Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JS Doctor - The Backbone of Night

One Hundred And Forty-Fifth Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Vamping


9D - The Backpacker of the Night -

CD Blurb
---------------

"But isn't that dangerous?"
"There are things out there far more dangerous than drunks with guns, Doctor."
"Like what?"
"I dunno. Circus midgets with rabies, maybe."

San Francisco, the 20th century. Well, 1896. That's close enough. Oh, wait, that's my PIN number! Oh, wow, heavy! God, writing these CD blurbs is a trap for the unwary, like the opium dens of Chinatown or the rowdy houses of the Barbary Coast! I wonder if the Doctor will accidentally reveal his PIN number when he visits the City by the Bay? That's one dangerous mofo trap, dammit!

Knowing his luck, an ancient enemy is waiting for him... probably ready to steal his PIN number, the poor sucker. If he fails to see her for what she is, a PIN-number-stealing whore, the price will be not just his life, but his very soul... AND HIS PIN NUMBER!

So, join us as the Doctor journeys into the very hearts of darkness, full of turmoil and hidden, er, darkness... his own ancient menace. I mean, his own soul. No, wait, I'm getting confused. Start again.

The Doctor must confront not one, but two ancient menaces. One, an old enemy. The other, the turmoil and darkness hidden in his own soul. And the other, the bastards who are right now stealing my PIN number and emptying MY bank account of hard earned cash! I HATE MY LIFE! I HATE EVERYTHING! Screw this blurb-writing bollocks, I've got to ring the bank pronto!



Plot Summary
--------------

The Doctor and Dara arrive in San Francisco to catch a concert by Brazilian prog metal band, Magician, in the incredibly vain hope they will be able to teach him some magic tricks.

Since the Doctor is a mature god-like alien who has mastered the ability to transcend the barriers of time and space, the fact that he is willing to admit he doesn't already know everything and is willing to pay cash to be taught means this is serious stuff. It quickly transpires that the Doctor wants to learn magic because the Magician's Oath means that he will be morally and legally obliged to avoid Dara during the aforementioned lessons

Tragically, lead singer of Magician, Dan Rubin, explains the only magic they know involves mushrooms. The Doctor feels a crushing tide of total depression and lets out a primal scream in a language with more consonants than vowels.

Elsewhere in town, a Goth chick called Chantarelle Renata abandons writing her collection of death based poetry as she detects a disturbance in the force. After slaughtering one of her pathetic nerd servants, she decides to attend the Magician concert to help express her nihilistic apathy.

There she is surprised to see the Doctor on his knees before the band drummer, Zé Bocchi, shouting that they call him "the teacher" so he must know SOMETHING! Bocchi explains that he graduated in Physics teaching and has no magical skills to share with the Doctor, though he is willing to discuss the merits of 1970s prog rock drummers like Portnoy or Rullo.

The Doctor gives up and heads off to the TARDIS only to find several of the audience members have mistaken it for a portable toilet and are trying to break in to use the facilities.

After the Time Lord pulls out a sacrificial knife and screams Celtic abuse at them, the crowds disperse and a leather clad blonde girl approaches him and offers to take him to a burger joint and discuss the pointless of existence and how disgusting it feels for warm blood to pulse through your veins.

The Doctor is deeply suspicious and asks her if this is some kind of sociology experiment, or if she's actually a journalist in her thirties trying to entrap him for her newspaper.

Renata explains she's just a vampire groupie.

"Vampires?!?" the Doctor gasps, aghast. "Vrykolakas?! Asanbosam?! Manananggal?? Strigoi? Chupacabra!?! JIANG SHI?!?!? You are attracted to those blood-sucking, mischief-making undead revenants, the Ancient Enemies of the Time Lords of Gallifrey?!"

"Yeah."

"Well, that's all right then. Eight for eight-thirty all right?"

Dara is annoyed at the attention the Doctor has paid Renata and he tells his companion to stop being a nosy bitch and do something useful like wander around the town after dark on her own and look for any strange, blood-drained corpses which could prove interesting.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Dara demands.

"I am going to search for refined crystalline silicon. And maybe wash my hair."

That night, the Doctor heads to the burger bar and he and Renata enjoy a nice meal and a discussion about the habits of the undead. For example, while they are often assumed to be thin, pale bloodless figures the earliest references show them as bloated, purple figures with long hair and nails, like Mr Blobby if he were a blood sucking fiend. Bulgarian vampires only boast one nostril to drain the life from their victims' ears, Moravian vampires are nudists, while Albanian ones wouldn't be seen alive without their platform heels.

Renata herself notes that the Chinese think vampires are so pathetic and nerdy that you could defeat them by leaving sacks of rice around the place and they would be compelled to count every last grain. The Doctor muses that unless the victim were a really pathetic accountant, it wouldn't work, and they both laugh and stare adoringly into each other's eyes before there is an ominous power cut.

Renata asks if it is too early in the relationship for them to pop outside so she can bite his neck. She's not a real vampire, but the whole role-playing game makes her incredibly horny.

The Doctor shrugs and allows her to on the condition he may refer to her as "Felicity Kendall" while she does it.

Slightly creeped out, Renata agrees, but their tryst is cut short when she realizes that there is a Bela Lugosi film festival on tonight and rushes home to tape it. The Doctor sighs and bandages his neck, muttering darkly about stupid American teenagers.

Returning to the TARDIS he ignores a barrage of questions from Dara and replies with one of his own: "What are YOU still doing here?" before claiming that he is not remotely concerned with vampires - it is the robotic Trods he is worried about and whose very presence could crack the Earth asunder.

The Doctor then puts on a DVD of Dracula: Dead And Loving It so he can research on this fang fetish, and practices his chat up lines of his incredibly unspeakable and dark past.

When Dara notes the bandage on his neck, the Doctor informs her he was attacked by a wild rat wearing lipstick. Dara doesn't know whether to be worried that the Doctor is obviously lying to her, or the fact he thinks she's so stupid she would actually BELIEVE that crap.

After an all night festival of vampire movies and watching every series of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", the Doctor has an epiphany as he realizes two basic fundamental truths in the universe:

1) Background character Harmony Kendall actually appears in more episodes than any other character, even Buffy Summers herself

2) Being an undead immortal of the night is a very attractive sales pitch

The Doctor lights up an opium-fueled hookah and tells Dara she knows nothing about his true self and intentions and has decided to become a vampire as part of his long term career path.

Dara laughs in his face, telling him that vampires aren't real!

The Doctor shouts angrily that SHE is an unusually thick Canterbury Schoolgirl with an American accent and HE is an immortal alien Time Lord and if he says that he believes in vampires as an ancient and malevolent life form, the chances are that he knows what he's talking about and she doesn't!

Dara insists that she cannot let the Doctor surrender himself to soulless carnivorous parasites - surely it's better for him to be her glorified chauffeur, transporting her hotness throughout time and space?

The Doctor stares at her in silence for a full three minutes and then walks out, telling her that Christopher Lee could never be scarier than her ego.

As the Doctor and Renata go clubbing, Dara is left wandering around the town looking for someone else to pester and annoy, and by freaky coincidence happens to stumble into the speakeasy where the rest of the play's speaking parts are: the band Magician!

Desperately, Dara unloads all her woes onto Dan Rubin who awkwardly explains that unless she wants him to write a song called "Please, Doctor, Don't Leave Me For A Goth", there's little a lyricist could do.

But when they learn that the Doctor is going out with "Renata" they immediately panic and Rubin, guitarist Schmitt, bassist Max and Bocchi the teacher agree to do everything they can do to help her.

As night falls, the Doctor rounds out a perfect evening by allowing Renata to bite him, whereupon he reveals he's done things he's not proud of, and the long-buried memories of them are starting to return under Renata's presence, and he knows what it's like to be hated and feared by all he meets...

Not realizing that this is just a ploy for sex the Doctor is trying out, Renata urges the Time Lord to abandon the soul that cages him and release his true self and surrender to his baser instincts. The Doctor shrugs and says he'll give it a go, and he and Renata shag each other on an alleyway dumpster.

The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and dresses up as a comedy Halloween vampire and decides to generally trash San Francisco and blame it all on the tongs and allow a gangland war to start up. Normally he would then sort out the chaos he started but he's having far too much fun being so goddamned evil.

Dara and the band burst into the TARDIS to find the Doctor with ridiculously goofy fangs and he shouts "GLEETINGS FLOM SOWF AFWIKKA!" at them. So they scream and run away.

Amazed at how stupid humans are, the Doctor presses a control on the console and the Damned's "Nasty" as spiffy video-effects merge with scenes of the Doctor running around scaring people and running into church's and shouting he "pisses on dogma" to the clergy and at one point singing the Lord's Prayer to really freak out passers-by.

However, just as the Doctor is about to drain the blood of a terrified hobo, he catches sigh of his reflection and bursts out in hysterical laughter. Unable to take this Nosferatu business seriously any more, the Doctor buys the tramp a slap up meal and explains he's gone a little crazy thanks to his new goth chick girlfriend. The hobo warns the Doctor that this is the start of a slippery slope and in six months time this Cradle of Filth worshipper will be pestering him to take out his piercings and pay the mortgage.

The Doctor realizes that his tryst with Renata has endangered his swinging bachelor existence which he has enjoyed for over nine centuries! Dare he risk losing that all for a rather cute ape liable to die of old age before they can celebrate their 200th anniversary?

Troubled, the Doctor drops by Renata's apartment just as Dara and the band arrive. Unfortunately, there is a sophisticated lock which they cannot get past, but Bocchi the teacher suggests they just use the spare key under the welcome mat. They burst in to find the Time Lord and vampire wannabe in a very compromising position.

Rubin and the rest of the band are confused and annoyed - when Dara said "Renata is dabbling with dark forces", they assumed she was talking about Renato Osorio, guitarists and backing vocals who co-authors most of their instrumentals! Since this clearly means that he's wandered off again, the band ditch Dara right away and head off to look for him.

Dara, left alone, pathetically threatens to stake Renata through the heart to end her influence over the Doctor, and the Doctor explains patiently that she is a human being a not a vampire. Then Renata reveals she's sent out a message to all the downtown vamps to converge on her apartment and bite them all!

"I'm sick of being miserable and bored!" Renata wails. "I want to change, to ascend to a new level of consciousness! Become immortal, like them! Like the Lonely Ones! This is the end, Doctor! No one gets outta here alive!

"Yeah, well, 'no one' is my middle name!" the Doctor sneers, before frowning and adding, "No, wait a minute, bit confused..."

The vampires attack and as Magician desperately fend them off with their musical instruments, the Doctor runs across the apartment and pulls back the curtain to allow dawn's first rays to enter the room.

The vampires scream and turn to dust, and so does Renata.

The Doctor blinks. "Well, she really DID have her heart in this. Talk about psychosomatic reactions... sheesh."


Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who Gets To Third Base
Doctor Who - Return of the Trodos Tyranny II: Where No Man Has Trod Before
Bloodbath At The House of Chuckles


Links and References -
Dara hopes that the David Segal Doctor won't turn up and spoil the nice Gothic atmos like he did in "Dork Dreams" (Serial 3D).


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor posed as the eponymous conjurer in the painting by Hieronymus Bosch. He thinks Bosch got the nose "all wrong".



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

Renata: So many people have the misconception of vampires as violent carnivorous parasites. But they who walk with the night are not interested in harming anyone. They are creatures above us. Exalted!

Doctor: Wow... You're an idiot. Like all the rest of the children making up bedtime stories of friendly vampires to comfort themselves in the dark! You know nothing about vampires, what they are, how they live, how they dress... well, maybe how they dress. Some things never go out of fashion, especially among the undead. Flares, for the love of Omigod! FLARES!

Renata: You don't have to be so confrontational about it! Other viewpoints than yours may be valid, you know!

-------

Dara: The axe is sharp and the blade is keen!
Creature features, spirits on your screen!
Shadows fall and all is gloom!
You're not so safe
IN THE SAFETY OF YOUR ROOM!!

-------

Renata: Every culture has its own name for Goth Tarts, there's even different names for the Anne Rice fans. The Chinese call us the Backpackers of the Night. We sleep by day, we screw by night, and leave no witnesses!

--------

Dara: What? You mean you're not going to, like, let your darker side have free reign...

Doctor: I'm not human, Dara, I'm a Time Lord! I can control my baser instincts perfectly well - look at all the times I've defeated the Bastard, the Dustbins, all sorts of evil across time and space! I think I can manage one pathetic remnant of a race we destroyed aeons ago...

Dara: It's not the vampire I'm worried about.

Doctor: "Vampire"? Who said anything about vampires? It's the Trods I'm worried about! I was sure that destroying the Super Trod on Trodos in the year 2066 would have stopped their robotic empire of human slaves would stop them, but some passing moron had to try and turn them into his own personal army! Then I told the Dustbins that the Trods were breaching copyright, what with them being monocular conical robots running on static electricity, and they massacred the Trods. But not even that seems to have stopped them!

Dara: Hey, you're just making this up!

Doctor: "Just making this up"? They all said that. They were all suspicious. Just like you. All over time, space... and I was there! DAMN THE TRODS!

-------

Doctor: So you play your wits against mine?! ME, who commanded armies hundreds of years before you were born!! FOOLS!

(They stare into each other's eyes for a while.)

Renata: Hi.

Doctor: Hi.

Renata: Renata.

Doctor: Doctor.

-------

Dara: I'm NOT a child, Doctor, and I'm NOT stupid! Don't you lie to me! DON'T YOU DARE LIE TO ME!! You were BITTEN by a VAMPIRE last night and you're under her influence NOW, aren't you? AREN'T YOU?!!?

(The Doctor stares at her and then walks out, shaking his head.)



Dialogue Gems
-------------

Max: In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

Dara: And that's me?

Max: What? Good god, no! I was just making polite conversation.

--------

Renata: I know who you are.

Doctor: Yeah, I know who I am, too. So what?

Renata: Do you have any idea what it's like, to know only people who hate and fear you?

Doctor: Yes, actually.

Renata: No! Really?

Doctor: Oh yes. Was a while ago now, so the inquest declared an open verdict and no one mentions it any more. But the blood remembers, my dear. It always remembers.

Renata: You are so cool.

Doctor: I know. Magnificent, aren't I? Of course, I swore I'd never be a complete immoral bastard like that again. I tried to disown myself, but it doesn't go away. It waits... This working for you?

Renata: Oh, you betcha. Let's do it right now!

Doctor: Heheh. That Ol' Dark Past routine never fails!

--------

Doctor: So much has come to mind. All the things I've... tried to forget. All the things I'm not proud of. It's all coming back to me at once...

Dara: Oh, come on, Doctor! What have YOU got to be ashamed of?

Doctor: Hanging around you, for a start. But more than that. Much more. More than you will ever know. You think you know me, Dara? You don't. I only show you what I want you to see.

Dara: How can you say that? You're way too boring to be that interesting!

Doctor: It's not true. You don't know me, Dara, not a bit. The past is littered with my sins! I've done things in my life, quite dreadful things. I pretended ever since, they never happened. Oh, you'd hate me if you knew...

Dara: What could you have possibly done that was so awful? You always say you're "a friend to people all over the world, the galaxy, all through time"! God, how lame! I feel so lame just saying it.

Doctor: It hasn't always been that way. I only show you what I want you to see - and now I'm thinking I've done the same thing to myself. I have to start looking at it again, face what I am. It must... I must... be free.

Dara: Oh! My! God! You're so totally hot right now!

Doctor: So I fooled you too... SUCKER!

--------

Doctor: I have... felt things that I haven't allowed to even admit I was capable of feeling for a long time, touched a part of my soul that I thought I shut out forever, a part of myself... a part we all have, deep within... that I keep locked up, shut away because it's so dark and ugly. I can feel it surfacing again. I can't fight it because... because it's... me.

Renata: Oh, God, I want to have you right now!

Doctor: Once again, he shoots and he scores!



Listener Reviews
-----------------

"The Backpacker of the Night does sound really good, though. Unlike most SCADs, the plot itself sounds very interesting. Of course emaciated vampire chicks are an acquired taste because, well, Jesus Christ! What sort of warped people like the "bottom half - Ethiopian child, top half - taped-on rock melons" look? I have to say, unequivocally, that you are sick. And yes, that includes you, David Beckham!" - Jared "No Nickname" Hansen (2007)


"The Backpacker of the Night didn't strike me as particularly enchanting." - Bram Stoker (1998)


"This story rocks! Vampire killer bikini girls are what Doctor Who NEEDS! And lots of it! Why the hell aren't the SCADs bragging that they did this? Are they not ferociously heterosexual bigots?!? Even Chip Jamison is decent in this story. What more needs to be said?"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)


"They say that in order to appreciate the gems, you must endure the rocks. This is one of those stories that will help you appreciate the gems. You will yearn for the gems, ache for them, slash at your bare thighs with razor blades simply to take your minds off the rocks. The rocks are awful! They are EVIL! EVIL I SAY! And this is one of the rocks! It didn't look good on paper, and it was a mess on air! The dialogue is terrible, the incidental music grating, and the acting is all around a crime. Even Jeffrey Coburn and Sheri Devine, who normally shine like stars in the night just about to turn nova and expand in a wave of apocalyptical fury, turn in dreadful performances. Someone should have staked this one in the heart before it got out of its coffin! THIS IS THE WORST THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD! And the fact the author dumped me because of my chronic impotence and mother complex IS COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT!"
- The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



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

"Just before we went into production on this story, Jym de Natale, Sheri and I watched several vampire films so we could get into the mood of the story. Andy Worhol's Dracula, Bram Stoker's version, Dracula's Dead And Well And Living In London with Christopher Lee. I know we watched more. Or at least I remember watching more. Fright-Night was awful, wasn't it?

It was all very odd stuff for me, since I never was into the vampire legend. Mind you, Uncle Gregor did have that nasty disease which makes your teeth pointy and skin sensitive to sunlight, a recognized medical condition. All the dead bodies he buried in unconsecrated soil was a bit harder to explain, though.

Sheri was to the teeth, no pun intended, so I think she had a smashing time doing Backpacker, though I think she would rather have played the villain rather than the hapless victim. Especially when the hapless victim was as irritating as Dara. Sometimes she wondered if she'd somehow annoyed Doug Phillips in the past and it was his kind of revenge? Or maybe Doug was just an asshole? Who knows?

I don't think it was out of anything planned, but by the time Backpacker came around, the series had taken a darker tone. Well, a dimmer one at least. Yes, a lot of the light bulbs had gone and no one got round to replacing them. The rest of the season was on candle light, which was fortunate really. No one had paid the electricity bill, so we were cut off shortly afterwards.

I remember Doug wanted this to be a vampire story which you'd want to listen to with the lights out. Hence the lack of lights while we were recording, a kind of method acting. Bloody difficult to do, though, since we couldn't read the script and hot wax from the candles was dripping everywhere.

I remember not being too happy with this one, possibly after Jamie Lawson accidentally jammed a candle into my eyes and left me screaming in pain and temporarily blind for fortnight.

The idea of selling your soul was an interesting one, but it's never appealed to me. My soul is far more valuable to me than money. I have it put into every contract that I won't do any nudity, vulgarity, bestiality or Elvis impressions. Now, that's is quite unusual for Hollywood and has cost me quite a lot of jobs. And frineds. Still, it's something I stand by.

OK, there was quite a bit of nudity, vulgarity and bestiality in this story, but no Elvis impressions! Not one! I'd never degrade myself to that point! Not for another two seasons anyway! Besides, like anyone will ever actually listen to these things and find out the truth... what a ridiculous idea."


Sheri Devine Speaks!
--------------------

"I liked the essential idea of The Backpacker of the Night, because I love vampire groupie goth junkie romance tragedy zombie comedies. This story pressed all my buttons. I think that's why everyone hates it.

More rejection.

Oh well, if anyone wants me, I'll be in the clock tower with the sniper rifle."



Rumours, Slander, and Libel
---------------------------

On the face of it, it is strange that Doctor Who would not have featured more stories about vampires. I mean, talk about the easiest villains to do ever! No wonder they ripped them off as Cybermen... anyway, only three stories feature anything approaching proper undead: California - State of Decay, The Chess of Fenric and something else. Probably. I'll get back to you on that.

Of course, what's really weird is that in Season 18, Vampires were completely demystified and established as a core part of Time Lord mythology... and never ever ever appeared again in the TV show. Ever.

Maybe it's because California - State of Decay chose to reinvent vampires and show new sides to them like every damn possible vampire series does nowadays. No, they didn't just paint them as warriors or damned souls, but revealed them as mutant servants in a spaceship on another planet in a different universe! That also hatched from eggs!

You would have thought the no-reflection, sun-light-hating, immortal bloodsucking soulless monsters would be a good enough formula but oh, in with the self-awareness and mockery and technobabble explanations, coz God knows it's impossible to enjoy the idea without it! "Ultraviolet" was shit as well!

Similar thoughts occurred to Jamie Lawson, who had previously portrayed Catwoman in the season's second story, The Empire of the Dustbins Strikes Back!, and she decided to offer her services as a script writer, understandably convinced she could hardly write anything worse than the story she was then appearing in.

Lawson wanted a terrifying story that would be satisfied with the fact that vampires, like werewolves are archetypes of human beings giving into their baser instincts and not involve any crap jokes about sun block keeping Dracula from bursting into flames, or fanwank references to Anne Rice.

Producer Douglas Phillips decided that the SCADs needed something to help divert attention away from the revelation there was a new, proper, TV Doctor played by Paul McGann on TV. Thus, he decided, the SCADs would produce their first audio nasty, a fan audio to rival I Spit On Your Grave.

Script Editor Joseph Medina assumed that any "quite spooky" story would do, but Phillips insisted he wanted nasty violence, spooky murderous clowns, messy deaths, gallons of blood, shadowy knife-wielding figures, gratuitous nudity, menacing unseen forces that lurk in the darkness, and basically be more frightening than a tour around a Swiss timepiece-making factory.

Thus, Jamie "Unbalanced Personality" Lawson's proposal of a vampire groupie lust rampage of brutal slayings that kill off the virtues of reality and allowing the world to spiral into an armadillo of despair was chosen to be worked on.

Numerous changes were made to, in Phillips' words, make this dull, leaden tale of cliched blood-drinking fiends brooding about despair, disappointment and yeast infections into something halfway "actually terrifying" by adding lots of jumpy shocks and supernatural gore. Phillips believed that vampires were the least frightening mythological beasts ever, calling them "a bunch of lank-haired geriatric nob-ends arses who need blood transfusions and dental care".

Thus Medina was ordered to add a number of random and seemingly pointless scenes to the plot - a sequence where the Doctor is impaled by a crucifix, causing him to weep tears of blood before dissolving in offal; Dara engaging in opium-fueled prostitution; Renata beating herself with a dead boa constrictor; characters having their brains removed and used in sex games by necrophiliac mass murderers; the Doctor and Renata getting into a sticky situation involving a length of pipe, an old cigarette box, a jar full of white liquid, a gas cooker and a small amount of brute force; the band Magician to attempt the Indian Rope Trick only to be very messily slaughtered by the invisible monsters that live at the top (this scene meant that the band had to be written into the story, only for this scene to be cut for timing reasons - ain't life a bitch?!)

Medina became increasingly hyper-tense and convinced that there was something hiding in the shadows of his bedroom, and thus asked Thomas Himinez to complete the task of editing this story for him. No reason was documented, but seemingly the expression "IT'S COME FOR ME! IT'S COME TO FEED OFF MY SOUL!!" was used quite a bit at the time.

Phillips and Himinez quickly worked out a brilliant plot plagiarized from the Hammer Horror film "Mitterhaus Python's Vampire Circus" so blatantly it could be spotted from the larger Magellanic Cloud.

The story would feature the Doctor travelling back in time and indulging in some pedophiliac cannibalism as he "conquers" little girls of a village before assorted villagers try to kill him. The Doctor manages to butcher them but is badly injured and uses his sonic screwdriver to regenerate himself into the Ultimate Vampire of Pure Evil, allowing him to shag a schoolteacher's wife while simultaneously single-handedly fending off a torch-wielding mob!

Dara attempts to reason with the Doctor by using her Circus of Nights Who Steal The Money From Dead Men's Eyes, a private army of Japanese anime super heroes including talking panthers, ninja tigers and a computer-hacking chimpanzee, a naked snake woman, and a dwarf speaking Welsh.

Their combined might force the Doctor through his spooky mirror, where he teams up with Albert the Bored God who convinces him the Circus are a bunch of rag week student who "need killing", preferably involving crucifix impalings and enormous exit wounds.

Finally, after a mass slaughter of the entire cast, it turns out this was all a dream... or IS it?!?!

These alteration pissed off Lawson, whose storyline was remarkably different:

Colonel Crichton is invited to tea at an English country house and discovers satanic rituals are being celebrated with a veritable who's who of government ministers, peers of the realm, generals and scientists in a general sort of cult vibe with lots of biscuits and jaffa cakes.

Narrowly escaping via the toilet window, Crichton summons the Doctor and Dara to help UNIT do some obvious stuff like gatecrashing the country house and kicking some serious ass. However, they discover the party is now in the basement and they have all turned into vampires!

The Doctor sets his sonic screwdriver to "wooden stake" mode and dusts the lot of them before concluding that his old enemy the Bastard is using the cult to create a virulent strain of Hepatitis B with which he will rule the universe. What's more, the Bastard himself is, in fact, Dracula.

The UNIT troops open fire with silver bullets, and the Bastard effortlessly has his vampire hordes slaughter the soldiers, take the Doctor and Dara to a country house and put them in an easily escapable death trap and generally hope things to go to plan. Meanwhile, he prepares for the Sabbath of the Undead on the 23rd of August so he can extract humanity for taking the piss out of his evil title for centuries.

The Doctor and Dara are locked in the cellar again, but because they killed the vampires earlier, are in no danger and thus easily escape. Then, the Bastard kidnaps Dara and lays her out on a sacrificial alter and threatens to give her immunity to the lethal virus unless the Doctor surrenders.

The Bastard releases the virus, but at that moment Crichton and the rest of UNIT attack the church with water pistols, which somehow destroys the vampires in the exact same way wandering around in direct sunlight hasn't.

UNIT then blow up the church, which somehow prevents the virus from doing a damn thing. The Bastard trips over his own feet and accidentally drives a stake through his heart - but, since he has two, he is able to come back to life and escape to his TARDIS as soon as everyone wanders off to fight off a Cyberman invasion.

Thus, Lawson and Himinez tried to fuse the ideas into one coherent plot while at the same time struggling to create a character-lead dynamic story with a moral lesson about obsession leading to destruction, chaos, fear, death and unimaginable rice pudding.

In order to add an extra level of horror, Phillips ordered the sound design to be as terrifying as possible. Every seen was punctuated with the sound of ghouls wailing in torment, every background was accompanied by the lonely moan of the wind and rain, every line of dialogue underscored by EVIL music, and each cliffhanger with a thunderclap, a tolling bell, a wolf howling, and the screams and moans of Chip Jamison as members of the cast took turns at jabbing him with an electric cattle prod. What's more, the Dominic Glynn theme music was replaced for one story only with an creepy music-box version played with ominous and vampire-related lyrics sung over the titles by a passing Swedish tourist.

Publicity went into overdrive to portray the story as "The Even More Ultimate Than The Evil Dead Experience in Grueling Terror". Complete lies were spread that the story was recording in 'surround sound horror-scope', leading several of the cast members to believe the script editor was making decisions based solely on what Mystic Meg wrote under "Capricorn".

The cover was distinctive with its monochrome simplicity, with the Doctor shown dangling from a noose, Dara sticking out a black tongue, Magician screaming in terror en mass and Renata with a completely pointless lobotomy scar and goatee - all of the images were added with glowing red eyes and the Doctor Who logo etched as red dripping letters of blood. The title of the story was also slightly altered to -

"Fear Will Freeze You When You Face The Backpacker Of The Night, A Bit Like Something Out Of A Horror Movie, She's Not Very Nice At All, She's Worse Than One Of Those Little Black Crunchy Things!!"

However, most ill-educated fans (as most SCAD listeners are) simply refer to it simply as The Backpacker of the Night like the drooling gimps they are.

Unfortunately, when the cast and crew actually got round to listening to the finished product they dubbed it "hilariously right pain in the arse bad with a heavy-handed plot that literally just fizzles out in a mind-bogglingly stupid and pointless end of frankly ludicrous and uncomfortable proportions".

And that was just from the electrician who dropped by to try and help fix the studio lights!

Indeed, Phillips was so horrified at how poor the adventure turned out, he started sending hate mail to himself demanding to know what the bloody hell he thought he was doing making this trash in the first place?! There was a shortage of actual vampires, hardly any blood and the question, "Will anyone actually get bitten in this pile of crap?!" was asked with disturbing frequency.

The entire production team agreed that if they learned one thing from this story, it was that under no circumstances were they ever going to let a "thick bastard" like Lawson anywhere near them ever again.

Lawson left the company and never returned to pen anything as half decent or entertaining for the SCADs ever again, and Phillips, Segal and the rest of the production team were glad of it.

What a pack of wankers.

"Touched by Vlad Tepes" by Magician

Touched? You say that I am too!
So much... Of what I say ain't true.
You'll never bite someone quite like me... again.
You'll never bite someone quite like me... like me...

There is a damned, a dying art
That can never tear us apart!
Those Dustbin gits, Cybermen ghosts
Worse, the Bastard knows I'm not at home!

You'll never bite someone quite like me... again!
You'll never bite someone quite like me... again!

I... I looked into your eyes and saw
A world of Nosferatu groupies
I looked into your eyes and saw
A world so unfashionable!

You'll NEVER bite someone
You'll NEVER bite someone quite like way
That YOU BIT ME!

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