I, Davros

- I, Lavros -

An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Doctor Who Spin-Off Guide Appendix O' Kaiser Lavros: The Mutant... The Myth... The Legend...

A Dustbin extraction team have been sent to Earth, Brighton, 1986 to see what has befallen the LAST two extraction teams sent their to collect the infamous yet oddly forgettable creator of the Dustbins: the mutant humanoid Lavros.

The Dustbins discover the remains of a huge battle with the odd hydrogen explosion and, wedged into a brick wall is the severed head of Lavros himself. Using superior Dustbin technology, the metallic meanies wire Lavros into a giant roll-on deodorant device in a cheap homage to Dennis Potter’s "Cold Lazarus". Lavros revives from the dead, miserable and self-pitying after he was dumped by Melanie Bush. The Dustbins inform him that they have been sent to collect him to test if he is suitable to lead the Dustbin Umpire which is currently having the crap kicked out of it in the 50th century. But is Lavros capable of restoring this sci-fi icon to its former glory?!

Lavros tells them all they can go fuck themselves – they’ve pissed him about far too often and even if they made him Supreme Emperor Dustbin, they’ve totally failed to live up to his expectations. OK, the Time Lords used their mighty powers to change history so the Dustbins would be an incredibly pathetic race of losers, but Lavros doesn’t care: he’s gone right off them as a franchise.

The Dustbins cannot resist their compulsion to tidy up the ruins of Lethe Logistics and to pass the time idly ask Lavros to tell them a funny story if he can’t be arsed to help them plan a new destiny. Lavros admits that recent events have reminded him of a tale of his youth, some eight thousand years previous...


i. INCONTINENCE

Deep in hyper-space is the planet Fargo, the scene of a vicious conflict between the Distbun Nation against the Dull Confederacy has been going on for a thousand years and no one is clear any longer how a war over a lost TV remote can make the barren, polluted world a safer place for their increasingly psychotic and mutated children.

Colonel Mike Yates doesn’t let his lung cancer get in the way of his duty of shooting deserters, and returns to his dysfunctional family at 732 Everradioactive Terrace – his wife, a calculating bitch in white called Pella Yates, his sister and babysitter Edina Yates, his rebellious liberal teenage daughter Jessica Yates, and his incredibly creepy and introverted son who likes to be called "Mad Larry" Yates and needs a private tutor called Grant Goggins who charges by the hour and does stuff all.

Mike Yates is depressed as the war has reached an absolute stalemate – doubly crushing as it’s already been going nowhere for the last 400 years. Either the Dulls have a spy in the Distbun Nation allowing them to anticipate and counter every move, or else the Distbuns are really, really bad at fighting wars. Worse, he’s been retired from his duties due to health issues and he now faces the horrible fate of having to live with his family full-time!

Pella laughs at his misery, Jessica has a date with the pizza man, and "Mad Larry" is far more interested in a pet slug, who he envies as he still wets the bed at the age of 16. Annoyed, Mike Yates orders "Mad Larry" at gunpoint to give up his poncy dreams of university and join the military youth just like everyone else.

Edina points out that Mike Yates should calm down – everyone knows he’s firing blanks. This unfortunate turn of phrase leads to a truly spectacular domestic row that not only reveals that the sterile Mike Yates isn’t the father of "Mad Larry" but also ends with Pella using a petrol bomb to kill Mike and his sister and also burn down the house.

"Mad Larry" is forced to stay over at Grant Goggins’ place and passes the time shoving different animals into a radiation chamber to see if they melt or go pop first. Grant Goggins shows off his Vulgar Plants, giant green scrub pads he mutated in the belief they could improve cleaning his lab but instead have become a psychotic threat to all life on Fargo but, as Grant Goggins notes, you win some, you lose some.

The Congress of the Distbuns decide that, since trying to start a nuclear arms race is total suicidal insanity that will no doubt end all life on the planet that this course of action will be the LAST thing the enemy are expecting and immediately starts constructing neutronic weaponry. Either that or they can try to negotiating for piece but that would DEFINITELY mean wasting all the cobalt they’ve been stockpiling. Ultimately this proves to be a complete waste of time as a Dull ballistic missile blows up the east of the city and kills the Councilors arguing about the whole business. There’s ironic!

As the Dustbins realize they’re going to need some kind of funky protective bubble dome around the city if this is going to stop crap like this occurring daily, and Grant Goggins has an epiphany and realizes that one of the deserters Mike Yates executed in the opening scene was, in fact, Grant Goggins Junior and Grant Goggins Senior is perfectly placed to get revenge by blowing "Mad Larry’s" brains out with a Luger.

Showing the weasel cunning that will hold him in good stead, "Mad Larry" suggests Grant Goggins adopt him and end the vicious cycle of murder and revenge. Weeping profoundly, Grant Goggins drops the gun, falls to his knees and embraces "Mad Larry"...

...who stabs him in the gut, throws him into the radiation chamber and sets it to 'You’re Pushing It, Chester!!' before striding off, vowing to tell everyone that Grant Goggins was a total loser who committed suicide. "Victory is mine!" cackles "Mad Larry" insanely.

Jessica meanwhile is horrified when Pella reveals that her boyfriend, the pizza guy, was responsible for the bomb that killed Mike Yates, the missile on the city, the Rainbow Warrior, the hostages in Milan, the murder of the Princes in the Tower and quite a few other things. Pella has the pizza guy executed, leaving Jessica not only in need of a new boyfriend, but also knowing her mother is a foaming-at-the-mouth rabid psychopath. Things aren’t helped when "Mad Larry" returns home and, over the pizza, idly asks if anyone’s using the pizza man’s corpse or can he use it for research?

Jessica is horrified at the suggestion and pushes "Mad Larry" away, calling him a sick, cold-hearted monster. She screams at him and tells him she no longer regards him as her brother.

"Mad Larry" isn’t fussed as, after all, she shouts this at him twice a day anyway – sometimes more if he’s hogs the bathroom.

Just then, Councilor Sequester bursts into the room, screaming that he’s spent the last 16 years waiting for Pella to call him back after that one night stand and it is time for "Mad Larry" to find out who his real father REALLY is, and screw Pella’s political ambitions and the endless trail of corpses she’s left in her wake!!

"Mad Larry" at that point accidentally blows the Councilor’s head off with the shotgun he was idly polishing.

A rather awkward silence follows, but "Mad Larry" breaks it by telling everyone he slaughtered Grant Goggins in a radiation chamber just to see if he’d mutate into a strange tentacled monster. Pella is horrified: "Don’t you have any idea how difficult it is to find a good tutor nowadays?" she complains.

The Dustbins have listened to Lavros’s story and dismiss it as neither fun nor particularly entertaining – all the characters are total bastards, the foreshadowing painfully obvious, and the celebrity cameos a complete waste of time.

Lavros insists that he was just getting to the really good bits when they interrupted him...


ii. PUBERTY

The fickle finger of fate means that since "Mad Larry" slaughtered all his tutors, there was no one left to teach him and so he was chucked out of high school and forced to join the Military Youth. Nevertheless "Mad Larry" is confident his superlative skills and scientific genius will allow him to overcome his weak bladder and graduate from the Academy in record time!

He still hasn’t graduated fourteen years later, and is now the oldest cadet there, held back not only by his uncontrollable bowels but also because he considers all authority figures stupid fools superior in only their ability to go to the toilet unaided. By now the war between the Distbuns and the Dulls is so quiet some are mistaking it for peacetime, which just pisses "Mad Larry" off even more.

"Mad Larry" is forced to spend his day testing weaponry (or, to put it another way, being used as target practice) with his only friend is Preston, some ten years "Mad Larry’s" junior and the only one listening to "Mad Larry’s" claims he could piss a better heat-sinking laser weapon in his sleep and how he’s wasted here!

The Supremo, ruler of the Distbun people, finally gets sick of the hate mail "Mad Larry" keeps sending him and agrees to let the nutter do something useful – in this case lead a suicide mission codenamed "Operation: Certain Death". In the highly unlikely event of him surviving, "Mad Larry" MIGHT, just MIGHT, be allowed to graduate or become a janitor at the Scientific Corps.

"Mad Larry" returns to the bedsit he shares with Jessica (who has become a filthy hippie scumbag preaching peace and love) and Pella (who has taken up art collecting in addition to her homicidal tendencies), both of whom note he’s a dangerous psychopath who could bring about disaster if he got any kind of real power. Plus, his total lack of girlfriends is making him look like a gibbering geek.

"Mad Larry" revels in the fact that he will be free of these dreadful red-haired harridans and in any case he’s sure the Supremo understands his value and wouldn’t put him in any danger. His relatives laugh at him, brightened up at the realization that if he dies, the Yates trust fund goes to them.

Deeply annoyed, "Mad Larry" heads off on his mission and takes Preston along – not only does he have expertise in weapons development, previous combat experience, and is the only real friend "Mad Larry" has, but he can provide crucial comic relief. They are both put under the command of airhead Major Brittany and sent to penetrate a secret Dull weapons factory, nick everything not nailed down and blow up everything that is. "Mad Larry" finally twigs he is regarded as expendable and sulks eloquently.

At the witching hour, Major Brittany leads her group across the mine field in a move which unsurprisingly kills most of her group, with "Mad Larry" and Preston surviving because they were smart enough to go round the field and not die. This turns out be the latest in a long line of stupid and avoidable errors, and is followed by being attacked by a Dull patrol. "Mad Larry" uses his dictaphone to bitch about Major Brittany and her stupid power pats which he intends to use in a future inquiry into the "farce" of a mission.

Finally, "Mad Larry" and Preston get inside the secret research centre and discover it is an entirely automated missile base, about five times deadlier than is needed to wipe out the Dustbins forever. On the bright side, as the entire Dull economy has been poured into this project, blowing it up should win the war. No sooner does Preston rejoice at this than he and "Mad Larry" are arrested by Dulls, who in turn are shot by Major Brittany totally by accident.

Blowing up the base, the Distbuns flee into the wastelands but get completely lost and wander into a Vulgar Plant forest and more redshirts are killed, this time, mutated into the scrub pads themselves, before spear-wielding cavemen attack. The cavemen are lead by none other than the Cthulu-like mutant Grant Goggins who amazingly survived that radiation chamber in the first chapter fifteen years previously and has been transformed into a Lovecraftian monster along with his plants.

"What a brilliant idea!" "Mad Larry" gasps. "Genetically engineer weapons! I could elevate even a mollusc above the gods! There is absolutely nothing about this plan I do not love!"

Killing all the mutants with their machine guns, the only survivors "Mad Larry" and Preston escape... only to be shot at by friendly fire. Luckily, "Mad Larry" is able to use Preston as a human shield and is able to reenter the Distbun city safely.

He returns home and finds that his mother has drowned Jessica in the pool in an argument over who ate all the low-fat yogurt in the fridge. "Mad Larry" decides that he seriously needs to get a flat of his own. He packs up his CD collection, his books and takes Jessica’s corpse so he can use for practice with genetic experiments.

"She always despised science and believed my work would destroy them, but she was wrong," Lavros explains to the Dustbins. "And so I combined strands of her genetic material with those of a Dull and a Vulgar plant. All I got was a strange duvet with cactus spines, but it was a start! The beginnings of a weapon greater than any Fargo had ever seen! And now look at you... you sicken me."

The Dustbins still haven’t found this story entertaining and in fact consider it the worst road trip plot they’ve heard. Lavros decided to tell them another story, of his one true love – a gorgeous blond, blue-eyed boy by the name of Yarvelling...


iii. CONSTIPATION

Over the next few years, "Mad Larry" got a job at the Scientific Corps and worked his way up into the Scientific Elite – he allowed nothing to get in his way, not friends, not family, not toilet paper. Loyalty, integrity and honesty were rare commodities in the Distbun city at that time and so were adequate toilet facilities as the Dulls were forced into retreat.

"Mad Larry" is brought before the Supremo and the Council of Twelve to justify the massive spending being done on cleaning products by the Scientific Elite, most of which are used to clean up the trouser accidents "Mad Larry" regularly suffers. Worse, rumors are circulating that "Mad Larry" might be gay since the only girls he ever goes out with are on the autopsy table. Luckily the inquiry is interrupted by a Dull air raid using atomic shells and Dull assassins attack – seeking the one true threat, "Mad Larry" himself!!

"Mad Larry" effortlessly kills the assassin with a handy 10-tonne weight and takes the corpse for his increasingly foul experiments along with his work mates Yarvelling and Zolfian. It becomes apparent to them all that the Dull DNA proves their insane conspiracy theory that Fargo is an artificial planet used as a giant laboratory to super-evolve its inhabitants at the behest of godlike aliens. The massive war between the Dulls and the Distbuns is causing both races to change on a molecular level as their genes adapt.

"Makes you think, huh?" muses "Mad Larry" before he asks Yarvelling to stay behind and meet his increasingly decrepit mother – the scientist is not only impressed with his intelligent mind, but rose-petal lips, washboard abs and bulging codpiece.

"Mad Larry" is now convinced his mother is so senile she’s forgotten which side she’s on and will become a Dull spy – the other day Pella beat a ten-year-old boy to death for not volunteering to lick her boots. Mind you, she does that a lot, so it’s probably irrelevant.

Inspired Yarvelling’s funky idea that 'life can find a way' and the way to win the war is to transform the Distbun people into the ultimate evolutionary form that can survive anything, anywhere, anytime. Something with high intelligence, a strong survival instinct and ideally won’t look like an old sneeze congealed on a slide.

Meanwhile, the Dustbins attack the Dulls using one of "Mad Larry’s" cleaning items: a dust-eliminating ray as devastating as a lightning strike, that can reach a distance of three miles and puncture armor plating, using enough power to light the entire Distbun city for just over 73 years. Since it not only removes dust but exterminates people, the military have snapped it up.

"Mad Larry" regrets the massacre of the Dulls as he was hoping to use them for his own sick experiments, and bitches when the Supremo demands more cheap negative effect rays to cause more carnage.

As the Distbun nation celebrates their success, Yarvelling is met by Pella who wants him to be her new boy toy. Unfortunately, Pella is now so mad she mistakes the radiation chamber for a shower and immediately strips off, runs inside and switches it on. When "Mad Larry" arrives Pella is dying and sprouting tentacles in equal measure as her body tries to mutate into something that can survive the radiation, but ends up exploding into raw avocado anyway.

Yarvelling is deeply disturbed by this – and by the way "Mad Larry" insists on cataloging the remains and injecting them into a heavily pregnant woman called Renee he meets on the bus, just to see what happens. And what happens looks like the Director’s Cut of "Xtro" – creating a psychotic disembodied brain with googly eyes and claws that tries to kill the rest of the people on the bus.

Undaunted, "Mad Larry" heads to a maternity ward and delights in creating a brand new species of revolting, murderous, genetically-identical monsters who tend to kill the mothers right away. "Isn’t it beautiful? Everything else on the planet is here by accident, but THESE babies have been designed!"

Yarvelling is disgusted. "Mad Larry" is immoral, ruthless, insane... and he goddamn stole Yarvelling’s idea! Even down to the new species having a name that’s the anagram of "Distbun", but doubts that "Nubtsids" will be the supreme ruler of the universe.

"Mad Larry" realizes that their long term relationship was never going to work out, especially since the Distbuns are rapidly homophobic. In the meantime, he now has Pella’s private army to inherit, indoctrinate and blackmail the Supremo into doing whatever the hell "Mad Larry" wants: a free parking space, complete autonomy from the Council of Twelve, a nifty secret underground laboratory.

The Supremo folds like a house of cards and after much soul-searching and yet another loss of bladder control, "Mad Larry" decides that he needs a clean end to his relationship with Yarvelling, so he has the strapping young lad hanged to death as a traitor to their people.

"Mad Larry" heads home with a spring in his step...

...before a Dull warhead lands right on his foot.

Flickering between the worlds of life and death as he hears the voices of Pella and Yarvelling slagging him off for being a total jerk until their voices become metallic, ring modulated screams that his useless flesh shall be stripped away so his strong mind can survive.

"Mad Larry" wakes up to find he has lost his legs and his left arm, and is now a wizened, wrinkled old mutant kept alive in his prototype CyberLoo, a mobile throne that takes all the work out of toilet training. He may be a revolting freak kept alive by Distbun medical technology, but at last he is free of the random whims of his own digestive track. However, his old pal Zolfian thinks it would be tidier if "Mad Larry" blew his own brains out.

"Mad Larry" refuses to die and make a mess now he is capable of controlling his own bodily fluids. He will live and replace his crude, messy, biped race with a new and stronger race. He is no longer "Mad Larry Yates"...

HE – IS – LAVROS!!!!!!

The Dustbins irritably point out they know all about his origin story, as they bought the original CD. They have fully tidied up the remains of Lethe Logistics and now head off back to their ship, while Lavros – now fully caught up in nostalgia – continues to bore everyone rigid with stories of his Year One Saga.


iv. CRAP

Mere months before the events of the Tom Baker story "Genocide of the Dustbins" (which, since it’s out on LP, VHS, DVD, Target Paperback and repeated by the BBC every week, you probably know about), a Dull saboteur wearing a tuxedo and carrying a toothbrush crosses the wasteland and arrives at the perimeter outside the Distbun dome and sets off an explosion in the Science Dome. The bald saboteur digs Lavros out of the rubble, introduces himself as Nicholas Briggs, and then skips away, leaving the mutant to the mercy of a Dull patrol.

Lavros is taken to the Dull City where he is interrogated by Colonel Moorish and their double agent, Zolfian. Lavros is rather put out at this betrayal, but gives himself a shot of valium from his Cyberloo so he feels all happy and joyful and rants he will make them all drown in their own corrupt blood.

Colonel Moorish demands Lavros snap out of his drug daze and cough all the secret Distbun weapons he’s been working on. The high Lavros spills the beans about his biological experiments, but Moorish assumes he’s talking absolute crap and knows nothing about evolution.

Cutting her losses Moorish decides to contact the Distbun government and demands that unless they release all Dull prisoners, disarm their weapons and surrender, then the Dulls will RETURN Lavros.

The Supremo is tempted but decided that NO ONE tells him what to do and so contacts the Distbun Security Commander – a creepy, Himmler-ish dude in child molester glasses and an Iron Cross lapel stud known as Nyder Tarrant. This is a guy who makes Lavros himself seem normal and well-adjusted and Nyder is confident that he can single-handedly sneak through the wastelands, infiltrate the Dull city, eliminate any opposition and rescue Lavros even though no one knows where the toilet-obsessed mutant actually is located...

Well, fancy that, Nyder actually DOES rescue Lavros single-handed as he machine guns Dull soldiers to death, including Moorish and Zolfian. Lavros is meanwhile having great fun with his morphine injection system and now believes himself to be having a picnic with Pella and Jessica, and believes Nyder is none other than Captain Croag the Highland Ranger, his childhood hero made manifest!

On the way back to the Distbun City, Nyder carries Lavros’ Cyberloo and explains that he is great admirer and believes Lavros’s work to preserve the Distbun race and keep Fargo tidy is commendable. Inspired, the duo agree to be the bestest of friends ever-ever-ever!

Nicholas Briggs meanwhile sneaks inside the Distbun dome and disguises himself as a Distbun sergeant with the aide of a ridiculous false moustache. He sneaks into Lavros’ private office while wheelchair ramps are being constructed and finds a handy file-o-fax containing dirt on all of Lavros’ sickening experiments.

Lavros decides it is time to start kicking bottom and confronts the Council of Twelve – more and more of the Distbuns are going mad and mutating as the devastating war causes them randomly-super-evolve from their stagnant gene pool. In order to cut to the evolutionary chase, Lavros intends to open a special nursery for ALL Distbun children to undergo mandatory experiments until some of them develop super powers or something equally useful.

The Supremo and the Council of Twelve tell Lavros to fuck off.

Lavros returns home and rages about the incompetent, short-sighted buffoons on the Council while Nyder makes supper. Once upon a time, he respected the Supremo as a strong military leader, but now he believes him to be a mewling kitten, concerned only with personal responsibility and public disenfranchisement. Over a particularly fine linguini, Nyder and Lavros start to sing... sing... SING!

Inspired Lavros reveals to Nyder his most prized possession: a copy of a book which was banned years ago, as it contains arcane knowledge that could be used to influence the future, or so the authorities thought...

"The Official Doctor Who & The Dustbins Outer Space Pocket Book Omnibus Guide for Space Travellers: The Complete Story Of The Time Lord’s Greatest Foes (Up Till 1985)" by Orange Terry and Peel Nation, Creator of the Dustbins!

"I used to read this as a child and found the editorial bias amusing, particularly the chapter on the 'Growing Up With The Dustbins'. The writer actually believes that children will buy any old merchandise as long it’s remotely connected to the franchise. At the conclusion of the Foreword, written in the extinct tongue of Terry Nation, it says 'Happy Birthday, Dustbins – long may your reign of cleanliness continue!'"

Lavros tells Nyder that in the original language "Dustbin" describes ordinary mortals ascending to godhood, though it could also simply have been nicked off the spines of some encyclopedias.

Fueled with righteous passion... and Nyder’s cooking... the pair decide to stage a coup against the Supremo and his easily-offended Council of Twelve and force feed them all baked beans, then lights a match – exterminating them all instantly. As the highest ranking civilian in the dome, Lavros will be taking command. This is the mutherload, all right!

Lavros immediately starts making party-political broadcasts throughout the Distbun City, assuring the people that their future is secure in his hands and until the new government takes over he will work closely with the security services to make sure that life in the city goes on and even improves. For a start, he’s invented a new child care facility to help all struggling single parents. The message ends with a bombastic piece of music which Lavros says is an old Distbun victory march from his own personal collection – Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel singing "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)"!

Over the next few weeks, Lavros makes regular visits to the Pediatric Ward where all the children have been transformed into ferocious Calamari and fed nourishing body parts stolen from the morgue to make them grow big and strong. OK, they’re now cannibalistic killing machines with an intense hatred of dust, but they have GREAT immune system and not one of them suffers from clinical depression.

Just then one of the children’s mothers, Luella, turns up with a soft toy for her boy Kenny and is not pleased at what he sees. Lavros uses his prepared cover statement that these are NOT genetically-modified Distbuns but just one of his old sneezing fits from the old days when he had no control of his body and buckets of stuff came out of both ends. At that point Nicholas Briggs enters, having used his ring modulator to trick the computer into thinking he is simultaneously Lavros, Nyder and the Supremo.

Rather annoyed, Lavros has Luella knocked out and fed to the child mutants and decides to carry out surgery on Nicholas Briggs. Why? Because he’s a total fucking psychopath, that’s why! Haven’t you been paying attention to the previous three installments?

Lavros and Nyder retreat to a secret location – a long-abandoned carnival fairground where Lavros has adapted some of the dodge ’em cars into Cyberloo life support systems. Into this Nicholas Briggs’ brain is fused with his ring modulator, irradiated and wired into the Mark I travel machine – the first of the Dustbins.

Nyder points out that technically it’s not a Distbun but a Dull, but Lavros tells him to shut up and marvel at their first look at what destiny has in store for them!

Lavros switches on the dodge ’em car power source and the creature comes to life. "LAVROS... I AM ALIVE! THE FUTURE... IS HERE!" it grates at them both.

And as Lavros and Nyder both agree that the voice needs re-working, on the Plain of Swords outside the Distbun City, a programming executive from the Drama Department of the BBC dressed as Dracula and calling himself a Time Lord summons Doctor Who and Sarah Jane to Fargo for a ratings blockbuster about the creation of the Dustbins to create a thriving series of BBC-authorized collectible Dustbin crap...

In the present, Lavros notes that even though he was an old man, at that moment he felt his life (and TV career) was truly about to begin, that something great and important lied just on the horizon, both exciting and terrifying him.

It’s at this point he notices all the Dustbins have locked him in a cell on their space ship and buggered off, and he’s actually been talking to himself for the last hour and a half.


v. MISSIONARY

The Dustbin shuttle leaves Earth, intending to take Lavros back to Fargo for a kangaroo court and an echidna extermination by the Black Dustbin. Little do they realize that they are being followed by a Dull secret agent called Jolene, the Jennifer "Alias" Garner of New Davius, wearing her funky PVC leather suit which – since it’s red and Dustbins can’t see red – renders her completely invisible!

However, she is not invisible to Aldo and Royce, the junkie lisping space plumbers who have been subcontracted by the Dustbins to run their crude shuttle which, as an unavoidable side effect of its warp drive, covers the engines in cocaine they can snort up. As Dustbins have no noses, they need the comic relief duo alive to keep the ship running.

Aldo and Royce immediately twig that Jolene is a Dull spy sent to capture Lavros and agree to help her on the condition she’s not a hopelessly-naive idealist here on the off-chance that the psycho can be rehabilitated. Jolene denies this. Very unconvincingly.

Lavros, especially after the diet of mushy peas the Dustbins have forced into him in the hope to shut him up for five minutes, thinks he
has gone ever-so-slightly loopy when he starts hearing disembodied voices whispering to him. The Dulls want revenge against Lavros – a terrifying concept, as it automatically implies they have somehow become interesting!

Jolene uses her psychology degree to completely freak Lavros out, and is so ridiculously overconfident she destroys her own spaceship and her only way out of Dustbin territory if everything goes completely tits up. Jolene is absolutely sure she’s convinced Lavros to renounce pure evil and his compulsive cleaning disorder and offers him a CD containing a Dull-improved Mo’ Lovin’ computer virus which he can use to destroy the central nervous system of the entire Dustbin civilization and leave them directionless, worthless dole scum – and thus make Lavros the most popular severed head since the Face of Bond!

Lavros weeps at the thought and tells Jolene he has completely come to terms with his mother issues and he now wishes to become a nice little old man who gives lollies to small children, plays with puppies and frolics through fields of dandelions. Aldo and Royce can’t believe how retarded Jolene must be to fall for this crap when they are both exterminated by the Dustbins for being too damn annoying.

Finally the ship lands on Fargo and Lavros is brought to the central tower of the main city. There, the Black Dustbin intends to try Lavros, exterminate him, declare itself Supreme Emperor of the Dustbins and have a really great street party. Accompanied by invisible Jolene, Lavros shows off the CD which he is forced to hold between his teeth due to his complete lack of any limbs.

"Thith dithc containth the Mo’ Lothin viruth!" Lavros mumbles. "Itth can inthect and dethroyth you all! A Dull thpy gave thith to me! Thee exthpecthed me to extherterminathe you all! But," he adds, spitting out the disc and finally being able to talk normally, "I refuse! You are my creations – I gave you life once before and I do so again! I held all your lives in my mouth and could have wiped you all out, but I have saved you all from destruction. Do you still call for MY execution?!"

The Black Dustbin whimpers and flees the city as it realizes that pretty much the rest of the Dustbin race have decided they like Lavros better as Emperor – after all, when was the last time the Black Dustbin ever saved the entire species from extinction?

Jolene is utterly horrified at Lavros’ betrayal, as she was certain that they had a connection and Lavros knows in his heart what a total asshole he’s been. But Lavros is now the Emperor Dustbin and the first order of business is for Jolene to be exterminated as she is simply too bloody stupid to be allowed to live.

The next order of business is to seek out this mysterious 'Handjob of Omigod' Aldo and Royce were chatting about earlier, in a scene which seemed so extraneous at the time but now has gained incredible relevance to the ongoing story arc.

"Let the universe beware!" Lavros starts ranting. "I cannot be killed! I am INVINCIBLE! I will lead the Dustbins into a future where they will be MASTERS of TIME and SPACE! I AM THE EMPEROR OF THE DUSTBINS! When the Doctor and I next meet, let it be a FINAL CONFRONTATION! NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG NOW!!!"

Which is kind of funny, in retrospect.

Book(s)/Other Related –
Lavros: Dust Or Glory
Doctor Who And The Dustbins Without A Cause
"Nemesis of the Doctor" by Ben Aaaaaronovitch

Fluffs – Terry Molloy seemed introspective in this spin-off audio series.

"Nothing dust allergies of Fargo on dies. Er, I mean, nothing allergies Fargo on dust of dies. Or rather of Fargo dies dust nothing on allergies. Dies nothing allergies dust of Fargo on. On allergies dies of nothing Fargo dust. Am I making myself clear? Yes, I should say so!"

"That is our world out there. A chemical soup for a sky above and a scarred, radioactive wasteland below. It is purgatory. But we must make it paradise! We need Shake’N’Vac TO PUT THE FRESHNESS BACK!!!"

"Who am I, Dustbin? What am I? I’m your daddy! Everything that you are comes from me, your every thought! I’M YOUR DADDY! WHO’S YOUR DADDY?!"

Fashion Victims – the Supremo’s neon pink Space Rat outfit means we all agree with Lavros’ criticism of the leader of the Distbuns.


Goofs –
So... Lavros got the idea of making the Dustbins from a tie-in Doctor Who guide book printed eight thousand years after he’d made them, did he? Unless Steven Moffat wants to field this one with his oh-so-brilliant "ontological party piece", I think I’m going to have to say this smashed up the fourth wall even more than the original Tom Baker story Genocide of the Dustbins did...


Dialogue Disasters -

LAVROS: I am not giving you any money, Jessica – I object in principle to funding your peace-hungry friends appeasing the enemy and negotiating away the Distbun future!
JESSICA: Fine! YOU can pay the pizza man then.
LAVROS: Fine! The useless tosser just better not be expecting a tip, that’s all I have to say...

DISTBUN: War? Huh! Good god! What is it good for?!
PELLA: Keeping people out of trouble, creates jobs, provides young people with skills and opportunities of advancement...
DISTBUN: But no one lives long enough for that to matter.
PELLA: I never said it was perfect.

LAVROS: Such questions challenge authority, but they also address reality and scientists must be free to question. The cult of blind obedience that my mother is encouraging isn’t healthy. And did you see what she was wearing? No knickers and now she’s shaved her head! Who does she think she is? Britney Spears?!

PELLA: Lawrence, you must dedicate your mind to one task - to take your rightful place and destroy all those who would destroy you! And maybe, one day, learn to live without your incontinence trousers!

PRESTON: Your ego will be your undoing one of these days.
LAVROS: Ahem. Did I give you permission to foreshadow future events, Preston? I think not, damn you! My arrogance is better than anyone else’s – it can only lead us to victory and don’t you forget it!

GRANT: If I had the energy I’d shred every cell in your body, "Mad Larry"! I only hope that, one day, you find out for yourself what it’s like to be a hideous crippled mutant living in endless pain.
LAVROS: Not much chance of that is there, so tough luck, buster!

LAVROS: We have to wipe out the Dulls completely! Until now, all we’ve really done is aim at the odd military target or place of outstanding natural beauty, but the Dulls aren’t merely opponents. Logically the war will end with one form of life in utter control of the whole world, with all other life forms gone. THAT has to be our goal! THE ONLY TRUE VICTORY! Oh god, another set of perfectly good underpants ruined!!


Dialogue Triumphs –

LAVROS: I am your creator! I AM LAVROS!!
DUSTBIN: WE KNOW. SHUT THE HELL UP.

LAVROS: Look at you infernal trashcans! When this started back in the 60s, you were freaking unbeatable, but now you cower in the darkness of your ancestral home, too frightened to venture out! Since when did Dustbins recognize fear or weakness or fallibility or blogging? You had potential, you could have been something... YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A CONTENDER! But now you’re just a pale imitation of your past on a one-way ticket to Palookaville!

LAVROS: Preston, are you all right?
PRESTON: Yeah... but my legs are completely fucked!
LAVROS: Don’t worry, Preston, "Mad Larry" won’t leave you to the scavengers, I can carry you the rest of the way.
PRESTON: No. It’d slow you down too much! You’d be a sitting target! Just kill me and save yourself!
LAVROS: Kill you?!
PRESTON: Yeah. Go on. Blow my head off.
LAVROS: ...have you any idea what mess that would make?
PRESTON: I’d do the same for you!
LAVROS: What makes you think I’d want to make a mess! It is our duty as Distbuns to survive in as tidy a method as possible whatever happens, just Grant Goggins tried to. And just because you’re crippled you want me to splatter your brains across the tundra in a stain that just won’t shift? It’s people like YOU that drag the Distbun race back into defeat. Until now I’ve always respected you, but now I knows you’re just as weak as all the others! "Mad Larry" doesn’t need people like you in his life!
PRESTON: So you are going to kill me?
LAVROS: Yes!
(Lavros shoots him)
PRESTON: Hah!
LAVROS: God damn it, Preston, you cunning son of a bitch...

LAVROS: I’ve given myself selflessly to help the Distbun race for a very long time and my actions have been undertaken solely to guarantee their survival. That you wankers even felt the need to debate my simple request shocked me. Outdated concepts of morality have tainted your thought processes, you’ve allowed superstition to overshadow the undeniable scientific facts. You, Supremo, are AN IGNORANT OLD WOMAN! Don’t deny it, either, we all know you’ve been in drag for the last fifty years and you fool NO ONE! How can the Distbuns ever achieve victory from a camp old transvestite?
SUPREMO: You think you could do better, Mr. Blind One-Armed Cripple?
NYDER: Oh, that was low, dude.

JOLENE: In all your pain and suffering you have come just that little bit closer to all those victims of your own creations. In some way, deep in your mind you are reverting back to flesh and blood before you were completely consumed by fear and loathing...
LAVROS: Oh, spare me your mediocre attempts at psychoanalysis!
JOLENE: I’m a professional. This is my job.
LAVROS: You’re shitting me! Really?!
JOLENE: Uh-huh.
LAVROS: What-EVAH!

LAVROS: What gives you the right to subject any sentient being to such dangerous experimentation, knowing that it will die?
GRANT: Well, a scientist must keep his emotions and his work separate from each other and that most of the greatest discoveries throughout history were made at the cost of someone else’s pain and suffering. Nothing matters more than the truth and sacrifices must sometimes be made in the search for scientific enlightenment.
LAVROS: If you say so. Heh-heh-he-he-he...
GRANT: What was that?
LAVROS: Oh, nothing.

DUSTBIN: WE WILL LEAVE YOU NOW, WITH ONLY YOUR INCREDIBLY LAME ANECDOTES FOR COMPANY!

LAVROS: Nyder, The Distbun race is changing into something else, several steps closer to being gods than the Distbuns are, thanks in part to my own experiments! The simple anagram is PROOF I’m on the right track!! Now... may I have some more of your wonderful tomato and herb sauce on my pasta? It really is delicious!


Viewers’ Quotes –

"Eww. Lavros is like Norman Bates without legs!"
- Mary Whithouse (1976)

"I was expecting something more spectacular for an expose of what Lavros got up to in his youth when he had TWO working hands. How disappointing." - Julian Clary (2009)

"Christ. The Yateses make MY family look normal!" - Dave Restal (2007)

"It isn’t terribly subtle, but it’s quite striking." - RTD (2008)

"Much better at mixing characterization and political intrigue than Gallifrey 90210 ever managed? Well, YOU might think that but I couldn’t possibly comment." - Sir Francis Urquart (2006)

"Young Anakin Skywalker was a complete pussy compared to Young Lavros!"
- George Lucas (2000)

"Your arms, your legs, your heads, you’re everything to me, I mean, through all eternity. Your glisten scales of green, I don’t know where they’ve been. You might have laid a Treen, but I don’t care. You are my everything, you’re everywhere." - Reg Nullify’s "Ode To Lavros" (8765)

"Right. Now we know how Lavros became Emperor. I can die content."
- John Preddle (2008)


Rory Jennings Speaks!
"Lavros was a troubled young man with a few issues with his mother that needed resolving. All I know about him is that he created the Dustbins. And he’s a total loony. Frankly, I don’t really want to know much more about him to be honest. Mind you, there’s a lady from Brent’s Cross who knows who she is and unless she retracts certain statements pronto will get me doing my Lavros impression on her spinal column. Bless."

Terry Molloy Speaks!
"I’ve been doing this character a long while and long may it continue, as there’s always something new to explore – like Lavros’ family, which is rather like a cross between Little House on the Prairie and The Addams Family. Is Lavros barking mad, pure evil or just misunderstood? Buggered if I know. Still, who’d want to play a good guy like the Doctor? Even when he’s being played by Colin Baker as a total loon strangling people, the good guy’s not as interesting as a nutter like Lavros. Of course, if he was COMPLETELY evil, he’d be immensely two-dimensional and unsympathetic. Not that he’s in any sympathetic at the best of times, but you know... he’s a fantastic after-dinner speaker."

Peter Miles Speaks!
"It’s nice to know that the tiny bit-part I played in 1975 has been completely extrapolated into this massive character. I had one line before a Dustbin killed me, but now Nyder is revealed to be a psychopath who kills with glee. Which is hugely enjoyable. I don’t get to snuff enough assholes in real life."


Rumors -
For many, Lavros is and has always been the quintessential Doctor Who villain – no, the Bastard DOESN’T count - an outright monster; crippled, disfigured, and gruesome to the eye, Lavros has somehow always managed to be even uglier on the inside than he is in the out. God, we’re all so fickle, aren’t we?

But on television, no explanation was ever given for Lavros’ dreadful physical condition, thanks to Terry Nation’s utter contempt for deigning to sully his hands with a typewriter. So it was only a matter of time before the fans bashed out their own theories about what happened and inflicted it on the rest of us.

Big Finish’s decision to bring back Terry Molloy as Lavros had been wildly successful, so when the Eighth Doctor story Terri’s Firmer killed off the character forever absolutely no returns at all of any kind anywhere, anytime, ever, it was quite a stupid move.

In order to keep milking the Lavros cash cow while still not contradicting their own (rather forced, IMO) ongoing continuity, Executive Producer Gary Russell decided the time was right for a spin-off series exploring the mutant’s life prior to his first TV appearance in Genocide of the Dustbins. Everyone just sighed, shook their head, and thanked their lucky stars the annoying bastard was going to quit at the end of the financial year and head off to join a commune in Wales called the BBC.

The series, dubbed "I, Claudius Only With Lavros In It" by Jason Haigh-Ellery, was planned out by Alan Barnes before he got sick and tired of the whole thing and ran away. It would cover Lavros from his earliest days, and show all the people who had completely screwed up the main character over the course of his life.

The problem with I, Lavros was that it was a story with a predetermined conclusion everyone and their dog knew about, so it was decided to try and jazz up the series by getting a completely random collection of authors.

The first chapter was by ex-Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins who had penned The Lust and Other Lies for the Eighth Doctor range; the second chapter was by the Chaser Team after their spectacular failure with the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex story The Chaser’s War on Colony 34; the third chapter was a bit of Terry Nation style recycling by Lance Parkin as he reedited flashbacks from his own 2003 story Lavros; the fourth chapter by Alan Scott Woodward who also had to work out how to resolve the cliffhanger of his previous story The Afronauts where instead of leaving Lavros the Emperor of the Dustbins he had him fall in love with Mel Bush and die horribly in a thermonuclear explosion in Brighton 1986; and the final episode would be by Nicholas Briggs as it would give him something to do.

Chosen to play the sixteen-year-old Lavros/"Mad Larry" for the first chapter was the astonishingly good Rory Jennings, who had previously appeared as another chilling psychopath Mark Gatiss in the best-forgotten TV episode The Idiot Box which I never, ever, ever want to ever mention ever, ever again.

Ultimately, these profound pieces of drama on a global and personal scale were not so much a blatant fan service as a fully-paid night of morbid masochistic joy in an Amsterdam brothel of fanwank, a full-on jism-fest saturated with that reeks of the highest quality, right from Steve Fox’s double-fisted title jingle and score all the way through to Stuart Manning’s distinctive - and frankly downright boring - propaganda-inspired cover artwork.

The story of how Lavros goes from golden boy prodigy to feeble nonentity to the depths of hell and back again to finally stand out of the crowd via his hideous crippling injuries and in a way better manner than anything Revenge of the Sith ever achieved.

The series ensures that there are no gaps left in his life story – and whether this is a good thing or not, remains to be seen. In the sense that it’s freakingly obviously NOT a good thing. Mind you, some consider I, Lavros to be the best of Big Finish’s Doctor Who spin-offs with its heavy reliance on continuity and boasting all the finest qualities Russell brought to Doctor Who without... at first... any of the many, many, MANY flaws. Could this quality be maintained for the rest of the series beyond the opening installment? Is that a serious question? Would it scar you for life if the answer was "no"?

The final word on I, Lavros HAS to be the incredible musical duet performed in the fourth chapter, showing an amazing bit of domestic bliss between Lavros and Nyder as they sing about their position on the turning point of destiny...

"Dark Destiny of Dust" by the Yates/Tarrant combo

Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Could be most anything!
A peaceful calm? An atomic bomb?
Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

These may be the last words that we sing
So say your prayers to the Gods upstairs
And in the mean time lets just sing
Cause who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Could be a Vulgar Plant sting!
A discouraging word? A Muto herd?
While us rhetorical oracles sing!

I don’t mean to insult radiation burns
I just mean forget your small concerns
So let’s sing, let’s sing, let’s sing, sing!
Cause who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Cause who knows what tomorrow may bring??