Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JS Doctor - The Time Brokers

One Hundred And Forty-First Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Pretty Vacancies


5D - The Thyme Brokers -

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

Are you tired of life? Bored with the meaningless grind of existence? Looking for some adventure? New frontiers to conquer? Then you're fucked then because the universe is one long tidal wave of disappointment and misery, a river of pain that empties out into an ocean of nothingness! There is no God, no afterlife, no point to this mortal coil!

So... want some meaningless sex? Well, buddy, you've come to the right place!

We are the Have A Good Time Brokers and WE can help! We can relocate you to any place in any time you desire to get your leg over (no matter how many) with any beings you desire and we can assure you the management is VERY open minded.

Travel back to the wild frontiers of the 1880s when the American West was still wild and the women even wilder. Or go forward a thousand years or so and see what life will be like when the next generation of technology takes hold and how kinky marital aides have become. Perhaps you've always wanted to sexually rule a planet in leather clad dominatrix. We can arrange that, too (but it might cost extra). Here at the Have A Good Time Brokers, all of time and space is yours for the asking, and no safety word is required.

Simply make an appointment with the appointment drone and we'll contact you to arrange your perfect time and space to climb the walls of sexual ecstasy and fall screaming down the other side.

Payment? Money is vulgar - and so are you! But cash is not a problem, we can work with any budget. In fact, we require no down payment at all. We've got money to spare. You want money, sure, have it to spend on those hookers in Las Vegas!

All we ask in return is that, once your lease is up at the end of a generous fifty years, you simply turn over to us a single possession: YOURSELF!

No time wasters please.



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

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor and Mark are quietly sitting around the console, sharing a bottle of marijuana gin and plucking banjos in an attempt to strangle out a good cover of an old Eagles' tune, between arguing if the title is "Journey of the Sorcerer" or "Voyage of the Sorcerer" or maybe "Hitchhiking of the Philosopher..."

Their deep musings are interrupted once again as Dara finally escapes from her straight jacket and gag and starts demanding they pay attention to her hotness and sweat-stained school uniform as she flicks her hair to suggest how available she is, but leads her slightly stoned and paranoid travelling companions into thinking she has nits.

Mark and the Doctor toss a coin and, once again, Mark calls it right and thus wanders off into the depths of the TARDIS as the Time Lord is left to put up with the totally empty-headed bint they travel with.

The Time Lord continues to try and accompany himself with the "really difficult and wistful bit at the very end" and when Dara tries to interrupt, he shouts Martian abuse at her. Dara claims she's started cutting herself in a cry out for attention.

The Doctor's eyes widen at that and he leaps to his feet and runs over to the TARDIS tool kit to find a Terileptil hunting knife and hands it over to Dara - she can do some REAL damage with that, and as long as she cuts down, not across, she should be dead in two minutes flat. This will leave him free to repair the HADS system in the TARDIS.

"Ah, Dara, the HADS is the most incredible device devised by the Ancient Time Gods - the Holistic Activity Divination Stabilizer! Its use is legendary throughout the known cosmos. Some call it the Dues Ex Machina, more still refer to it as a McGuffin, but the Time Lord refer to it as the Universal Get Out Clause of Rassilon. Whenever the TARDIS is danger, it allows all possible future probabilities to collapse into one multidimensional pool party, and plucks the most ridiculous pattern of events whose end result is saving this old Type 40's sorry singularity, and kicks it into action. For example, if a couple of Dustbins were trying to use an atom-smasher to break in, it would suddenly rain pink custard and wash them all down a convenient drain into the fires of hell."

"If it's that good, why do we ever bother saving the universe?" Dara demands.

"Because it's broken, you stupid ape!" the Doctor screams at her. "Why else do you think I'm fixing it! Does ANYTHING penetrate that ball of cotton wool and used tampons you call a cerebral cortex? I'VE HAD ENOUGH! JUST GET OUT!"

So saying, the Doctor lands the TARDIS and throws Dara out the doors, telling her she can crawl into a ditch and die for all he cares. However, thanks to the marijuana gin's curious effect on Time Lord physiognomy, the Doctor instantly forgets all about this when he realizes he's landed in a Texan rural cemetery in the year 1984.

Dara notes that the cemetery has been vandalized and several corpses have been dug up and draped around the place. The Doctor muses on the artistic merits and, given that it's the 1970s, this is actually quite a novel dadaist installation, but suspects most of it's down to laziness than form and void.

At that moment a skinny, heat-struck figure lurches crazily through the graves towards them and Dara wonders if he might be a zombified ghoul come to eat their brains. The Doctor laughs this suggestion off as impossible and then shoves Dara in front of him - if the ghoul snaps her neck and chases the Doctor to the nearest farmhouse, well, he'll owe her a coke.

Instead of growling and trying to eat them, the odd figure snatches Dara's Terileptil hunting blade and laughs insanely as he cuts his own hand. The Doctor notes reprovingly that Dara could learn a tip or two about self-mutilation from this insane Texan passer-by.

The weirdo then trips over a cow skull and knocks himself unconscious, so, for want of something better to do, the Doctor and Dara wander over to the nearby farm - a dilapidated old house next to a swimming hole, surrounded by junked vehicles. The Doctor notes such a large amount of derelict vehicles points to a homicidal maniac slaughtering passers by with gay abandon, but Dara tells him off for being annoying and insists they visit.

The Doctor knocks on the front door which is answered by a huge man wearing an ill-fitting mask made out of human flesh carrying a sledgehammer. Quickly pretending to be a Southern Baptist, the Doctor hands over Dara noting "she'd look good on a meat hook, wouldn't she?"

The huge man (who the Doctor dubs "Leatherhead" to appease the lawyers) attacks our heroes with his mighty chainsaw. "That's not a knife," the Doctor laughs, brandishing the Terileptil hunting dagger, "THIS is a knife!" and easily cuts the chainsaw blade off.

Leatherhead stares blankly at the useless weapon for a moment and there is an awkward silence that follows. After a moment the Doctor hands Leatherhead the knife by way of an apology and the insane, retarded hillbilly has Dara taken inside the house and tied to the chair.

The Doctor offers to slice up Dara for food for Leatherhead's redneck cannibal family. Dara screams in protest and the Doctor points out that all that bullshit about cutting herself is really in perspective NOW, isn't it?

Unfortunately, the rest of the family are suffering horrible food poisoning after consuming some KFC and are too busy vomiting and writhing in agony to pose any threat to anyone. Only Leatherhead, a committed vegan, is safe. The irony of it leads to Leatherhead wielding his ruined chainsaw in a psychotic dance of frustration in the kitchen.

As the Doctor tries to break the ice by suggesting he gets a new hobby with the Illuminati, there is a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, a well-built Austrian man with slicked back hair, mirrored sunglasses and a leather jacket explodes into existence beside them.

The Doctor and Dara dive for cover as the figure announces he is "Dah Liver Ranch!" and opens fire with his machine gun, killing Leatherhead and all of his inbred hillbilly family, before the Terminator vanishes again.

The time travelers decide that this is really weird and decide to call it quits and return to the TARDIS. It quickly transfers them to Terminal L.X.116/RH, also known as Spaceport Galena, the crossroads of the entire galaxy and containing more different and varied aliens than the Cantina scene from Star Wars: A New Hope seen through a kaleidoscope!

Emerging from the TARDIS (parked cunningly behind a chocolate pilchard dispenser), the Doctor and Dara emerge to see the familiar form of the Terminator leaving the gents toilets and ducking into a bar called "the Good Time Brokers", a combined night club, brothel, massage parlor, opium den and tax accounts agent.

Certain that this establishment appeals to at least ONE side of his new persona, the Doctor runs inside, telling Dara to stay where she is at she is not only underage, but a social embarrassment who is "square to the point of deformity" and wouldn't enjoy herself.

Inside the club, the Doctor has great fun shouting out dance tips to the girls in rusty cages hanging from the ceiling, but is shocked when Johnny Carson strides out on stage. It becomes apparent that this is merely a Carson impersonator played very, VERY badly by Chip Jamison, but his awful "Carnac the Magnificent" routine is so bad it unleashes a mystical demon from outside the barriers of time and space itself: Pewnack the Destroyer.

This demonic creature is about to unleash the Minions of Threek to begin the Time of Weeping but unfortunately the proprietor of the Good Time Brokers - a Texas hooker called Miss Kitty Fantastico - offers Pewnack the ability to live out his sexual fantasies in any period of time and space he desires: yet another service offered by the club, but one very rarely used since the customers are almost immediately killed by the Terminator upon arrival.

The Doctor asks the cyborg just WHY he is determined to head back in time and murder people at random for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The Terminator replies something in a cod Italian accent and machine guns Pewnack the Destroyer to death, before the ungodly avatar has even finished his cocktail.

The Time Lord realizes that the Terminator is the legendary Berwale the Avenger - the ultimate evolutionary form of a Swiss army knife - and now he shall scourge the entirety of time and space, starting with Saffron Waldon.

"Oh, I am completely bloody sick of this!" shouts one of the paying customers, and with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher named Big Emma, opens fire on the Terminator and reduces the behemoth to a small cloud of agitated atoms in a cheap negative effect.

"Mark!" the Doctor exclaims in surprise as he realizes who the savior of the entire created universe truly is. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I WAS enjoying the facilities until you and Bimbo turned up!" Mark growls. "It's all ruined. Let's get out of here."

The Doctor and Mark leave the ruined club and, ignoring the pestering questions from Dara as she demands to know what the hell happened while she was standing outside, kicking a coke can and working out the merits of certain disorders, enter the TARDIS and head off for new adventures with slightly less dated concepts, sound effects, and closing credits.


Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who Stalks Leatherface! (Canada Only)
Dr Who Exterminates The Terminator! (Germany Only)
"Carnac The Magnificent Conquers Time!" a one man stage show by Chip Jamison



Links and References -
Dara: DOCTOR! THE DUSTBINS ARE HURLING ASTEROIDS AT EARTH AND ALL OF HUMANITY IS DYING IN THEIR GRIME DESTRUCTOR RAYS! THIS IS THE DAY THE DUSTBINS WIPED THE FLOOR WITH MANKIND!!!
Mark: What?!
Doctor: We're not doing that one!
Dara: Er. What's that, Doctor?
Doctor: That one got moved back!
Mark: We're not doing the Empire of the Dustbins today, we're doing the Terminator at the Pink Pussycat club!
Dara: Oh. Sorry bout that, Jeff.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor hasn't been to Galea since he, Frobisher the Penguin and Dr. Ivan Asimoff saved the Zyglots being hunted to extinction by the Akkers, the Dullest Species in The Universe.



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

Bunny Girls: We're Interstellar Angels,
Pristine and honest and nice.
We're Interstellar Angels,
And we're going at half price!

People say how good we are
When we sing and dance!
We're a hit at all the bars,
Though we turn down each advance!

We've between Jupiter and Mars
'Cos we're the super-virginal stars!
Modesty is chastity!
Chastity is purity!
Purity is boring!
Let's have some activity!!

Offstage we get out thrills,
With our backing bands
We admit it pays the bills
Doing one night stands

We're not exactly pure and white,
But we've an image to protect!
Eighty credits for one good night
Or our careers will soon be wrecked!

In the public eye
WE'RE DEMURE AND SHY!
But if you can't pay
WE'LL DO IT ANYWAY!
We never put up a fight!
IT IS A WAY OF LIFE!

Interstellar Angels
HONEST AND CHASTE?
Interstellar Angels
OH, WHAT A WASTE!

Doctor: You see, why can't you be like that, Dara?

Dara: What do you mean? I'm the hottest thing ever.

Doctor: Couldn't you at least be nice, helpful, selfless and charming?

Dara: That's a tall order...

Doctor: I GIVE UP!

-------

Kitty: You must be looking for The Have A Good Time Brokers.

Mark: What gave it away?

Kitty: Nothing, I just wanted to use the story title in the dialogue.

-------

Carnac: Don't try to FOOL me with your SLICK WORDS, Doc. I've READ about you SICK ritual KILLERS from BACK EAST. Men from better backgrounds, BORED with LIFE and PLAYING with it at their LEISURE, they're kinda ODD... LIKE YOU.

Doctor: Odd? I'm not the one with a spray-on toupee pretending to be Johnny Carson in an orbital peepshow! If I'm odd, you're fucking deranged!




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

Dara: Doctor! You've turned white as a sheet! Is Chip Jamison's acting so bad?

Doctor: Bad? Bad?! BAD?!? Dara, it's one of the purest manifestations of evil to ever exist!

--------

Terminator: Ahmayzeen, truly ahmayzeen. Dis TAHDUS of yars is incredabbul, Darkta.

Doctor: I'm glad you appreciate it.

Dara: Most people think it's a piece of junk.

Terminator: Most people are ideeyots. Ahs are you, yarng lady.

Doctor: Dara's a very 'special needs' person.

--------

Doctor: In all my travels, Dara, I've learned that every legend has a germ of fact to it. Otherwise, where would the legend come from?

Dara: Internet forum trolls?

Doctor: Oh. Yeah. Well, forget everything I just said then.

--------

Doctor: You're killing people pointlessly! That's murder!

Terminator: No, Mistuh Darkta, dat's bizness.

Doctor: It's evil. Simply evil.

Terminator: Nort efil, Darkta. Jarst bizness. All purfektly leeheegul, in fakt. Dat vay ahm habsolfed of murdah.

Doctor: I doubt your victims would feel the same way.

Terminator: Vell, ahm certain ve could argue dat filisoffikul gem, but ah marst now blow yor head arf yor sholdars now...



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

"The Thyme Brokers has an intriguing concept, offering people an escape into unlimited sexual ecstasy and then taking it away from them. Very emotive stuff. Unfortunately, this concept has nothing to do with the plot, which was very confusing and seemed to rely on Rambo shooting the Terminator shooting Leatherface while Johnny Carson talks bollocks. I had to rewind to find out how the Doctor has resolved the story, and rewind again to find out what the story was. Still not sure about this." - DIY Sheep (2003)


"Odd. These episodes are very short, aren't they? I've always wanted to know a little more about the characters of Leatherface and the Terminator. I quite liked the feel of the first two episodes. Outright plagiarizing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't something that has been regularly used in Doctor Who history. However, the ordinary futuristic space brothel settings were returned to in the third and fourth parts were kinda predictable. I mean, how many stories are set in outer space cat houses? And not just Doctor Who - Emmerdale had an episode there, just the other week. Chip Jamison irritates my bowels. "
- Lars Peason (1994)


"Just like some of my other reviews, I can't really find anything to be negative about. Once again, I shall have to make stuff up to stop myself sounding like a total squeebag poofter. This story was short, small, and you'd have to have been dead and buried under Sutton Hoo's tomb for five centuries to find Jym DeNatale's Arnold Schwarzenegger's opinion convincing, but I suppose that, in many ways, this actually worked very well since they might not get sued to buggery by Universal Studios' lawyers. I also sometimes feel that the character of Johnny Carson would have made a good companion. As long as Chip Jamison wasn't playing him. Or even in the same continent as him. At all."
- Singrid Thornton (2000)


"I'm not being funny, but at times the Doctor irresistibly reminded of the spaced out comedy character Dr Denzil Davis from the BBC's The Fast Show. I'm not being funny, and neither was The Fast Show."
- Allan Adale (2005)


"The Even Doctors has always been a favorite Doctor Who story of mine, and so I felt that a practical sequel to it was a great idea! Just a damned shame this wasn't it." - Ewen Campion-Clarke (2006)


"It's nice to see Doctor Who go back to its roots of using historical settings and famous movie characters in lieu of anything even approaching the description of "plot", and the palpable lack of enthusiasm to the Texan power-drill cannibalism during the first half of the story, and even during the nudie girl floorshow on the space station. There's a real feeling no one was involved in this out of choice, and the idea of making Johnny Carson a villain out of your worst nightmares works perfectly with the Doctor believably frightened of the mere thought of Chip Jamison's performance. Overall, though, it seems a little on the retarded side, story-wise. But not a bad story to round out a good season, since this is not a good season and this IS a bad story, though it is, like sex with the Queen Mother, mercifully brief."
- The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



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

"I remember being quite ill when we taped this story, so I don't really remember too much of it. Except for the bit where I almost passed out during one of the scenes, foaming at the mouth and screaming I was the Mysterious Dr Satan and trying to sexually assault the furniture.

Everything else is a blur. And that's a good thing.

Sheri was very cool about it, especially when I shoved her head through the window and forced her at knife point to squawk like a buzzard in pain. Sheri's beauty is matched only by her charm - which some might construe as me saying she is beauty and charming. But I'm not. I'm saying she's an ugly bitch whore. And I say that only because Sheri isn't around to hear it.

She's been acting for longer than I have - sixty or seventy years more, if I'm right - and the fact that she can pull off being a vacuous nineteen-year old slut is testimony to her acting ability. Or her increasing senility.

She is also an accomplished stuntwoman, having worked the western circuit before coming to the SCADs. I guess that explains how she was able to fling herself bodily through the window, then slip a lasso around my neck and dragged me out of studio and tied me to a passing bus. It was days before I got free, and my illness had been replaced by rope burn.

Ah, Sheri. What has become of her, I wonder? Oh well, who cares?

I was really looking forward to this story, a sort of time travel brothel frequented by Hollywood horror-action characters is a great idea, especially when you have sights like Freddy Kruger and Bruce Lee shoving dollar bills into the stockings of the Time Hookers... but instead the whole story focussed on the Terminator killing people for no good reason.

Apparently we had to change the plot because Doug the producer was stupid enough not to read the fine print. "It's all Chip Jamison's fault! WHY DID WE EVER HIRE THE BASTARD?!" was how they justified it.

Typical, really.

And words to the wise, eh?"



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

Jeff Coburn had been the official Doctor for four years and SCADs had still failed to finish his first five-story season. As 1995 drew to a close, Producer Douglas Phillips abandoned the plans for the massive six-episode season finale extravaganza, an epic tentatively entitled "The Umpire of the Dustbins Destroys JST For Undermining Them And Generally Being Rubbish Compared The SCADS Who Will Set Themselves Up Amongst The Gods Because They Are Better Than Anyone Else In The Whole World And Don't You Forget It".

Phillips needed a new four-part script fast, preferably not one written by David Segal. Luckily, the great personnel round up at the start of the year had also collected a curious being called John S Drew. Drew, actually a teenage lobster-like Gargan from an outer planet, had arrived on Earth from a broken home. And when the laws of your alien world forbid the use of families and friendship, a broken home is SERIOUSLY hardcore.

Like all his kind, Drew was disdainful of the "foreigners" who inhabited the Earth, and his previous attempts to blend in with typical 1950s American small town culture were not made easy, as he was in the heart of 1990s Minneapolis. Nevertheless, the self-styled "thrill-crazed space kid from outer space who blasts the flesh off humans for a laugh" was a writer for audio drama.

Thus, despite the frequent use of his disintegrator ray-gun to kill numerous people every hour on the hour, Drew was nevertheless able to come up with a fascinating premise for a storyline to end Coburn's first season.

Since the Doctor has helped a majority of his companions find new sex lives in times and places not their own, thought Drew, there must be other people who would a like a similar chance, and is thus, a business opportunity!

The story would then focus entirely on this temporal pimping agency with lots of evil twists on loan repayments, bailiffs and the fine print, and also allow lots of gratuitous sex scenes, nudity and material so hardcore it would offend some high court judges.

Unfortunately, disaster struck the SCADs with such ferocity that the entire cast and crew eventually abandoned their makeshift recording studio - a deserted hotel built on an Native American graveyard - in fear of their own lives. No one at the time understood the string of bad luck, psychosis and supernatural silly buggery going on, but it later transpired the whole thing was caused by a crate of finest French absinthe which Jym de Natale had been trying to bribe Phillips into making him the next Doctor.

Segal had stolen the crate, cackling insanely, and drunk an entire bottle with no apparent ill effects. He then sold it to script editor Raymond Dugong as lime cordial, before suddenly convulsing and running outside.

Segal began to believe he was a dog and soon had dug up the corpses in the graveyard. Still of the firm belief he was a dog, Segal pissed over the corpses and then buried them upside down before going on heat and climbing a tree.

Meanwhile, Peter Hinchman and Jeff Coburn had, after a thirsty recording session, downed three glasses of "cordial" each and done distinctly peculiar. The original opening scene which had the Doctor and Mark reprogramming the TARDIS computer became a curious banjo competition, forcing a hasty rewrite. However, by the time of the next take, their condition had worsened.

The two actors had watched a truly contemptible B-movie called The Uninvited, about a strange poisonous radioactive parasite that lived inside the body of a tabby cat. At random points the cat would vomit up the parasite, which would then gratuitously murder some badly-acted teenagers.

Hinchman and Coburn decided it would be a great idea if the Doctor started defeating his enemies by vomiting up a lethal slime monster which would then slaughter all of them, and demanded a redraft of the Dustbin story to end with the Time Lord regurgitating a giant iguana to annihilate the cyborg cleaning machines once and for all.

However, they realized that a suitable sound effect would be required for a tame iguana to be ejected from Jeff Coburn's throat. Thus, with woozy cunning, they decided to steal a large lizard and for Coburn to swallow it. When Phillips arrived, Jeff was lying on the floor, clutching his neck, with a tail out of his mouth as Hinchman burst out laughing "It crapped in his mouth, man! Can you believe it? Uncool! Uncool!"

This - combined with the hangover - left Coburn dangerously ill. Rather than waste time and effort taking him to hospital, they beat the actor with rubber tubing to record the scenes. Coburn nearly passed out, before suddenly becoming rabid and attacking everyone in the room.

Finally, Sheri Devine was able to subdue the actor, only for the half-eaten lizard to crawl into the crate of absinthe and die. de Natale was passing and, suspicious about the green cordial, drank it. Furious at how he'd been ripped off by Segal, de Natale started chasing everyone with a fire axe screaming "LITTLE PIGS! LITTLE PIGS! LET ME COME IN! JYM WANTS TO FINGER YOUR ENTRAILS!!"

An ominous thunderstorm struck the hotel, and strange spectral figures were spotted moving through supposedly deserted corridors and rooms. The recording equipment was ruined when it was found to have shorted out after ectoplasm had poured over it, before Hinchman did further damage trying to get the damn thing to "microwave his fucking burritos already".

Phillips decided to send out for some new recording equipment, but technical problems got in the way - specifically the sudden plague of zombies lurching around the hotel, and the fact the naked and barking Segal had chewed through the phone lines. What's more, it later transpired that de Natale had rung up the suppliers who, after hearing their client yodeling "BOYS AND GIRLS GO OUT TO PLAY ON THE PRETTY MOTORWAY!!", took out a restraining order and thus prevented the technology from reaching the SCADs for two years. Ironically, this meant they arrived just in time to start work on the next series.

Only one person knew where the emergency backup recording equipment, and that was Sheri Devine. However, Devine had also partaken of the green cordial and was now gripped by suicidal remorse and repeatedly attempted to slash her wrists. Phillips narrowly convinced her that she wasn't so pathetic as to kill herself, and so Devine decided to go on a bloody rampage with razor blades, intending to kill all witnesses.

Hinchman, meanwhile, had worked out that the zombies' heads exploded like cantaloupes filled with dynamite when paintballs were fired at them. Wiping out the zombie horde, he managed to communicate with the local highway via a torch and Morse code, and a bunch of supermodels auditioning for Jossie and the Pussycats arrived, thinking this was their stop.

By now, Dugong was so despairing he too decided to drink the cordial and started to believe he was somehow transported into a dimension exactly as chronicled in Dungeons & Dragons, and started running around the place fighting off invisible orcs and goblins.

Finally Chip Jamison turned up at the hotel. This truly indicates black magic since the entire production team had made damn sure Jamison thought they were in Portland and changed all the locks. His arrival was truly a terrifying portent, and when Drew himself started to grow long black fur, fangs, and began to howl at the moon, things looked grim.

Then, all hell broke loose - David Segal returned to the hotel stark naked, and asked everyone if they'd missed him.

The hotel was abandoned in two point three seconds.

Painful rehabilitation followed. Phillips and the now stable Devine and distinctly un-werewolf-like Drew discovered that the entire night's activities had been recorded by Hinchman's walkman, and thus they had a mixture of recorded scenes and insane chase runarounds with voices shouting about Pewnack the Destroyer, some bimbos singing about what sluts they were, and Jamison's truly appalling Johnny Carson stand up routine.

They had no time to rerecord the story, and with a desperate desire to finish one year's work before the decade was out, Phillips ordered Drew to edit the recording until it became a complete Doctor Who story they could fob off to all three people who knew and cared about the SCADs (statistics reveal that at least one of this shameful individuals was Dave Segal in a wig).

Drew set to work and easily arranged the first two episodes with the Doctor and Dara encountering the insane Jym de Natale, then travelling to a space age brothel full of snarling strange creatures and an a cappella trio of bunny girls singing before "Johnny Carson" unleashes a bunch of D&D monsters and everything blows up. Sadly, the carefully constructed climax - where the TARDIS' Holistic Activity Divination Stabilizer would have finally fixed itself and saved the day - had to be abandoned for a slightly less predictable ending involved Mark Tryhard, a bazooka and a lot of sexual frustration.

Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication the title "The Have A Good Time Brokers" was thought to be "The Time Brokers". However, Jeri Rogers assumed that the story was about an inner city market garden, and thus the "time" in the title would be some sort of herb. Quickly checking this (but not checking anything else) she authorized the use of the title "The Thyme Brokers".

Finally, the first season was complete. Jeff Coburn, as soon as he regained motor functions and the power of speech, was immediately dragged back in the fold for the next year, as were Devine and Hinchman. However, Hinchman had taken photos of the recording session and now could blackmail the entire production team in whatever way he wanted.

The insane egomania of the SCADs had taken a blow. It had taken them nearly five years to produce what the BBC did in less than one, and only the corporation's steadfast refusal to keep doing so in any way gave the fan audios the edge. But it was painfully obvious that, since 1995 was dawning, their attempts to capture the period of 1982 was no longer the zeitgeist they thought it would be. They needed proper stories, fewer companions, more returning enemies and fanwank, and a theme tune that hadn't been abandoned ten years previously. In short, they needed a new influx of ideas and creativity.

Tumbleweeds rolled by.

Phillips was confident that as long as no one read the New Adventures or watched any decent TV or listened to Jon Pertwee's audio range, then the SCADs would be the most popular Doctor Who product by default. There could be no stopping their conquest of series, and thus completely ignored the news that one P. McGann of Liverpool had been sighted in Vancouver alleyway with a police box and dumb redhead on a motorbike...

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