Unbound # 9 - Seven Keys to Doomsday (i)

An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Dead On Stage!

W H A T I F . . . THE ODDLY VISUALS ENDED IN A STAGE PLAY WRITTEN AND PERFORMED A DECADE BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY STARTED? SOUNDS LIKE A JOB FOR FACTION PARADOX, DOESN’T IT?

A Stage Struck Doctor – A Stage Struck Dimension


Serial SP02 – Seven Keys to My Pants -

The bald, tuxedo-wearing, toothbrush-wielding Doctor and his companions Kevin and a pet budgie called Squeaky have arrived on the alien world of the planet Korn – a rather dull gravel quarry with tinsel on the dead-looking trees and strange mood lighting.

The TARDIS crew head for the ruined buildings where they discover Tony Robinson’s Time Team are there, investigating the Citadel of Korn, once the centre of the mightiest empire the galaxy has ever known, but now it’s just a shattered ruin, albeit the MIGHTIEST shattered ruin the galaxy has ever known – and they’ve only got three days to excavate it.

The dig immediately discovers a large ornate key but before anyone can work out what it unlocks, the site is attacked from all sides by small, metallic litter-bin shaped objects whose nature we, the audience, can only guess at!

In the intense crossfire, Tony Robinson is shot full in the chest and thrown backwards into the mud, while Kevin is gunned down from behind. It’s mindless, pointless slaughter but a really exciting way to kick off the action, don’t you find?

The Doctor decides discretion is the better part of valor and makes a dash for the TARDIS, only for another shot to ring out. "Motherfucker!" the white-faced Time Lord gasps as he to drop to the ground, still clutching the key. With the last of his strength, the Doctor manages to climb inside his battered time machine and send it somewhere – ANYWHERE! – that has people who can help him.

It comes as little surprise therefore the police box materializes on stage in the Adelphi Theatre at Christmas 1974 in the middle of a December performance of Dario Fo’s "Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!" and arguably the least useful spot in all of recorded creation for the Doctor to be.


ACT ONE


Emerging from the TARDIS to the wild applause of the audience who assume this is some brilliant special effect, the Doctor collapses to the ground – literally "corpsing" on stage! Luckily, he gets some of his blood on the peeps in the front row; an oversexed teenage couple Jimmy Forbes and Jenny Wilson whose ice creams are now ruined.

The duo run from their seats, climb onto the stage and start shouting abuse at the dying Gallifreyan for ruining their Christmas enjoyment. Jenny realizes the man is genuinely ill and suggests they steal his wallet since he’s too weak to resist, and Jimmy decides they best rob the Doctor with fewer witnesses, so they retreat inside the police box to mug him in private.

Unlike the rest of the English-speaking world, Jimmy and Jenny are shocked to find themselves in a futuristic looking control room that’s bigger on the inside than the outside. While they stand around being useless and gobsmacked, the mortally wounded Doctor realizes he’d be better off takes his chances on Korn, and programs the TARDIS to return there before his DNA finally give up.

"This is just plain wrong!" the Doctor gasps. "I survive the destruction of the Time Lords only to die from a stray bullet?! HOW is that in ANY WAY fair?!?"

Suddenly, the Doctor is engulfed by an optical nightmare of shifting colours and geometric patterns constantly rebuilding and reforming as weird and discordant sounds assault the air, as the Time Lord’s body shortens and thickens, features becoming harsher and more rugged as the Time Lord transforms into a completely different person in mere moments – though whether this is the Fourth, Seventh or Tenth Doctor all depends on which continuity you think this is and whether or not you have any kind of social life.

"Well, amigos, that was quite, quite groovy," the new Doctor says, sitting bolt upright with his long white hair. "Nothing like crossing the Great Divide and back again to put a spring in ya step!"

The new Doctor immediately begins checking the controls of the console, and cheerfully greets the two teenagers who decide to play it cool and get plausible deniability. Pretending to NOT have been trying to beat him to death and steal his shoes, they politely asks the Doctor what in the name of God’s arse is actually going on.

"OK, this is a tricky one. Basically, I was on this alien world called Korn – this is the TARDIS by the way, Time And Relative Dementias In Space, a sort of space ship what travels in time – on this nice little archaeological dig. And then I get shot in the back by some fascist pig, and I legged it back to the TARDIS as fast I could, set a course for Earth, but it turns out I was worse off than I thought. You’re probably not up to much with bodily regeneration, but there you go, wham, bam, thank you Doctor. Still, ya gotta take the rough with the smooth, and I’ve seen worse faces. In fact, I’ve HAD worse faces. Now do you understand?"

Oddly enough, Jenny and Jimmy DON’T understand but aren’t prepared to cope with another explanation so they just try to sneak out of the TARDIS and back to the theatre. The Doctor points out that, as the TARDIS is now flying through the Vortex, if he opened the doors the time winds would disintegrate all their molecules into nothingness – and that’s the BEST case scenario!

The Doctor tells the teenagers that he’s set the time machine back to Korn to find out which cowardly son of a slime crawler killed him and "deliver some karma" with the back of his hand! The Time Lord finds the strange key in his pocket and idly throws it away, assuming it not be important or relevant as the TARDIS reappears the moment after it left, just next to the ruins – however, someone has tidied away all the corpses murdered by those strange bin-shaped creatures. Oh, WHO could these mysterious psychopaths be?!

Jimmy and Jenny are dumbstruck by this and the Doctor takes the opportunity to look up Korn in his copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. "See, the rulers of this planet were called the Bachelors of Korn, these amazing science guys who invented wonderful machines and terrible weapons, but not always in that order. They ruled hundreds of planets, but at the peak of their power, just when everything was at its grooviest, they quarreled amongst themselves about the washing up or something and this terrible civil war broke out. In fact, as wars go, it was as uncivil as it’s possible to get and when it was over, some three minutes later, their empire was stuffed, their home planet was devastated, leaving only a few struggling colonies behind. A real screw-up in anyone’s language, eh, amigos?"

They hear a strange noise in the darkness and the Doctor puts it down either to his new digestive system OR one of the hideous atomic mutations created by that terrible war he was just talking about. Not remotely bothered by possible hairy giant octopuses or any such nightmare monsters attacking, the Doctor wanders off to find any clues about the oh-so-mysterious homicidal cleaning machines. Instead, all he finds is another novelty key and idly pockets it.

The Doctor returns to the TARDIS to discover Jimmy and Jenny have been captured by a hoard of weirdly-dressed guerillas with waist-length white hair and olive-coloured body-stockings clearly supposed to make them look tanned and rugged. The stereotypical rebels have the violent and aggressive one (Gormless), the calm leader (Jedi), and the token bit of all right (Amber Benson).

The terrified Jimmy tries to sell the Doctor out to buy his own freedom and the rebels assume that the Time Lord has come to Korn searching for the novelty keys and is an agent working for their as-yet-ominously-unnamed enemy.

"What? These things?" asks the Doctor baffled, waving around the novelty key he found which just happens to be identical both to the one in the TARDIS and in Jedi’s hand. "What’s so important about this here key then, amigo?"

Jedi lets out an incredulous and vitriolic rant the gist of which is that these keys are part of the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido and very, very important indeed cause there are only seven keys in the entire galaxy. The rest are pretty much variations on the theme of "You gotta be fucking kidding me, man!"

Jedi’s shouts attract the sound of approaching monsters and the big, butch rebels decide to scarper. Gormless pleads with Jedi to kill the travelers and take the key, if only to give him something to do in the plot but Jedi says it doesn’t matter who actually has the crystals so long as their enemy doesn’t. Gormless points out that they have yet to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Doctor ISN’T their enemy, but in the confusion the Doctor, Jenny and Jimmy have run away and hidden.

The rebels run away, exiting stage left pursued by huge, gun-wielding mutants looking like the cross between a Quirk, a Proton, a fiddler crab and Moby. Watching from behind some rocks, the TARDIS crew nearly piss themselves laughing at such ridiculous monsters as they search for the rebels and come up with sweet FA.

For the benefit of the audience distracted by the retarded monsters, the Doctor summarizes that there are two different groups hunting the crystal keys and are prepared to kill to get them, and Jedi’s group were escaped slaves. However, the Doctor can’t for the life of him work out WHY any of this is happening and suggests they follow the "Clawrantulars" and find out a rationale for events and also the mofo who murdered the Old Doctor!

Jimmy insists on going home, but everyone ignores him – and quite right too, it’s the only thing that actually works on that tit.

The gang soon arrive at a very boring metal wall surrounding the ruined City of Korn and watch from a safe distance as the guerillas are attacked by the Clawrantulars and an incredibly silly fight breaks out. But the time the Doctor, Jimmy and Jenny turn up all the monsters are dead and big Gormless lying, mortally wounded and incredibly embarrassed. Jedi accuses the TARDIS crew of stalking them, but the Doctor protests they were on their way to warn the rebels that they were about to be ambushed, but arrived a little too late and it would have felt stupid shouting "Look out!" AFTER the Clawrantulars attacked.

Unfortunately, a SECOND lot of Clawrantulars have been followed the TARDIS crew and attack at this point. Cursing their bad luck, Jedi and Amber Benson race off and leave the others to die – but it turns out that these cyclops-chicken-headed biological disasters are attracted to moving objects and lumber off, leaving the Doctor, Jimmy, Jenny and Gormless behind.

The dying Gormless realized that his rampant paranoia was misplaced – it was Jedi and Amber Benson who were back-stabbing assholes rather than the strange old hippie and the teen lovers. Which is not a sentence often typed, believe you me. Gormless suggests the Doctor use the Anderson Tube ventilation shafts to access the Great Computer of Wikipedia in the City that knows everything. Gormless warns them the route is protected by dangerous monsters and a ruthless editing staff, and hands over the third key and an epic novel he was composing about an alcoholic moron growing up in occupied France of 1943 and then dies in unspeakably agony.

The Doctor tells his friends it’s up to them to make sure Gormless’s death isn’t wasted, but this isn’t actually a legally-binding contract and they can do whatever the hell they want to without any kind of bad karma being accumulated.

One incredibly tedious crawl through maintenance tunnels and arguing about the map and the definition of "latitude" and "longitude", the Doctor says he has an uneasy feeling and thinks rushing blindly ahead will result in them facing untold dangers... which is why he thinks Jimmy should take the lead.

Seeing this as the perfect way to impress his bird, Jimmy strides off down the tunnel and immediately trips and falls over a skull and lands in a huge pile of humanoid and animal bones - evidently all that remains of the creatures who’ve tried to go down that tunnel in the past. The Doctor realizes they must have been killed by something powerful as some of the skulls are from animals who could obviously look after themselves, but mainly because it’d be really pathetic if they could all be wiped out by some little squirrel thing.

As we’re now twenty-five minutes into the story, it’s time for a gratuitous cliffhanger moment for overseas syndication as two huge Clawrantulars sneak out of the shadows and attack, but the New Doctor is luckily a master of Venusian Aikido and flips the ugly bastards down the tunnel and into a convenient lethal electric force field and the smell of well-cooked crabmeat fills the air.

This is sobering news – it turns out all the animals and humanoids got electrocuted and there ISN’T some hideous monster in the tunnels, but the Doctor cheers himself by nicking the possessions of the dead Clawrantular and find another novelty key. For those of you numerical illiterate, that means they have four of the seven keys to the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido and there are only three more to go. Christ, I need a better quality of reader for these guides...

In order to get past the body-heat-activated force field, the Doctor realizes he needs a sonic screwdriver and – pausing only to wonder why "t’other fellow" was so damn stupid not to get one earlier – builds a new one out of a Phillips Head screwdriver and a Molenski Univarious. With the sonic screwdriver operational the TARDIS crew easily get past the force field and arrive in the Great Computer Wikipedia – WOTAN VII: Last Action Hero – who, like most computers, is stark staring mad.

WOTAN VII: Last Action Hero notes it’s been many years since a life form has come to the City, mainly since they tended to die horribly with the force field. It explains that it was built by the Bachelors of Korn to guard the City and destroying any intruders while simultaneously being a handy encyclopedia that anyone can (responsibly) edit and invites the Doctor to use its mighty resources of all the knowledge known to the Bachelors.

After updating his own wikipage with his new incarnation, the Doctor looks up "Chastity-Belt of All-Libido" - in particular, he wants to know what was its purpose, why was it created, why were the keys and would it be legal to videotape its use? Amazingly the entry reveals that one of the novelty keys is in this very room.

WOTAN VII: Last Action Hero reveals that knowledge of the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido is forbidden and that anyone who seeks it is clearly a weirdo who must be destroyed in as ridiculously contrived a manner as it is possible to carry out.

So the computer traps the Doctor, Jimmy and Jenny in a force field and lowers a giant concrete block down to flatten them. The Doctor points out that nasty monsters are after the Keys and if the Bachelors of Korn were still around they’d want the Doctor to nick the Keys for the greater good. WOTAN VII: Last Action Hero laughs evilly and reveals that the wikipage on the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido was edited by the Last Grand Bachelor of Korn last week from the Great Internet Café – so the Doctor’s well and truly stuffed!

The Doctor asks for a chance to prove that his own intelligence is much greater than that of the Computer. He asks it one simple question – calculate Pi to the exact decimal base! The huge machine laughs mockingly at the group and begins to read out the number, which will take the computer around ten or eleven billion years to read out the whole value. And since it only takes a few minutes for our heroes to escape, nick the fifth key and bugger off, that means WOTAN VII: Last Action Hero is pretty much out of the plot.

The TARDIS crew set off to the Great Internet Café to locate the last Grand Bachelor and try and pick his pocket in the hope the last two keys are on his person while simultaneously getting HIM to explain what the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido is used for... cause, the name is SO damn cryptic, isn’t it?

"Course," the Doctor notes, " the Bachelors of Korn were never really evil, just proud, arrogant and over-confident in their own sexual prowess. Chances are this Chastity-Belt has great potential for good and evil, which was why they threw the keys away. Course it’s my duty to hand them over to the Time Lords for safe keeping. Oh, wait, they’re extinct. Guess I’ll just have to look after myself, eh? Life’s hard, is it not, amigos?"

Jenny and Jimmy are so disgusted they are unable to speak for a moment, which is rather awkward timing as that exact moment the Doctor is attacked by a giant lobster they happened to be passing at the time. Luckily, they also happened to be passing Jedi and Amber Benson who shoot the lobster, intending to have it for dinner with green white and tartar sauce. As an unexpected side benefit, this saves the Doctor’s life and his newly-regenerated ribs pop back into place.

"Have you been spying on us?!" demands Jedi of the Doctor, but it’s a baffling non sequitur and so everyone ignores him and moves on towards the Great Internet Café. It turns out that Jedi and Amber have found yet ANOTHER key which means there is only one other of these ridiculously-easy-to-locate mythical talismans left to collect while Amber Benson explains that following the collapse of the Bachelor’s empire, the people were happy to go back to a simpler way of life, abandoning science and staying away from the cities to become farmers. The fact they had all been bombed back to the Stone Age was a complete coincidence.

"But then our enemy arrived in spaceships and took over Korn to find the novelty keys, rounded people up into slave camps and anyone who opposed them was instantly exterminated," Amber explains, keeping the identity of the villain oh-so-ambiguous.

"They sound like they’re the most evil and ruthless life form in the entire cosmos and almost certainly old enemies of mine... Damn it, amigos, it could be ANYONE!" the Doctor growls just when a flotilla of Dustbins appear at the other end of the tunnel, as they were clearly sick and tired of waiting for the main characters to twig as to their presence in the story.

The Doctor orders everyone into the side tunnel the giant lobster came from on the grounds that the chances are they will be safer with huge sea monsters rather than Dustbins and in any case they can always sacrifice Jimmy to the giant lobsters. Disappointingly, however, there are no further monsters and Jimmy is annoyingly still alive when they emerge from the tunnel and the Dustbins have buggered off.

Sending Jedi and Amber Benson to spy on the Dustbins, the trio set off to the Great Internet Café. Once they’re alone, Jimmy accuses the Doctor of getting rid of the others so he can hog all the glory himself and be the hero, but the Doctor points out that Jimmy’s done nothing but whine ever since their expedition began. He then punches Jimmy in the groin, and Jimmy’s pig-like squeals echo down the tunnels and attract the attention of the nearby Dustbins who burst back into the cave and order them to surrender. The Doctor urges his friends to run, before throwing Jimmy straight at the Dustbins and legging it.

It looks like the annoying testosterone-fueled twat is doomed as the Dustbins like nothing better than exterminating the Doctor’s accomplices – ask Kevin and Squeaky if you don’t believe me! But at the last second ANOTHER giant lobster attacks the Dustbins and Jimmy is able to scamper away for his life.

Blissfully unaware of Jimmy’s survival, the Doctor and Jenny arrive in the ruins of Great Internet Café of the Bachelors and to the Doctor’s intense annoyance find that Jedi, Amber Benson and Jimmy have not only survived but got there ahead of them!

Finally attention settles on the giant skeletal figure on the throne at the end of the hall playing Wolfenstein 3D on a laptop. A deep voice warns them that the punishment for profaning the Great Internet Café of the Grand Bachelors is death, which prompts the Doctor to retort that the punishment for pissing off the last of the Time Lords is WORSE than death. "Got an answer to THAT, amigo?" the Doctor challenges.

The skeletal figure demands to know why he’s come here, rather undermining the aura of all-knowing magnificence it was making a rather half-hearted attempt to build and requiring the entire plot to be explained once more.

The Bachelor appears unconvinced that a race of mobile litter bins from across the galaxy have come to Korn to seek the seven novelty keys to the Chastity-Belt of All-Libido, with is rather closed-minded for a living skeleton with a glow-in-the-dark living inside a ruined city run by Wikipedia in its spare time. Foolishly, the Bachelor reveals it has the seventh and final key secreted in its underwear and challenges the main cast to get it off him without using their hands.

Only the Doctor is brave enough to try, but finds himself completely paralysed, frozen by the thought of the Bachelor’s revolting underpants and the Time Lord has to force himself to fight against the disgust and it soon becomes a battle of wills to see which of them has the stronger stomach. Eventually the Doctor prevails and he snatches the small crystal from the bony groin of the Grand Bachelor.

The sudden shock causes the Bachelor to vanish in a cheap negative effect as the naughty alien chap self-destructs, allowing the Doctor to fit the six Keys together to form one really big and stupid-looking Key, even if the first bit was there to add to it.

Suddenly a Dustbin bursts into the Hall, accompanied by Clawrantular guards who stumble around the place unsteadily, getting in the way and allowing the Doctor and the others to escape.

"BUGGER," notes one of the Dustbins, "I WAS GOING TO OVER HIM TO HAND OVER THE KEYS OR ELSE EXTERMINATE HIS COMPANIONS, ONE BY ONE, STARTING WITH THE CUTE CHICK IN THE WHITE DENIM. I WAS REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT. IT’S MY FAVORITE BIT OF THE PLAY, ALL TOLD..."



ACT TWO

Escaping the ruined city, the Doctor, Jimmy, Jenny, Jedi and Amber Benson retreat to the TARDIS for another round of that wonderful "bigger on the inside" conversation that we just never get tired of until the Doctor mercifully takes off.

For want of something else to talk about, Jedi indulges in his ever-increasing paranoia about the Dustbins turning up at just the right moment and the evil alien cleaning machines’ general habit of being well informed about their movements. "One of YOU is betraying me!" screams Jedi, cutting a long story short.

The Doctor, amused by this train of conversation, decides to blame Jimmy, pointing out that the Dustbins had apparently captured him in the tunnels earlier, but then he oh-so-conveniently escaped. Deep down, the Doctor knows Jimmy lacks the ruthlessness or intelligence to betray them to their enemy, but it turns Jenny off the odious git which is good enough excuse for him.

Unfortunately, Jimmy’s increasingly ridiculous claims that a giant lobster came out of the rock and saved him convince everyone present and the finger of suspicion points to the Doctor when it turns out he left the novelty key behind for the Dustbins behind.

"Aw, come on," the Doctor protests. "That’s just bad luck, amigos. Besides, if I was working for the Dustbins, I would have given them the first Key as well. Without that, the six Keys are useless on their own. If anything, I’ve completely screwed up their plans. So. Yay me!"

No one joins in the celebrating and after an uncomfortable pause, the Doctor lands the TARDIS elsewhere on Korn, in a strange complex of buildings built entirely out of milk crates and tinfoil. The presence of Dustbin guards patrolling the area give away the fact this is the Dustbin base and the TARDIS’s crappy navigation has plunged them all, once again, into the worst of all possible dangers.

Trying to look on the positive side, the Doctor points out that this is just where the Dustbins are likely to be holding the other six Keys and he can, using his brilliant mind, a fire extinguisher and a ring modulator, infiltrate the base. "But I’ll need a distraction. Hey, Jedi, why don’t you get your rebels to attack the base?"

"But we’ll all be killed by the Dustbins!" Jedi protests.

"Your point being?"

Unable to argue, Jedi agrees and the Doctor, Jimmy and Jenny sneak into the base while Jimmy protests that he never volunteered for this and would be much happier to stay in the TARDIS and not die horribly. However, the Doctor’s plan requires Jimmy as a sacrificial goat to lure the Dustbin into a false sense of security long enough for the others to open the Dustbin casing and shoot the contents of said fire extinguisher right into the monster within - intense cold is the one thing Dustbins can’t stand as it makes embarrassing parts of their anatomy either go hard or shrink.

With the mutant disposed of, Jenny climbs inside the empty Dustbin with the ring modulator and pretends to be a Dustbin in a scene that happens quite a lot in Terry Nation stories. Or Terrance Dicks stage plays. Especially Terrance Dicks stage plays BASED on Terry Nation stories. But I digress. Frequently.

After bluffing their way past two more Dustbins who take the piss out of the guard’s "girly voice", the trio break into the base, bump into Jedi and Amber Benson and no sooner do they explain the plot AGAIN than the Dustbins attack, everyone scatters, but it looks like Jenny Dustbin has been blown to smithereens and there’s shock, remorse, bitterness, guilt, a whirlwind of self-loathing and in the middle of it all Amber Benson reveals that Jedi’s paranoia was right all along – SHE was the traitor to the Dustbins as they hold her brother, Marco Polo, hostage! The Doctor announces that Amber Benson is simply too cute to be executed and they will instead save her brother on the off-chance he has vital information that will help their cause, but mainly because Amber Benson might sleep with them as recompense.

They are all, of course, unaware that in the main control room stands the Dustbin Prime – the republican replacement to the Dustbin Emperor whose brain were blown out by 20 megaton nuclear warheads on Gallifrey, if you remember. Notable for its green bumps, golden power-vacuum-cleaner and squeegee, slimming black finish and personalized garbage hatch that glows when it talks!

After sending a Dustbin flotilla to wipe out all the rebels off screen, and musing over the destruction of the rogue Dustbin with the voice disturbingly similar to Wendy Padbury, has Jenny brought in by the Crawrantulars (which SOUNDS like a disgusting euphemism, but actually isn’t).

The Dustbins bombard her with questions about the Doctor’s present location and how much he knows of their plans, and the usual old bollocks but she can’t answer them quick enough so the Dustbin Prime tells her they’ll use the Mind Analysis Machine to wrench the truth from her and the power from the machine will destroy her brain! Jenny points out this might be slightly counterproductive as it might destroy her brain before it wrenches the truth from her, so the Dustbins send her to the prison area while the Dustbin Prime thinks up a plot that isn’t quite as stupid.

Of course, Jenny is brought to the complex at the exact moment the Doctor, Jedi, Jimmy and Amber Benson turn up to rescue Marco Polo. A huge fight between the white-haired hippie rebels and the snapping red Clawrantulars begins with Batman-style captions of "POW!", "OOF!", "SMACK!", "NASAL CARTILAGE SPLAT!", "WOMP!", "ROD!", "MEPHISTO!", "KER-RUNCH!" and, of course, "BELGIUM!" and ends with the crab-men lying dead, Marco Polo freed, Jenny reunited with Jimmy and all’s well with the western world.

At least until Marco Polo reveals that the Dustbins have built their base over a massive creation by the old Bachelors of Korn, the Unstoppable Sex Machine. The Dustbins believe it’ll enable them to conquer every planet in the galaxy and every galaxy in the universe. "For some reason," Marco Polo adds lamely.

Marco Polo leads the Doctor and friends to the Forbidden Zone containing the Chastity-Belt of the Unstoppable Sex Machine, which can only be unlocked by those Keys in a moment of such Freudian symbolism, the unleashed potential will be devastating. Jimmy takes one look at the gigantic metal bikini bottom and sneers that he’s seen bigger.

Unlike the previous ruler of the Dustbins, however, the Dustbin Prime has a huge distended brain and has made sure the Unstoppable Sex Machine is kept under constant guard, and despite all Jedi’s screams of Dustbin Umpire episode titles, they all end up captured and Marco Polo is killed and his corpse tidied away in a split second.

Feeling rather foolish, Jimmy, Jenny, Jedi and Amber Benson are frog-marched away, but the Doctor has narrowly escaped certain extermination by pretending to be a wall. This, coupled with the fact the Dustbins are looking for a bald nutter with a toothbrush, leaves our hero at liberty. Unfortunately he has absolutely no idea what to do next.

Brought before the Dustbin Prime, the Supreme Wheelie Bin, offers them all a nice hot cup of tea and some ginger-nut biscuits. Having long observed the previous incarnation of the Doctor, the Dustbin Prime is convinced all humanoids are obsessed with tea and are prepared to betray their entire civilization for a decent cuppa.

"TOUGH CUSTOMERS, EH?" sneers the Dustbin Prime when the prisoners do not reveal the whereabouts of the Doctor for a cup of tea. "VERY WELL. HOW ABOUT A SEMI-DETACHED BUNGALOW IN KENT TO LIVE IN?"

True, the Dustbin Prime may have the greatest mind of its entire species, but it’s complete shit at interpersonal relationships and finally decides to give and have the prisoners probed to death for its own sadistic pleasure. Oddly enough, this proves a good enough incentive for Jimmy to agree to get some payback against the Doctor and betray him to their mortal enemies.

"Turns out the Doctor’s turned into a long-white-haired hippie, and he was in the group that attacked the power plant," Jimmy says in what could be a brilliant web of lies or proof that he really hasn’t been paying attention. "It was all a diversion to get him into the reactor with a nuclear bomb."

The Dustbin Prime agrees that this is serious and sends the Dustbins off to search the power plant, and immediately bump into the Doctor in the corridor outside. "THIS IS YOUR FINAL DEFEAT!" booms the Dustbin Prime. "WHEN THE CHASTITY-BELT OF ALL-LIBIDO IS OPENED, IT WILL RELEASE ORGASMIC RAYS THAT WILL PERMEATE THE UNIVERSE AND OVERLOAD ALL ANIMAL TISSUE WITH SEXUAL ECSTASY! EVERY OTHER RACE WILL BE RENDERED HELPLESS WITH THE PLEASURE AND FINALLY THEY WILL HAVE THEIR SEX DRIVES BURNT OUT – THE SPECIES THAT SURVIVE WILL BE NEUTERED AND HAVE NOTHING IN THEIR LIVES TO DO EXCEPT CLEAN AND TIDY AFTER THEMSELVES!"

"Except the Dustbins," the Doctor broods.

"EXACTLY. DUSTBINS HAVE NO NAUGHTY BITS. WE ARE IMMUNE TO THE EFFECTS AND WE WILL EMERGE AS SUPREME RULERS! THE LAST OF THE DUSTBINS SHALL ACHIEVE FINAL VICTORY!" the Dustbin Prime booms. "YOU YOURSELF SHALL INITIATE THE DUSTBIN CONQUEST AND UNLOCK THE CHASTITY-BELT OF ALL-LIBIDO. IT WILL BE DRAMATICALLY IRONIC!"

Proving that the Dustbins are actually a bunch of total morons, the Doctor is allowed to muck about with the Unstoppable Sex Machine and takes a seventh key from his pocket, slides it into the remaining lock and turns them and a strange red glow fills the base along with the unmistakable sound of Barry White.

"Oh dear!" the Doctor boggles. "Would you believe it, I must have used the wrong key in the wrong slot, so all that sexual energy that’s building up can’t escape. I wonder what happens when the Unstoppable Sex Machine meets the Immovable Chastity-Belt?"

"BAD SHIT HAPPENS!" exclaims the Dustbin Prime. "PANIC! PANIC!"

In the confusion, the Doctor, Jenny, Jimmy, Jedi and Amber Benson run for their lives. The Dustbins open fire with suddy water, but it’s too late and the group escape down the corridor. Moments later there’s an enormous explosion and the entire base is rocked as the Unstoppable Sex Machine finally suffers premature ejaculation! This hideous fate wipes out the last bastion of the once-mighty Dustbin Empire in a truly revolting and disgusting manner.

Rather nauseated, the Doctor decides he’s most likely killed the jerk that triggered his regeneration and he is sick and tired of Korn and every last freakish creature living on its surface. He, Jimmy and Jenny storm off back to the TARDIS without another word when it turns out that one Dustbin has survived and is guarding the TARDIS.

"HALT, DOCTOR! NOW YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR FILTHY CRIMES!"

"Oh, I am completely sick of this," shouts Jedi and then uses some freaky mind powers to crush the Dustbins like an empty Coke Can, and as smoke pours out of the shrieking alien trashcan, the flapping lid to the bin explodes and the mutant within is flung out of its casing to slam against Jedi’s hand as he crushes it in a spray of blood.

As the last Dustbin in the universe dies, the Doctor laughs insanely and sends the TARDIS hurtling back to the Adelphi theatre moments after it left. The puzzled audience watch on as Jimmy and Jenny emerge from the police box and the Doctor claps his hands.

"Right planet, right century, right matinee performance! Goodbye to you both, amigos, and thanks for not being completely useless and dying on me like the last few. Makes a real change, you know? Still, I better be off. Apparently the Beasts of Vega are turning aggressive again and looks like muggins here is gonna be the one to sort it out."

Jenny hopes the Doctor doesn’t have to rush off straight away, but he tells her, rather embarrassed, "I was just wondering, well, since you and I got on so well and you were such a help dealing with Dustbins, I thought you might be up for another trip? Chance to see a bit of the universe, eh, amigo?"

"Oh you must be joking!" Jimmy scoffs at the idea.

"I wasn’t asking you, zit face!" snaps the Doctor. "I was talking about Jenny. You, Jimmy, would be no help at all dealing with giant hairy octopuses with lots of teeth, let ALONE the Beasts of Vega! Hell, even K9 found that lot hard going..."

Jimmy argues that he has a job to go to and Jenny is about to take her A Levels, so they can’t go tearing off to another planet, but Jenny admits she kind of likes the sound of this "Meetmeinbedin 3" and soon the three of them are arguing until the audience boo them off stage...