Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JS Doctor - The Warlords of Apshai (ii)

Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who & The Celebrity D&D Game
Doctor Who: Just What Dangers To Expect When You've Recklessly Exceeded The Blinovitch Limitation Effect Like Some Drunken American Tourist
The Doctor Who Strategy Game Of Time And Space For Total Nerds With No Lives Of Any Kind Whatsoever


Links and References -
In a shocking divergence from SCAD policy, The Warlords of Apeshit actually refers to events in the television series!! Specially "The Wank Games", "Error of the Autons", "Planet of the Spy-Spoofs", "The Lethal Assassin", "The Zoo-Keeper of Traken", "Survival" in regards to the Bastard and everything from "Gobot" to "Death Comes To Tom" in regards to David Segal's Doctor.

There are also pointless references to "The Sexual Toymaker", "The Greatest Blow In The Galaxy" and "Battlefield: Earth".


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Oldest Doctor, Bill and Mark were heading for the library at Alexandria to research back issues of "Cosmopolitan" and learn more about the female orgasm, between the SCAD adventures "Nightmare of Limbo" and "Short Circuit III".

The Copycat Doctor and Mark Tryhard are on their way to a seaside bungalow on the planet Dunsquabblin 8 for a relaxing seaside holiday between "The Webber's Gate" and "Countdown to Armadillo", hence Mark's "I'M WITH THIS TWIT ->" T-shirt and the Doctor's sailor hat with "KISS ME SLOW, I'M A MONGOLOID PORN STAR" written on it in felt tip.

The Future Doctor and Chris are from the future and thus incredibly unlikely to reappear in any form anywhere in this audio series ever again.

Meanwhile, Dara claims she and the Proper Doctor have just had an exciting adventure during the Great War where she had sexual congress with up to thirteen German soldiers at a time.


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

Proper Doctor: Does anyone know me? I'm not even sure I know myself. Sometimes I find I can almost forget. Almost. If you knew how much suffering I caused. All because of my arrogance. I asked of heaven every fair star and of the Earth every highest zest...

Copycat Doctor: And all things near and...

Proper Doctor: Shut up, asshole! Ahem. And all things near and far could not appease our deeply troubled breast.

Oldest Doctor: You're misquoting it, you know.

Future Doctor: Oh, what a buzz-kill!

Proper Doctor: I'm trying to provide a mythical analogue!

Oldest Doctor: You're trying to impress the chicks. I won't work!

Proper Doctor: It might!

Future Doctor: It didn't.

Proper Doctor: Oh. Bugger.

-------

Wank Lord: Four Doctors? And four Bastards? Meh. How derivative. What are you people thinking?! You copy the BBC and they are shit to start with!!

-------

Future Doctor: It's a calculated risk.

Oldest Doctor: Calculated on what? Your fingers?!

Proper Doctor: Who wants life to be predictable?

Copycat Doctor: I do!

All: SHUT UP!

-------

Bill: I'd rather take my chances out there, thank you much.

Proper Doctor: We will be entering a universe hostile to your very existence! If he Bastard gets what he wants here, you and every other living thing will be at the mercy of tyrants they can never defeat and forces you can never control, let
alone understand! Unless we stand and fight, Mr. Sanderson, generations to come will never have to freedom to even hope for death -

Future Doctor: Dear God, you two, it's just Dungeons and Dragons!

-------

Dara: It looks like the Bastard!

Oldest Doctor: Ah, so you've met him. My condolences.

Dara: Well, in a way, I wouldn't have met the Doctor if it wasn't for him. OK, I murdered some poor suckers in cold blood while I was under his evil hypnotic influence, but all in all it was a really good day - I skipped school, traveled through space and time, to see the universe as a really big place, to explore nude worlds, to seek out perverted life and kinky civilizations, to boldly get blown where no man has been blown before!!

Oldest Doctor: I'm going to have to stop you there, Miss Hamilton.

Dara: Oh, why?

Oldest Doctor: No real reason, I just have to stop you.

-------

Old Bastard: There lies the difference between us, Doctor. While we play with stellar matter and genetic code, you choose to play with your friends!

Proper Doctor: At least I have friends, baldo!

Old Bastard: ...Why must you always make me cry so?



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

Copycat Doctor: Explain it to that bitch Dara, won't you? She's YOUR companion!

Proper Doctor: Ah, but she's YOUR companion first. I just inherited her.

Copycat Doctor: Oh no... no way. If I had her as my companion, I'd kill myself right away, just take a running jump off a short suspension bridge.

Proper Doctor: That does actually make sense of what happened.

Copycat Doctor: Does it? Oh dear...

-------

Dara: We are the mighty Warlords of Apeshit...

Bill: Why are they using her to communicate?

Oldest Doctor: The Apeshit are beings so massive they exist outside the boundaries of time and space as we understand them. To even perceive them in normal reality would destroy the central nervous system of any living thing, as we are too firmly rooted in the lower dimensions to witness those above.

Mark Tryhard: That doesn't actually answer the question, though, does it?

Proper Doctor: She's a complete airhead so it's easier to possess her.

Chris: But what if they doth burn out her mind?

Future Doctor: Believe me, Chris, we'd never notice.

-------

New Bastard: I never truly believed... I've seen you reject power, but never
power on your own terms.

Proper Doctor: That is the difference between us. I don't need it to enjoy sex any more.

New Bastard: Yes. I see that now. We truly follow two different paths. However, if you interfere in my affairs in the future, I -WILL- kill you... old friend.

Proper Doctor: Yeah. You're SUCH a threat, "old friend". A man who honestly believed that a university drop out like me was once a megalomaniac who tried to conquer the universe and slaughtered countless lives like a cross between Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler and Michael Grade, devastating the whole
of the universe and then pretending nothing happened SO convincingly that it
might as well NOT have happened! You actually went around asking ME for advice about how to take over the galaxy...

New Bastard: Leave me alone! You're mean!

Proper Doctor: You call yourself the Bastard, but you are merely a Bitch! Now get the fuck off my time scanner before I rip you a new one, you wanker.

--------

Sea Lion Bastard: The Bastard does not go clubbing... alone.

-------

Oldest Doctor: Trying the same old chat up lines that Ruath said worked on her sister! How utterly immature!

Future Doctor: Not as immature as Scarf Boy here.

Proper Doctor: Yes, why do I even bother with himself?

Copycat Doctor: Do you mind?! I'm the longest serving Doctor in the history of anything ever! All right, I'm a rip off of Tom Baker! All right, I have no original dialogue, all right I'm so thoroughly unlikable children spit in my face as I pass and all my attempts to get an American Express card fail abysmally... BUT I'VE HAD MORE WOMEN THAN THE REST OF YOU PUT TOGETHER! I'VE HAD HALF OF FUCKING FREEMONT, THAT'S WHAT I'VE HAD! So you can keep your bloody brand new story lines! And you can keep your so-called nouveau progressive characterization! I'd rather have my backlog of remakes and no intelligent thought whatsoever, with my trusty scarf! My beautiful... derivative scarf...

(He collapses, sobbing in misery.)

Proper Doctor: Well, sorry about that, but I'm afraid there's no place for sentiment or forgiveness in Doctor Who fandom.

Ian Levine: He's right you know.

All: FUCK OFF, IAN!

--------

Super-Trod: HE IS OF THE TIME LORDS, THE TIME LORDS ARE SUPREME... GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, HE IS IMMORTAL... HE JOURNEYS IN THE TARDIS AND TRAVELS THROUGH TIME AND SPACE... HE IS - HE IS THE DOCTOR - DOCTOR WHO? DOCTOR DISCO!! NOW WE CHANGE THE FREQUENCY MODULATION AND BOOGIE! BOOGIE OR BE INCINERATED!!!



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

"The Worlords of Apeshit was the most ambitious SCAD story ever, which was why it fell the furthest. Contrived plot riddled with fanwank, bringing back Doctors and Bastards old and new only to turn them into a bunch of squabbling bickering freaks running around in corridors... a perfect recreation of the television series when it does stuff like that. If I want that detritus served up on TV thirteen years ago, I'd have bothered to watch it! JST MUST DIE!!"
- Gertrude Perkins (1998)

"The bit where the Sea Lion Bastard goes psycho is actually scary. And the Sea Lion Bastard is played by Chip 'What's "Act" Mean?' Jamison. Ergo, there is a bit in this where Chip Jamison does not suck with the power of an isolated singularity. I know. Amazing but true." - Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)

"Coburn's third season gets off to a great start with some deep character development for the Doctor and a new alien menace that is the most powerful yet seen. While some, well, many, well, everyone may consider the idea of previous incarnations of the Bastard getting together with several Doctors an event whose time should never come... fuck you! It is handled with great finesse by writer Joseph Medina, which I can say with authority as no one else has ever bothered to do it. The Warlords of Apeshit is a tale unworthy of the epic proportions it has stolen mainly from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, but no one reads that rag, do they? It's just business as usual, expecting you to feel nostalgic for Doctors you don't know played by an actor who's been in every single story since his reign finally ended. It doesn't live up to any of its hype, but YOU try telling a decent story with Dave Segal and a sea lion playing D&D! Hah, not so smug are we, reader-type-person! You come off somewhat bland! I HATE YOU ALL!" - The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



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

"I think this is a story that was long overdue. If the Doctor could get his previous incarnations all together, who's to say that someone else, like the Bastard, couldn't as well? So here we had four Doctors more or less against four Bastards more or less, each fighting over a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Really the stuff that legends are made of. If the legends in question are very sad and pathetic, like that guy who had his head chopped off and got a replacement made out of wood. Whatever happened to that guy? Was he man... or chess piece?

Doug Phillips felt that, over the thirty-odd years that the series had ran we had learned too much about the Doctor, and so he wanted to throw a few things in there to put the "Who", as it were, back into "Doctor Who". Exactly the same way they'd been doing it in Sylvester McCoy's time, but we were careful never to point this out in front of Doug after we saw what he did to Ray. I can still hear the screams in the dead of night...

Anyway, over several stories, most notably The Warlords of Apshit and Devil Gate Drive, they began to show a lonely, exiled Doctor who had some terrible, dark secret in his past. Something that he was totally ashamed of; one that would be a personal torment to him for all his lives, but one that he would never reveal even to his closest friends. Which would ultimately just be a ploy to get some sex off the various alien women he'd meet. It's a bit immoral, I suppose, but believe me, it's a tactic that works. I met my wife by claiming to have single-handedly lead to the Challenger space shuttle explosion... Oh, lighten up, they were just AMERICANS for God's sake! Life goes on. For some.

There's this positively chilling line in Apeshit where the Bastard mocks the Doctor, asking him if all the good deeds he's done were really out of the goodness of his heart or born from the need to do penance for ancient sins and the Doctor says, "Sucker! You totally fell for that!" I think that pretty well sums it up.

And it's a great contrast to my Doctor's character who is usually so upbeat and carefree all the time. I think it makes it all that much more attractive to know this jovial Doctor has some secret torment inside him. Anyone trying internet dating, this technique should not be sniffed at you cyber geeks!!

I was looking forward to working with Vince, to see how he'd manage to slip back into his character after being gone for so long. I couldn't believe that Vince turned out to be this split personality that was fighting for control of David's body. It was like the Exorcist only with more goofy Tom Baker impressions. Scared the bejeezus out of the rest of all, who all assumed that Vince was a real person...

I wouldn't mind doing another get-together like Apeshit again, I really wouldn't. Just as long as David Segal wasn't there, speaking in tongues and reciting Tom Baker dialogue like last time. Scared the crap out of me."


David Segal Speaks!
-------------------

"I... tolerated Warlords of Apeshit. I tolerated it a lot. And I tolerated even more flack I got from the cast and crew who told me I was a complete failure whose unspeakable foulness was contaminating the recording studio. But I'm used to that. It was when those same insults were written into the script that I started to take offence.

It was flashback city working with my adoring friend Vince Savage who owes his life, his sanity and above all his talent to me. It was a trip down Memory Lane, or maybe LSD Flashback Boulevard as those bits of the neighbourhood are easily confused.

Jeff Coburn was annoyingly professional as ever. But at the same time he was also somewhat distant, and backed away from me in horror on several occasions screaming, "Which one of them is in control right now? They both talk through the same mouth! For the love of God, keep that nutter away from me!!"

It was probably just the roll of the Doctor taking its toll on Jeff, just like it does everyone except me. Jeff is definitely too hard on himself, it's not his fault he's not as talented, witty, good-looking or convincing as I am, is it? It's simply not fair to compare people to my greatness, but I suspect Jeff did and he was his own worse critic. He spent two seasons slowly realizing he wasn't as good as the guy he foolishly replaced, then I popped back to prove once and for all no one is as good as being the Doctor as I am.

You've really got to feel for the guy in this impossible situation. Of course, he's such a great guy he told everyone that I was a complete hack unworthy of the oxygen I stole from the lungs of more deserving anthropoids, and that I suffered from 'delusions of adequacy let alone full blown grandeur'.

And if the producers came to their senses and realized I was the only person who can do the Doctor justice, well, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Seriously. I'm waiting by the phone. Call now! PLEASE!!"


'Vincent Savage' Speaks!
------------------------

"When I found out through my complicated system of stoogies, espionarge and surveillance that Thomas Himinez and Joe Medina were working on a three Doctor/three Bastard storyline, I sucked thoughtfully on my hookah and thought, 'Hey, this will be just like old times!' And I was right, it was a complete fucking shambles just the way I remembered it.

Of course, there was now sound equipment, papery things called 'scripts' and the producer wasn't just some guy we met at a wine bar five minutes previously, giving the whole thing an amateurish feel to it, but in comparison it was professionalism personified, a vast improvement on the old days where 'production schedule' was assumed to be a difficult position in the Karma Sutra.

But even with fifteen years of experience, worldwide distribution over newfangled computer stuff, it was vastly identical to the anarchic pitched battle in front of microphones like it was in my time. Everyone kicked the script editor with the force he deserved.

It was absolutely great working side by side with David Segal again, a four-episode orgasm that redefined the word 'joy'. The guy isn't appreciated for the absolute saint and genius he is. He could be Pope, that's how amazing he is, I'm amazed he hasn't been made President of the United States on a wave of Bible-bashing fundamentalist Who fandom. It beggers belief. And he's so damn sexy, I'm not surprised women keep falling for his fabulously sinewy body.

Jeff Coburn and Jym de Natale just got in the way between me and the Living God of Segal, as his name would imply! You will worship him! WORSHIP HIM! WOR-SHIP HIIIIIIIIM!!!"


Jym de Natale Speaks!
---------------------

"When did I know I was going to become the next Doctor? I've always known! I've always been ready - I have the whole Genius of Night bound to my will! And when you're in a story like this, all those fears about matching up to prior performances melt away as you realize how rubbish they are and how easy it will be to outshine them all! Mind you, Dave pretending to be Vince was a bit disturbing, it really creeped me out. Where was I? Oh yes. The Great Elemental will get rid of Jeff Coburn at the end of the next series, and I shall be ready and waiting! MY DESTINY STARTS HERE!!"


Peter Hinchman Speaks!
----------------------

"I literally phoned in my performance. I was hardly going to leave my mansion in Bermuda to play second fiddle to Dave Segal playing four different characters, was I? If my performance suffered, screw you. I'm glad you're upset. Geeks who listen to this crap deserve what they get. Now, if you'll excuse me, there are three bunny girls and a tin of whipped cream with my initials engraved in it."


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

"The multi-Doctor story was done in a multi-storey building. Which was difficult as we were shouting at the ceiling or the floor hoping the recording equipment would pick us up. I guess they wanted everyone separate so we didn't twig Vince Savage is just Dave Segal speaking in a ridiculously deep voice.

With so many different Doctors to react to in so many different ways - yes I knew this one but I didn't know that one and this one knew me but the other one didn't and visa versa... and they still kept slagging me off and calling me an airhead whenever they thought I wasn't listening. Assholes."


Rachel Sommers Speaks!
----------------------

"Was I pleased to be chosen as a new companion? In a way, I was not. And you wouldn't be pleased if you had to play second fiddle to Jym, Jeff, Dave, Dave, Sheri, Dave, Peter, Chip and Dave. You'd think they'd realize that I, even with my speech impairment and total lack of acting experience would be worth higher billing than that nutbag Segal. Thuckering thuckertath!"



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

In 1993, Producer Douglas Phillips had an epiphany and quickly changed his trousers. He then struck upon a brilliant idea: the SCADs would celebrate Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary and distract the fan base from all those other releases like "3-D Dimensions in Lime", "The Dork Dimension" and "Thirty Long Fucking Years At The BBC" by releasing a story with the three SCAD Doctors!

Disaster struck when Phillips discovered that out of their three Doctors, two were played by David Segal and the other had only recorded a single line of dialogue. The 30th anniversary story would have to wait until the new Doctor got some stories under his belt and they found someone else to be the third Doctor.

By 1998 new script editor Joseph Medina realized they could simply give into the endless requests, pleadings, bribes and death threats from Jym de Natale and have him play a future incarnation of the Doctor! However, Medina thought that the Three Doctor story had already been done on TV many, many times before, a Three Bastards story had never been attempted for some reason. Phillips pointed out there was possibly a very good reason for a lack of Bastard team up stories, maybe the fact that most of the time the villain was so rubbish having him in stereo would be unbearable, or the fact as a character he did not differ enough from other versions of himself (apart from the whole Sea Lion business) and apart from anything else it would mean giving David Segal even MORE control over the finished product.

Medina insisted that he knew precisely what he was doing and set to work. It quickly struck him that he would have to write the entire story himself and since he was also the script editor, that could get incredibly confusing. Thus, he announced he was going on strike as a script editor to concentrate on writing, so if they didn't like the stuff he was handing in, they were stuck with it as no one was authorized to change it.

Phillips blew a blood vessel in fury at such arrogance, especially when it was clear Medina's script - tentatively entitled "Rip Off Of That Old DWM Comic I Really Liked With Merlin And Satan And The Keyboard That Ran The Universe" - explicitly was set in the TV Doctor Who universe, set at some point prior to Paul McGann's agonizing TV Movie which had proven to be completely canonical.

Phillips pointed out that the SCADs had been in production since 1981, so Medina had over seventeen years and 148 stories to draw upon for inspiration but instead was focussed on the JST-infected abomination screened to the scum-encrusted plebians on British television! Where was the justice?

"Why, it's right here, Doug!" said Medina shaking a fist in front of Phillips' face before taking him by surprise by violently kicking him in the groin and hurling his folded body down some stairs.

Amused at the producer's sobbing pleas for help and moans of pain, Medina decided to kick him while he was down (metaphorically speaking, though he did actually kick the wounded man a lot anyway) by using the script to emphasize what a total loser the Bastard was. Thus, Medina undid all the work (real and imagined) by Phillips and the previous script editor to make the villain cunning, methodical and completely capable of defeating the Doctor save by ridiculous plot contrivance. Instead, the Bastard was shown to be the pathetic little loser he was always hinted at, and the latest incarnation repeatedly heckled by his former selves, event the one that had mutated into a walrus.

Phillips' screams of horror were so loud they caused interference on local TV stations, ruining the 438th repeat of a Rosanne episode.

Recording the story was a nightmare, particularly as it was clear that if they wanted "Vincent Savage" to participate they would have to indulge Segal's strange fantasies and thus have no one in the room when "Vincent" and he were together at the same time. An attempt to record one scene with the cast on different levels of the same building was attempted but it became too impractical since Segal was voicing his own Doctor, the Proper Master, Vincent Savage, both his companions and most of the sound effects.

Finally Segal agreed to allow everyone to record in the same room, but they would have to be blindfolded so as to preserve the illusion that half the cast was not being played by the strange man in the home-knitted multi-coloured scarf. This lead to a high number of goofs in the finish product as actors bumped into each other and demanded "Watch where you're going, jerk!" and the sound engineers found themselves adjusting the bass and treble of the light dimmers, and at one point Jeff Coburn fell over something which turned out to be the recording mixer and caused a fuse box to explode and cause the building to burn down. Tragically, the entire cast managed to escape safely.

This gave Medina the brilliant excuse to claim that half the cast had perished in the fire and that Segal would have to fill in for them in the scenes not already recorded. Not only did this mean they didn't have to wear blindfolds any more, Medina could now take on the job of directing and thus was exempt from any criticism of the storyline since he was just the director and had no input into whatever crap he was given.

An incredibly lax director, Medina allowed more and more ad-libbing with the entire subplot of the Bastard regenerating into a ginger-haired pratt (based on Chris Evans) and the Doctors repeatedly telling him how utter crap he was. Coburn totally improvised the final sequence where he tells the entire universe how goddamned lucky it is that a genius like him is around to save its sorry butt from every Toymaker, Dustbin and Harrison Chase.

However, the adlibbing meant that Segal got about seven hundred times more abuse in a single scene than he got during most weeks, causing his sanity to shatter and allowing the split personality of Vincent Savage to inhabit his convulsing body. At this point de Natale ran out of the studio screaming "GET A PRIEST, GET A VICAR!! I BELIEVE IN GOD!!"

Medinas quickly restored order by pointing out that "Dave Savage" was a harmless circus freak and that they all relax with a nice game of cards. However, no cards were available and so a Sword & Sorcery RPG was found instead to play to calm the remaining actors down. Medinas thought this was so brilliant he added the entire D&D subplot to the finished story.

The title of the story changed randomly from "The Three Doctors" to "The Three Bastards" and then back and forth with the number changing from three to four to three and a half then four and a half then "The Three And A Half But Basically Four Doctor Versus the Four And A Half But Basically Three No Wait There's That New Redhead Bastard Added God This Is Difficult" before turning to "The Gamesters of Apeshit", "The Airheads of Apeshit" and finally "The Warlords of Apeshit".

Phillips was psychotic about the finished product, with its over-reliance on TV (spit) continuity and also a perverse agenda to show up how bland, uninteresting and boring the SCADs had become. In fact, huge chunks of the script eerily resembled the latest release of Blake's 7: The Seven Golden Gowns, a tale of transvestitism and terror by Barry Letts for BBC audio, and for a rabid B7-hater like Phillips this was the last straw.

Medina pointed out that while he had completely destroyed whatever credibility the character of the Bastard had left, The Warlords of Apeshit had given him a brand new incarnation to do some cool stuff with. What's more, it meant they didn't need Segal's increasingly unconvincing Anthony Ainley impression. The New Bastard was Patrick Reynolds, former heavyweight champion of the world who had taken up working with the SCADs while he was waiting for his application to become Pope was considered and ultimately rejected.

Phillips was tempted by this idea, but knew it was a trap - if they tried to use this New Bastard, it would confirm Warlords as absolutely canonical, but if they didn't, they'd be stuck with Segal's Master till the crack of doom!

Segal himself, however, was very happy with the story and confident that his return to role would cause the billions of SCAD fans who had previously sworn never to listen to another episode following his departure to swarm back. They didn't, but this was unsurprising since this admiring rabble did not exist outside Segal's diseased brain in the first place.

Indeed the radical publicity coup didn't happen at all - since no one had heard of de Natale's Doctor, and that "Vince Savage" couldn't make any public appearances and Coburn simply didn't make any anyway, it was left with Segal in a scarf waving a CD shouting "BUY THIS!" at random passers by, and ergo was the exact same sales pitch for every other SCAD story.

Later, Z'Indignant Productions decided to pay homage to The Warlord of Apeshit by penning a sequel to this entitled The Krios Fuck Fest, where the godlike aliens have lesbian animal threesomes repeatedly until the tape runs out.

This was done without the knowledge of either the producer or executive producer so Douglas Phillips and Richard Segal went round to the office of Z'Indignant Productions, beat everyone there up with baseball bats, doused the office in petrol and set fire to it.

Which cheered everyone up no end.

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