Unbound # 11 - Masters of War

An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Programme Guide O' War-Masters of Mars-Water

W H A T I F . . . IT WAS THE EXACT SAME SCENARIO AS LAST TIME?!

A FILTH-y Doctor – A FILTH-y Dimension


Serial 3B – Engines of Dust-Eradication


Part One

The Doctor and the Brigadier have arrived on an alien planet that seems oddly familiar for some unaccountable reason, though just about anyone with a fully-functional central nervous system who has seen a single frame of the 1960s film "Dr Who and the Dustbins" would be able to identify with more ease than it takes to blink.

Finally, when a patrol of gleaming silver Dustbins surround the time travelers as they wander around a very dull generic sci-fi city, the Doctor twigs they’ve managed to end up on Fargo, home planet of the Dustbins. It seems that if the TARDIS is powered by imagination, the author clearly lacks much as the time machine has fetched up on the only place it turns up MORE OFTEN than Earth!

The Dustbins are disgusted to find these two geriatrics breaking curfew and suspect that Last of the Summer Wine style antics are imminent. They threaten the pair with extermination when, at the last moment, some rather dull... er... Dulls, approach.

A female Dull named Gillian explains that the Doctor and the Brigadier are her closeted gay redneck uncles from the Cliché Province, and thus are too backward and illiterate to join the electoral roll. The Dustbins tutt loudly and punish the lot of them with a 12-day reduction in their rations of food, water, and illegal iPod downloads.

Although the TARDIS crew are very grateful to Gillian for saving their sorry asses from the deadly Dustbin death rays, but the Doctor for one suspects they face a fate far worse than death – having to sign on to a Dustbin Work for the Dole program at the nearest Distbun branch of Centrelink! The Brigadier, for his part, is rather unimpressed that the nightmarish cyborg monsters of pure evil the Doctor goes on and on about merely gave them both JobSeeker ID numbers instead of anything remotely badass nasty or vicious.

The pair cheer themselves up by crashing at Gillian’s swinging bachelorette apartment which she shares with her bi-curious flatmate Nadir who immediately overpowers them. She warns the newcomers that she has put individual sticky labels on the food in the fridge and if anyone tries to nick one of her low-fat yogurts there will blood, yes, there will be BLOOD!

Over a rather awkward soybean and tofu salad, the Brigadier tries to break the ice by reminiscing about that time in 1972 where over fifty UNIT troops were slaughtered on a staff-outing to a Dustbin discothèque. The Dull girls swoon over the butch military man, even though his anecdotes were actually cited as evidence of his incompetence by the United Nations.

The Doctor clears his throat loudly and points out that HE participated in the Great Piss-Up that resulted in the deaths of all the Dustbins on Fargo... and quite a lot of innocent civilians who happened to be in the way. As the Dulls consider the Great Piss-Up to be a senseless massacre, the Doctor chatting cheerfully about it over dinner is, in fact the height of bad taste.

The Time Lord hastily explains that it wasn’t HIM who used those pipe bombs that caused all the collateral damage, and emphasizes that he freed the few surviving Dulls from the Dustbin tyranny.

Gillian waspishly points out that pretty much the moment the Doctor was gone, a package tour of Dustbins from off-world returned to discover the massacre and instantly re-conquered the last remaining (and ever-so-slightly crispy) Dulls.

"You bastards are never happy are you?" the Doctor grumbles.

In return for not having to do the washing up, the Doctor offers to overthrow the Dustbins once more – and this time without a violently destructive explosive-using granddaughter to stuff things up.

As the Dulls are so utterly boring and desperate, they immediately agree while the Doctor begins his quest of redemption and resistance... by crashing out on the sofa and watching TV all night. Alas, the Fargo Broadcasting Corporation is made by Dustbins for Dustbins and between regular daily propaganda broadcasts, sitcoms like "Oh My Dustbin" or long-running soaps like "Terry Nation Street", there are children’s programs called "Learning with Lavros".

After watching 639 episodes of the near-mythical creator of the Dustbins talking to puppets about cleanliness being next to godliness and the nature of hygiene, the Doctor has one question:

"Who the hell is that guy?!?"

The Dulls explain that millennia ago, a mysterious hostile race of space aliens attacked Fargo – the Trods, the sadistic-static-powered, shoulder-padded robot bastards! Their Dull Ancestors immediately conscripted their weak, no-fist loser cousins the Distbuns as shock troops to fight the Trodos menace. In the war, a young and sexually abnormal boy called Lavros was crippled and incontinent, and fought back against his rebellious sphincter by creating the Dustbins.

Lavros then vanished on some spiritual quest with a discreetly pregnant Drammakin supermodel girlfriend. Since then the Dustbins have decided that their embarrassing progenitor should be completely forgotten, which is why this vitally important bit of the mythos has never, ever been mentioned before.

Satisfied by this explanation, the Doctor and the Brigadier decide to head to Centrelink, intending to ferment a rebellion with the downtrodden slave workers. After a whole day of registration, aptitude tests, the Doctor decides that the Dulls are so boring that they damn well DESERVE their horrible existence.

The Brigadier is stunned to discover that Nadir has the Dull equivalent of bipolar disorder and is thus actually INTERESTING. The Doctor is more fascinated by the fact the Dustbins allow Nadir to enjoy all sorts of unemployment benefits while she stays at home as a co-dependent of her girlfriend Gillian.

"Now, why didn’t I think of that?" the Doctor fumes.

So annoyed is he, the Time Lord immediately decides to create a method of reprogramming the brains of Dustbins using two magnets and a comb... and quickly realizes that this is not only impossible, but a monumentally stupid waste of time.

The Black Dustbin announces that they are at DustCom 3 and thus all the Dulls on benefits shall be placed on a new youth training scheme that just happens to involve being transformed into hideous mutants and installed into casings thus swelling the ranks of the Dustbin army. With Nadir dragged off to the Incubation Crèche, the Brigadier finishes his low-fat flour shake and decides it is time to kick arse.

The Dulls, still inexperienced in the art of doing absolutely anything halfway exciting, gratefully accept the soldier’s help in fighting back against the tin-plated omnicidal maniacs! Who says Darwin was wrong about survival of the fittest?

After eight long centuries of oppression, it takes about seven minutes for the Brigadier to single-handedly lure a Dustbin patrol into a trap, damages one of them, stuns the creature inside with Hai Karate aftershave and disable its rape alarm. Unfortunately the Dulls are rendered catatonic by this display of military might and are unable to stop the Brigadier being effortlessly captured by ANOTHER Dustbin patrol that happened to be passing and took some serious offense.

The Brigadier is shoved onto a train to join the Incubation Program, to be turned into a Dustbin. His friend and companion the Doctor meanwhile, spends another night watching TV and trying to ferment alcohol from tofu and potato peelings. By morning, the Doctor has created a mixture of two parts gin and three parts vodka!

With one drop, the Doctor captures that damaged and helpless Dustbin from earlier and gets it completely and utterly pissed. The drunk and delusional Dustbin immediately winds its unsteady way back to the hub of the city, slurring its words and bumping into things.

Drunk Dustbin hiccups and demands to be placed in command of all Dustbin forces on the grounds it is "so damn bastard hard" it’s not afraid to take ANYONE outside. It starts blasting other Dustbins, and begins to scream it is the Second Coming of Lavros.

At last, the Doctor has found the true weakness of the Dustbin Empire!

Their incandescent GULLIBILITY!!

Despite the fact "Lavros" is clearly a worker drone Dustbin wasted on cheap cider and unable to string three words together without burping, countless Dustbins believe its wild claims. In fact, the only reason the Black Dustbin rejects the idea is because it’d simply lose its job with the Supreme Architect of the Dustbin Vision back in town!

Confusion spreads throughout the Dustbin ranks, as some accept the
word of the dissident while others remain loyal to the Black Dustbin and in less than three minutes, civil war has broken out between the factions. The Dulls steal weapons from exterminated Dustbins and immediately wage war to re-take their city.

If the Doctor had actually PLANNED any of this, it would be a brilliant scheme – but he didn’t and he especially didn’t take into account the alien spacecraft heading for the city.

Yes, the Trods are here!

The Black Dustbin calls an emergency party political broadcast where it explains that the Dustbins conquered Fargo and the Dulls for their own good, to protect them from the evil Trods! Well, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it – either way, unless the Dustbins and the Dulls end hostilities and face the common enemy, they are all stuffed!

The Trodos saucer attacks the city, and their gleaming Trod soldier bots glide out to conquer the Incubation Crèche where the Brigadier and Nadir were queuing. Once the area is secure, they summon their Chief Technician, the legendary Lavros...

"Well," says Lavros after a long pause. "THIS is pretty awkward."



Part Two

Lavros finally breaks the ice by ordering the Brigadier and Nadir flung into a convenient holding cell until their presence has some kind of impact on the plot. In the meantime, the Trods seize control of the city and only lack of legs prevent the Black Dustbin from being forced to kneel before Zod... sorry, Lavros.

With the weary disappointment that only blind, one-armed cripples can evoke, Lavros explains precisely why his creations suck so badly:

"You had already established a sound footing on several other worlds, worlds that had so much more to offer than this ravaged gravel quarry – wheelchair access, mandatory recycling laws and no littering campaigns! There was no logical reason to return to Fargo – or are you going to tell me that the Dustbins have become SENTIMENTAL?! WHERE DID ALL THIS NONSENSE PHILOSOPHY COME FROM? DOES NO ONE PAY ATTENTION TO THE CORPORATE MISSION STATEMENT ANY MORE?!?!"

Lavros bitches that the Dustbins were useless from the start which was why he answered a rather kinky back-page classified advertisement to join the Trodos Confederacy and considers the Trods to have far more potential than any Dustbin – they can master the art of bitch-slapping apart from anything else!

The Dustbins now have a choice: to bend over and take whatever the Trods do to them and become the bitches of the invaders or else all be exterminated...

Unfortunately, given the fact the Dustbins are in the middle of a civil war at the moment, more and more divisions occur in the Dustbin ranks at this ultimatum. Some days it’s just not worth getting out of bed, is it?

Meanwhile, the Doctor decides that the Dulls and Dustbins must unite on equal terms against their common enemy before the Trods use the entire planet Fargo as dental floss! The first thing to do is to end the civil war, which involves taking a cricket bat to the Dustbin currently known as "Lavros" and beating some sense into it. The Doctor admits that he feels guilty about what he’s done and wants to restore the Dustbin's free will... but is nevertheless enjoying himself immensely as he smashes the Dustbin with the bat.

At some point or another when I couldn’t be bothered to take notes, the Brigadier and Nadir escaped from the Trods while they were busy repainting all the Dustbins now under their control.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Brigadier decides it’s time for someone with balls of steel to take charge of the situation and the Dustbins and Dulls agree to help him on the grounds the Trods will be unlikely to be expecting their entire military strategy to be given over to an alcoholic septuagenarian off-worlder.

However, said alcoholic septuagenarian off-worlder is one badass mofo and the Trods are taken completely by surprise as the Brigadier leads a fleet of Dustbin saucers to blast the Trods out of the sky.

The Dustbins and Dulls work together to capture Trods and then torture it to gain answers to completely irrelevant questions from the screen career of Dirk Bogart to the life cycle of the hermit crab. Finally the Doctor discovers the Black Dustbin aiming its gun-stick at the Trod prisoner, demanding to know its favorite position for sexual intercourse. The Doctor is disgusted, and that’s putting it mildly.

It finally strikes the Time Lord that Lavros is effectively working for the enemy who first crippled him aeons ago and the Doctor decides to break into the Trodos Mother Ship, tell him the truth and generally hope things sort themselves out from that point onwards.

"After all, what’s the worst that could happen?" the Doctor asks.

Another pitched battle between the Fargonites and the Trods comes and goes, and the Trods manage to finally conquer the city through sheer bloody-mindedness while the Doctor and the Brigadier finally break into Lavros’ very laboratory. Hastily waving a signed confession, the Doctor proves the truth about Trods

"What a fucking liberty!" Lavros whispers.

Being a complete foam-at-the-mouth psychotic megalomaniac, Lavros has built a funky doomsday device that will fuse every last motherfucking Trod in the galaxy with a surge of 10,000 volts of static electricity and, laughing like a crazy person, presses that button.

One montage of cheap negative effects later, every last Trod goes apeshit and explodes, finally destroying the Trod Mother Ship and everything in it, with the Doctor and the Brigadier having escaped through a flaw in the continuity.

Safe and sound in the city, the Doctor announces he’s completely bored of all this and determines to return to the TARDIS. The Brigadier however, announces he is way too old for this crap and would rather stay on Fargo with Nadir as his teenage mistress.

With a final shout of "I’m hauling ass to Paddington!" the Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS, leaving the Brigadier and Nadir faintly embarrassed and facing a highly unbroadcastable future...
Book(s)/Other Related –
Dr Who and the Trodos Ambush
Doctor Who and the Curfew of the Dustbins
It Happened There, Maybe, I’m Not Sure But It Sounded Nasty – an in-depth analysis of histories that didn’t happen but were apparently bloody awful


Fluffs – David Warner seemed to be in a state of mutually-assuredly-messiness for most of this story.

"Why can’t you be more convincing? We need ACTING, not ACTION!"

"Ooooh, the Dustbins are fighting back... someone peel me a grape..."

"This fanwank is wasteful! I should like to see if I can subvert it or invert it or avert it... OVERTLY!"

Gillian: Have you got your lines right this time, Doctor?
Doctor: Yes...
Black Dustbin: NO!
Doctor: Shut up, Nick!


Fashion Victims – The Doctor’s 18th century sideburns and hair don’t really go with his glow-in-the-dark hotpants and tie-dyed string vest.


Goofs -
Why would laughing gas get a robot high?!


Technobabble -
The Doctor brainwashes a Dustbin by "reversing the polarity of the artificial neural limit flow".


Links and References -
The Doctor goes on at length about his previous encounters with the Dustbins in the hope someone – ANYONE! – might be interested.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor goes on at length about his previous encounters with the Trods in the hope someone – ANYONE! – might be interested.


Groovy DVD Extras –
Isolated music tracks, and a trailer for the third season of Eighth Doctor and Lucie stories.
I know.
Pathetic.

Dialogue Disasters -

Brigadier: This antiseptic solution is incredibly flammable... Don’t try this at home, children, as it invariably ends in death!

Black Dustbin: THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF MOTIVATING THE UNTIDY IS BY MAKING THEM WORK TOWARDS THEIR OWN OBSESSION FOR NEATNESS! FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, WE INVADED YOUR CITY AND SUBJECTED YOU TO A NEW DISCIPLINE AIMED AT IMPROVING STANDARDS OF CLEANLINESS, THE BETTER TO FIGHT OFF RUBBISH AND/OR ALIEN INVADERS!
Dulls: So why didn’t you tell us what it was all for?!
(A long pause.)
Black Dustbin: HMM, I SUPPOSE IT *WAS* A RATHER STUPID APPROACH NOW THAT YOU COME TO MENTION IT...

Doctor: My sympathies lie with the oppressed. They’re so much easier to get into bed for some reason...

Brigadier: At the double!
Dustbin: YOU CHANT MEANINGLESS PHRASES!
Brigadier: It raises morale!
Dustbin: SEE? YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN!!

Lavros: My new Dustbins will have full loyalty to the Trods! It is the closest they will come to achieving my original ambition for them!
Super-Trod: YOU ONCE INTENDED THEY WOULD SCRUB CLEAN ALL THEY ENCOUNTERED WITH SOAPY WATER AND VACUUM CLEANERS?
Lavros: [sighs] Indeed. It now seems somewhat ridiculous.

The Brigadier’s truly incredible sex life:
Brigadier: Do you want me to come?
Nadir: It’s up to you.
Brigadier: I don’t know about you but I feel like I’m limbering up. AHHH! Splendid orgasms, all of them!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Lavros: You are always weak.
Black Dustbin: WE ARE NOT WEAK!
Lavros: Really? Then why have you lost?!
Black Dustbin: ...TOUCHÉ.

Brigadier: How many Dulls did we lose?
Nadir: Three, maybe four.
Brigadier: Good.
Nadir: Good?!
Brigadier: I once lost 47 men trying to take down three Dustbins. You can’t take on a Dustbin and not expect a few dead red-shirts! Keeping the death toll down to three or four per Dustbin is pretty good!
Nadir: How can you boil them down to numbers like that?
Brigadier: Well, they weren’t particularly memorable, were they?
Nadir: ...good point, well made.

The Doctor, discovering where baby Dustbins come from:
"It’s worse than I imagined!"

Lavros: I designed the Dustbins to be ruthless and believe utterly in their own cleanliness. That absolute obsession is more important than anything! They clean because they BELIEVE they should be clean and they truly WANT, more than anything, to BE clean!
Doctor: But they believe they were far more tidy than you were and scrubbed you into submission.
Lavros: Indeed. It is a conundrum I never entirely foresaw. Oh, why must everyone ALWAYS bring that up?

Brigadier: I think I’m bringing far less emotional baggage to the matter. Now, chap with the squeegee – FIVE ROUNDS RAPID!

The Black Dustbin on the idea of a national garbage strike -
"IT IS A VIOLATION OF DUSTBIN ETHICS!"

Lavros: It’s never wrong to overthrow an oppressor. Unless that oppressor is me. It’s always wrong to overthrow me. I suddenly feel quite nostalgic. Perhaps I should see how the mood takes me.

Gillian: Doctor, have you got a plan?
Doctor: Would it make you feel better if I pretended not to be making it up as I go along?
Gillian: Yes.
Doctor: In that case I know exactly what I’m doing, but please don’t ask me about it in any great detail.

Brigadier: Doctor, I don’t think this thing with the Dustbins and the Dulls is going to hold! All it takes is one toffee wrapper on the ground and the whole thing is going to blow up again...
Doctor: Those two have been living out their unfunny sitcom existence for thousands of years. It was never going to be fixed overnight.
Brigadier: But you just said that it WOULD be fixed overnight?
Doctor: Yeah, well, I was lying then, wasn’t I? It could take years for them to work things out and master the art of refuse management responsibly, and we can’t hang around here all that time, can we?
Brigadier: Can’t we?
Doctor: There’s so much else out there, so many places to see... we could be somewhere else, flirting with someone else and getting to third base with an alien babe with green hair and six breasts!
Brigadier: YOU could be. I don’t have to.
Doctor: Yeah, right.
Brigadier: I’m sure of it. You go and get blown away into space, do what you do with KY jelly... but I’m not sure I can keep up with your pace, no matter how many Acturan Viagra tablets you provide! Maybe it’s time for me to play sugar daddy for a while?
Doctor: Well, you’re a swinging chap, Alistair. It’s been a pleasure going on the pull with you.
Brigadier: Thank you, Doctor. Shacking up with a bipolar alien teenager wasn’t EXACTLY what I was looking for, but it was probably what I needed. My sex-life at UNIT was so frustrating... I feel I’m making up for lost time in my own inimitable fashion!
Doctor: ...you dirty old man!


Viewer Quotes –

"I heard that the Trods were a last-minute replacement for the Crotch, an alien species that just look like a crotch dragging itself along the ground by its thigh stumps... and the Distbuns hated them so much, they relinquished their own crotches and became Dustbins. Imagine the fight scenes... AIM FOR THE GROINS! Goodnight, folks!"
- www.mysourcessaythatyoursourcesarelying.co.uk

"Not ANOTHER bloody Unsoiled Dustbin story! Don’t you people have ANYTHING ELSE TO OFFER?!" - Jared "Cybermen Rule" Hansen (2009)

"This is my most anticipated release of the year!!! Well looking forward to this jaw-droppingly interesting one! Bravo to all involved! I watched Titanic when it was on TV the other day JUST to see David Warner being evil in it. He is thoroughly awesome! Eddie Hitler, you are a genius and are welcome to marry my sister anytime! Well done sir! Well done to all involved! Huzzah!!"
- Mr. No Coherent Thoughts (2008)

"The Trods undoubtedly have THE most annoying alien voice I’ve ever heard in a Big Finish. The extremely fey performance completely undermined them as a threat. Oh, sure they’re all pure statistics, calm stillness and isolated analysis but that doesn’t stop them sounding like a sedated teletubby lounging around after an orgy. COOING LASSITUDE IS NOT CREEPY, SPOOKY OR ETHEREAL, DAMN IT!"
- the supposedly-terrifying comedy genius/mammal Emo Phillips (2009)

"It’s just like Star Trek: Voyager, man!"
- Stoner who thinks EVERYTHING is like Star Trek: Voyager (2010)

"This is terrible! It sounds like some fans dicking about! Long, turgid and action-movie-empty-character-less-ness! I was embarrassed for an actor of Warner’s talent having to say those awful lines in this thin, weakly-scripted, indifferently-played, wearisome story! I can’t give it anything out of 10! I HATE IT!" - Michael Grade (2010)

"After Baker Lane, many thought Eddie Hitler was a crap writer. After
the delightful Grand Theft Auto: Cardiff 1898, it was decided that Hitler-penned stories would be on the bottom of the list to purchase. After Engines of Dust-Eradication, I think you would have to count as bowel-shattering insane to think Mr. Hitler was in any way talented. So, no, we are NOT interested in his services! FUCK OFF!"
- BBC Wales Press Statement (2009)

"Nicholas Briggs as the... Dustbins. Color me surprised. I bet he crops up as a few other things in it too." - Roy Skelton (2010)


David Warner Speaks!
"It’s quite ironic, really, that with no Doctor around to fight off the alien hordes in the 70s and 80s, Earth is in dire straights but the rest of the universe as a whole is better off. Yeah, that should take Generation Y down a peg or two, the arrogant little bastards."


Nicholas Courtney Speaks!
"2009’s something of a renaissance for the Brig, what with me being in Unsoiled stories and The Sarah Jane Misadventures all in the same week. Only trouble is next week I’ll be completely forgotten. Oh well. Life’s a bitch and then you appear in Big Finish, as Paul McGann once told me between uncontrollable sobs."


Terry Molloy Speaks!
"I thought this was really excellent. Terry Molloy again gives us a chilling Lavros. Although Terry Molloy liked Julian Bleach’s performance in the new TV series, Terry Molloy really do think Terry Molloy would have been great in the role again. Julian Bleach doesn’t speak of himself in the third person, either. WORD!"


Rumors & Facts –

It’s so nice to anticipate something and then not be disappointed when you finally hear it. If only that could be felt with THIS story.

In 2003, Big Finish released Doctor Who Unsoiled as part of the oh-so-drearily-predictable 40th anniversary celebrations. Six stories daring to ask how the universe would cope if the causal nexus had unraveled in a slightly different way... and all bar two of them concluded with "everyone is dead and/or never existed in the first place".

Only the first two stories, Arse Morality and Sympathy for the Devil, had anything remotely approaching sequel fodder, and fans clamored on the occasional overrated internet forum for a sequel featured the Third Doctor and his bitter, disillusioned and alcoholic companion the Brigadier as they stumble through time and space having remakes of stories that were much, MUCH camper in the original 1970s series.

Alas, after the stark disaster of A Storm of Angles with its "Russell T Davies is an abomination against all mankind" subtext, the Unsoileds were quietly shoved onto the backburner. Big Finish did so fear that the hand that fed them just MIGHT get a bit annoyed. So, the next story of the David Warner incarnation fighting Dustbins was promptly shelved for the next year.

EVEN MORE ALAS, the BBC refused to allow the story to be released in 2004 lest it compromise the massive publicity juggernaut of the new series where Bill Nighy was definitely-absolutely-positively-look-I-don’t-have-my-fingers-crossed-or-anything the Ninth Doctor.

The story was thus shelved again until 2005... whereupon BBC Wales immediately blocked the production on the grounds that it would undermine the brand new Ninth Doctor they were trying to sell to the public, especially as the Terry Nation estate were prick-teasing everyone about whether or not the Dustbins would be used.

Oddly enough, the EXACT SAME REASON was offered the following year.

Finally, in 2009’s gap-year, RTD allowed Big Finish to finally release the story on the grounds that he didn’t care if this undermined the introduction of the Eleventh Doctor as he’d quit already and no longer gave a damn what happened to Steven Moffat.

And so, five years after it was first announced, Engines of Dust-Eradication was finally recorded! A story that demonstrated that the undoing of even ONE relatively forgettable adventure can have huge consequences thanks to the interconnected universe of space and time... or, to put it another way, author Eddie Hitler was too pissed to remember all the details to Genocide of the Dustbins properly.

With a quick bluff that all the Dustbins the Doctor has fought before were all total weirdoes who in no way reflect the true society and beliefs of the Fargo trashcans, Hitler was groggily confident no one could possibly argue against his incoherent view of continuity. Not that he particularly cared anyway.

When Hitler DID make the vaguest of efforts to do any kind of research into his script, it all went horribly wrong. He got the confused and assumed the original draft of the first Dustbin story ("The Surveyors" as it was called) was the finished article and NOT a complete pile of horseshit that even Tony Hancock was not willing to claim as his own.

This meant Hitler was under the impression that the dusty neutronic war on Fargo was actually triggered by a third alien race and the story ended with the Dulls and Dustbins uniting against a common enemy while the TARDIS crew ran in the opposite direction very, very fast.

But WHO were these mysterious, laser-proof, war like aliens? After much discussion, debate, soul-searching, and Asking Jeeves on http://uk.ask.com/?o=2&jr=true, Hitler came up with the following list:

- the Quirks
- the Boord
- those aliens from Blake’s 7 that resembled three litres of pond scum

Given this list, Hitler drank a bottle of Jiff Micro Liquid and decided that none of them were good enough and it was time to bring to Big Finish for the first time ever THE TRODS!

Yes, the Trods! Invented by those strange, strange creatures in the air, at sea and on land who worked for Mighty Midget TV Comic 21 who were not prepared to spill out the cash on the Dustbins! Instead they created their own incredibly camp alien cleaning machines, the Trods, to threaten the First Doctor and his illegitimate offspring John and Gillian. At some point around 1966, the MMTVC21 got the rights for the TV monsters and the Trods were the first up against the wall, having their botties soundly smacked by the Dustbins in their first ever appearance and ever since have been solely confined to the dark halls of Gareth Roberts nostalgia and shitty American fan-made audio dramas!

Exactly why these metallic bastards of evil death ended up having such vague, wishy-washy voices turning them into ethereal yet bloody irritating tosspots is harder to fathom.

Nevertheless, the Trods make Engines of Dust-Eradication a spectacular story, by virtue of being a spectacle, like walking down the street in a leather bunny suit with vinyl underpants and a latex bushy tail. Not entirely sure where I was going with that, but neither was Hitler when he came up with this entire audio play. A single metaphor seems rather insignificant in comparison all of a sudden, doesn’t it?

Some say that Engines of Dust-Eradiction is a complex, multi-layered
story that might take a few listens to fully digest BUT at the same
time you can get the basics of the story on the first run-through. Some say that this provides a great extrapolation on the character of the Alt-Third Doctor, the Brigadier, the Dustbins and Lavros. And some say that there will be a third adventure for the David Warner incarnation, and the inevitable delays mean it will be released just in time for the fiftieth anniversary.

If you come across these people, beat them up for me, will you?

Christ they annoy me.


Here comes the Dustbin re-unification
Catch the train to the city of old!
Incubate the new generation
From the cells of Dulls on the dole!

Battle fleets blocking out the sun!
Planet Fargo, here I come!
I WANT TO BE A DUSTBIN DICTATOR!
Viva la Lavros! Viva la Lavros!
YARVELLING WITH PERSONAL HYGIENE!
Viva la Yarvelling! Viva la Lavros!

Here come the Trods and the New Order!
Who cares if Dulls have bipolar disorder?
When you’re low where can you go?
Where to? FARGO! FARGO!

You can’t quench my evil desire!
By sending me away and calling me a liar!
I WANT TO BE A DUSTBIN DICTATOR!
Viva la Lavros! Viva la Lavros!
THE SUPER-TROD BITCH-SLAPS PRISONERS!
Viva la Super-Trod! Viva la Lavros!

When I met the Trods I switched allegiances,
And turned against my own kind!
Morals are just inconveniences,
But it seems I’ve been willfully blind...

I WANT TO BE A DUSTBIN DICTATOR!
Viva la Lavros! Viva la Lavros!
THOSE TRODOS BASTARDS TOTALLY TRICKED ME!
Viva la bullshit! Viva la Lavros!

It’s a triumph against the odds!
Everyone united against the Trods!
Hey ho, off we go!
Where to? Cygnus Alpha? No, FARGO!

I say, "Here come all the Dustbins, baby
And if the propaganda works one day
Then we’ll all be goose-stepping
ON GALL-I-FREY!"