Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JDN Doctor - The Perfection Society

One Hundred And th Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Silver Genesis!


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.

Finally the Super-Trod...

...glides off, bored and to be quite honest used to a far higher quality of murder victim than the total loser it is offered. The unstoppable death machine heads off into the maze of corridors looking for a way out.

Left alone, the Doctor immediately congratulates himself on his amazing McGuyver-style survival skills in defeating the evil Super-Trod without even so much as lifting a finger. Then he realizes he has wet himself in terror and mercifully falls silent for once.

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.

Suddenly, a massive metallic shape smashes through the French windows - the now completely insane Super-Trod who sings little-known Bad News songs. The Doctor appears and reveals he has reprogrammed the Super-Trod into a horseman of the rock apocalypse, a leader and savior of the wild ride to oblivion and ecstasy and the robot will now free the universe with its own peculiar brand of justice.

Instantly, the Super-Trod starts mercilessly slaughters the residents and starts tearing the Cybermen limb from hydraulic limb.

The Doctor sighs and confesses to Chris that he was talking total crap and hoped that if the Super-Trod DID suddenly end its desire to end all filthy flesh life in the galaxy, the regenerated Time Lord might have been able to steal the credit. Chris responds by repeatedly slamming his head into her kneecap, though whether this is because she is sickened by his complete lack of talent or because she still believes him a demon is left uncertain.

"I'M A WARRIOR! WARRIOR! OF GENGHIS KHAN! THE BLOOD WON'T WASH AWAY! I'M A WARRIOR! WARRIOR! I'LL KILL MYSELF ONE DAY!" grates the Super-Trod in perfect Mongolian as it continues its killing spree. "I'M A WARRIOR! WARRIOR! OF GENGHIS KHAN!"

The Neomorph Cybermen start to lumber out of the retirement home to escape the Super-Trod and a furious battle erupts. The Doctor decides the time has come to leave and let humanity sort out its own problems rather than rely on him constantly cutting into his preening time and save them. Chris is disgusted, and that means a lot since she is really passionate about such carnage!

Nevertheless she follows the rotund hairy twat into the ruins of the police box as the Super-Trod effortlessly finishes ethnic cleansing the Cybermen and turns its attention on the surrounding countryside. Bayview is soon torn apart in massive explosions as the killer robot smashes up the war memorial and uses it as a stone javelin to smash down more buildings. Finally, the government, in a desperate attempt to stop the Super-Trod, initiate their Hammerdown Protocol and drop an atom bomb with 'HAVE A NICE DAY' chalked on the side on the town.

The nuclear holocaust that follows reduces the whole part of England to dust with the only things left standing the TARDIS... and the slightly dented Super-Trod. On the broken scanner, the Doctor and Chris watch as it rises up and starts looking for more thinks to destroy, chanting "BURNING, LOOTING, RAPING AND SHOOTING! ALL THIS I DO! I'D KILL FOR YOU!!" to itself.

With Earth seemingly utterly doomed, the Doctor immediately sets the TARDIS in motion, only to remember at too late how badly damaged the crippled time machine is - and after about thirty seconds after entering the time vortex, it explodes and throws the Doctor and Chris out into the screaming maelstrom of certain and horrible death.

"Getting used to change is never easy. But living a stagnant life is even worse. This is so fucking unfair," the Doctor muses as he plunges, unprotected through the scouring winds of time and space before being spat out back into the physical universe in a ditch.

There, the Doctor convulses, his entire body bathed in bright golden light from no discernable source. For a long moment the orange energy swims across his flesh like a living thing then explodes outwards with blinding brilliance, lighting up the ruined console room. His warping skin burns away, his changing flesh peeling off in the hail of orange fire and flying away like clouds of ash - and when the light dies down, the face and body left behind in the ditch are, to the relief of all concerned, that of an entirely different person...

Books/Other Related Material-
Dr Who - Hypo Full of Love
Doctor Who Increases His Manhood
The Jym de Natale Era (10% Less Impressive Than The Steven Payne Months)


Links and References -
As the TARDIS explodes, the Doctor puts his hands together in prayer and shrieks, "Oh Jon, who art in heaven, Pertwee be thy name...".


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor claims to have been far too busy fighting sabre-tooth gorillas and rubber-brained horses attempting to conquer Mongolia to actually get involved with the main plot. God, he just won't SHUT UP!



Dialogue Train Wrecks
---------------------

Leyland: You will join me, Christine. We will be the first of the New Race!

Doctor: 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: You are more than human now. We are the future. There is no need to resist. We are irresistible. To everyone! Your resistance is useless!

Chris: How about MY resistance?

Cyberman: That's useless too.

Dana: And mine?

Cyberman: That's useless-

Doctor: And mine?

Cyberman: Look, shut up!

-------

Cyberman: Cyberon will not harm you.

Chris: No... I doth must be hallucinating!

Cyberman: Then why are you talking to me?

Chris: ...touche. No... It's a side effect! This isn't real!

Cyberman: What is real?

Chris: Not YOU, that's for sure!


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: You just want her for yourself you sick metallic bastard!

--------

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)

"Fantastic direction, appropriate music, brilliant all round! I'm sure Jym De Natale will make a great Doctor after his performance in the story. He's already got a big fan!" - Someone Who Now Wishes To Remain Nameless (2000)

"When I listened to this story, I pictured the new Doctor as a good-looking guy in a nicely cut suit, the next door neighbor who kept his lawn perfectly maintained, his car always clean, and his CD collection by genre in alphabetical order. He'd be the kind of guy upon whose word you could depend, who'd give a lot of time to charitable works, who'd have been considered a key member of his neighborhood, his community, and society as a whole. To me, that's what made de Natale's Doctor so scary; that there are wankers like that who live among us right now, good men who take noble ideals across the line of "the end justifies the means" into real and true darkness. All you've got to do is look towards Washington and you'll see those assholes by the bucketfuls. The new Doctor wasn't a complete fuckwit -- that's the tragedy. He was a loser whose passion for his ego cost him his soul and his life." - Andrew Beeblebrox (2001)

"I loved how "Jym DeNatale" was on the list of failed experiments in the Cyberman database. It really amuses me." - Ewen Campion-Clarke (2006)

"We've been discussing this reviewer of the DWADs over at the forum. He goes into greater details with his reviews than any review I've ever seen before. When it comes to my own stories, I think he is mostly fair, but I also have to take what he says with the understanding that he has an axe to grind with the DWAD group overall. In particular, I love how he compares me to Eric Saward to the point where I'm as lost with my writing of the characters as he alleges Saward was." - John S. Drew (2007)

"And YOU can fuck off as well, Drewboy!"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)

"Like The Cardiff Rift, the ideas and background situations of this story are so abused that they rival certain visitors to Neverland Ranch - it's just a remake of The Price of Paris without all the euroskepticism! There's a lot of sleeping around, moralistic speeches and a lot of picking up the pieces from the previous story (were six long fucking episodes not enough?!) Chris's decent into paranoid schizophrenia pushes her from 'a more passionate Leela' to 'Ally McBeal wannabe'. There is a palpable lack of enthusiasm in all involved and appropriately enough, The Pretension Society in no way feels like the start of a brand new era and it thankfully cut short."
- The Jym de Natale Handbook in its entirety (2010)


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."



Jeffrey Coburn Speaks!
----------------------

"Jeez. That was not what I was expecting at ALL. I won't bore you with the details of why the new guy's tenure was cut shorter than a skinhead's hairdresser, but take it from me the guy was a bit miffed. Still, I'm really glad that the next new guy has gotten off to a fabulous start, and all my hopes that everyone involved can continue to put out a professional-sounding and fun product. Yeah, I'm used to my hopes being dashed in that particular department, but this Flynn character blows Jym out of the water in terms of professionalism, talent, charisma, good-looks, honour, nobility and downright sexual appeal. Let's just draw a veil over de Natale's Doctor and pretend it never happened."


James K Flynn Speaks!
---------------------

"I get into character using a bright blue miniature TARDIS on my dashboard. It's a very potent talisman. Tom Baker swears by it. Frequently. And I MEAN Tom Baker, not Dave Segal on smack. I never missed an episode of the TV show when Tom Baker was on, so I can tell the difference. It's really rather pathetic the way Dave thinks we can all be fooled. I try to watch other episodes, but the schedule is so higgledy-piggledy and the producer keeps insisting no other episodes exist, and he burns any books or comics I buy. He also insists we have sort of audience BEYOND people who are crazy for Dr. Who. Of course, I have to pick projects carefully so I don't detract from the day job but being the Doctor, though, is a no-brainer; it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know that Welsh revival will never choose me, nor will Big Finish. The difference between me and the guy I replaced is that I don't really mind. I have a life beyond it. I'll continue as the Doctor as long as they'll let me. Other than that, we'll see what the Muses send my way. Or if they really ARE as insane as Jeff Coburn says..."



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?!"

Of course, Segal had treated Jeff Coburn exactly the same way and no one thought anything of it at the time, instead concentrating on giving the new Doctor a novel twist on the traditional Cyberman story - the "novel twist" in question being they weren't going to simply dub Segal into an old recording of Tom Baker's Return of the Cybermen.

Of course, regeneration stories are problematic by their very nature: how does one tell an absorbing yarn and at the same time introduce a new leading man? The essential characteristics of the Doctor are already there, yes, but idiosyncrasies and nuances of the fresh interpretation must be put under the spotlight and on top of this is the Doctor's companion, who if not au fait with the concept of regeneration have to come to terms with the sudden metamorphosis of their closest friend.

The Pretension Society is without doubt the absolute pinnacle of how NOT to juggle the need to reinterpret the central character with the desire to present a compelling story. Even the staunchest critic of The Twin Double-D Dilemma will embrace Colin Baker's craggy knob after facing THIS abomination of fan-boy overindulgence. Anyone ignorant enough to be excited entering the Doctor's next epoch would have that quickly curtailed by de Natale's redefinition of the hero as an arrogant pompous, self-important loser with absolutely no redeeming features of any kind. Unlike Colin Baker, he can't even speak without sounding like he's pissed on cheap sherry and trying to hold in a fart. And I've seen more convincing facial hair on Jim Henson puppets.

At the end of this 117 minute adventure, it was painfully obvious that Jym de Natale wasn't so much not working out but making cast and crew pine for the good old days of Dave Segal being in charge of absolutely everything. Even John S. Drew considered de Natale "depriving the drones of vital oxygen" and should be blasted at short range with electro-atomic death rays to restore efficiency and productivity to the work force.

Jym de Natale had to go.

This was a double tragedy, as they would be forced to scrap not only the entire supporting cast to prevent re-infection, but also scrap the next years' worth of scripts commissioned for the de Natale Doctor and Chris! Two below-mediocre seasons were now completely unrecordable!

There was The Soul Hunters by Rachel Sommers herself after she stabbed another 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, that would be 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 ultimate choice for the new Doctor was none other that James K Flynn, who was signed up instantly in the confused belief he was JFK reincarnated and could easily tap into the Kennedy family fortune to fund the SCADs for ever more! Although there was some disappointment that JKF was merely an experienced actor of the stage and radio, it quickly became apparent that unlike his predecessors he was

a) sane
b) willing to actually play the Doctor for the pittance offered
c) somehow believed that appearing in the SCADs "supported the arts"

Thus, for the first time this century, the Superiority Complex Audio Dramas were looking at a future where they WEREN'T all completely and utterly screwed in every possible and conceivable sense.

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!!!!


I was reborn to be... ALIVE!
I was reborn to be... ALIVE!
Reborn! Reborn to be alive! (Oh, we will survive!)
Christine, I was reborn
Reborn, reborn... COME ON EVERYBODY! Reborn to be alive! WOO!

People always ask me why
I never find a place to stop
And settle down in time! OH YEAH!
But I've never wanted
All the things that people need
To justify their lackluster lives!

I'm the New Doctor, the New Doctor, the New Doctor!
I'm the New Doctor, the New Doctor, the New Doctor!
I'M THE NEW DOK-TAH WHO!!

Time is on my side
When I'm aboard
The TARDIS
And I'm fine flying blind! OH YEAH!
Sonic screwdriver, an old time ship
And something new to occupy
A mind like mine!

Christine saw me reborn
Reborn, reborn to be alive! (Oh, we will survive!)
I was reborn, reborn, reborn
Reborn to be ALIVE!! GRACIAS!!



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 continues 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.

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