1E - The Pretension Society -
CD Blurb
Fleeing an Earth corrupted by passions, cruelty, and hatred, the people of Perivale sought to create the perfect society. They failed miserably, so let's talk about something more interesting happening in Saffron Waldon.
As the twenty-first century dawned, could man overcome his very basic nature? Would Pokémon replace real pets? Is having an unhealthy obsession with a computer game character as valid as having a relationship with a real, living person who CAN'T disembowel mutant ninjas?
When the Doctor and Chris arrive on a world frighteningly similar to our own, since it IS our own, and they find a society about to revolutionized by a wonder drug called Cyberon which can fix permanent brain injury, incurable diseases, bad posture, hangovers, depression, constipation and disco fever. Can the Doctor save a society whose zeal for technological advancement and physical superiority will ultimately lead to their own extinction? Why should he bother? Or will time run out as Chris falls in love with a good looking bearded villain and run off to the Bahamas before the Doctor's very eyes?
But, indulging in luddite paranoia for the briefest of brief moments, what if this wonder drug has its OWN evil plan for the deposition of human kind? Is this the start of dethroning man from his supremacy, to become a secondary being like an ape or an estate agent, subservient to a more efficient and reliable species? Is Cyberon merely an omen of the rise of the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machines, metal giants closely resembling the human form, whose muscles of steel and electronic eyes will defeat the unpredictable insect of man?
Or are we just getting a wee bit hysterical?
Plot Summary
We join this eugenics-supporting episode as the Doctor perishes mere moments after setting his ruined TARDIS to go to Disneyworld as Chris tells him to stop being a pathetic weakling and stop dying.
At this point, the Doctor's eyes glow a burning red, convincing Chris he has somehow been possessed by the Devil. This impression is not helped when the fiery red glow spreads from his eyes to engulf his face and body, which then dissolves to reveal a big fat guy with long curly hair and a goatee lying in the Doctor's place!
The new Doctor soon proves dangerously irritating as he absent-mindedly forgets that he has already regenerated, repeatedly gets Chris' name wrong, and takes every chance to insult and ridicule the "total magic-obsessed loser" that was his previous incarnation. In between this he admires his new, rugged face in any reflective surface he can find and starts proclaiming that he has finally achieved physical perfection and could beat Helen of Troy in a beauty contest.
After five minutes of narcissistic patronizing, Chris has enough and declares the regenerated Doctor an "arrogant demon son of a bitch" and punches him repeatedly in the kidneys. The Doctor is more interested in getting out of his singed, blood-soaked and ravaged clothes - and the sight of his naked body terrifies Chris so much she flees into the depths of the TARDIS.
The Doctor meanwhile is more upset to discover that 'perfection' doesn't fully extend across ALL of his new body, and is so ashamed he bangs his fist on the console. This has the twin side effects of causing the crippled time machine to crash land, and the Doctor to break a nail - an injury too much for his delicate constitution to handle... despite the fact the last guy was able to suffer five million volts of direct current without flinching.
Instead, the Doctor nearly loses consciousness from the magnitude of his damaged cuticle and stumbles off after Chris, begging for her to come and save his glorious aspect from such harsh realities...
...only to walk straight into Chris's home-made Wyle-E-Coyote-style man trap involving a tripwire, a noose and the ceiling-high piles of unread issues of Mighty Midget TV Comic 21 Action Magazine. Chris laughs cruelly as the wailing bastard is buried in newsprint that muffles his puny screams for "Melanie and/or Sarah" to show mercy upon his divine salty goodness.
Rubbing her hands with glee at a job well done, Chris tries to find her way back to the control room through the myriad of identically-damaged roundeled corridors. She soon stumbles across the remains of the destroyed Super-Trod (who perished in the episode immediately prior to this one - what sort of fan ARE you?!?), and notices a rather interesting button on its cylindrical body marked CRUSH-KILL-DESTROY and switches it on. Just for a laugh.
Soon the deadly robotic life form is rising up, shaking its mighty metal claws and growling Romanian death threats in its heavily-fractured artificial voice. Leaving the Super-Trod to hurtle around the TARDIS corridors looking for people to slash to ribbons, Chris returns to the control room to watch episodes of The Banana Splitz on the scanner. However, the VCR is like everything else on the crashed TARDIS - completely stuffed.
Annoyed, Chris kicks open the doors and strides out of the wreckage of a police box dropped from a great height onto very hard ground. She finds herself in the grounds of the Bayview Retirement Home for the Terminally Bewildered and the Almost Dead. At this point the plot turns 290 degrees and decides to focus on the plight of a bunch of senile pensioners, some of whom believe they are monkeys, and Chris taking the piss out of their mental disabilities.
Chris is soon mistaken for a staff nurse and within six hours finds herself driving to an apartment she shares with a fit-looking gay bloke named Cosmic Raymond and they discuss her frustrated single lifestyle over a coffee and low-fat yogurt. Chris is impressed at how rapidly her lifestyle has turned around when there is a knock at the door as the REAL nurse and flatmate turns up... so Chris headbuts her unconscious and locks her in the cellar.
Meanwhile, inside the ruined TARDIS, the Doctor struggles to free himself from under all his unread comic books, short of breath, dizzy and unable to focus - yet he's still capable of making truly appalling puns and being incredibly smug, blaming all the imperfections of his new form on that 'stupid, stupid bastard' of his previous incarnation who got himself killed.
The Doctor soon hears the telemetric bleeping sound of the approaching Trod-shaped death machine. As he is too weak and feeble to move, the Doctor lies where he is making unfunny would-be-witticisms.
Outside, at the Home for Decrepit Dementia, the sinister American Tom Leyland from the Touchwood Institute has arrived to test out his newly-developed and patented all-purpose elixir he has named the not-at-all-suspicious "Cyberon". Without waiting to say hello, Leyland is grabbing pensioners and injecting mercury into the back of their necks while cackling evilly to himself. He's so caught up in the moment, he injects some of the staff - from the wheelchair-bound Dana to Chris herself - before he realizes what he's doing. There seem to be no immediate side effects, apart from some of the inmates screaming that shiny silver ghost monsters with stupid jug-handles on their heads are appearing in blue-misted, LSD-CGI-hallucinations that only they can see. Leyland nevertheless insists this is an unqualified success and runs off to the nearest nightclub, BrainStorm, before anyone can stop him.
Chris races after him and after five minutes in a rave party, has suffered such culture shock it has blown her fragile little mind and she immediately falls ass over tit in love with Leyland, who laughs evilly and has a light beer. Together they discuss the future of the human race, the nature of reality, and whether or not Big Brother will really take off in the reality TV genre.
Back at Bayview, several of the residents have dropped dead as their skin turns silver and Dana can now not only walk, she has chosen one of the semi-visible Cyber-ghosts to be her fitness trainer for the next London marathon. She tells everyone that she is being 'lifted by guardian angels', but they're all nuts so they agree with her claims wholeheartedly. At BrainStorm, in order to keep up with hardcore extreme 24-hour-party-person lifestyle, Leyland ducks into the gents to shoot up with Cyberon. He quickly freaks out as all the mirrors reflect Cyberman helmets and the walls start to melt into rainbows. Curiously, Leyland acts like he WASN'T expecting this, which begs the question of why he started taking hallucinogenics in the first place.
Nevertheless, it still leaves him sweaty and approachable for Chris to take him back to her place and spend a night of borderline illegal ecstasy together. Gosh, it's so mature and dramatic and gritty and realistic! It's like This Life with Cybermen! Oh, the future is so bright I gotta see an optometrist!
Meanwhile, the all-night sex session is so draining that Leyland needs another shot of Cyberon. He explains to Chris he only started taking because all the other cool doctors were taking their own drugs, and only needed it to improve his intellect, problem-solving abilities, abstract concept visualization, capacity to retain knowledge and of course make him a better dancer.
When he pops out for some fresh air he finds a silver Cyberman standing in the kitchen, acting like it owns the place. In a booming synthesized voice not at all dissimilar to Nicholas Briggs, it orders Leyland to take another hit so they can talk face-to-silver-moulded-faceplate. Leyland tells the Cyberman to fuck off, which it does in a spooky editing trick the moment Leyland isn't looking.
This proves to be nothing but an excuse to creep up behind the butt-naked Leyland and scare the crap out of him with a similar sudden shocking reveal. After a few more minutes of this, it just gets old and the Cyberman vanishes properly. Chris wanders out, watching her hand move with her Cybus-enhanced LSD vision. She muses that Cyberon is a living, intelligent thing that is using Leyland in order to get it injected into as many brains as possible.
Having deduced the main part of the plot, Chris immediately goes back to having sex with Leyland rather than doing anything about this invasion of Cybermen ghosts who even now are marching around Bayview where the residents who HAVEN'T perished from heart attacks are now fully-cognoscenti members of society.
Books/Other Related Material-
Dr Who - Hypo Full of Love
Doctor Who Increases His Manhood
Dialogue Train Wrecks
Leyland: You will join me, Christine. We will be the first of the New Race!
Chris: What are they?
Leyland: They're the future
Doctor: They're Cybermen.
Leyland: They're the next stage of evolutionary intelligence on Earth!
Doctor: They're Cybermen.
Leyland: They're the Immortal Ones.
Doctor: Hello? They're Cybermen!
Chris: That's good, isn't it? Who doesn't want to be immortal?
Doctor: GOD DAMN IT, THEY'RE CYBERMEN!
Cyberman: Cyberon will not harm you.
Chris: No... I doth must be hallucinating!
Cyberman: Then why are you talking to me?
Chris: ...touche.
Dialogue Gems
Doctor: You're talking science fiction now, not realistic medicine!
Leyland: I know this will be a paradigm shift, I'm not arguing there.
Doctor: Huh? Who mentioned paradigms?
Leyland: But the silicon chip, the airplane, the radio, they were all science fiction once! It's not the Twentieth Century any more. We're due a little science fiction. Now let me inject this mercury into the back of your neck...
CyberLeader: Your sexual contact with Christine means that you have formed an emotional bond. That is not long-term commitment. That is weakness. You must play the field.
Leyland: We've made contact with something better than us - they're stronger, they don't die, they'll cast off this human bodies and reach from the stars. It's been staring us in the face. We've known for years we were about to encounter something better than us. Another form of intelligence, something genetically engineered, even some aspect of the divine. We knew it was going to happen. We ARE it. Nothing can stop us. No one needs to be left behind. Anyone who takes Cyberon will be part of it too.
Doctor: And what if they don't want to take it?
Leyland: Oh. I hadn't thought of that...
Listener Reviews
"MY GAWD!! KILL US - THIS STORY SUCKS." - Kit Peddler & Gerry Davis (2000)
Jym de Natale Speaks!
"And so it came to pass that Jeffrey Coburn fell and his gimmicky incarnation of the Doctor was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion, as master of the SCADs, and I thought it... good! What wasn't good was that, unlike those regeneration stories from the original TV series, my Doctor wasn't out of it or acting like a maniac for a little while following the change until I get my new and infinitely superior head on straight. I didn't get to do that. Christine did. I was pretty much on the verge of death through the whole thing and that's because the so-called writer of this was having trouble getting my character down, and did an utterly awful job. They should just let me be, rather than expect me to follow some paltry script!
But I enjoy playing the Doctor. It completes me. I bring my gift of audio talent to ALL humanity. I might not have signed a contract, but I'm in this for the long haul, mark my words. How long? How long will I stay? Longer than Tom Baker. Longer than Sylvester McCoy. Longer even than Dave Segal. Fandom is powerless against the might of Jym de Natale! Onwards, forever onwards! To the end of Doctor Who itself! I WILL **NEVER** LEAVE! I'm saying this of my own free will, you know, I'm not being coerced! There's not a gun to my head! I'm a willing participant of the SCADs! THE UNIVERSE WILL SUCCUMB TO ENTROPY BEFORE I GIVE UP THIS PART!!"
Rachel Sommers Speaks!
"My character, against the New Doctor, is sick and tired of this shit. He's more of an arrogant asshole than the old Doctor, but I think Chris will beat some respect into him and make him less of an arrogant asshole. I think she's working out just fine. I like a twisted sexual sadist like that. Hopefully a lot of other people do to... if they know what's good for them. Cause Chris is going to be around for a long time. Longer than this new jerk with the moustache, whose fingers I intend to break and his head I shall repeatedly slam against tables if he annoys me ever, ever again."
Rumours, Slander, and Libel
To replace Jeff Coburn's wild, decadent, hedonistic, magic-obsessed Doctor, it was decided by Douglas Phillips that his successor should be a more sober, old-fashioned Edwardian, aloof, cultured twat obsessed with class. Someone pedantic, boring, alien and with an ego the size of the planet Jupiter. While he admitted that this was a complete rip off of Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor, Phillips pointed out that Coburn's Doctor was originally a rip off of Peter Davison, and look how well that turned out! Married passionately to Jym de Natale, Phillips was convinced that they could ensure that this New Doctor was a man who could stand beside Life and call it "Friend" and NOT be the irritating, pathetic jerk prophesized in The Warlords of Apeshit.
Unfortunately, it was soon discovered that de Natale was completely insane.
This was down to a sinister brain tumor which kicked in remarkably soon after David Segal congratulated de Natale on getting the top job, followed by claiming, "You are not the Doctor until you wrestle this scarf from my naked body - or are you unworthy of a spine?!"
(...and so on...)
This was a double tragedy, as they would be forced to scrap not only the entire cast to prevent re-infection, but also scrap the next years' worth of scripts commissioned for the de Natale Doctor and Christine! Two below-mediocre seasons were now completely unrecordable!
There was The Soul Hunters by Rachel Sommers herself after she stabbed a prospective writer in the bladder. This was a dark, magnificently evil, black and foul tale of the White House being overrun by zombies and lightbulb-headed aliens from Babylon 5.
The Way-Past-Imperfect Doctors by Julio Iglesias, which would be unique in a multi-Doctor story featuring the same incarnation all over again. Over forty-seven separate versions of the Doctor played by de Natale would fight the evil Curtis and save the entire universe twice!
Then there was The Chimera's Shame, the traditional "set entirely in the TARDIS with no other characters trying to tell an incredibly cheap ghost story ripped from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine" tale. Oh, we REALLY missed out here, as Andrew Beeblebrox's second script for the SCADs had a great role for Frobisher the Penguin, while no one noticed the fact the Doctor kept calling Chris "Peri" or referring to himself as "the cat who walks alone"!
Then there was the even more traditional "character wakes up in everyday Earth convinced the entire series is nothing but a disturbed dream but turns out actually be in VR as part of some evil alien plot" story which everything from Stargate: Atlantis to Charmed had tried to pull. I'd like to say that Iglesias' second story, Memorandum, was in any way or new or interesting but as we all know, it's a complete lie and Farscape cut its teeth on crap like this.
Following this was the amazing, the incomparable Vids of Time! Whereupon Chip Jamison does a 'funniest home video' compilation of SCAD stories, comparing them with all the bits of the genuine series he doesn't like. The fact that he accidentally destroys the universe after trying to work out if Countdown to Armadillos is better than Death Comes to Tom is just the icing on this rancid cake of day-old pus!
The last commissioned story for the de Natale Doctor is only spoken of as a myth; a dark fable; a horror tale, told across the flickering embers of a midnight fire, wherever hardened fan audio enthusiasts gather to drink fermented vegetable products and compete in tales of blood-chilling terror!! The legend speaks of Time's Champignons, an attempt to turn the Patrick Troughton story The Dominatrix into a fifteen-episode-long epic.
The Doctor and Christine discover a peaceful alien race of toga-wearing weaklings is under attack by a ruthless space empire of whom we see only their psychotic ruler - Dara Hamilton! In desperation to escape, the aliens try to build a time machine which does absolutely no good whatsoever apart from padding out the first five episodes as the Doctor and Christine end up flung back in time to follow a scene-by-scene remake of the first Hartnell story, only with more shouting, exposition, and the leads refusing to do a damn thing. Around episode eleven, a rebel leader turns out to be the David Segal Doctor, who sells out the aliens to Time Lords who intend to kick some serious ass. The Doctor and Christine then go through a series of Sliders-style parallel universes, with an amazing cliffhanger as they are arrested for loitering in a McDonalds without ordering any food. Finally, episode fourteen manages to condense the entirety of Mistrial of a Time Lord into one thirteen-minute monologue, where the Doctor decides the time has come for him to go back in time and shoot Rassilon from the Patrexes Book Depository. The last episode would have the Doctor explain exactly how the hell this could help anyone in any way whatsoever, before he realizes that he'll just end up wiping out his entire species and destroy two thirds of the universe in a time paradox. The Doctor then discovers that while they've been doing absolutely nothing for the last fifteen episodes, the situation has resolved itself and gives a long speech of congratulation which bores Chris into a coma!
...you know, maybe we didn't miss out much after all.
When it was told to him that he was to be replaced, even though they didn't actually HAVE any replacements, de Natale called a press conference. "Okay, I just been told by these... humans... that I am not wanted here. I have but two questions. Not true, I have dozens, but most can be answered with 'They have small penises and live in their mother's pad'. The two I must ask, however, are these: What do my weight and mustache have to do with anything? And if I'm so utterly deranged, why do the public keep begging ME to be the Doctor?!"
The journalists were rather baffled at this, as they had turned up in the belief de Natale was actually running for mayor and was going to make hard stances on tax reform and immigration. Instead he was banging on about some crappy sci-fi fan audio series that he had been thrown out from for being too damn weird.
"I don't mind negative feedback," de Natale continued, fighting off the invisible bats that kept getting caught in his hair as they tried to drink his blood. "As a professional, both actor and stuntman, I learned long ago that opinions are like assholes - everyone has them, and they all stink, yet serve a purpose. But to be so mean-spirited about it is so needless. Besides, almost all the other reviews of me are much more positive. I know people like this personally. People who would not watch the new Battlestar Galactica because it wasn't the old one. People who wouldn't watch Enterprise because it "...threw Gene's ST Bible out the window!" and "...doesn't have Star Trek in the title!". But they didn't get nasty or personal about it!"
By now, not even Phillips and Himinez knew what the fuck he was talking about, and everyone began to wander off, leaving de Natale standing in the middle of the town square, without any trousers, handcuffed to a goat, and continuing to rant about how good he was. He was last sighted fourteen months ago, still standing there, still being boring. The goat, however, had long since escaped.
"Oh, and in case you see this yourself Benji, for the record, since you seem to act like a true Doctor Who fan, you should know that the Doctor's personalities have always been modeled after the actors playing them, at least in part. I am arrogant, but only to the point I can back it up. Like my Doctor was!!" he was last heard screaming at a lamppost. "But I digress. The producers will go through puberty and actually kiss a girl (or boy, as the case may be, the dirty little homo fuckers) someday, and the won't have to be such a little toad anymore. And my vengeance will know no bounds! THIS WILL BE MY FINAL VICTORY! THE DESTRUCTION... OF THE SCADS... THEMSELVES!!!! ACTIVATE THE REALITY BOMB!!!"
Whatever.
In the meantime, it was desperate that a new Doctor was found to properly replace de Natale while the media liaison officer performed 1984-levels of retconning to make it clear that de Natale was never a real Doctor but an insane, violent half-way incarnation like the Watcher, the Valeyard or Whitnail & I. His appearance as a fully-fledged Doctor in Warlords of Apeshit was cunningly revealed to be a group hallucination since the de Natale Doctor never actually did anything to advance the plot or said anything useful at all.
Potential replacements for de Natale meanwhile included Rupert Booth (who turned it down as he was 'out of their league'), Barbara Benedetti (refused on the grounds she and Sommers were rival Homecoming Queens at high school), David Nagel (turned out to be David Segal using a cunning pseudonym), Aaron Toman (turned down the part when he realized he would not actually be playing every single character and there would be no crossovers with Monkey Magic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Discworld), Mark Kalita (who, upon realizing how bloody stupid everyone at the SCADs were, started his own fan audios, DAMN Productions), Matthew Chambers (immediately joined DAMN Productions by mistake), and Nicholas Briggs... who just laughed at them all hysterically for around twenty-nine minutes and then threw a molitov cocktail into the recording studio as he strolled, still laughing, into the sunset.
The only thing left to deal with was to give the brand new one-off Doctor a brand new one-off title sequence. de Netale did not want the usual 'head and shoulders forming out of the ungodly horrors of the time matrix' bollocks that all other Doctors had. Instead, he decided the credits should involve a full-length shot of him grooving around the TARDIS control room, sophisticatedly leaning on his cane as lights pulsed behind the roundels, dry ice swirled, and members of the KKK in the background performed the theme tune. And as the new incarnation pirouetted around the time machine, he did sing... sing... SING!!!!
The End of an Error
As a new age dawned, dark rumors began to spread of Doctor Who having the utter temerity to return to the world of television, casting the SCADs back into the shadows of little-known and unliked fandom. Word began to reach Phillips that some strange Neanderthal pervert by the name of "Rusty Davis" would get his diseased talons on the franchise and make it impossible for the SCADs to fit in out of sheer spite, while others claimed that "Rusty Davis" had no idea the SCADs even existed and wouldn't care if he did.
"I like Doctor Who," Phillips announced at an emergency press conference inside a cardboard box known to a select few as the Fortress of Solidarity. "And I like RTD and hope he will write for the series because he will give me an endless supply of examples of how NOT to write a story. He is not and never has been capable of writing anything beyond magical Scooby-Doo-ending mess. I see stories always taking place on Earth, or Parallel Earth or New Earth and NOTHING ELSE! The wanky feldercarb from those Virgin Books NEVER HAPPENED, but they'll make TV adaptions of the really awful ones!! I see duff nonsensical stories, I see shallow individual episodes relying on running around and a frantic pace to make up for the fact that there is very little plot, I see lazy set pieces, I see a crad pop star companions harder to get rid of than the flu, I see fracking cute companions played by BLACK women called 'Free Ahemen', I see RIVERS FOAMING WITH BLOOD!"
And lo, his disciples started to look at each other in confusion as their leader continued to scream hysterically from within the Fortress of Solidarity. "You thought that movie with Sylvester McCoy was bad?!? Well get ready for Dustbins being talked to death, gasmask zombies with sloppy writing misunderstanding the concept of cloning, stories devoted ENTIRELY to farting aliens who sing and then die by magic! WHAT A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF HUGO-NOMINEE ARROGANCE! BAFTA STANDARDS ARE TOO LOW! Wirting, erm, I mean 'writing', is an ART! AND I AM AN ARTIST! I JUST DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS TO PROVE IT!"
At this point, the SCAD followers completely lost track of what he was ranting on about and started to light up cigarettes and talk amongst themselves as boredom set in.
"While RTD's mediocre wirting, I mean, 'writing', is of the Lowest Common Denominator type," Phillips continued, now drooling uncontrollably, "and all that bollocks about him being given OBEs and the Dennis Potter Award for absolutely incredible and fantastic wirting, ah, 'writing', that makes Harold Pinter blush is simply tabloid gossip!! The thought of him writing most of Doctor Who unsettles my stomach, kind of like too much junk food and not enough substance. RTD will make us suffer horribly! RTD is a great fan, but not a great writer, just like JST was a great fan, but not a great producer... Now, me? I am a terrible fan, a brilliant producer, and holier than thou! I think this is one of the nice things of being a Yank, I don't have any of that baggage that weighs down people in Bri-ton! I only do what the rice krispies TELL me to do! It's very simple, DON'T write crap like RTD, and they will worship you! I DON'T HAVE TO BE A GOOD WRITER TO RECOGNIZE A BAD ONE! As far as Doctor Who is concerned, allowing the SCADs complete creative, editorial and manifest control is LONG OVERDUE!"
By this momentous development, absolutely no one was listening.
"I will vary the stories and won't dive off the cliff of fanwanking like RTD! Doctor Who does best with continual change! Doctors should not last more than a few years! Fresh blood keeps things fresh! And I will remain producer FOREVER! As YOU are NOW, I once WAS! As I am NOW, so YOU shall BE. ARE YOU PREPARED TO FOLLOW ME?!?!"
It was at this point that Phillips finally collapsed from oxygen starvation, having been unwilling to poke any air holes in the Fortress of Solidarity. Since no one else had been able to fit in the box, the rest of the cast and crew simply listen to Phillips' muffled voice and assumed that the sudden silence was a dramatic pause and not, as it eventually transpired, the producer choking to death on his own carbon dioxide. No one else could be bothered to replace him, a quick round of musical chairs was held to determine the new Executive Producer of the SCADs for the first time since 1991...
...was David Segal, who immediately knitted himself a new scarf to celebrate.
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Professional.
CD Blurb
Fleeing an Earth corrupted by passions, cruelty, and hatred, the people of Perivale sought to create the perfect society. They failed miserably, so let's talk about something more interesting happening in Saffron Waldon.
As the twenty-first century dawned, could man overcome his very basic nature? Would Pokémon replace real pets? Is having an unhealthy obsession with a computer game character as valid as having a relationship with a real, living person who CAN'T disembowel mutant ninjas?
When the Doctor and Chris arrive on a world frighteningly similar to our own, since it IS our own, and they find a society about to revolutionized by a wonder drug called Cyberon which can fix permanent brain injury, incurable diseases, bad posture, hangovers, depression, constipation and disco fever. Can the Doctor save a society whose zeal for technological advancement and physical superiority will ultimately lead to their own extinction? Why should he bother? Or will time run out as Chris falls in love with a good looking bearded villain and run off to the Bahamas before the Doctor's very eyes?
But, indulging in luddite paranoia for the briefest of brief moments, what if this wonder drug has its OWN evil plan for the deposition of human kind? Is this the start of dethroning man from his supremacy, to become a secondary being like an ape or an estate agent, subservient to a more efficient and reliable species? Is Cyberon merely an omen of the rise of the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machines, metal giants closely resembling the human form, whose muscles of steel and electronic eyes will defeat the unpredictable insect of man?
Or are we just getting a wee bit hysterical?
Plot Summary
We join this eugenics-supporting episode as the Doctor perishes mere moments after setting his ruined TARDIS to go to Disneyworld as Chris tells him to stop being a pathetic weakling and stop dying.
At this point, the Doctor's eyes glow a burning red, convincing Chris he has somehow been possessed by the Devil. This impression is not helped when the fiery red glow spreads from his eyes to engulf his face and body, which then dissolves to reveal a big fat guy with long curly hair and a goatee lying in the Doctor's place!
The new Doctor soon proves dangerously irritating as he absent-mindedly forgets that he has already regenerated, repeatedly gets Chris' name wrong, and takes every chance to insult and ridicule the "total magic-obsessed loser" that was his previous incarnation. In between this he admires his new, rugged face in any reflective surface he can find and starts proclaiming that he has finally achieved physical perfection and could beat Helen of Troy in a beauty contest.
After five minutes of narcissistic patronizing, Chris has enough and declares the regenerated Doctor an "arrogant demon son of a bitch" and punches him repeatedly in the kidneys. The Doctor is more interested in getting out of his singed, blood-soaked and ravaged clothes - and the sight of his naked body terrifies Chris so much she flees into the depths of the TARDIS.
The Doctor meanwhile is more upset to discover that 'perfection' doesn't fully extend across ALL of his new body, and is so ashamed he bangs his fist on the console. This has the twin side effects of causing the crippled time machine to crash land, and the Doctor to break a nail - an injury too much for his delicate constitution to handle... despite the fact the last guy was able to suffer five million volts of direct current without flinching.
Instead, the Doctor nearly loses consciousness from the magnitude of his damaged cuticle and stumbles off after Chris, begging for her to come and save his glorious aspect from such harsh realities...
...only to walk straight into Chris's home-made Wyle-E-Coyote-style man trap involving a tripwire, a noose and the ceiling-high piles of unread issues of Mighty Midget TV Comic 21 Action Magazine. Chris laughs cruelly as the wailing bastard is buried in newsprint that muffles his puny screams for "Melanie and/or Sarah" to show mercy upon his divine salty goodness.
Rubbing her hands with glee at a job well done, Chris tries to find her way back to the control room through the myriad of identically-damaged roundeled corridors. She soon stumbles across the remains of the destroyed Super-Trod (who perished in the episode immediately prior to this one - what sort of fan ARE you?!?), and notices a rather interesting button on its cylindrical body marked CRUSH-KILL-DESTROY and switches it on. Just for a laugh.
Soon the deadly robotic life form is rising up, shaking its mighty metal claws and growling Romanian death threats in its heavily-fractured artificial voice. Leaving the Super-Trod to hurtle around the TARDIS corridors looking for people to slash to ribbons, Chris returns to the control room to watch episodes of The Banana Splitz on the scanner. However, the VCR is like everything else on the crashed TARDIS - completely stuffed.
Annoyed, Chris kicks open the doors and strides out of the wreckage of a police box dropped from a great height onto very hard ground. She finds herself in the grounds of the Bayview Retirement Home for the Terminally Bewildered and the Almost Dead. At this point the plot turns 290 degrees and decides to focus on the plight of a bunch of senile pensioners, some of whom believe they are monkeys, and Chris taking the piss out of their mental disabilities.
Chris is soon mistaken for a staff nurse and within six hours finds herself driving to an apartment she shares with a fit-looking gay bloke named Cosmic Raymond and they discuss her frustrated single lifestyle over a coffee and low-fat yogurt. Chris is impressed at how rapidly her lifestyle has turned around when there is a knock at the door as the REAL nurse and flatmate turns up... so Chris headbuts her unconscious and locks her in the cellar.
Meanwhile, inside the ruined TARDIS, the Doctor struggles to free himself from under all his unread comic books, short of breath, dizzy and unable to focus - yet he's still capable of making truly appalling puns and being incredibly smug, blaming all the imperfections of his new form on that 'stupid, stupid bastard' of his previous incarnation who got himself killed.
The Doctor soon hears the telemetric bleeping sound of the approaching Trod-shaped death machine. As he is too weak and feeble to move, the Doctor lies where he is making unfunny would-be-witticisms.
Outside, at the Home for Decrepit Dementia, the sinister American Tom Leyland from the Touchwood Institute has arrived to test out his newly-developed and patented all-purpose elixir he has named the not-at-all-suspicious "Cyberon". Without waiting to say hello, Leyland is grabbing pensioners and injecting mercury into the back of their necks while cackling evilly to himself. He's so caught up in the moment, he injects some of the staff - from the wheelchair-bound Dana to Chris herself - before he realizes what he's doing. There seem to be no immediate side effects, apart from some of the inmates screaming that shiny silver ghost monsters with stupid jug-handles on their heads are appearing in blue-misted, LSD-CGI-hallucinations that only they can see. Leyland nevertheless insists this is an unqualified success and runs off to the nearest nightclub, BrainStorm, before anyone can stop him.
Chris races after him and after five minutes in a rave party, has suffered such culture shock it has blown her fragile little mind and she immediately falls ass over tit in love with Leyland, who laughs evilly and has a light beer. Together they discuss the future of the human race, the nature of reality, and whether or not Big Brother will really take off in the reality TV genre.
Back at Bayview, several of the residents have dropped dead as their skin turns silver and Dana can now not only walk, she has chosen one of the semi-visible Cyber-ghosts to be her fitness trainer for the next London marathon. She tells everyone that she is being 'lifted by guardian angels', but they're all nuts so they agree with her claims wholeheartedly. At BrainStorm, in order to keep up with hardcore extreme 24-hour-party-person lifestyle, Leyland ducks into the gents to shoot up with Cyberon. He quickly freaks out as all the mirrors reflect Cyberman helmets and the walls start to melt into rainbows. Curiously, Leyland acts like he WASN'T expecting this, which begs the question of why he started taking hallucinogenics in the first place.
Nevertheless, it still leaves him sweaty and approachable for Chris to take him back to her place and spend a night of borderline illegal ecstasy together. Gosh, it's so mature and dramatic and gritty and realistic! It's like This Life with Cybermen! Oh, the future is so bright I gotta see an optometrist!
Meanwhile, the all-night sex session is so draining that Leyland needs another shot of Cyberon. He explains to Chris he only started taking because all the other cool doctors were taking their own drugs, and only needed it to improve his intellect, problem-solving abilities, abstract concept visualization, capacity to retain knowledge and of course make him a better dancer.
When he pops out for some fresh air he finds a silver Cyberman standing in the kitchen, acting like it owns the place. In a booming synthesized voice not at all dissimilar to Nicholas Briggs, it orders Leyland to take another hit so they can talk face-to-silver-moulded-faceplate. Leyland tells the Cyberman to fuck off, which it does in a spooky editing trick the moment Leyland isn't looking.
This proves to be nothing but an excuse to creep up behind the butt-naked Leyland and scare the crap out of him with a similar sudden shocking reveal. After a few more minutes of this, it just gets old and the Cyberman vanishes properly. Chris wanders out, watching her hand move with her Cybus-enhanced LSD vision. She muses that Cyberon is a living, intelligent thing that is using Leyland in order to get it injected into as many brains as possible.
Having deduced the main part of the plot, Chris immediately goes back to having sex with Leyland rather than doing anything about this invasion of Cybermen ghosts who even now are marching around Bayview where the residents who HAVEN'T perished from heart attacks are now fully-cognoscenti members of society.
Books/Other Related Material-
Dr Who - Hypo Full of Love
Doctor Who Increases His Manhood
Dialogue Train Wrecks
Leyland: You will join me, Christine. We will be the first of the New Race!
Chris: What are they?
Leyland: They're the future
Doctor: They're Cybermen.
Leyland: They're the next stage of evolutionary intelligence on Earth!
Doctor: They're Cybermen.
Leyland: They're the Immortal Ones.
Doctor: Hello? They're Cybermen!
Chris: That's good, isn't it? Who doesn't want to be immortal?
Doctor: GOD DAMN IT, THEY'RE CYBERMEN!
Cyberman: Cyberon will not harm you.
Chris: No... I doth must be hallucinating!
Cyberman: Then why are you talking to me?
Chris: ...touche.
Dialogue Gems
Doctor: You're talking science fiction now, not realistic medicine!
Leyland: I know this will be a paradigm shift, I'm not arguing there.
Doctor: Huh? Who mentioned paradigms?
Leyland: But the silicon chip, the airplane, the radio, they were all science fiction once! It's not the Twentieth Century any more. We're due a little science fiction. Now let me inject this mercury into the back of your neck...
CyberLeader: Your sexual contact with Christine means that you have formed an emotional bond. That is not long-term commitment. That is weakness. You must play the field.
Leyland: We've made contact with something better than us - they're stronger, they don't die, they'll cast off this human bodies and reach from the stars. It's been staring us in the face. We've known for years we were about to encounter something better than us. Another form of intelligence, something genetically engineered, even some aspect of the divine. We knew it was going to happen. We ARE it. Nothing can stop us. No one needs to be left behind. Anyone who takes Cyberon will be part of it too.
Doctor: And what if they don't want to take it?
Leyland: Oh. I hadn't thought of that...
Listener Reviews
"MY GAWD!! KILL US - THIS STORY SUCKS." - Kit Peddler & Gerry Davis (2000)
Jym de Natale Speaks!
"And so it came to pass that Jeffrey Coburn fell and his gimmicky incarnation of the Doctor was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion, as master of the SCADs, and I thought it... good! What wasn't good was that, unlike those regeneration stories from the original TV series, my Doctor wasn't out of it or acting like a maniac for a little while following the change until I get my new and infinitely superior head on straight. I didn't get to do that. Christine did. I was pretty much on the verge of death through the whole thing and that's because the so-called writer of this was having trouble getting my character down, and did an utterly awful job. They should just let me be, rather than expect me to follow some paltry script!
But I enjoy playing the Doctor. It completes me. I bring my gift of audio talent to ALL humanity. I might not have signed a contract, but I'm in this for the long haul, mark my words. How long? How long will I stay? Longer than Tom Baker. Longer than Sylvester McCoy. Longer even than Dave Segal. Fandom is powerless against the might of Jym de Natale! Onwards, forever onwards! To the end of Doctor Who itself! I WILL **NEVER** LEAVE! I'm saying this of my own free will, you know, I'm not being coerced! There's not a gun to my head! I'm a willing participant of the SCADs! THE UNIVERSE WILL SUCCUMB TO ENTROPY BEFORE I GIVE UP THIS PART!!"
Rachel Sommers Speaks!
"My character, against the New Doctor, is sick and tired of this shit. He's more of an arrogant asshole than the old Doctor, but I think Chris will beat some respect into him and make him less of an arrogant asshole. I think she's working out just fine. I like a twisted sexual sadist like that. Hopefully a lot of other people do to... if they know what's good for them. Cause Chris is going to be around for a long time. Longer than this new jerk with the moustache, whose fingers I intend to break and his head I shall repeatedly slam against tables if he annoys me ever, ever again."
Rumours, Slander, and Libel
To replace Jeff Coburn's wild, decadent, hedonistic, magic-obsessed Doctor, it was decided by Douglas Phillips that his successor should be a more sober, old-fashioned Edwardian, aloof, cultured twat obsessed with class. Someone pedantic, boring, alien and with an ego the size of the planet Jupiter. While he admitted that this was a complete rip off of Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor, Phillips pointed out that Coburn's Doctor was originally a rip off of Peter Davison, and look how well that turned out! Married passionately to Jym de Natale, Phillips was convinced that they could ensure that this New Doctor was a man who could stand beside Life and call it "Friend" and NOT be the irritating, pathetic jerk prophesized in The Warlords of Apeshit.
Unfortunately, it was soon discovered that de Natale was completely insane.
This was down to a sinister brain tumor which kicked in remarkably soon after David Segal congratulated de Natale on getting the top job, followed by claiming, "You are not the Doctor until you wrestle this scarf from my naked body - or are you unworthy of a spine?!"
(...and so on...)
This was a double tragedy, as they would be forced to scrap not only the entire cast to prevent re-infection, but also scrap the next years' worth of scripts commissioned for the de Natale Doctor and Christine! Two below-mediocre seasons were now completely unrecordable!
There was The Soul Hunters by Rachel Sommers herself after she stabbed a prospective writer in the bladder. This was a dark, magnificently evil, black and foul tale of the White House being overrun by zombies and lightbulb-headed aliens from Babylon 5.
The Way-Past-Imperfect Doctors by Julio Iglesias, which would be unique in a multi-Doctor story featuring the same incarnation all over again. Over forty-seven separate versions of the Doctor played by de Natale would fight the evil Curtis and save the entire universe twice!
Then there was The Chimera's Shame, the traditional "set entirely in the TARDIS with no other characters trying to tell an incredibly cheap ghost story ripped from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine" tale. Oh, we REALLY missed out here, as Andrew Beeblebrox's second script for the SCADs had a great role for Frobisher the Penguin, while no one noticed the fact the Doctor kept calling Chris "Peri" or referring to himself as "the cat who walks alone"!
Then there was the even more traditional "character wakes up in everyday Earth convinced the entire series is nothing but a disturbed dream but turns out actually be in VR as part of some evil alien plot" story which everything from Stargate: Atlantis to Charmed had tried to pull. I'd like to say that Iglesias' second story, Memorandum, was in any way or new or interesting but as we all know, it's a complete lie and Farscape cut its teeth on crap like this.
Following this was the amazing, the incomparable Vids of Time! Whereupon Chip Jamison does a 'funniest home video' compilation of SCAD stories, comparing them with all the bits of the genuine series he doesn't like. The fact that he accidentally destroys the universe after trying to work out if Countdown to Armadillos is better than Death Comes to Tom is just the icing on this rancid cake of day-old pus!
The last commissioned story for the de Natale Doctor is only spoken of as a myth; a dark fable; a horror tale, told across the flickering embers of a midnight fire, wherever hardened fan audio enthusiasts gather to drink fermented vegetable products and compete in tales of blood-chilling terror!! The legend speaks of Time's Champignons, an attempt to turn the Patrick Troughton story The Dominatrix into a fifteen-episode-long epic.
The Doctor and Christine discover a peaceful alien race of toga-wearing weaklings is under attack by a ruthless space empire of whom we see only their psychotic ruler - Dara Hamilton! In desperation to escape, the aliens try to build a time machine which does absolutely no good whatsoever apart from padding out the first five episodes as the Doctor and Christine end up flung back in time to follow a scene-by-scene remake of the first Hartnell story, only with more shouting, exposition, and the leads refusing to do a damn thing. Around episode eleven, a rebel leader turns out to be the David Segal Doctor, who sells out the aliens to Time Lords who intend to kick some serious ass. The Doctor and Christine then go through a series of Sliders-style parallel universes, with an amazing cliffhanger as they are arrested for loitering in a McDonalds without ordering any food. Finally, episode fourteen manages to condense the entirety of Mistrial of a Time Lord into one thirteen-minute monologue, where the Doctor decides the time has come for him to go back in time and shoot Rassilon from the Patrexes Book Depository. The last episode would have the Doctor explain exactly how the hell this could help anyone in any way whatsoever, before he realizes that he'll just end up wiping out his entire species and destroy two thirds of the universe in a time paradox. The Doctor then discovers that while they've been doing absolutely nothing for the last fifteen episodes, the situation has resolved itself and gives a long speech of congratulation which bores Chris into a coma!
...you know, maybe we didn't miss out much after all.
When it was told to him that he was to be replaced, even though they didn't actually HAVE any replacements, de Natale called a press conference. "Okay, I just been told by these... humans... that I am not wanted here. I have but two questions. Not true, I have dozens, but most can be answered with 'They have small penises and live in their mother's pad'. The two I must ask, however, are these: What do my weight and mustache have to do with anything? And if I'm so utterly deranged, why do the public keep begging ME to be the Doctor?!"
The journalists were rather baffled at this, as they had turned up in the belief de Natale was actually running for mayor and was going to make hard stances on tax reform and immigration. Instead he was banging on about some crappy sci-fi fan audio series that he had been thrown out from for being too damn weird.
"I don't mind negative feedback," de Natale continued, fighting off the invisible bats that kept getting caught in his hair as they tried to drink his blood. "As a professional, both actor and stuntman, I learned long ago that opinions are like assholes - everyone has them, and they all stink, yet serve a purpose. But to be so mean-spirited about it is so needless. Besides, almost all the other reviews of me are much more positive. I know people like this personally. People who would not watch the new Battlestar Galactica because it wasn't the old one. People who wouldn't watch Enterprise because it "...threw Gene's ST Bible out the window!" and "...doesn't have Star Trek in the title!". But they didn't get nasty or personal about it!"
By now, not even Phillips and Himinez knew what the fuck he was talking about, and everyone began to wander off, leaving de Natale standing in the middle of the town square, without any trousers, handcuffed to a goat, and continuing to rant about how good he was. He was last sighted fourteen months ago, still standing there, still being boring. The goat, however, had long since escaped.
"Oh, and in case you see this yourself Benji, for the record, since you seem to act like a true Doctor Who fan, you should know that the Doctor's personalities have always been modeled after the actors playing them, at least in part. I am arrogant, but only to the point I can back it up. Like my Doctor was!!" he was last heard screaming at a lamppost. "But I digress. The producers will go through puberty and actually kiss a girl (or boy, as the case may be, the dirty little homo fuckers) someday, and the won't have to be such a little toad anymore. And my vengeance will know no bounds! THIS WILL BE MY FINAL VICTORY! THE DESTRUCTION... OF THE SCADS... THEMSELVES!!!! ACTIVATE THE REALITY BOMB!!!"
Whatever.
In the meantime, it was desperate that a new Doctor was found to properly replace de Natale while the media liaison officer performed 1984-levels of retconning to make it clear that de Natale was never a real Doctor but an insane, violent half-way incarnation like the Watcher, the Valeyard or Whitnail & I. His appearance as a fully-fledged Doctor in Warlords of Apeshit was cunningly revealed to be a group hallucination since the de Natale Doctor never actually did anything to advance the plot or said anything useful at all.
Potential replacements for de Natale meanwhile included Rupert Booth (who turned it down as he was 'out of their league'), Barbara Benedetti (refused on the grounds she and Sommers were rival Homecoming Queens at high school), David Nagel (turned out to be David Segal using a cunning pseudonym), Aaron Toman (turned down the part when he realized he would not actually be playing every single character and there would be no crossovers with Monkey Magic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Discworld), Mark Kalita (who, upon realizing how bloody stupid everyone at the SCADs were, started his own fan audios, DAMN Productions), Matthew Chambers (immediately joined DAMN Productions by mistake), and Nicholas Briggs... who just laughed at them all hysterically for around twenty-nine minutes and then threw a molitov cocktail into the recording studio as he strolled, still laughing, into the sunset.
The only thing left to deal with was to give the brand new one-off Doctor a brand new one-off title sequence. de Netale did not want the usual 'head and shoulders forming out of the ungodly horrors of the time matrix' bollocks that all other Doctors had. Instead, he decided the credits should involve a full-length shot of him grooving around the TARDIS control room, sophisticatedly leaning on his cane as lights pulsed behind the roundels, dry ice swirled, and members of the KKK in the background performed the theme tune. And as the new incarnation pirouetted around the time machine, he did sing... sing... SING!!!!
The End of an Error
As a new age dawned, dark rumors began to spread of Doctor Who having the utter temerity to return to the world of television, casting the SCADs back into the shadows of little-known and unliked fandom. Word began to reach Phillips that some strange Neanderthal pervert by the name of "Rusty Davis" would get his diseased talons on the franchise and make it impossible for the SCADs to fit in out of sheer spite, while others claimed that "Rusty Davis" had no idea the SCADs even existed and wouldn't care if he did.
"I like Doctor Who," Phillips announced at an emergency press conference inside a cardboard box known to a select few as the Fortress of Solidarity. "And I like RTD and hope he will write for the series because he will give me an endless supply of examples of how NOT to write a story. He is not and never has been capable of writing anything beyond magical Scooby-Doo-ending mess. I see stories always taking place on Earth, or Parallel Earth or New Earth and NOTHING ELSE! The wanky feldercarb from those Virgin Books NEVER HAPPENED, but they'll make TV adaptions of the really awful ones!! I see duff nonsensical stories, I see shallow individual episodes relying on running around and a frantic pace to make up for the fact that there is very little plot, I see lazy set pieces, I see a crad pop star companions harder to get rid of than the flu, I see fracking cute companions played by BLACK women called 'Free Ahemen', I see RIVERS FOAMING WITH BLOOD!"
And lo, his disciples started to look at each other in confusion as their leader continued to scream hysterically from within the Fortress of Solidarity. "You thought that movie with Sylvester McCoy was bad?!? Well get ready for Dustbins being talked to death, gasmask zombies with sloppy writing misunderstanding the concept of cloning, stories devoted ENTIRELY to farting aliens who sing and then die by magic! WHAT A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF HUGO-NOMINEE ARROGANCE! BAFTA STANDARDS ARE TOO LOW! Wirting, erm, I mean 'writing', is an ART! AND I AM AN ARTIST! I JUST DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS TO PROVE IT!"
At this point, the SCAD followers completely lost track of what he was ranting on about and started to light up cigarettes and talk amongst themselves as boredom set in.
"While RTD's mediocre wirting, I mean, 'writing', is of the Lowest Common Denominator type," Phillips continued, now drooling uncontrollably, "and all that bollocks about him being given OBEs and the Dennis Potter Award for absolutely incredible and fantastic wirting, ah, 'writing', that makes Harold Pinter blush is simply tabloid gossip!! The thought of him writing most of Doctor Who unsettles my stomach, kind of like too much junk food and not enough substance. RTD will make us suffer horribly! RTD is a great fan, but not a great writer, just like JST was a great fan, but not a great producer... Now, me? I am a terrible fan, a brilliant producer, and holier than thou! I think this is one of the nice things of being a Yank, I don't have any of that baggage that weighs down people in Bri-ton! I only do what the rice krispies TELL me to do! It's very simple, DON'T write crap like RTD, and they will worship you! I DON'T HAVE TO BE A GOOD WRITER TO RECOGNIZE A BAD ONE! As far as Doctor Who is concerned, allowing the SCADs complete creative, editorial and manifest control is LONG OVERDUE!"
By this momentous development, absolutely no one was listening.
"I will vary the stories and won't dive off the cliff of fanwanking like RTD! Doctor Who does best with continual change! Doctors should not last more than a few years! Fresh blood keeps things fresh! And I will remain producer FOREVER! As YOU are NOW, I once WAS! As I am NOW, so YOU shall BE. ARE YOU PREPARED TO FOLLOW ME?!?!"
It was at this point that Phillips finally collapsed from oxygen starvation, having been unwilling to poke any air holes in the Fortress of Solidarity. Since no one else had been able to fit in the box, the rest of the cast and crew simply listen to Phillips' muffled voice and assumed that the sudden silence was a dramatic pause and not, as it eventually transpired, the producer choking to death on his own carbon dioxide. No one else could be bothered to replace him, a quick round of musical chairs was held to determine the new Executive Producer of the SCADs for the first time since 1991...
...was David Segal, who immediately knitted himself a new scarf to celebrate.
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Professional.
4 comments:
By now, not even Phillips and Himinez knew what the fuck he was talking about, and everyone began to wander off, leaving de Natale standing in the middle of the town square, without any trousers, handcuffed to a goat, and continuing to rant about how good he was. He was last sighted fourteen months ago, still standing there, still being boring. The goat, however, had long since escaped.
LMAO. And to think I wasn't sure if you'd adapt the whole acerbic rant.
I'm really unsure of what Natale was trying to do with that rant. I mean... I'm sure I've mentioned it, but when a guy only known to anyone as a lead in some obscure fan audios is the one to use the 20-year-old "lives in his mother's basement" putdown, it somehow loses even MORE of its meaning.
Did the story have the Cybermen in it or what?
You aren't worried that Lighthope will find this?
LMAO. And to think I wasn't sure if you'd adapt the whole acerbic rant.
You mean I wasn't totally predictable?
I must be improving.
I'm really unsure of what Natale was trying to do with that rant.
Well, nor do I. I mean, he clearly didn't read the read the reviews properly. The only time I EVER slagged off an actor was Chip Jamison. I kept my ire for the fictional characters and the PR department. I never had a go at Jym's acting or his weight. I think the only time I even mention it is saying "the new Doctor looks like a fat Billy Connolly" which is fair enough since Billy's very skinny. But according to him my reviews were "fat guy is stupid" written 500 times.
I mean... I'm sure I've mentioned it, but when a guy only known to anyone as a lead in some obscure fan audios is the one to use the 20-year-old "lives in his mother's basement" putdown, it somehow loses even MORE of its meaning.
I have to say it took me a moment to realize it was an insult. Yes, I'm 20 and yes I live with my parents. But in the economic and housing situation... what's new? Maybe in the times when the only time people DIDN'T move out were if they were emotional/intellectual cripples, that may have had some power. But I like my parents. I like my pets. Even if I had anywhere else to go, I'd probably stay where I was (the fact I don't trust my parents not to kill themselves in domestic accidents notwithstanding).
Jym's rant shows that he clearly finds being with parents a horrible idea, and the fact he's bagging out a review when HE was FIRED for unproffesionalism, well... who cares what you think, dude? Oh wait, yeah, me. Because if you react like that without reading things first, you deserve to have the weewee extracted.
Did the story have the Cybermen in it or what?
No, it didn't. I did my analysis of it and wished they had been. The real story is a rather ill-thought out colony of snobs who kill anyone who is impure. No real villains, or sympathetic characters... nothing.
That's why I dislike the JdN era, and the last year of JC. I know it sounds pathetic to say "no old monsters or companions" but that only works if you replace them with new, interesting monsters and companions. They're all just disembodied intelligences, evil corporations and all so forgettable. It's summed up with The Chronic Rift - every single parallel universe crashes into each other, and we get a bunch of characters never seen before running away from some rednecks.
The whole Cyberman plot was taken from Lance Parkin's Cyberon, which interestingly seemed to have all the Cybermen scenes edited to a bare minimum. Maybe because the outfits were heartbreakingly pathetic...
You aren't worried that Lighthope will find this?
He hasn't visited since and he is SO busy, apparently. As for why he did then, it's like he typed in "Journey's End" and "DWAD" into a search engine, expecting to find "DWADs are better than JE". And all he found was me.
Sides, it'd take two seconds to wipe this post out of existence and there'd be no evidence it ever was... bwahahaha.
You mean I wasn't totally predictable?
I must be improving.
Yeah. Cos it was just so obvious that C'rizz would transform into Felicity Kendall....
Well, nor do I. I mean, he clearly didn't read the read the reviews properly. The only time I EVER slagged off an actor was Chip Jamison. I kept my ire for the fictional characters and the PR department.
...that's a pretty good point. And, truly, the acting in the DWADs that I've experienced is essentially on the same level as the AVs and most amateur productions.
I never had a go at Jym's acting or his weight. I think the only time I even mention it is saying "the new Doctor looks like a fat Billy Connolly" which is fair enough since Billy's very skinny. But according to him my reviews were "fat guy is stupid" written 500 times.
...ANOTHER really good point. Plus, ISTR you only reviewed three of his stories anyway. Two of which he was barely in, and I'm not sure if they were all up on the DWAD site.
I have to say it took me a moment to realize it was an insult. Yes, I'm 20 and yes I live with my parents.
Hang on... you're 20? Are we the same age?
But in the economic and housing situation... what's new?
I do have to say that the idea of getting my own house seems like a daydream fantasy at the moment, and I'm sure others are in the same boat. Hell, getting an APARTMENT.... then I guess in America there are all those 2-storey houses at the moment that the banks are selling for 10 grand a pop..
No, it didn't. I did my analysis of it and wished they had been. The real story is a rather ill-thought out colony of snobs who kill anyone who is impure. No real villains, or sympathetic characters... nothing.
Hmm, bit of a cop-out. There's a bit of scope for a good eugenics story. But then it's always going to be a predictable the way it goes, due to the Doctor's stance.
That's why I dislike the JdN era, and the last year of JC. I know it sounds pathetic to say "no old monsters or companions" but that only works if you replace them with new, interesting monsters and companions.
I guess I have to agree with that. That'll be the challenge facing Steven Moffat soon, in fact, because he's pretty much said that he isn't very interested in bringing, well, anything back.
Considering his track record so far of disembodied, disposable and (if we're honest) not terribly memorable villains it will be interesting to see if this works.
(To be fair, the new format doesn't allow much scope for introducing credible alien races - something like the Krillitane could be very interesting, but takes fourth-stage to SJS, Mickey, and K9 in a single 45 minute episode)
They're all just disembodied intelligences, evil corporations and all so forgettable. It's summed up with The Chronic Rift - every single parallel universe crashes into each other, and we get a bunch of characters never seen before running away from some rednecks.
Can't comment really, because I'm certain I haven't read your review of it. ISTR from your pisstake that the central idea of the parallel universe plot was allowing guest characters to come back after being killed off - and idea that got massively slated when Mike Tucker and Bob Perry used it and which I doubt improved with age.
The whole Cyberman plot was taken from Lance Parkin's Cyberon, which interestingly seemed to have all the Cybermen scenes edited to a bare minimum. Maybe because the outfits were heartbreakingly pathetic...
Oh, yeah. I'll be watching that sometime. Holidays coming up, you see.
Hopefully this will blow me away by being something really good that Parkin has done. Gallifrey Chronicles reeeally let me down, man. (PS, young Hartnell no returns)
Sides, it'd take two seconds to wipe this post out of existence and there'd be no evidence it ever was... bwahahaha.
Truly yours is a.... TOWERIN' intelligence!
Yeah. Cos it was just so obvious that C'rizz would transform into Felicity Kendall....
Heh. More obvious than turning into the Nimon, which is what he did...
...that's a pretty good point. And, truly, the acting in the DWADs that I've experienced is essentially on the same level as the AVs and most amateur productions.
Exactly. It'd take something very dire to be worthy of criticism. Like, ahem, Shadow of the Dragon.
...ANOTHER really good point. Plus, ISTR you only reviewed three of his stories anyway. Two of which he was barely in, and I'm not sure if they were all up on the DWAD site.
I reviewed three, but I dunno if they put them all up.
Hang on... you're 20? Are we the same age?
No. Tell a lie. I'm 23. I think. Born in 85. Yes. 23. Ah, dyspraxia! And to think I complain when the Doctor gets his age wrong...
I do have to say that the idea of getting my own house seems like a daydream fantasy at the moment, and I'm sure others are in the same boat. Hell, getting an APARTMENT.... then I guess in America there are all those 2-storey houses at the moment that the banks are selling for 10 grand a pop..
Exactly. And, you know, there are people out there who need their own place a lot more than I do.
Hmm, bit of a cop-out. There's a bit of scope for a good eugenics story. But then it's always going to be a predictable the way it goes, due to the Doctor's stance.
The trouble with TPS is there is no real stance. The baddies give a ruthless but fair philosophy that "people who are disable/whatever cannot be as useful to society as those who are not". No one ever says, "bollocks! What about...?" They just say, "this is wrong" and no justification, no attempt to think up another way.
But the whole thing's stupid, like most Drew stories are. It's a world where artists and philosophers are specially bred and technology is ridiculous advanced... but there's a flea market with comedy Pakistani stallholders.
I guess I have to agree with that. That'll be the challenge facing Steven Moffat soon, in fact, because he's pretty much said that he isn't very interested in bringing, well, anything back.
I heard he wanted to do a Dalek story since it's turned out there's a whacking great loophole for their survival. And he has wanted to do the Cybermen for a while.
Considering his track record so far of disembodied, disposable and (if we're honest) not terribly memorable villains it will be interesting to see if this works.
Suppose. The Weeping Angels worked, but only once. You couldn't do them again. The Clockwork Men are just a variation on Cybermen and as for River Song... wait, she wasn't the villain, was she? It was a black blob that ate chicken drumsticks.
(To be fair, the new format doesn't allow much scope for introducing credible alien races - something like the Krillitane could be very interesting, but takes fourth-stage to SJS, Mickey, and K9 in a single 45 minute episode)
I always wondered if the Family of Blood were Krillitanes, further along the evolutionary path. When I said that, someone retorted that the FOB were obviously the gas monsters from Touchwood, without all the nymphomania.
Can't comment really, because I'm certain I haven't read your review of it.
LOL, never did one. Could barely sit through it.
ISTR from your pisstake that the central idea of the parallel universe plot was allowing guest characters to come back after being killed off - and idea that got massively slated when Mike Tucker and Bob Perry used it and which I doubt improved with age.
None of them were killed off, IIRR. It was just the whole cast getting together in what was NOT supposed to recall in any way, shape or form anything by RTD. But, still, knowing my luck.
Oh, yeah. I'll be watching that sometime. Holidays coming up, you see.
Try not to snigger at the hands.
Hopefully this will blow me away by being something really good that Parkin has done. Gallifrey Chronicles reeeally let me down, man. (PS, young Hartnell no returns)
Yeah, that kind of pissed me off too. OK, I understand he didn't want the final scene to lead into Rose, but this is like ending Terror of the Vervoids with the Doctor shouting "VIONESIUM!" or Seeds of Death with "well, all we need is water". Don't worry about the giant blowflies that swarmed over Earth from a second moon, that's a worthy finale for the Eighth Doctor, that is.
Oh, and the Doctor meeting the Time Lord whose TARDIS he nicked, I did that idea first! Godamn it!
Truly yours is a.... TOWERIN' intelligence!
Aye, 'tis as well for you dolts that you have me to guide you. Huhhuh. There's more to war than hard strokes, my good Bloodaxe...
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