10th Doctor - The Christmas Invasion (i)

Serial XMAS-05 - The Michaelmas Evasion
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Bad Santas

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides - Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial XMAS-05 - The Michaelmas Evasion -


The time: December 24th, 2006. The place: Jackie Tyler's bedroom.

Jackie and her jail bait lover Mickey Tyler are preparing for the festive season with some pre-present-wrapping sex, not caring if Jackie's daughter Rose will be home for Christmas - or at all.

As they enjoy a post-coital herbal cigarette, Jackie hears a familiar, ancient grinding noise and for a moment thinks Mickey is having a heart attack from all this sex.

Mickey, who is hard at work, also hears it and they both put it down to creaky bed springs - thus completely missing a battered blue police box tumble out of the sky and very badly-reverse park its way through the roof and into the bedroom.

A mad-looking Scotsman staggers through the doors, and sees the couple shagging each other. "Damn! Missed!" he bitches, before losing his balance. "I'll have to poison the water supply instead," he adds, completely disoriented, yet still disgusted to see them.

"Wait, there was something else I had to tell you apart from the fact I hate you and I'm going to kill you... what was it... Oh! I know! Merry Michaelmas!"

"What you on about?" Jackie retorts. "It's December!"

"Oh, jings, don't tell me I've missed THAT and all!" the newcomer complains, and falls down, completely unconscious.

Rose emerges from the TARDIS and berates her mother for shagging her boyfriend, until she realizes this is just the sort of relationship that could get them on Trisha.

Mickey idly wonders where the Doctor is, and Rose explains the unconscious stranger on the floor IS the Doctor. In fact, he is completely stranger - having lost what little grip he had on reality after he apparently shagged her and died smiling.

"That's my girl," Jackie says proudly.

At Buckingham Palace, Prime Minister Harriet Jones has just had the Royal Family escorted off the premises and shot dead by firing squad as she rather fancied spending Christmas at the palace rather than the newly-reconstructed 10 Downing Street.

As Jones rips up a priceless mink carpet and throws it on the fire, her timid red shirt assistant explains that the British space probe Wino Bill has gone missing. Jones suggests they check at the back of the sofa but it becomes apparent that the last time they remember seeing Wino Bill, it was on the surface of Mars.

In the depths of space, the alien Sycophant Leader is unimpressed to discover his Christmas present is nothing more than a cold metal probe containing the 1812 Overture, a vial of Type A blood and some old Doctor Who episodes.

Annoyed, the Leader checks the probe was "Made in the UK" and decides that instead of having a pleasant Yuletide picnic, the Sycophants will instead invade the planet Earth, crush its people and generally be unpleasant while at the same time being sickeningly polite.

Back at the Powell Estate, Jackie has stripped the new Doctor naked and tied him up to her bed with leather restraints... so at least this is one Christmas tradition being upheld this year. Stealing a stethoscope from a blind orphan down the road, Jackie determines to make the Doctor's hearts beat faster and break him out of this daze.

At various points the Doctor falls into consciousness, but quickly falls back out of it before Jackie can attach the electrodes, but she's definitely getting somewhere - why else would he call her "Brigadier" and ask her if this "is another one of your games, my naughty nun?"

Mickey shouts at Rose that the Doctor she knew is dead, vanished and gone to hell and they are stuck with his DNA understudy and she'll never know that gritty Northerner again.

Rose cheers up immensely at this news and decides to go shopping.

(Whether or not this was Mickey's intention is, as yet, unknown.)

While wandering for bargains at the local market and Mickey updating her on the plot twists of Eastenders, Rose notices that they are being stalked by four badly-made robotic Santas with glowing red eyes shouting "HO - HO - HO! DEATH - TO - THE - HUMANS!"

Suddenly, the Santas reveal brass instruments and begin an up-tempo jazz version of "Little Drummer Boy", and Rose and Mickey flee for their lives. Mickey uses a handy canister of Nitro-9 to topple the street's massive Christmas tree and it squashes the Santas.

"Next time I ask for an xbox," Mickey screams at the red-clad bodies, "I mean I WANT AN XBOX! NOT A BOOK TOKEN, YOU ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATIONS OF WESTERN CONSUMERISM!"

Rose congratulates Mickey on this highly articulate and intelligent outburst, then suggests they run for it as the Santas are recombining into a giant reindeer with a glowing red lightbulb for a nose and carrying two submachine guns.

Back at home, the Doctor is being force-fed laughing gas by Jackie for her own sadistic enjoyment. The Doctor regains his senses long enough to come up with a complicated Bill & Ted style plan.

Once he escapes from Jackie he will duck into the TARDIS and travel back in time a day
Then, he will create a cybernetic killing machine in the form of a harmless Christmas Tree and arrange it is delivered to the Tylers' flat and set up across the room from him
The Tree will then activate and turn into a lethal buzz saw, killing Jackie and allowing the Doctor to escape, and duck into the TARDIS (ref. to step 1)

No sooner does he come up with this plan then the Christmas Tree comes to life like a festive Tasmanian Devil and attacks!

At that moment, Rose and Mickey burst in being chased by the giant reindeer. As she tells the others of their encounters, the Doctor sagely remarks, "Oh, Jings, not the Autons again! Bollocks!" and goes to have a nice nap.

Rose shouts abuse at the Doctor for not helping them and finally realizes there is one way to prove the Doctor is the same man though his face has changed and accent subtly altered.

She offers to sleep with him if he saves them.

The Doctor immediately awakes and orders "C'Rizz The Christmas Tree" to attack the reindeer and slice it to pieces. The whirling destroyer-tree lives up to its name and begins eating the reindeer meat.

Watching this, the Time Lord suddenly claims he can see a cloud of Japanese fighting fish speaking fluent German emerging from his mouth and collapses after Mickey smashes a pint glass against his forehead.

Ultimately the question remains... were these genuine Autons? Or maybe Cybermen in deep cover? Or Ice Cream Vendors? Or the Sexual Toymaker in a festive mood?

Prime Minister Jones is interrupted from beating up her Tamagotchi to learn that the Wino Bill has somehow been swallowed up by UFO that resembles a fish tank ornament hanging in space above Mars.

Jones is not interested - her Christmas Day didn't exactly hinge around a space probe landing in a red quarry, unlike the rest of the NASA saddoes and the British Rocket Group losers.

At that point the Wino Bill starts to beam back images from within the Sycophant space craft. For several minutes, Jones watches these strange alien snarls, mistaking them for an avant-guarde remix of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Having previously encountered the Slitheens, the Prime Minister's opinion of extra terrestrial life is rather low and denounces the aliens as a student prank - the Sycophants clearly not Martians, because of their lack of an ice cream fetish.

UNIT/WANK use all their resources to identify and isolate these aliens... and as usual give up after five minutes when a police box doesn't immediately materialize in the corner. Normally the Doctor arrives and starts acting all smug and eccentric while UNIT just repeatedly kill green monsters and look butch. This scenario is like nothing they were ever expecting to deal with!

The American President timidly rings Jones to wish Merry Christmas and, you know, not to nuke the USA like the last time she got mildly annoyed by a punchline in Friends. The President goes on to offer help blowing up these weird alien types before they go ID4 on Earth's butt.

"He's not my boss and he's certainly not turning this into a war," Jones retorts. "That's for ME to do... Get Touchwood to deploy Super Alien Attack Weapon A! I'm gonna light those suckers up like a Christmas Tree!"

She then has the following message sent to the Sycophants -

"This is a day of peace on planet Earth. We extend that peace to the Sycophants. BTW, this planet is armed and if you don't surrender immediately we will rip the brains out of your skulls one by one and bathe in the blood of your children while molesting your females with your throbbing, disintegrating brains before playing a quick game of cricket with what internal organs are left.

Just...

...fuck...

...off.

NOW!

Yours, Prime Minister Harriet 'Hellfire' Jones of the United Kingdom."

Jones plans to nuke the Sycophants when they are retreating.

Luckily, Mickey has discovered all this by hacking into www.backgroundexposition.co.uk/doctorwho on his brand new laptop. Knowing that Harriet Jones is going to trigger the ultimate destruction of the human race simply because she's so damn bastard hard she's not afraid to step outside to take anyone on, the Tyler clan decide to quit Earth and leave in the TARDIS.

However, the Sycophants have already made their first steps to conquering all of mankind. With their nauseating toadying, they convince ever human being with Type A blood to climb the nearest tall building and will jump off when the Sycophant Leader announces 'Simon Says Leap To Your Deaths'.

In Paris, Italy, America and Poland there are identical scenes... in fact, come to think of it, it is the SAME scene with a different caption on each one!

In Buckinham Palace, Jones cracks open a bottle of champagne at the thought of mass suicides. She loves a bit of carnage and double-dares the Sycophants to carry out their threat. Taken aback, the Sycophant Leader admits he was expecting her to surrender.

By way of a reply, Jones sets up a party political broadcast.

"Peoples of Earth, alien invaders are about to wipe out one third of our population. They have gained control of human beings through a sample of blood on Wino Bill. Why someone left some human blood on a Mars Probe, well, don't ask me Skippy. Maybe it was HIV+ and was some half-arsed chemical warfare? Anyway, I'm sure we all have friends, relatives or indeed are ourselves about to plummet to our deaths.

And good too.

The reduction of one third of human population will mean more jobs, less crowded public transport, more food, less reason for war and universal mourning might even end racial intolerance and hatred. So, if you're standing on top of Big Ben, jump off. For Britain.

Right, where's a mince pie, I'm fucking famished..."

Realizing their attempted blackmail won't work, the Sycophants swoop their ludicrously-designed spaceship over London in a scene definitely not cribbed from Alias of London or Independence Day. Oh no way sir. Even though its wings decapitates Big Ben as arrives.

Jones and some red shirt assistants are teleported aboard the Sycophant space ship which resembles the cellar of a Sunnydale High School with a few lava lamps draped around the place.

Prime Minister Jones is unimpressed with alien life after she dealt with the quantum space bimbos the Slitheen. When her aides are reduced to bones in shots not at all nicked from Mars Attacks, she tells the Sycophant to get to the point or she'll rip his bloody face off.

Which she then does because it's getting dull.

Back at the Powell Estate, Jackie, Mickey and Rose have relocated to the TARDIS when they realize they'll need the Doctor to pilot the time machine. The disorientated Time Lord has meanwhile been gang-bashed by some homeboys after he objected to their cries of "Oi! Weasel Features!"

No sooner do the Tylers locate the Doctor and drag his body into the TARDIS then it is teleported aboard the Sycophant space ship - leaving Jackie back at the estate, much to her annoyance.

Rose pops out to tell her mother to get her butt into gear, only to find herself confronted by an army of skull-faced insects and Harriet Jones. When she sees the Prime Minster, Rose screams like a girl and this leads to Mickey getting caught.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor has had coffee and sugar being fed into him via an intravenous drip while Jackie desperately pours shampoo down his throat. He belches occasionally, but still has yet to regain consciousness. WILL OUR HERO RECOVER IN TIME?!?!?

Yes, actually.

As Rose suffers from the intense passive aggressive posturing of the Sycophant Leader when the Doctor stumbles out of the TARDIS under the impression he is an advaark with no arms.

After some more 'Hey-you're-not-the-Doctor-you-don't-look-like-him-oh-on-second-thoughts-maybe-you-are' moments, the Doctor tells the Sycophants to sod off. It's Christmas fucking Day for God's sake, just leave them alone! Just for once!

The Sycophants start laughing. The Doctor's speech is lifted directly from Disney's The Lion King!

Now completely pissed off, the Doctor takes off his dressing down, picks up a light sabre and begins a massive fight with Darth V... sorry, the Sycophant Leader who demands the Doctor join him.

"Never!" the Doctor shouts. "You killed my father! Well, I *think* it was my father... My mum was into some serious sex slave stuff. And when you come home to discover your 'dad' looks completely different, well, you don't question it on Gallifrey. You know, I think I'm a bit confused..."

During this baffled speech, the Sycophant Leader cuts the Doctor's arm off, chews it up and eats it.

The Doctor's sore relieved - thanks to his demented regeneration, he had three arms! Using his remaining two, he scares the Sycophant Leader so much it wets itself and begs never to give in. In fact, their technology is so puny and pathetic they could not control humans in the first place except be so bloody annoying their victims were pushed to the brink of suicide. They promise they'll become the Earth's defenders and give the Doctor the Christmas holidays off from now on.

The Doctor accepts and everyone is teleported back to the Powell Estate and as they watch the Sycophant spaceship takes off and group hugs are given.

Sick of this smaltsy, self-congratulating crap, Jones reminds Touchwood to wipe out the retreating alien ship with the feared Belgrano Device and the Sycophants are wiped out in a cheap negative effect.

Furious that Jones' mindless prejudice has taken away his holidays, the Doctor charges up to her. All Time Lords know the six words that will bring down the government, but he only needs one:

"Thatcher!"

He and the Tylers storm off for some last-minute Christmas looting as Harriet Jones find she is already being targeted by alternative comedies and being parodied by Dead Ringers. Her political career is as dead as Kerry Packer.

On the way, the Doctor notices that rubber fetishist store Plastic Fantastic has been rebuilt after he destroyed it a year previously. The Doctor is thoroughly annoyed that so much of his good work is undone, and also fears that Rose might have found an excuse to stay on Earth. Thus, with absolutely no regret whatsoever, the Doctor chucks some semtex through the window before heading off again.

After the flames die down a bedraggled shape emerges from the smoke screaming, "Stop blowing up my shop, you bloody bastard! Who you work for, anyway? Prince Philip?"

Back at the Tyler's flat, the Doctor returns from the TARDIS wearing a new outfit to compliment his regenerated appearance - a Ben Elton-style spangly suit with a four-foot mullet hairdo.

Mickey, Rose and Jackie are universally horrified and Jackie offers some of her long-dead husband's wardrobe. Jackie explains she tried to flog them to Barnado's the day he died, but they refused to accept the geeky brown pinstripe suit.

And so, despite the fact it will no doubt guarantee Rose many years on a psychiatrists couch in the future, the Doctor puts on Pete Tyler's old gear which, disturbingly, fits perfectly.

After getting appallingly drunk at the party, the Doctor steals the plum pudding and the VCR and returns to the TARDIS - proving once and for all to Rose that this is the same Doctor.

Then, as this is a full-on Christmas Special, and in the grand tradition snow starts falling in the closing moments, just at the stroke of midnight on the 24th of December.

Rose finds this laughably unbelievable - it never snows at Christmas n England! Or Wales!

The Doctor shrugs and suggested that maybe he blew up some alien ship or whatever and it caused a chain reaction, fused with the water in the atmosphere and through the medium of technobabble ice crystals form and fall as snow!

Hastily he changes the subject and unlocks the TARDIS for them to return to mainstream Doctor Who production.

"I miss that gritty Northerner," Rose says, looking up at the stars.

"Well, I sure as hell don’t," the Doctor replies. "The guy was a prick."

Suddenly, a figure in a Santa cloak emerges from the shadows, "Ho, ho, ho, little girl! Have I got a surprise for you!" he opens up his cloak.

Rose's screams are drowned out by the flasher screaming,

"Jingle balls, jingle balls, jingle all the way! And a Merry Christmas to all of our viewers in jail!"

The End?


And so ends the commissioned version of The Michaelmas Evasion. However, this is not the only possible plotline for the first David Tennant serial.
According to a strange guy who sits in the corner of my local pub, The Dead Lemming, a completely different script was penned for this debut story by a being known only as Sparacus "Flamingo" Jones which was thrown out of rehearsals with bursts of hyena-like laughter.
Written to "evoke good old English hearth values," the script apparently only does this in that it burns well.
The synopsis is as follows -


The Michaelmas Evasion (b):

The newly regenerated Doctor lands the TARDIS in the village of Dertain Ceath at Michaelmas, 2005. Rose and the Doctor emerge to a snow covered country scene - a robin pecking at the old farm gate and the snow-capped church steeple in the distance.

It is like a Christmas card, and in fact, turns out to be that - a giant Christmas greetings card constructed on a heap known only as the Devil's A Dyke.

The time travelers run off into the snow, screaming with terror. They then discover strange footprints in the snow resembling cloven hooves. The Doctor mumbles something about the Devil walking the earth and Rose looks annoyed, pointing out that it is probably just the local theme park owner trying to drum up business.

The Doctor and Rose burst into the pub and start acting like they own the place. The Time Lord in particular is seduced by the presence of Mrs. Smythesby-Jones (played by Patricia Routledge) who is clearly evil due to suffering such a horrible name. Maybe even a Slitheen.

SJ starts rabbitting on about strange figures marching through the snow at night and that the fields around the village are about to be bought by the government for housing development. The Doctor retorts that if the village is so bloody worried about this why don't they pull their bloody fingers out and do something?

SJ retorts that there was a protest group but the leader, Reg Prentice was found dead next to the church, a pitchfork in his back and bloody pictograms scrawled on the vestry wall.

The Doctor and Rose mildly wonder if SJ has asked the vicar if he has any idea about what's happening - but such a course of action has not occurred to her. And it ultimately proves pointless as the vicar Nathanial York (Angus Deyton) has just had his throat ripped out.

There he was, minding his own business, lighting candles and THWACK - dead. The Doctor and Rose announce that the denizens of Dertain Ceath are too stupid to live and are about to return to the TARDIS when they spot Ben Chatham (Adam Rickitt), standing over the corpse.

"I heard the scream," Ben insists, wiping the blood from his hands. I was investigating the churchyard - I'm Ben Chatham .. I'm an archaeologist - well amateur archaeologist I suppose. I'm researching this site for possible pre-Christian remnants and associations. What could have done this?"

"Dunno," the Doctor replies, bored. "But whatever it is, it has claws. And a violent dislike of vicars lighting candles."

Ben proves he is also a practicing nudist as he tears off his clothes to cover the corpse with it. You know he's dedicated because the setting IS in the middle of a blizzard.

Then follow fifteen minutes of characters admiring Ben's "smooth, muscular chest shining in the candlelight, luscious and luminous".

These characters include Inspector Miles (Ross Kemp) and his fellow coppers (Todd Carty and Callum Best), Lord Acresby (John Savident), Mrs Hattersby the eccentric ghosthunter (Su Pollard), Sexton (Steve McFadden) and some carol singers (Jessie Wallace, Javine) and Charlotte Church (India Fisher).

The Doctor suddenly announces that the 'Hardon Development Company' trying to buy the surrounding lands are, in fact, a race called Lucifarians who just happen to resemble the classical Devil.

The Doctor and Rose decide to annoy the hell out of Lord Acresby and find him in Digby Connor's office, with Digby Connor (Martin Kemp) and several empty bottles of wine as an X-rated film plays on the VCR.

Acresby turned to drink when a spate of ritualistic murders wiped out his housekeeping staff and is now planning to sell his lands and titles to Digby in return for a few more barrels of mind-rotter and his son's cockroach's gambling debts paid off.

"My Lord," the Doctor shouts, "you must listen to this! Look! This whole development plan for Dertain Ceath is a front! For not only something sinister... but also DANGEROUS!! They want your land because of something underneath it!!"

Digby and Lord Acresby react realistically to this by telling the new-age nutter tree-hugging bastards to sod off. Despite their best efforts, Ben has followed the Doctor and Rose and announces that underneath the land is not earth spirits or ley-lines. Rose and the Doctor sneak out as Ben begins his big speech.

"Look something crashed here over a thousand years ago! And it brought with it cretins! Cretins far beyond humanity in their technical prowess and development. Oh, wait, sorry, that's 'creatures'."

Despite this eloquence, he is not believed - mainly because Digby and Acresby know for a FACT the ship only crashed there three hundred years ago. Ben is laughed out into the street.

The Doctor and Rose are trying to get pissed at the local pub, The Pink Elephant, only to find that Ben now seems to be stalking them. Rose goes to tell him to piss off but for some reason her line is -

"Oh Ben. Your beautiful eyes glisten in the light. I imagine myself caressing your muscular chest and planting a kiss on your rose-petal lips. God I love you."

The Doctor, sickened, steps outside for a breath of fresh air and soon is attacked. He escapes. And runs back inside, remembering that there are a bunch of evil, devil-resembling monsters on the loose.

Rose wonders why a bunch of godlike aliens would be interested in a small, impoverished Welsh village.

Ben enters and explains he was visiting Dertain Ceath on the off chance that the church has been built over a spaceship containing the ancient Lucifarian king, Bobbo (Ian Anderson), which crashed there hundreds of years ago, which the Doctor confirms.

Rose asks aloud just why the hell would self-respecting 18th century Welshmen build a village around a crashed spaceship containing the devil and put a church atop the spaceship? Why would such a godlike alien be doing visiting Earth anyway - was it to scare the crap out of St. Jerome? And how the hell do godlike aliens CRASH a spaceship?

She then asks why these godlike aliens are going to all the trouble of managing a corporate buyout instead of simply teleporting the spaceship and the contents away? And why are they murdering villagers which will simply increase the paranoia and draw attention to them?

Ben awkwardly admits that the horrible murders are actually down to him. But before anyone can answer Rose's other perfectly sensible questions, three Lucifarians barge into the church.

Luckily, the Tenth Doctor's new mascot (a violent, alcoholic owl) who has been living in the rafters, comes to life and attacks Ben, gourging out his left eye.

This distracts the Lucifarians long enough for the Doctor, Rose and the now-monocular Ben leg it back to the TARDIS at the Devil's A Dyke, where the Doctor presses a button on the console.

The spaceship explodes, destroys the Church and the Lucifarians - though why Lucifarian technology bows to the will of a button rather than three living Lucifarians, I cannot tell.

The Doctor decides to take off before Mrs. S-J can find them again, even though it means making Ben the new companion - despite the fact he regularly kills villagers in diabolic ceremonies.

The now homeless Owl is taken aboard the TARDIS as well and repeatedly attacks Ben in the face.

The End.

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Coming Soon... actually not... still...
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"What base are you aiming for, Doctor?"
"Further than we've ever been before, Rose!"
"I don't think we've met before."
"I'm the Doctor."
"That little Northern shit!?! I'll kill him!"
"Uh, not THAT Doctor! I am Casanova Fronkenstein!"
"Oh, that's all right then."
"May I introduce Ms Sarah Jane Smith? No? Oh, well, I'll stay quiet then."
"They say the Face of Bond will only speak to a wandering traveler without a home. Or anyone who'll buy him a bucket of vodka martinis."
"K9? What kind of name is that for a robot dog!"
"Wow! May I introduce in an unconvincing Scottish accent, Queen Victoria! Rose, we might get to meet James Brown! Funk soul brother!"
"Give her back to me, you magnificent... Bastard!"
"Bullets can't stop it! Try some cheese!"
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...some more Doctor Who, I guess...
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