. You might have noticed it from the whacking great sign over there.
DOCTOR: I knew that.
EDITOR: Hmmmm. What shall I do today. Oh, look! That lady looks hot! Have her brought up to me at once, brainwashed into a slave to do my bidding and put her with the others.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: What, sir? Oh, er, she's a terrorist. In disguise. Very good disguise. She looks like a badly-dressed airhead, but I know beneath that massive chest is the heart of a true anarchist.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG!EDITOR: Oh, please, sir! Two more and I'll have the whole set!
COMPUTER: Hello, Suki. Your application to be promoted to Floor 500 has been accepted. Kiss your ass goodbye - sorry, I mean, congratulations!
SUKI: Whoopee!
CATHICA: Fine. Get your promotion. I get to stay here, with all the fast food and your boyfriend and these wierdoes from that blue box. On second thoughts, Suki, take me with you!!!
DOCTOR: Too late. So, to summarize, this entire space station controls all the media on Earth and comprizes of you and four other yuppies plugged into a computer?
CATHICA: Yup.
DOCTOR: And despite the fact that it only needs the five of you, there are at least a thousand people on this station, and everyone who gets promoted vanish, never to be seen again? And, according to my highly-tuned powers of observation, flares are back in?
CATHICA: Are you trying to say that Satellite 5's media bias is preventing mankind from developing past 199,009?!
DOCTOR: No, but now you come to mention it, that's a damn good idea.
ADAM: No sex with Rose, no exciting adventures in time and space, and this slurpie tastes of re-fried beans. That does it, I'm turning to the Dark Side. Hey, Rose, can I use your phone?
ROSE: Sure. What do you want it for?
ADAM: I'm gonna find out the results of the horse races for the next 100,000 years, telephone them back to my house and make a fortune.
ROSE: Really?
ADAM: ...uh, no.
ROSE: OK, then! I'm off to nag the Doctor and reassure total strangers that we aren't a couple.
ADAM: A natural blonde. What a pity. OK, computer, let's change civilization as we know it... Damn it! The computer's not working. I could try and fix it, being a genius and all, but to do so would prevent IT support from flourishing. Man, I am such a nice guy.
SUKI: Wow! Floor 500 looks just like Floor 139. Only, snowing. Ooh, snowmen! And they have holes in their foreheads! But why not carrots for noses. Something's wrong.
EDITOR: Hello. I'm the Editor, but you can call me Simon.
SUKI: Are you an albino? Or just really cold?
EDITOR: How dare you! I shall let my master rip your mind apart.
SUKI: Who's your master?
EDITOR: Up there.
SUKI: Your master is the cieling?!
EDITOR: No, not there - there!
SUKI: Oh. Your master is a giant tapeworm?
EDITOR: Oh dear. He hates getting called that.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG!
SUKI: GAK!
EDITOR: Damn. There goes another one.
ADAM: Wow. IT support is full of ladies in nurse uniforms. As a geek, this is several orders of heaven for me!
NURSE: Hello. What's your problem?
ADAM: Yeah, I can't hijack all the information of the future for my own personal game ten thousand centuries ago.
NURSE: I'm afraid we don't let people do that without a sheet of psychic paper.
ADAM: Botheration!
NURSE: We can give you a free vomit-o-matic implant that turns bodily waste into attractive ice cubes that can be sold at profit to small and gullible children?
ADAM: Hah! I need a vomit-o-matic like I need a hole in the head.
NURSE: Whatever turns you on?
DOCTOR: Wow. The TARDIS has landed just next to a junction box full of cables that keep the space station from exploding and killing every single person aboard. Hey, Rose, help me rip this stuff up, will you?
CATHICA: That's not a good idea.
DOCTOR: At least I'm not stupid enough to get a hole drilled into my head on the pretext of getting richer!
NURSE: There you go, sir. A hole has been drilled in your head. I'm sure you can get richer now.
ADAM: OK, obviously sarcasm does not survive into this time. I'm definitely going to distort the pattern of history now. And after that... I'm taking my dog for a walk!
EDITOR: Suki? Oh, poor, Suki. I knew her well, Mr. Jagrafess.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: OK, I didn't, but I could have! Oh, well, never mind. Plenty more fish in the sea. Any other brainless blondes on the station that I can use for my wicked ways and not have anyone notice? Hey! Her! Next to the big-eared prick in the leather jacket. Who's she?
COMPUTER: No idea.
EDITOR: But this station contains every last drop of data in the entire cosmos! How could she avoid our omnipotent glare?
COMPUTER: Maybe she didn't fill in her census.
DOCTOR: Right. This lift takes us straight to Floor 500, a place where no one has managed to return from, the source of a lethal amount of heat, and doubtless the force preventing mankind from developing so... anyone for a ride?
CATHICA: I may have half my brain missing, but I know a stupid offer when I hear it.
ROSE: I wish I understood that. I'll come!
ADAM: Right. Just snap open my head, begin downloading the whole internet and convert it into morse code I can record on the answering machine and translate later... Hey, that might take a while. Still, it IS Rose's phone. She gets the bill. Damn it, I'm evil!
DOCTOR: Oh, my god! It's the Master!
EDITOR: No, I'm the Editor.
DOCTOR: Oh, sorry, my mistake.
EDITOR: Please, we're all friends here, aren't we? Now, my frozen zombie chicks, chain them to the wall! I feel particularly cool today and, after one hundred years of continual success I'm certain our evil plans can survive me explaining them all to a complete stranger.
DOCTOR: You're SURE you're not the Master?
CATHICA: Oh, well. Nothing else to do to day but head up to Floor 500 and face my destiny. Plus Suki still owes me a fiver.
EDITOR: So, you see, by repeating a phrase over and over again you can get whole hoardes of people worked up and speculating and having no idea that they're just being distracted. Well, that's what I think RTD is doing with this "Bad Wolf" thing.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
ROSE: Hey, you said that without moving your lips!
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAG!
DOCTOR: Good gravy! There's a giant booger on the cieling and it's gurgling in an evil fashion!
ROSE: Why doesn't the TARDIS translate its evil gurgles?
DOCTOR: He must have Tourette's syndrome - the TARDIS refuses to translate swear words. Why do you think I never tell your mother that she's a GRAAGAGAGAGAG? *
EDITOR: Language!
DOCTOR: Just why are you and this thing trying to control humanity?
EDITOR: That "thing" is the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy... oh, forget it. Call him Max. And why are we interfering with mankind's development? Well, like we need a reason?
DOCTOR: This badly-thought out plot has all the hallmarks of my old enemies the Cybermen!
ROSE: But the walls are made of gold?
DOCTOR: Oh. So they are. But all this ice... It must be the Ice Warriors then!
ADAM: What does this button do? ARGh!!!
EDITOR: I downloaded Adam Mitchell's entire brain! Quicker than normal, actually, come to think of it.
DOCTOR: Adam who?
ROSE: He means Adric.
DOCTOR: Oh, right. Still, what harm could he do?
EDITOR: I now know that you are the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords, I now have your TARDIS and the key you were stupid enough to give him.
DOCTOR: Well, apart from that. I hope someone just happens to be listening in the background to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
CATHICA: Oh, OK.
EDITOR: Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow? That couldn't harm us in the slightest. Now, if she reversed the flow of the air conditioning and pumped it up here, then, I admit, we'd be stuffed...
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EDITOR: Oops. Sorry, sir.
ADAM: Argh! It's the end of the world as we know it. And I'm getting the hell out of here!
DOCTOR: Rose! Use your escapology skills and untie me.
ROSE: I don't have any escapology skills, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Damn! We'll just have to escape with the restraints still on.
ROSE: Kinky!
EDITOR: I think it's time for a career change - Whoa! Suki! You've come back to life! You really must love me. Either that or the Jagrafess is possessing you to make me share his death!
SUKI: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: So... it's not option one then?
SUKI/JAGRAFESS/EDITOR: GAKKK!
DOCTOR: OK, so your heating system is stuffed and the satellite's on the brink of collapse, the media itself has ended and humanity's guiding light is now three litres of pond scum...
CATHICA: But?
DOCTOR: I was hoping YOU would be able to say something positive. I'm just off to discipline Adric. Rose, stay here and for god's sake don't screw up the course of established history.
ROSE: You betcha, Doctor. So, Cathica, instead of news, how about... oh, I don't know... reality TV gameshows?
CATHICA: Hey, that might just work!
ADAM: Wow! You've taken me back to my living room! How kind!
DOCTOR: Not exactly, I landed the TARDIS on your dog.
ADAM: Nooo!
DOCTOR: And now I will steal your answering machine.
ADAM: Can't you just steal the tape?
DOCTOR: Shut up or I'll click my fingers. Just like that!
ADAM: Gurk!
ROSE: Eew! His third eye has opened!
DOCTOR: Come on, let's get out of here before he sees his reflection and starts vomiting ice cubes.
ADAM: You can't leave me here! How do I explain this hole in my head?
ROSE: You're the genius!
ADAM: Yeah, I am. I'll just tell people it's a piercing. That got out of hand. Oh, no! What if they think I'm gay! Doctor, come back!!
* this idea was stolen by Gareth Roberts for his novel Only Human. Go on Outpost Gallifrey - I posted it first, and there's proof!
ADAM: Adam.
DOCTOR: As you're new aboard the good ship TARDIS, I think we should treat you with kid gloves and try not to scar you emotionally for the rest of your stunted life. So, set course for the day the sun expands and the planet Earth boils away into space...
ROSE: Aw, I saw that already!
DOCTOR: Oh. OK. I shall take us to the far future then. To the year 2000!
ROSE: I'm from 2005, Doctor.
ADAM: And I'm from 2012.
DOCTOR: It always used to impress the 1960s chicks. OK, I shall take us to the far future - the year 2000 times 100! 200, 000 AD, if you will.
ADAM: Hey, this is just a fast-food retailer!
DOCTOR: A fast-food retailer in the year 200,000, Adam!
ROSE: Are we on Earth, then?
DOCTOR: No, for a change, I've taken us off Earth.
ROSE: How far off Earth?
DOCTOR: Well, we're closer to it than the moon is. We're on a spacestation overlooking Earth in the far future.
ROSE: This sounds suspiciously familiar.
DOCTOR: Hey, how much is a kronkburger, mate?
COOK: 2 credits 20.
DOCTOR: My god! That's far too expensive for Happy Hour! History must have changed! Humanity's vision is scuppered! Oh well, I'll just loot the local ATM and try to relax.
ADAM: If this is the far future, where are all the aliens.
DOCTOR: Good question. Excuse me? Hi, can you look at this blank piece of paper?
SUKI: Sure.
DOCTOR: Now, I am your superior. You worship and respect me and will not be at all suspicious that I have absolutely no idea what's happening and am asking painfully obvious.
SUKI: Hmm. That's what it says.
CATHICA: OK. You are on Satellite 5, floor 139. You might have noticed it from the whacking great sign over there.
DOCTOR: I knew that.
EDITOR: Hmmmm. What shall I do today. Oh, look! That lady looks hot! Have her brought up to me at once, brainwashed into a slave to do my bidding and put her with the others.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: What, sir? Oh, er, she's a terrorist. In disguise. Very good disguise. She looks like a badly-dressed airhead, but I know beneath that massive chest is the heart of a true anarchist.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG!EDITOR: Oh, please, sir! Two more and I'll have the whole set!
COMPUTER: Hello, Suki. Your application to be promoted to Floor 500 has been accepted. Kiss your ass goodbye - sorry, I mean, congratulations!
SUKI: Whoopee!
CATHICA: Fine. Get your promotion. I get to stay here, with all the fast food and your boyfriend and these wierdoes from that blue box. On second thoughts, Suki, take me with you!!!
DOCTOR: Too late. So, to summarize, this entire space station controls all the media on Earth and comprizes of you and four other yuppies plugged into a computer?
CATHICA: Yup.
DOCTOR: And despite the fact that it only needs the five of you, there are at least a thousand people on this station, and everyone who gets promoted vanish, never to be seen again? And, according to my highly-tuned powers of observation, flares are back in?
CATHICA: Are you trying to say that Satellite 5's media bias is preventing mankind from developing past 199,009?!
DOCTOR: No, but now you come to mention it, that's a damn good idea.
ADAM: No sex with Rose, no exciting adventures in time and space, and this slurpie tastes of re-fried beans. That does it, I'm turning to the Dark Side. Hey, Rose, can I use your phone?
ROSE: Sure. What do you want it for?
ADAM: I'm gonna find out the results of the horse races for the next 100,000 years, telephone them back to my house and make a fortune.
ROSE: Really?
ADAM: ...uh, no.
ROSE: OK, then! I'm off to nag the Doctor and reassure total strangers that we aren't a couple.
ADAM: A natural blonde. What a pity. OK, computer, let's change civilization as we know it... Damn it! The computer's not working. I could try and fix it, being a genius and all, but to do so would prevent IT support from flourishing. Man, I am such a nice guy.
SUKI: Wow! Floor 500 looks just like Floor 139. Only, snowing. Ooh, snowmen! And they have holes in their foreheads! But why not carrots for noses. Something's wrong.
EDITOR: Hello. I'm the Editor, but you can call me Simon.
SUKI: Are you an albino? Or just really cold?
EDITOR: How dare you! I shall let my master rip your mind apart.
SUKI: Who's your master?
EDITOR: Up there.
SUKI: Your master is the cieling?!
EDITOR: No, not there - there!
SUKI: Oh. Your master is a giant tapeworm?
EDITOR: Oh dear. He hates getting called that.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG!
SUKI: GAK!
EDITOR: Damn. There goes another one.
ADAM: Wow. IT support is full of ladies in nurse uniforms. As a geek, this is several orders of heaven for me!
NURSE: Hello. What's your problem?
ADAM: Yeah, I can't hijack all the information of the future for my own personal game ten thousand centuries ago.
NURSE: I'm afraid we don't let people do that without a sheet of psychic paper.
ADAM: Botheration!
NURSE: We can give you a free vomit-o-matic implant that turns bodily waste into attractive ice cubes that can be sold at profit to small and gullible children?
ADAM: Hah! I need a vomit-o-matic like I need a hole in the head.
NURSE: Whatever turns you on?
DOCTOR: Wow. The TARDIS has landed just next to a junction box full of cables that keep the space station from exploding and killing every single person aboard. Hey, Rose, help me rip this stuff up, will you?
CATHICA: That's not a good idea.
DOCTOR: At least I'm not stupid enough to get a hole drilled into my head on the pretext of getting richer!
NURSE: There you go, sir. A hole has been drilled in your head. I'm sure you can get richer now.
ADAM: OK, obviously sarcasm does not survive into this time. I'm definitely going to distort the pattern of history now. And after that... I'm taking my dog for a walk!
EDITOR: Suki? Oh, poor, Suki. I knew her well, Mr. Jagrafess.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: OK, I didn't, but I could have! Oh, well, never mind. Plenty more fish in the sea. Any other brainless blondes on the station that I can use for my wicked ways and not have anyone notice? Hey! Her! Next to the big-eared prick in the leather jacket. Who's she?
COMPUTER: No idea.
EDITOR: But this station contains every last drop of data in the entire cosmos! How could she avoid our omnipotent glare?
COMPUTER: Maybe she didn't fill in her census.
DOCTOR: Right. This lift takes us straight to Floor 500, a place where no one has managed to return from, the source of a lethal amount of heat, and doubtless the force preventing mankind from developing so... anyone for a ride?
CATHICA: I may have half my brain missing, but I know a stupid offer when I hear it.
ROSE: I wish I understood that. I'll come!
ADAM: Right. Just snap open my head, begin downloading the whole internet and convert it into morse code I can record on the answering machine and translate later... Hey, that might take a while. Still, it IS Rose's phone. She gets the bill. Damn it, I'm evil!
DOCTOR: Oh, my god! It's the Master!
EDITOR: No, I'm the Editor.
DOCTOR: Oh, sorry, my mistake.
EDITOR: Please, we're all friends here, aren't we? Now, my frozen zombie chicks, chain them to the wall! I feel particularly cool today and, after one hundred years of continual success I'm certain our evil plans can survive me explaining them all to a complete stranger.
DOCTOR: You're SURE you're not the Master?
CATHICA: Oh, well. Nothing else to do to day but head up to Floor 500 and face my destiny. Plus Suki still owes me a fiver.
EDITOR: So, you see, by repeating a phrase over and over again you can get whole hoardes of people worked up and speculating and having no idea that they're just being distracted. Well, that's what I think RTD is doing with this "Bad Wolf" thing.
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
ROSE: Hey, you said that without moving your lips!
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAG!
DOCTOR: Good gravy! There's a giant booger on the cieling and it's gurgling in an evil fashion!
ROSE: Why doesn't the TARDIS translate its evil gurgles?
DOCTOR: He must have Tourette's syndrome - the TARDIS refuses to translate swear words. Why do you think I never tell your mother that she's a GRAAGAGAGAGAG? *
EDITOR: Language!
DOCTOR: Just why are you and this thing trying to control humanity?
EDITOR: That "thing" is the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy... oh, forget it. Call him Max. And why are we interfering with mankind's development? Well, like we need a reason?
DOCTOR: This badly-thought out plot has all the hallmarks of my old enemies the Cybermen!
ROSE: But the walls are made of gold?
DOCTOR: Oh. So they are. But all this ice... It must be the Ice Warriors then!
ADAM: What does this button do? ARGh!!!
EDITOR: I downloaded Adam Mitchell's entire brain! Quicker than normal, actually, come to think of it.
DOCTOR: Adam who?
ROSE: He means Adric.
DOCTOR: Oh, right. Still, what harm could he do?
EDITOR: I now know that you are the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords, I now have your TARDIS and the key you were stupid enough to give him.
DOCTOR: Well, apart from that. I hope someone just happens to be listening in the background to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
CATHICA: Oh, OK.
EDITOR: Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow? That couldn't harm us in the slightest. Now, if she reversed the flow of the air conditioning and pumped it up here, then, I admit, we'd be stuffed...
JAGRAFESS: GRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAGGRAAGAGAGAGAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EDITOR: Oops. Sorry, sir.
ADAM: Argh! It's the end of the world as we know it. And I'm getting the hell out of here!
DOCTOR: Rose! Use your escapology skills and untie me.
ROSE: I don't have any escapology skills, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Damn! We'll just have to escape with the restraints still on.
ROSE: Kinky!
EDITOR: I think it's time for a career change - Whoa! Suki! You've come back to life! You really must love me. Either that or the Jagrafess is possessing you to make me share his death!
SUKI: GRAAGAGAGAGAG.
EDITOR: So... it's not option one then?
SUKI/JAGRAFESS/EDITOR: GAKKK!
DOCTOR: OK, so your heating system is stuffed and the satellite's on the brink of collapse, the media itself has ended and humanity's guiding light is now three litres of pond scum...
CATHICA: But?
DOCTOR: I was hoping YOU would be able to say something positive. I'm just off to discipline Adric. Rose, stay here and for god's sake don't screw up the course of established history.
ROSE: You betcha, Doctor. So, Cathica, instead of news, how about... oh, I don't know... reality TV gameshows?
CATHICA: Hey, that might just work!
ADAM: Wow! You've taken me back to my living room! How kind!
DOCTOR: Not exactly, I landed the TARDIS on your dog.
ADAM: Nooo!
DOCTOR: And now I will steal your answering machine.
ADAM: Can't you just steal the tape?
DOCTOR: Shut up or I'll click my fingers. Just like that!
ADAM: Gurk!
ROSE: Eew! His third eye has opened!
DOCTOR: Come on, let's get out of here before he sees his reflection and starts vomiting ice cubes.
ADAM: You can't leave me here! How do I explain this hole in my head?
ROSE: You're the genius!
ADAM: Yeah, I am. I'll just tell people it's a piercing. That got out of hand. Oh, no! What if they think I'm gay! Doctor, come back!!
* this idea was stolen by Gareth Roberts for his novel Only Human. Go on Outpost Gallifrey - I posted it first, and there's proof!
Monday, January 29, 2007
Starring Dylan Moran as... Doctor Who...
An old script I hacked up back way back when I saw Black Books: The Grapes of Wrath and remembered a letter from Daniel O'Mahony suggesting his own candidate for the Ninth Doctor... I give no guarantee to its quality...
1. RAILWAY STATION
It is late at night, somewhere in Southern England. For a moment, all is quiet and still. Then, a strange noise is heard. It grows louder, and clouds begin to swirl across the sky, faster and faster. The clouds gather, smothering the sky as lightning crackles between them. Snow begins to fall over the station as the noise reaches a crescendo. The clouds swirl further – and suddenly the spinning TARDIS bursts free and spirals down through the air, to crash-land on platform two. The noise and lightning end, but the snow continues to fall. After a moment, the Doctor staggers out. Smoke wafts from the interior.
Doctor: [coughs] Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I suppose. [coughs] Nik? Are you all right?
Nik staggers from the TARDIS, pulling the door closed.
Nik: [coughs] Better than your parking? I told you to make sure you programmed in the axial tilt!
Doctor: Oh, whine, whine, whine!
Nik: And the diurnal rotation! And the orbital parabola!
Doctor: Yes, yes, ‘one day you’ll land us in the sea’!
Nik: ‘Only if I want to swim!’ Honestly!
Doctor: Oh, come on. Let’s see where we are?
Nik: Earth again. Probably twentieth century. Can we go, now?
The Doctor moves towards the main entrance.
Doctor: No. We’ll let the old girl cool down before we try again. Besides, you can’t go round the universe, convinced you know where you are. Sooner or later, you’ll be wrong, and then where will you be?
Nik: Devastated, I suppose.
Doctor: No, WHERE will you be? You won’t know, will you? Come on.
Nik: [rubs arm] But it’s so cold out here?
Doctor: Ah, you’ll live. The youth of today, no moral fibre!
2. STREET
The snow is getting worse. The Doctor and Nik emerge from the station.
Nik: Where is everyone?
Doctor: Indoors, probably. There’s a storm coming. Besides, it’s quite late, according to that clock over there. [indicates] Still, there should be a pub open or something. Come on.
Nik: [teeth chatters] Are you sure about it?
Doctor: No, I’m never sure. Now come on!
3. SPACE
A bright green speck of light appears in the depths of space, growing larger and closer. It is heading for Earth.
4. STREET
The trees and ground are now smothered in snow. The Doctor and Nik walk down the road. Nik now wears the Doctor’s jacket, not that the latter notices the weather.
Doctor: ...now, you see, Strobilus was a compulsive liar about things like that, so it was obvious to Captain Yates about what to do. He dropped his gun, raised his hands, and then dear old Liz walked in. As you can imagine, the whole thing went to hell after that...
A strange roar, like static, can now be heard.
Nik: Doctor?
Doctor: Did I ever tell you about Liz? Not a patch on Sarah Jane...
Nik: Doctor?
Doctor: Yes, what is it, Paddywack?
Nik: That noise?
Doctor: What noise?
The roar gets louder and louder.
Nik: THAT noise.
Doctor: Well, what about it?
Nik: What is it?
Doctor: Oh, how should I know? Probably a train heading for the station or something. You learn to get use to it when you’re on a planet as noisy as this...
A sickly green glow is cast over the street, getting stronger and brighter as the noise increases.
Doctor: Ah.
Nik: What the hell is that?
Doctor: Something nasty – this way coming! Get down!
They dive for cover as a circular green glow pierces the thick storm clouds above them. Then, an enormous fireball – the source of the sickly green glow – rips through and hurtles over their heads. It flies past them, skimming over trees and houses. It is sparking, allowing green flame to cascade over the ground it passes.
5. CHURCH
Edmond, a middle-aged vicar, is getting ready to leave the deserted church. Then, the green glow fills the room and the static-like roar is heard. He looks up in shock.
6. CHURCHYARD
The green fireball fills the sky as it hurtles towards the church.
7. RECTORY
A middle-aged woman runs to the window as the noise and light increase.
Agnes: Saints preserve us...
8. CHURCHYARD
The fireball clips the church spire, tearing through it and hurtling towards the vicarage. Edmond runs from the church.
Edmond: AGNES!
The fireball strikes the vicarage and the building explodes spectacularly, leaving shattered rubble burning with eerie green fire. The shock wave floors Edmond, who stares at the green inferno, aghast.
Edmond: [sotto] Agnes?
9. STREET
The roar of the explosion settles to a sinister background buzz. The Doctor leaps to his feet as a cascade of burning green liquid splashes onto the road, debris from the fireball.
Doctor: Ach! Pastel colours! Gah!
He helps the dazed Nik to his feet. More liquid strikes the ground and there is a fantastic explosion. The Doctor and Nik are thrown to the ground again and, in the distance, there are more explosions.
10. CHURCHYARD
Screams and howls can be heard as chaos reigns. Edmond stumbles across the yard towards the blazing vicarage, when some more debris combust, throwing him against a headstone. He cries out.
11. STREET
The Doctor moves into view, waving away some choking white mist. It clears to show some thin metallic residue on the ground. He bends down to examine them. Nik joins him.
Nik: [wheezes] Is it safe to touch them?
Doctor: No idea. But the reaction seems to have died off.
The Doctor produces a car aerial and prods the residue.
Doctor: That stuff wasn’t liquid – it was shavings from some kind of bulkhead. That fireball was a spacecraft or something. Probably out of control.
He picks up some of the powder and sniffs it.
Doctor: Varinium? It is! Pure Varinium...
Nik: [points] Doctor, look!
The Doctor looks up. A coiling surge of white smoke pours from the hulk of the church – damaged and lit by a green glow.
Doctor: That thing has crashed, all right.
Nik: And that residue has probably wiped out half the local population! Even the screams have stopped...
Doctor: Don’t be gruesome. Come on, let’s head to that church. See if they’re any survivors. We can use what’s left of that spire to check on the town. It might not be that bad. Come on...
They run down the road.
12. CHURCHYARD
The dazed vicar staggers to his feet. Blood trickles down his face.
Edmond: Agnes? Agnes! I’m coming for you!
He staggers drunkenly towards the burning building.
Edmond: The Devil can’t stop me now, Agnes! I won’t give in!
The vicar staggers and then all but collapses. He peers myopically up at the broiling white smoke and green light. The static roar begins to pulse, getting louder and louder.
Edmond: [groggy] As I walk in the shadow of the valley of death...
The Doctor and Nik enter the yard, see the situation and run over to the stricken Edmond. They help him into a sitting position.
Doctor: Easy, easy now.
Nik: He’s had a nasty bang on his head.
Doctor: He’s luckier than the others.
Edmond blinks himself awake. Immediately, he struggles out of their grip and tries to stand up. Nik supports him.
Nik: Careful, mister.
Edmond: Agnes? Agnes, where are you?
Doctor: I’m the Doctor, that’s Nik. Who’s Agnes?
Edmond: My... my wife. She’s in the vicarage, I’ve got to save her!
He pushes them aside and runs down the hill towards the inferno. The Doctor grabs him and drags him back effortlessly.
Doctor: No, there’s been enough death already.
Edmond: No! Agnes! I can’t let the Devil get to her! I can’t!
Nik: Vicar, there’s no way she can have survived that explosion. Is there, Doctor?
Doctor: Nothing human, no.
Edmond: It is the Devil! He’s fighting us! We must have faith!
He tears free and runs down to the edge of the flames. Shapes begin to move within as the pulsing static begins to get louder and louder.
Edmond: Agnes? Is that you? Agnes!
A line of silver shapes emerges from the billowing flames.
Nik: What are they, Doctor?
Doctor: Nothing human, I fancy.
The silver shapes of the Daleks emerge, undamaged, from the writhing flames. They begin to glide up the hillside, guns unfolding. The Dalek Leader leads the advance. Edmond stares at them, awed.
Edmond: Satan and his demons...
The Dalek Leader fires twice – a blue glow slams the vicar against a gravestone. His blasted body collapses to the ground. The Daleks silently turn to face the Doctor and Nik.
Doctor: Get down!
Another salvo flies past them, triggering more explosions. The Doctor gets back up and runs for the church. Nik follows. The Daleks fire at them, destroying more parts of the churchyard. They continue to glide up the hill after their prey.
13. CHURCH
The Doctor and Nik slam the doors closed and begin to pile furniture over the door. The background static noise steadily gets louder.
Nik: Those things – they just killed him without blinking!
Doctor: And they’ll do the same to us if they catch us.
The Doctor turns around – and we see a shattered hulk looming out of the darkness, clearly a Dalek. They start, but the machine is inactive.
Doctor: Don’t panic, it’s quite dead.
Nik: How did that get in here?
Doctor: The hole in the roof. When the fireball struck, it must have been ripped apart. This hunk of metal crashed in here... The roof! Of course! We can get out through there!
Nik: You have got to be kidding me!
Doctor: Oh, I’m distinctly serious, Czar Nicholas! Now, unless you want to face our homicidal metal friends out there, you might as well try and help me out of –
There is the sound of the Dalek Leader firing again and the barricade is blown apart. Smoke wafts through the gap and the Daleks begin to emerge. The Doctor and Nik run for the various exits, but Daleks enter via these, blocking them at every turn. They are trapped.
Dalek: STOP! DO NOT MOVE OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!
The Dalek Leader glides forward. The other Daleks close in, forcing the time travelers to shuffle forward towards the Dalek Leader.
Dalek: ARE YOU THE DOCTOR? ARE YOU THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS?
Doctor: Yes. That’s me. What, do you want an autograph?
Dalek: WE KNOW YOU. WE HAVE TRACKED YOUR TARDIS THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE. WE OBSERVED YOUR LANDING IN THIS SPACE-TIME LOCATION AND BEGAN OUR INVASION.
Nik: Why?
Dalek: IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO WITNESS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET EARTH AND ALL OF ITS INHABITANTS. ONCE THIS PLANET HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN THE HOLOCAUST, YOU WILL PROVIDE A NEW LIFE FOR US.
Doctor: No chance! Why, you haven’t even said ‘please’, yet!
Dalek: YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
Nik: Earth has been attacked more times than you can count! Mankind has fought off everyone else – why should you win when the Bandrils, the Cybermen, the Yeti, the Ice Warriors couldn’t?
Dalek: WHEN DAWN COMES TOMORROW, THIS PLANET SHALL BE RID OF ALL INFERIOR ORGANIC MATTER. WE SHALL BE THE NEW MASTERS OF EARTH.
Another static-like howl is heard. The Doctor and Nik look up. Through the gaping hole in the roof, the sky is steadily blocked out by the underside of a vast ship, seemingly made of emerald light.
Nik: Ah.
Doctor: Yes, I think that about sums it up.
Dalek: PREPARE FOR TRANSFERENCE!
14. CHURCHYARD
The gigantic ship hangs over the church. Already, similar ships are appearing in the sky and hurtling towards the ground. Suddenly, a beam of light snaps on, shining down through the hole in the church roof.
15. CHURCH
The eerie glow surrounds the Doctor, Nik and the Drones.
Nik: Um, how are we going to get out of this one, Doctor?
Doctor: Oh, I’ll think of something.
Dalek: TRANSFER NOW!
Doctor: If we’re lucky.
The glow intensifies and the group dissolve like smoke.
16. CHURCHYARD
The beam snaps off.
17. CHURCH
The eerie glow fades to leave the wrecked Dalek alone and silent.
18. CHURCHYARD
The ship turns and flies up off into the night, as thousands upon thousands of ships sweep through the sky.
To be continued...
...yeah, right...
1. RAILWAY STATION
It is late at night, somewhere in Southern England. For a moment, all is quiet and still. Then, a strange noise is heard. It grows louder, and clouds begin to swirl across the sky, faster and faster. The clouds gather, smothering the sky as lightning crackles between them. Snow begins to fall over the station as the noise reaches a crescendo. The clouds swirl further – and suddenly the spinning TARDIS bursts free and spirals down through the air, to crash-land on platform two. The noise and lightning end, but the snow continues to fall. After a moment, the Doctor staggers out. Smoke wafts from the interior.
Doctor: [coughs] Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I suppose. [coughs] Nik? Are you all right?
Nik staggers from the TARDIS, pulling the door closed.
Nik: [coughs] Better than your parking? I told you to make sure you programmed in the axial tilt!
Doctor: Oh, whine, whine, whine!
Nik: And the diurnal rotation! And the orbital parabola!
Doctor: Yes, yes, ‘one day you’ll land us in the sea’!
Nik: ‘Only if I want to swim!’ Honestly!
Doctor: Oh, come on. Let’s see where we are?
Nik: Earth again. Probably twentieth century. Can we go, now?
The Doctor moves towards the main entrance.
Doctor: No. We’ll let the old girl cool down before we try again. Besides, you can’t go round the universe, convinced you know where you are. Sooner or later, you’ll be wrong, and then where will you be?
Nik: Devastated, I suppose.
Doctor: No, WHERE will you be? You won’t know, will you? Come on.
Nik: [rubs arm] But it’s so cold out here?
Doctor: Ah, you’ll live. The youth of today, no moral fibre!
2. STREET
The snow is getting worse. The Doctor and Nik emerge from the station.
Nik: Where is everyone?
Doctor: Indoors, probably. There’s a storm coming. Besides, it’s quite late, according to that clock over there. [indicates] Still, there should be a pub open or something. Come on.
Nik: [teeth chatters] Are you sure about it?
Doctor: No, I’m never sure. Now come on!
3. SPACE
A bright green speck of light appears in the depths of space, growing larger and closer. It is heading for Earth.
4. STREET
The trees and ground are now smothered in snow. The Doctor and Nik walk down the road. Nik now wears the Doctor’s jacket, not that the latter notices the weather.
Doctor: ...now, you see, Strobilus was a compulsive liar about things like that, so it was obvious to Captain Yates about what to do. He dropped his gun, raised his hands, and then dear old Liz walked in. As you can imagine, the whole thing went to hell after that...
A strange roar, like static, can now be heard.
Nik: Doctor?
Doctor: Did I ever tell you about Liz? Not a patch on Sarah Jane...
Nik: Doctor?
Doctor: Yes, what is it, Paddywack?
Nik: That noise?
Doctor: What noise?
The roar gets louder and louder.
Nik: THAT noise.
Doctor: Well, what about it?
Nik: What is it?
Doctor: Oh, how should I know? Probably a train heading for the station or something. You learn to get use to it when you’re on a planet as noisy as this...
A sickly green glow is cast over the street, getting stronger and brighter as the noise increases.
Doctor: Ah.
Nik: What the hell is that?
Doctor: Something nasty – this way coming! Get down!
They dive for cover as a circular green glow pierces the thick storm clouds above them. Then, an enormous fireball – the source of the sickly green glow – rips through and hurtles over their heads. It flies past them, skimming over trees and houses. It is sparking, allowing green flame to cascade over the ground it passes.
5. CHURCH
Edmond, a middle-aged vicar, is getting ready to leave the deserted church. Then, the green glow fills the room and the static-like roar is heard. He looks up in shock.
6. CHURCHYARD
The green fireball fills the sky as it hurtles towards the church.
7. RECTORY
A middle-aged woman runs to the window as the noise and light increase.
Agnes: Saints preserve us...
8. CHURCHYARD
The fireball clips the church spire, tearing through it and hurtling towards the vicarage. Edmond runs from the church.
Edmond: AGNES!
The fireball strikes the vicarage and the building explodes spectacularly, leaving shattered rubble burning with eerie green fire. The shock wave floors Edmond, who stares at the green inferno, aghast.
Edmond: [sotto] Agnes?
9. STREET
The roar of the explosion settles to a sinister background buzz. The Doctor leaps to his feet as a cascade of burning green liquid splashes onto the road, debris from the fireball.
Doctor: Ach! Pastel colours! Gah!
He helps the dazed Nik to his feet. More liquid strikes the ground and there is a fantastic explosion. The Doctor and Nik are thrown to the ground again and, in the distance, there are more explosions.
10. CHURCHYARD
Screams and howls can be heard as chaos reigns. Edmond stumbles across the yard towards the blazing vicarage, when some more debris combust, throwing him against a headstone. He cries out.
11. STREET
The Doctor moves into view, waving away some choking white mist. It clears to show some thin metallic residue on the ground. He bends down to examine them. Nik joins him.
Nik: [wheezes] Is it safe to touch them?
Doctor: No idea. But the reaction seems to have died off.
The Doctor produces a car aerial and prods the residue.
Doctor: That stuff wasn’t liquid – it was shavings from some kind of bulkhead. That fireball was a spacecraft or something. Probably out of control.
He picks up some of the powder and sniffs it.
Doctor: Varinium? It is! Pure Varinium...
Nik: [points] Doctor, look!
The Doctor looks up. A coiling surge of white smoke pours from the hulk of the church – damaged and lit by a green glow.
Doctor: That thing has crashed, all right.
Nik: And that residue has probably wiped out half the local population! Even the screams have stopped...
Doctor: Don’t be gruesome. Come on, let’s head to that church. See if they’re any survivors. We can use what’s left of that spire to check on the town. It might not be that bad. Come on...
They run down the road.
12. CHURCHYARD
The dazed vicar staggers to his feet. Blood trickles down his face.
Edmond: Agnes? Agnes! I’m coming for you!
He staggers drunkenly towards the burning building.
Edmond: The Devil can’t stop me now, Agnes! I won’t give in!
The vicar staggers and then all but collapses. He peers myopically up at the broiling white smoke and green light. The static roar begins to pulse, getting louder and louder.
Edmond: [groggy] As I walk in the shadow of the valley of death...
The Doctor and Nik enter the yard, see the situation and run over to the stricken Edmond. They help him into a sitting position.
Doctor: Easy, easy now.
Nik: He’s had a nasty bang on his head.
Doctor: He’s luckier than the others.
Edmond blinks himself awake. Immediately, he struggles out of their grip and tries to stand up. Nik supports him.
Nik: Careful, mister.
Edmond: Agnes? Agnes, where are you?
Doctor: I’m the Doctor, that’s Nik. Who’s Agnes?
Edmond: My... my wife. She’s in the vicarage, I’ve got to save her!
He pushes them aside and runs down the hill towards the inferno. The Doctor grabs him and drags him back effortlessly.
Doctor: No, there’s been enough death already.
Edmond: No! Agnes! I can’t let the Devil get to her! I can’t!
Nik: Vicar, there’s no way she can have survived that explosion. Is there, Doctor?
Doctor: Nothing human, no.
Edmond: It is the Devil! He’s fighting us! We must have faith!
He tears free and runs down to the edge of the flames. Shapes begin to move within as the pulsing static begins to get louder and louder.
Edmond: Agnes? Is that you? Agnes!
A line of silver shapes emerges from the billowing flames.
Nik: What are they, Doctor?
Doctor: Nothing human, I fancy.
The silver shapes of the Daleks emerge, undamaged, from the writhing flames. They begin to glide up the hillside, guns unfolding. The Dalek Leader leads the advance. Edmond stares at them, awed.
Edmond: Satan and his demons...
The Dalek Leader fires twice – a blue glow slams the vicar against a gravestone. His blasted body collapses to the ground. The Daleks silently turn to face the Doctor and Nik.
Doctor: Get down!
Another salvo flies past them, triggering more explosions. The Doctor gets back up and runs for the church. Nik follows. The Daleks fire at them, destroying more parts of the churchyard. They continue to glide up the hill after their prey.
13. CHURCH
The Doctor and Nik slam the doors closed and begin to pile furniture over the door. The background static noise steadily gets louder.
Nik: Those things – they just killed him without blinking!
Doctor: And they’ll do the same to us if they catch us.
The Doctor turns around – and we see a shattered hulk looming out of the darkness, clearly a Dalek. They start, but the machine is inactive.
Doctor: Don’t panic, it’s quite dead.
Nik: How did that get in here?
Doctor: The hole in the roof. When the fireball struck, it must have been ripped apart. This hunk of metal crashed in here... The roof! Of course! We can get out through there!
Nik: You have got to be kidding me!
Doctor: Oh, I’m distinctly serious, Czar Nicholas! Now, unless you want to face our homicidal metal friends out there, you might as well try and help me out of –
There is the sound of the Dalek Leader firing again and the barricade is blown apart. Smoke wafts through the gap and the Daleks begin to emerge. The Doctor and Nik run for the various exits, but Daleks enter via these, blocking them at every turn. They are trapped.
Dalek: STOP! DO NOT MOVE OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!
The Dalek Leader glides forward. The other Daleks close in, forcing the time travelers to shuffle forward towards the Dalek Leader.
Dalek: ARE YOU THE DOCTOR? ARE YOU THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS?
Doctor: Yes. That’s me. What, do you want an autograph?
Dalek: WE KNOW YOU. WE HAVE TRACKED YOUR TARDIS THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE. WE OBSERVED YOUR LANDING IN THIS SPACE-TIME LOCATION AND BEGAN OUR INVASION.
Nik: Why?
Dalek: IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO WITNESS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET EARTH AND ALL OF ITS INHABITANTS. ONCE THIS PLANET HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN THE HOLOCAUST, YOU WILL PROVIDE A NEW LIFE FOR US.
Doctor: No chance! Why, you haven’t even said ‘please’, yet!
Dalek: YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
Nik: Earth has been attacked more times than you can count! Mankind has fought off everyone else – why should you win when the Bandrils, the Cybermen, the Yeti, the Ice Warriors couldn’t?
Dalek: WHEN DAWN COMES TOMORROW, THIS PLANET SHALL BE RID OF ALL INFERIOR ORGANIC MATTER. WE SHALL BE THE NEW MASTERS OF EARTH.
Another static-like howl is heard. The Doctor and Nik look up. Through the gaping hole in the roof, the sky is steadily blocked out by the underside of a vast ship, seemingly made of emerald light.
Nik: Ah.
Doctor: Yes, I think that about sums it up.
Dalek: PREPARE FOR TRANSFERENCE!
14. CHURCHYARD
The gigantic ship hangs over the church. Already, similar ships are appearing in the sky and hurtling towards the ground. Suddenly, a beam of light snaps on, shining down through the hole in the church roof.
15. CHURCH
The eerie glow surrounds the Doctor, Nik and the Drones.
Nik: Um, how are we going to get out of this one, Doctor?
Doctor: Oh, I’ll think of something.
Dalek: TRANSFER NOW!
Doctor: If we’re lucky.
The glow intensifies and the group dissolve like smoke.
16. CHURCHYARD
The beam snaps off.
17. CHURCH
The eerie glow fades to leave the wrecked Dalek alone and silent.
18. CHURCHYARD
The ship turns and flies up off into the night, as thousands upon thousands of ships sweep through the sky.
To be continued...
...yeah, right...
Friday, January 26, 2007
Things That Make Me Cry 2
If you peer back to my prediction of the plot of Father's Day (or D-Day as we knew it back then), there is a bit of autobiographical detail. Namely, Rose gets very depressed when she hears the Strangler's Golden Brown.
Why does that song depress me so? Well, it's certainly not because it's a bad bit of music. Indeed, it's usually in the top five tunes that will be the theme to Youth of Australia, assuming my sanity could cope. Anyway, back around 2003, an afternoon radio announcer called Mike Duffy chose the song as his theme. Mike Duffy... kinda like Sparacus, but with a taste in music you can't argue with. Listening to the tune caused strange melancholy in me, for a reason I could not ascertain. It felt, in short, like the dusk after a funeral. The world a smaller, less magical and less friendly place. Bittersweet is a good word for it.
But why would such music affect me? I wracked my brains and... rapidly gave up.
A year later I had my answer. Sometimes I wish I was still in ignorance.
Now, as I am probably one of a handful of people on this entire planet to know about The Legend of Robin Hood, I don't expect anyone reading this to. Now, a quick summary.
The Legend of Robin Hood was a six-part ITV series created by Robert Stewart Banks (he wrote The Seeds of Doom, you know). It was a realistically cynical story showing what, I feel, is very likely what really happened to Robin Hood. In the sense it was more like Blake's 7 than Prince of Thieves. The cast was also painfully impressive
Along with Will Scarlet, a boy called Ralph and a sarcastic, one-handed bloke called Much, Robin discovers a conspiracy to kill King Richard and falls foul of the Sherrif of Nottingham. Nottingham is planning to take over England by killing Richard and installing King John as a puppet ruler, and together with his drinking buddies the Abbot and Guy, plan to take over any remaining Saxon lands by having Guy marry Marian. Sir Kenneth Neston actually wants this to happen, as he intends to breed out the Normans with Saxon blood.
Nottingham tricks Richard into thinking Robin has chickened out of the crusades and in a fit of pique Richard brands Robin an outlaw. Robin, Tuck and the others set up a rural life in the forrests when they fall foul of John Little, a gigantic bloke who turns out be rather nice if you do not irritate him in any way whatsoever. The merry men (actually, they are never called that) discover that Nottingham has instituted a new cunning plan to get shitloads of cash. Everyone in England has to pay taxes to supply the crusades with funds and no one really has a problem with this. However, Nottingham is making everyone pay the taxes again and again and not letting any of the money reach the Holy Lands.
Robin decides to put in a road toll in his forrest - you wanna get through, you pay up. This is not the good hearted decision it might be, as he explains: they will give the money to the poor until they are taxed again and this time it goes to the crusades. This is as much about getting on Richard's good side and getting him to let them all off as much as making England a safer place. Their first attempt at this goes awry and Will is killed. Nothing spectacular, just a rather gloomy swordfight and we suddenly find out one of the merry men ain't so lucky.
Now, King Richard has been captured by a third party and all the taxes are to be devoted to paying up a ransom. However, King John wants to pay the kidnapper three times what is requested so that Richard will not be released, but kept in reasonable comfort until he dies of old age. Despite his psycho rages, John isn't particularly evil, just ruthless. And clueless... Anyway, moving on, Robin and his men sabotage things and Richard is released. However, furious, Guy kills Kenneth Neston and in a wonderful display of chutzpah starts whining when Marion doesn't instantly fancy rumpy pumpy with the bloke that slaughtered her only relative. Robin issues Guy a challenge and, narrowly, manages to kill him. Marion is free and things are, if not good, decent.
Now, the last episode of the series has, after it, a video clip called Take Five which plays Golden Brown. Directly after the last episode. As such, I have emotionally fused the two together.
So, the last episode. Nottingham has a criminal pretend to be one of Robin's men, then coldbloodedly kill the Bishop of Durram (imagine the pope with the reputation of Mother Teresa times a hundred). So shocking is this crime, the peasants betray Ralph and Much to the Norman soldiers - admittedly in the belief they will be interrogated and the real murderer found. However, the soldiers orders are to execute any rebel they find. In less than five seconds, our heroes are being dragged towards to makeshift nooses, Ralph clearly thinking furiously while Much screams hysterically... the next scene is at the local pub where Robin is shocked to hear that his two freinds have been hanged in the forest the previous day.
Robin disbands the gang for their own safety, however Tuck has caught a very bad fever and needs some special berries for a cure. He stumbles out into the forest, finds them... and then drops dead before he can use them. Meantime, Richard has returned to his castle and John finds the only way he can escape death is to publically claim he is a total idiot who was tricked by Nottingham. Truth or not, it wrecks his ego forever. Richard's forces surround Nottingham's castle and he cheerfully plans to escape by a secret passage, while all his companions know they are dead meat and might as well get drunk in the meantime. However, Nottingham is caught by Robin and brought to Richard, finally convincing the latter of his loyalty.
(Incidentally, Nottingham's last scene is amazingly cool. He stands before King Richard, looking unbearably smug. "Your crimes are many, my lord. The pity is you can only die once. You will be hanged tomorrow," says the King. "My rank donates the axe," sneers the Sherrif. Remaining impassive, the King replies "Then you shall have it. And your head put on a spike outside the castle gates." Nottingham is lead out, smiling at Robin in such a way you suspect that this is some kind of cunning escape plan and Paul Darrow is escaping...)
Robin decides to head back to his castle to sleep off a fever he's got from Tuck, telling Little John to go and collect Marian. Tomorrow, they'll meet King Richard and he will get his pardon and lands back. A very weak Robin staggers into his castle and gets a boy servant called Cedrick to get him the berries required for a cure. In a room that was once his cell, Robin grows more ill. A woman arrives and gives him the berry juice. It's surprisingly bitter.
It is at this point Robin learns what the audience knows - this woman is Guy of Guisborne's sister, and she's not feeling particularly merciful to the bloke who killed her brother. The wine has been poisoned, and we remember in the first episode a strange old woman warning Robin "You will never die. Save by a woman's hand." Which means of course, this woman has killed Robin. "Yes, my lord," the woman says quietly. "It was poisoned. Soon you will feel cold. In three or four hours you will be dead. Goodbye my lord." She turns and leaves as Robin stares after her in bare horror.
The next bit we see is Robin staggering through the forest. He loses his footing and collapses in the grass. It really is a beautiful day, and that forest is a lovely place. A small boy stands over Robin, assuming he is running from the soldiers. He is, to say the least, stunned when he learns he has found Robin Hood. Robin asks the boy to run to the town and find "a very large man and a very pretty lady" and tell them to hurry back. He promises the boy he won't be gone. The boy runs off into the forest at top speed...
And we see Marian kneeling, crying her eyes out while Little John holds Robin's treasured bow and arrow. "Where this arrow falls," Little John says with hithertoo unknown poetry, "there he'll lie." As the swashbuckling theme music builds, he fires the arrow into the air and we see some shots of pleasant English countryside... looking disturbingly like Gauda Prime... as the story comes to an end.
Then it's all Cairo hotels, pyramids, people in bhurkas wandering through sun-baked marble palaces, the Sphynx, the Nial, the sun going down...
And I cry. My eyes have a painful sting in them even now.
Hell, it's just a TV program. Based on a legend which is extremely dubious from a history viewpoint (though it it is undoubtedly the most credible account there is). And, after all, Robin dying in his own forest, the world he made his own long before he became an outlaw, with most of his mates dead at the time, has a poetic justice. He didn't suffer. Heck, it's ambiguous that he died at all.
But somehow, that sad ending... and it IS an ending, unlike the end of Blake's 7 with which it shares aching similarities... gets to me. And it still stirs a sort of loneliness in me, as we must abandon that world and go back to the modern problems of today. I get the same vibe watching the end of Warrior's Gate, Survival and Sleeping in Light, but never THAT intense.
Maybe I just had a really crappy day back when I first saw it... ooh, when I was two? about that young. Maybe that near suicidal emotional keystone could have been anything. I mean, Doomsday is designed to do that. And, disturbingly, after six months, it suddenly starts working.
Good thing they didn't replaced the Doomsday music with Golden Brown or I might have slit my wrists...
Why does that song depress me so? Well, it's certainly not because it's a bad bit of music. Indeed, it's usually in the top five tunes that will be the theme to Youth of Australia, assuming my sanity could cope. Anyway, back around 2003, an afternoon radio announcer called Mike Duffy chose the song as his theme. Mike Duffy... kinda like Sparacus, but with a taste in music you can't argue with. Listening to the tune caused strange melancholy in me, for a reason I could not ascertain. It felt, in short, like the dusk after a funeral. The world a smaller, less magical and less friendly place. Bittersweet is a good word for it.
But why would such music affect me? I wracked my brains and... rapidly gave up.
A year later I had my answer. Sometimes I wish I was still in ignorance.
Now, as I am probably one of a handful of people on this entire planet to know about The Legend of Robin Hood, I don't expect anyone reading this to. Now, a quick summary.
The Legend of Robin Hood was a six-part ITV series created by Robert Stewart Banks (he wrote The Seeds of Doom, you know). It was a realistically cynical story showing what, I feel, is very likely what really happened to Robin Hood. In the sense it was more like Blake's 7 than Prince of Thieves. The cast was also painfully impressive
- as Robin Hood there was Martin Potter, a bloke you can find as Eirak in Terminus
- as Little John there was Conrad Asquith, the big, beefy, bearded drunk copper in Talons of Weng Chiang
- as Friar Tuck there was Tony Caunter best known as, er, Morgan in Colony in Space (though he was in Enlightenment)
- as Will Scarlet there's a craggy faced geezer who's appeared in countless things I can't remember
- as the Sheriff of Nottingham there is Paul Darrow (basically Avon in a beard and this role got him the part of Avon)
- his mostly-forgotten Vila-like stoog is an Abbot (played by Selman from Cygnus Alpha
- William Marlowe plays Sir Guy of Guisborne (Mailer from Mind of Evil, with the same moustache)
- John Alberini as Sir Kenneth Neston, the uncle of Maid Marion (you gotta know who he is)
- David Dixon plays King John (the TV version of Ford Prefect)
- Michael Jackson plays King Richard (not THAT Michael Jackon, but the redhead that falls foul of King John and the Master in The King's Demon)
- and finally I forget who plays Maid Marion... but she is beautiful. Hard to describe beautiful. She's not ugly, but she's not Cosmopoliton material either. But you can buy the fact everyone falls in love with her just by seeing her face.
Along with Will Scarlet, a boy called Ralph and a sarcastic, one-handed bloke called Much, Robin discovers a conspiracy to kill King Richard and falls foul of the Sherrif of Nottingham. Nottingham is planning to take over England by killing Richard and installing King John as a puppet ruler, and together with his drinking buddies the Abbot and Guy, plan to take over any remaining Saxon lands by having Guy marry Marian. Sir Kenneth Neston actually wants this to happen, as he intends to breed out the Normans with Saxon blood.
Nottingham tricks Richard into thinking Robin has chickened out of the crusades and in a fit of pique Richard brands Robin an outlaw. Robin, Tuck and the others set up a rural life in the forrests when they fall foul of John Little, a gigantic bloke who turns out be rather nice if you do not irritate him in any way whatsoever. The merry men (actually, they are never called that) discover that Nottingham has instituted a new cunning plan to get shitloads of cash. Everyone in England has to pay taxes to supply the crusades with funds and no one really has a problem with this. However, Nottingham is making everyone pay the taxes again and again and not letting any of the money reach the Holy Lands.
Robin decides to put in a road toll in his forrest - you wanna get through, you pay up. This is not the good hearted decision it might be, as he explains: they will give the money to the poor until they are taxed again and this time it goes to the crusades. This is as much about getting on Richard's good side and getting him to let them all off as much as making England a safer place. Their first attempt at this goes awry and Will is killed. Nothing spectacular, just a rather gloomy swordfight and we suddenly find out one of the merry men ain't so lucky.
Now, King Richard has been captured by a third party and all the taxes are to be devoted to paying up a ransom. However, King John wants to pay the kidnapper three times what is requested so that Richard will not be released, but kept in reasonable comfort until he dies of old age. Despite his psycho rages, John isn't particularly evil, just ruthless. And clueless... Anyway, moving on, Robin and his men sabotage things and Richard is released. However, furious, Guy kills Kenneth Neston and in a wonderful display of chutzpah starts whining when Marion doesn't instantly fancy rumpy pumpy with the bloke that slaughtered her only relative. Robin issues Guy a challenge and, narrowly, manages to kill him. Marion is free and things are, if not good, decent.
Now, the last episode of the series has, after it, a video clip called Take Five which plays Golden Brown. Directly after the last episode. As such, I have emotionally fused the two together.
So, the last episode. Nottingham has a criminal pretend to be one of Robin's men, then coldbloodedly kill the Bishop of Durram (imagine the pope with the reputation of Mother Teresa times a hundred). So shocking is this crime, the peasants betray Ralph and Much to the Norman soldiers - admittedly in the belief they will be interrogated and the real murderer found. However, the soldiers orders are to execute any rebel they find. In less than five seconds, our heroes are being dragged towards to makeshift nooses, Ralph clearly thinking furiously while Much screams hysterically... the next scene is at the local pub where Robin is shocked to hear that his two freinds have been hanged in the forest the previous day.
Robin disbands the gang for their own safety, however Tuck has caught a very bad fever and needs some special berries for a cure. He stumbles out into the forest, finds them... and then drops dead before he can use them. Meantime, Richard has returned to his castle and John finds the only way he can escape death is to publically claim he is a total idiot who was tricked by Nottingham. Truth or not, it wrecks his ego forever. Richard's forces surround Nottingham's castle and he cheerfully plans to escape by a secret passage, while all his companions know they are dead meat and might as well get drunk in the meantime. However, Nottingham is caught by Robin and brought to Richard, finally convincing the latter of his loyalty.
(Incidentally, Nottingham's last scene is amazingly cool. He stands before King Richard, looking unbearably smug. "Your crimes are many, my lord. The pity is you can only die once. You will be hanged tomorrow," says the King. "My rank donates the axe," sneers the Sherrif. Remaining impassive, the King replies "Then you shall have it. And your head put on a spike outside the castle gates." Nottingham is lead out, smiling at Robin in such a way you suspect that this is some kind of cunning escape plan and Paul Darrow is escaping...)
Robin decides to head back to his castle to sleep off a fever he's got from Tuck, telling Little John to go and collect Marian. Tomorrow, they'll meet King Richard and he will get his pardon and lands back. A very weak Robin staggers into his castle and gets a boy servant called Cedrick to get him the berries required for a cure. In a room that was once his cell, Robin grows more ill. A woman arrives and gives him the berry juice. It's surprisingly bitter.
It is at this point Robin learns what the audience knows - this woman is Guy of Guisborne's sister, and she's not feeling particularly merciful to the bloke who killed her brother. The wine has been poisoned, and we remember in the first episode a strange old woman warning Robin "You will never die. Save by a woman's hand." Which means of course, this woman has killed Robin. "Yes, my lord," the woman says quietly. "It was poisoned. Soon you will feel cold. In three or four hours you will be dead. Goodbye my lord." She turns and leaves as Robin stares after her in bare horror.
The next bit we see is Robin staggering through the forest. He loses his footing and collapses in the grass. It really is a beautiful day, and that forest is a lovely place. A small boy stands over Robin, assuming he is running from the soldiers. He is, to say the least, stunned when he learns he has found Robin Hood. Robin asks the boy to run to the town and find "a very large man and a very pretty lady" and tell them to hurry back. He promises the boy he won't be gone. The boy runs off into the forest at top speed...
And we see Marian kneeling, crying her eyes out while Little John holds Robin's treasured bow and arrow. "Where this arrow falls," Little John says with hithertoo unknown poetry, "there he'll lie." As the swashbuckling theme music builds, he fires the arrow into the air and we see some shots of pleasant English countryside... looking disturbingly like Gauda Prime... as the story comes to an end.
Then it's all Cairo hotels, pyramids, people in bhurkas wandering through sun-baked marble palaces, the Sphynx, the Nial, the sun going down...
And I cry. My eyes have a painful sting in them even now.
Hell, it's just a TV program. Based on a legend which is extremely dubious from a history viewpoint (though it it is undoubtedly the most credible account there is). And, after all, Robin dying in his own forest, the world he made his own long before he became an outlaw, with most of his mates dead at the time, has a poetic justice. He didn't suffer. Heck, it's ambiguous that he died at all.
But somehow, that sad ending... and it IS an ending, unlike the end of Blake's 7 with which it shares aching similarities... gets to me. And it still stirs a sort of loneliness in me, as we must abandon that world and go back to the modern problems of today. I get the same vibe watching the end of Warrior's Gate, Survival and Sleeping in Light, but never THAT intense.
Maybe I just had a really crappy day back when I first saw it... ooh, when I was two? about that young. Maybe that near suicidal emotional keystone could have been anything. I mean, Doomsday is designed to do that. And, disturbingly, after six months, it suddenly starts working.
Good thing they didn't replaced the Doomsday music with Golden Brown or I might have slit my wrists...
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The Best Fic I've Ever Read
And the saddest.
You might not have any idea about what the hell "Daria" is, but I don't think that matters. Not this time.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/440646/1/
Painfully good.
You might not have any idea about what the hell "Daria" is, but I don't think that matters. Not this time.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/440646/1/
Painfully good.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Curiouser and Curiouser
The Day God Went Mad
The first story of Tom Baker's era could have got off to a better start, I think we can all agree.
Surely in a situation like this, it would have been better to contrast the new Doctor with the UNIT era that defined his predecessor. Seeing the Brigadier and Sarah relate to this new version of their old friend was a better course of action, but this was thrown out the window for the Fourth Doctor's second story "Heavy Metal" (where the Doctor returns to find a philosophical android is starting a third world war, and UNIT hardly gets a look-in).
The first moments of the serial, where the regenerated Doctor flees in the TARDIS, gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what the serial could have been like.
Instead, we see the Doctor arrive on a huge space ship heading for the planet Imelo and promptly gets involved in local affairs. It is Baker's incredible performance that gives the story any kind of momento - the script has the new Doctor a blank slate, reacting to people totally randomly according to how they treat him, and shifting from Troughton to Hartnell for no real reason for various scenes.
Frankly, the plot for the first episode wasn't up to much, with the Doctor exploring the ship as the security teams try to track him down. The cliffhanger where the Doctor hides in a communications room only to find himself surrounded by armed guards, didn't exactly inspire me at the Time Lord's resourcefulness or intelligence. Nevertheless, the way he sweet-talked Commander Mordee in the second episode was priceless, especially with the historic moment when the Doctor broke off mid-rant and asked if anybody had a jelly baby, which in turn lead to the dull dinner party sequence.
There was nothing about Xoanon that wasn't already done in 2001: A Space Oddesy, and having a Dalek eyestalk wittly providing light conversation over disappearing and reappearing meals wasn't exactly the terror of giant spiders or lumbering Ice Warriors. And there was also a terrible amount of exposition on Mordee's mission.
The colonization angle has been done before, and better, though the Doctor's brooding over the term 'progress' hinted at a far more cerebral incarnation than we ultimately got. Maybe this was a hangover of the 'older Doctor' plotline, as most of the physical stuff is given to Sub-Commander Khan (a wonderful performance by Prentis Hancock there).
The power-failure at the end of episode two was quite drammatic. The lights suddenly going out, a short of the Phados spaceship shutting down, and the Doctor grinning, "You know, I think we're going to crash?" was a memorable end to the episode and no doubt responsible for increase in ratings for episode three - sadly, as it was total padding.
The Doctor and Khan being forced to walk through miles of pipe and air tubes to get at the main computer junction lead to that terrible ending where Khan is conveniently gassed by a security system. Had the fabled 'Berbrese noose' been used, I think the situation would have been more dramatic.
The plot effectively ended half-way through the final episode as the Doctor effectively puts on a collinder and uses a 'Silridiean Memory Transfer' to boot up the computer. If only that were possible today, eh? It was nothing but technobabble and I suspect had Jon Pertwee stayed for Season 12 the polarity of the nuetron flow would have been reversed for similar effects.
Indeed, the only inventive act was to give Xoanon the Doctor's voice and face - why bother? Did Baker get a second paycheck or something?
The realization of the Phados crashing into that desert plane just outside a gigantic crator full of jungles and harsh animals was pretty poor too. Doctor Who should milk these situations - the realization that the Phados has time technology could have been used to some dangerous extent when the TARDIS gets lost in the works. These hostile animals were never seen, and perhaps some none-too-pleased natives could have spiced things up.
Instead, we just got the Doctor chatting to himself ("You handsome devil, Doctor" made me laugh once or twice) and the truly pointless bit where Survey Team Leader Mentar took a photo of the Doctor's face for posterity. The Doctor's outfit consisted of a hospital gown, his old coat and a brown scarf he found in the TARDIS - definitely nailing the character as caring about anything except his appearance.
A dull start to the best of the Doctors, with only that chilling end sequence - where the Doctor/Xoanon begins to laugh like a madman and suddenly everyone clutches their foreheads - giving any kind of drama to it. Perhaps Chris Boucher intended a sequel to this story, about the result of the Doctor's interference?
We may never know, and the ultimate fates of Mordee, Imelo and Xoanon are left unrecorded to this day.
6/10
Absolutely wonderful review!!! Suddenly Robot doesn't look as bad as others may have us believe.
The first story of Tom Baker's era could have got off to a better start, I think we can all agree.
Surely in a situation like this, it would have been better to contrast the new Doctor with the UNIT era that defined his predecessor. Seeing the Brigadier and Sarah relate to this new version of their old friend was a better course of action, but this was thrown out the window for the Fourth Doctor's second story "Heavy Metal" (where the Doctor returns to find a philosophical android is starting a third world war, and UNIT hardly gets a look-in).
The first moments of the serial, where the regenerated Doctor flees in the TARDIS, gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what the serial could have been like.
Instead, we see the Doctor arrive on a huge space ship heading for the planet Imelo and promptly gets involved in local affairs. It is Baker's incredible performance that gives the story any kind of momento - the script has the new Doctor a blank slate, reacting to people totally randomly according to how they treat him, and shifting from Troughton to Hartnell for no real reason for various scenes.
Frankly, the plot for the first episode wasn't up to much, with the Doctor exploring the ship as the security teams try to track him down. The cliffhanger where the Doctor hides in a communications room only to find himself surrounded by armed guards, didn't exactly inspire me at the Time Lord's resourcefulness or intelligence. Nevertheless, the way he sweet-talked Commander Mordee in the second episode was priceless, especially with the historic moment when the Doctor broke off mid-rant and asked if anybody had a jelly baby, which in turn lead to the dull dinner party sequence.
There was nothing about Xoanon that wasn't already done in 2001: A Space Oddesy, and having a Dalek eyestalk wittly providing light conversation over disappearing and reappearing meals wasn't exactly the terror of giant spiders or lumbering Ice Warriors. And there was also a terrible amount of exposition on Mordee's mission.
The colonization angle has been done before, and better, though the Doctor's brooding over the term 'progress' hinted at a far more cerebral incarnation than we ultimately got. Maybe this was a hangover of the 'older Doctor' plotline, as most of the physical stuff is given to Sub-Commander Khan (a wonderful performance by Prentis Hancock there).
The power-failure at the end of episode two was quite drammatic. The lights suddenly going out, a short of the Phados spaceship shutting down, and the Doctor grinning, "You know, I think we're going to crash?" was a memorable end to the episode and no doubt responsible for increase in ratings for episode three - sadly, as it was total padding.
The Doctor and Khan being forced to walk through miles of pipe and air tubes to get at the main computer junction lead to that terrible ending where Khan is conveniently gassed by a security system. Had the fabled 'Berbrese noose' been used, I think the situation would have been more dramatic.
The plot effectively ended half-way through the final episode as the Doctor effectively puts on a collinder and uses a 'Silridiean Memory Transfer' to boot up the computer. If only that were possible today, eh? It was nothing but technobabble and I suspect had Jon Pertwee stayed for Season 12 the polarity of the nuetron flow would have been reversed for similar effects.
Indeed, the only inventive act was to give Xoanon the Doctor's voice and face - why bother? Did Baker get a second paycheck or something?
The realization of the Phados crashing into that desert plane just outside a gigantic crator full of jungles and harsh animals was pretty poor too. Doctor Who should milk these situations - the realization that the Phados has time technology could have been used to some dangerous extent when the TARDIS gets lost in the works. These hostile animals were never seen, and perhaps some none-too-pleased natives could have spiced things up.
Instead, we just got the Doctor chatting to himself ("You handsome devil, Doctor" made me laugh once or twice) and the truly pointless bit where Survey Team Leader Mentar took a photo of the Doctor's face for posterity. The Doctor's outfit consisted of a hospital gown, his old coat and a brown scarf he found in the TARDIS - definitely nailing the character as caring about anything except his appearance.
A dull start to the best of the Doctors, with only that chilling end sequence - where the Doctor/Xoanon begins to laugh like a madman and suddenly everyone clutches their foreheads - giving any kind of drama to it. Perhaps Chris Boucher intended a sequel to this story, about the result of the Doctor's interference?
We may never know, and the ultimate fates of Mordee, Imelo and Xoanon are left unrecorded to this day.
6/10
Absolutely wonderful review!!! Suddenly Robot doesn't look as bad as others may have us believe.
- Henry Gordon Jago
Absoloutly brilliant YoA - although you may have tried to emphasise the poorer elements of the story - it still read like the best Doctor intro (n)ever made (baring Spearhead obviously).
- Third Auton
What the fuck are you on about, you retard? This doesn't make any sense at all!
- Mick Gair
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Things That Make Me Cry
I'm butch, I am. Damn tough. Hardened and instinctively restraining my emotions because half the time no one gave a damn anyway. Plus my eyes get really blotchy. Not a good look and those that know me, know how ugly as sin I am. No need to make it worse.
Thus we have a list of things that shattered my resolve. Including
Rose's departure in Doomsday
The end of The Legend of Robin Hood
The Monkey Magic episode Such A Nice Monster.
The last proper episode of Round the Twist (which I would name if I could remember the title, plus the fact every episode after was so shithouse I will never again acknowledge its existence.)
The Tom Baker Years.
The what?!?
I picked up my copy of The Tom Baker Years during a rainy Saturday afternoon trip to the ABC - and thoroughly disappointed that the only other Doctor Who stuff there was an eye-catching Dalek poster and newspaper comic strip about them. I won't spoil it for you, but it involved stairs. So, I grabbed this lovely orange colored box with that smiling face, impressed that what was clearly one video was advertising itself as a two-cassette box. I was either getting more than my money's worth or less than my money's worth, but at the time I was so engrossed in working out who the bloke on the back next to Styre was. Turned out to be Soldeed in the end. I'm still kicking myself, you know.
So, the tape. It's set in that gloomy museum basement that all such tapes are set in, and Tom Baker wanders in - clearly having just stepped off the Shada reconstruction or just about to enter it - and gives a clearly scripted spiel that he never liked the idea of these tapes in general especially as the tape couldn't even follow the layout set down previously: there are no Tom Baker missing stories, or highly-regarded ones that weren't on tape back then.
Tom has been seduced into this because he has no idea what he'll be watching. True, there's an above-average probability it will be a Doctor Who story featuring him, but the details were live. Reality TV, you might say. And so, he watches a few minutes from every story he did - in the order it was on TV - and he regales you with what (if anything) he remembers. No, that's not fair. He comes to a complete blank only on a few stories, like Planet of Evil or Underworld. Story titles and dates he's normally quite good with, though a few mistakes are dryly corrected by captions at the foot of the screen. By the second tape, this is forgotten, letting him get away with calling Leela's first story The Face of Fear and simply shrugging over the name of The Androids of Tara. I get the impression that the captioner was as caught up in watching the stories and Tom as I to bother with such trivialities.
Of course, nowadays there's nothing Tom can tell you that Doctor Who Magazine can't - though, there is an exception but Tom refuses to explain on the grounds this is a family-oriented tape by God it was fun, though. Apparently. But Tom recalls something from 90% of stories and it's always interesting and probably corrected by the next clip. Tom's recall is, altogether very good. While I, fan that I am, could recite you every working title for his stories backwards (please, don't hit me), would be rendered open mouthed at having to recall every anecdote for seven years eleven years ago. Due to my age, it's impossible anyway, but that's a tall order by anyone's standards.
Tom Baker makes it quite clear that he never watches things he stars in - with noticeable exceptions like The Deadly Assassin, for example, which he felt he had to. As such, this is all pretty new to him and he enjoys it.
The early part of the tapes, with Tom grinning in front of us and on his TV are infectious. A real sense of melancholy falls over the second half of the tape, Seasons 16-18, but Tom Baker is, like the Doctor, having far too much fun to worry about things until Romana leaves in what has to be the longest clip - from her departure to the credits of Warrior's Gate episode four. From that moment, and the intrusive bit of film footage with the ever present "the marriage didn't last long you know" quote that Tom, perhaps for the best, doesn't say anything about, a real sense of... not quite bitterness, not quite depression sinks in. Mainly to me, as I can't judge Tom; the video has been edited slightly, I'm certain, as it shows his reactions to the Five Doctors before his reaction to his death scene, so his pathos moves backwards.
Watching those final scenes, with a brooding older Tom superimposed in the corner - a stark contrast to the chuckling figure watching the opening scene in Robot - make Logopolis seem even more poignant. As the Master shoves the glowering Doctor away from the controls, I get the strangest impression: denial. This can't be the end of Doctor Who. He's won before, he'll win now. He's not weak or old... is he? As Tom Baker says, he could have kept going after this. Maybe for Doctor Who it was best he didn't, but I don't think credibility would have been lost if the fourth Doctor survived Season 18.
Tom's final reminisces bring a lump to my throat as he explains he (at least tried to) leave Doctor Who, head held high and looking for greener pastures. He had the best part in the world behind him - surely things could get only get better?
They didn't.
The final anecdote where he left a hotel full of drinking Who fans hanging on his every word and return a haircut later to be barely noticed, sums it up pretty well. "They'd forgotten me," he whispers gently, "but I hadn't forgotten them."
He's not wallowing in misery, or cursing fate, just looking back at what happened, old and wise. As he says, no matter what happens to him from now on, for seven long years he lived the best life he'd ever had, a life that can be watched again. Proof it happened. How many people can say that? And, as he wanders off into the sunset again, cheerful and curious, you wonder just how much of the Doctor is Tom Baker and how much of Tom Baker is Doctor Who?
Well worth the cash, in my opinion, mainly because I didn't pay for it.
But I sobbed my heart out.
There, you damn paperazzi! YOU HAPPY NOW?!
Thus we have a list of things that shattered my resolve. Including
Rose's departure in Doomsday
The end of The Legend of Robin Hood
The Monkey Magic episode Such A Nice Monster.
The last proper episode of Round the Twist (which I would name if I could remember the title, plus the fact every episode after was so shithouse I will never again acknowledge its existence.)
The Tom Baker Years.
The what?!?
I picked up my copy of The Tom Baker Years during a rainy Saturday afternoon trip to the ABC - and thoroughly disappointed that the only other Doctor Who stuff there was an eye-catching Dalek poster and newspaper comic strip about them. I won't spoil it for you, but it involved stairs. So, I grabbed this lovely orange colored box with that smiling face, impressed that what was clearly one video was advertising itself as a two-cassette box. I was either getting more than my money's worth or less than my money's worth, but at the time I was so engrossed in working out who the bloke on the back next to Styre was. Turned out to be Soldeed in the end. I'm still kicking myself, you know.
So, the tape. It's set in that gloomy museum basement that all such tapes are set in, and Tom Baker wanders in - clearly having just stepped off the Shada reconstruction or just about to enter it - and gives a clearly scripted spiel that he never liked the idea of these tapes in general especially as the tape couldn't even follow the layout set down previously: there are no Tom Baker missing stories, or highly-regarded ones that weren't on tape back then.
Tom has been seduced into this because he has no idea what he'll be watching. True, there's an above-average probability it will be a Doctor Who story featuring him, but the details were live. Reality TV, you might say. And so, he watches a few minutes from every story he did - in the order it was on TV - and he regales you with what (if anything) he remembers. No, that's not fair. He comes to a complete blank only on a few stories, like Planet of Evil or Underworld. Story titles and dates he's normally quite good with, though a few mistakes are dryly corrected by captions at the foot of the screen. By the second tape, this is forgotten, letting him get away with calling Leela's first story The Face of Fear and simply shrugging over the name of The Androids of Tara. I get the impression that the captioner was as caught up in watching the stories and Tom as I to bother with such trivialities.
Of course, nowadays there's nothing Tom can tell you that Doctor Who Magazine can't - though, there is an exception but Tom refuses to explain on the grounds this is a family-oriented tape by God it was fun, though. Apparently. But Tom recalls something from 90% of stories and it's always interesting and probably corrected by the next clip. Tom's recall is, altogether very good. While I, fan that I am, could recite you every working title for his stories backwards (please, don't hit me), would be rendered open mouthed at having to recall every anecdote for seven years eleven years ago. Due to my age, it's impossible anyway, but that's a tall order by anyone's standards.
Tom Baker makes it quite clear that he never watches things he stars in - with noticeable exceptions like The Deadly Assassin, for example, which he felt he had to. As such, this is all pretty new to him and he enjoys it.
The early part of the tapes, with Tom grinning in front of us and on his TV are infectious. A real sense of melancholy falls over the second half of the tape, Seasons 16-18, but Tom Baker is, like the Doctor, having far too much fun to worry about things until Romana leaves in what has to be the longest clip - from her departure to the credits of Warrior's Gate episode four. From that moment, and the intrusive bit of film footage with the ever present "the marriage didn't last long you know" quote that Tom, perhaps for the best, doesn't say anything about, a real sense of... not quite bitterness, not quite depression sinks in. Mainly to me, as I can't judge Tom; the video has been edited slightly, I'm certain, as it shows his reactions to the Five Doctors before his reaction to his death scene, so his pathos moves backwards.
Watching those final scenes, with a brooding older Tom superimposed in the corner - a stark contrast to the chuckling figure watching the opening scene in Robot - make Logopolis seem even more poignant. As the Master shoves the glowering Doctor away from the controls, I get the strangest impression: denial. This can't be the end of Doctor Who. He's won before, he'll win now. He's not weak or old... is he? As Tom Baker says, he could have kept going after this. Maybe for Doctor Who it was best he didn't, but I don't think credibility would have been lost if the fourth Doctor survived Season 18.
Tom's final reminisces bring a lump to my throat as he explains he (at least tried to) leave Doctor Who, head held high and looking for greener pastures. He had the best part in the world behind him - surely things could get only get better?
They didn't.
The final anecdote where he left a hotel full of drinking Who fans hanging on his every word and return a haircut later to be barely noticed, sums it up pretty well. "They'd forgotten me," he whispers gently, "but I hadn't forgotten them."
He's not wallowing in misery, or cursing fate, just looking back at what happened, old and wise. As he says, no matter what happens to him from now on, for seven long years he lived the best life he'd ever had, a life that can be watched again. Proof it happened. How many people can say that? And, as he wanders off into the sunset again, cheerful and curious, you wonder just how much of the Doctor is Tom Baker and how much of Tom Baker is Doctor Who?
Well worth the cash, in my opinion, mainly because I didn't pay for it.
But I sobbed my heart out.
There, you damn paperazzi! YOU HAPPY NOW?!
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