Monday, November 2, 2009

7th Doctor - Dream-Time

Serial 7W/A - The Dreaming
The Dreaming
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Advance Australia Fair

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7W/A - The Dreaming


Part One

The Doctor suspects that his new companion Hex may not be completely cut out for the task of a TARDIS crewmember, facing strange and new life forms in the deep realms of time itself. In order to see if Hex can cope, the Doctor announces that he intends to make their first trip through time and space to the unremarkable, unspectacular Melbourne Cup of the Year of Our Time Lord 1975.

Hex and Ace put on suitably ridiculous attire for the occasion, and prepare to experience the Race that Stops the Nation of Australia. The Doctor lands the TARDIS and, grinning insincerely, leads them outside.

The TARDIS has materialized in a weirdly deserted city floating through the depths of space, uprooted from the Earth and a breathable atmosphere maintained behind a mysterious force field.

To the Doctor’s mild surprise, Hex does not suffer a complete nervous breakdown upon leaving the TARDIS, but points out he expected a few more crowds for the most spectacular horse race known to man.

The Doctor explains that Australians are capable of truly amazing feats when they wish – in this case, they have called in sick, en masse, and the entire nation has taken the day off and it is unsurprising that the whole city has come to a standstill.

Ace wonders why the sky is full of stars when the race happens during the day, but Hex knowingly explains that it’s because daylight savings, before asking the Doctor about the strange soft-baked clay standing stones dotted down the main street, with crudely etched faces.

The Doctor stares at the unnerving stones and, taking a moment to compose himself, shrugs that it’s probably some kind of anti-nuclear street protest that’s so avant garde no one understands the message. Ace agrees and carves the words ACE WAZ ERE into the nearest stone, ignoring the blood seeping from it and the sounds of muffled screams.

Just then, there is the distinctive sight of an alien spacecraft hurtling over the city to make a landing nearby. The Doctor turns to Hex, expecting him to be overawed to the point of catatonia, but instead he shrugs it off as one of Australia’s demented flight paths.

More and more disturbed by Hex’s gullibility, the Doctor turns a corner and sees, at the end of the street the famous Australian landmark of Uluru – or, to parochial, toffy-nosed poms like Hex and Ace, Ayers Rock.

The idea of a city being build around Uluru is not quite as preposterous as the idea that Uluru was picked up and dumped in the middle of Melbourne as part of the Cup festivities, but this is what Hex and Ace casually suggest.

When the Doctor protests at the sheer impossibility of the task – as well as the fact the Heritage Listing would be completely invalidated, Hex muses that maybe it’s not the REAL Uluru, but some home made giant rock, created with newspaper, paint, chicken wire and sticky-tape.

Now suspecting that Hex is trying to freak him out, perhaps at the behest of some evil from the dawn of time, the Doctor takes them to investigate Uluru to discover if it really is some demented HSC art project or if, just maybe, it’s the real thing.

Hex muses that the only other logical explanation is that they are walking through someone else’s dream – a different truth that doesn’t match their own preconceptions. He then uses his homemade asthma-inhaler bong, and blows a smoke ring. "Cosmic," he concludes.

The Doctor realizes with relief that Hex is just a complete stoner which is why he has taken all this in his stride, before telling Ace off for drawing beards and moustaches on all the cave paintings.

Just then, a Holden Ute driven by Mullet and Warnie arrive and tell them to get themselves into the back quick smart, for they are ASIO Commandos and what they say goes!

On the other side of Uluru stands the space ship of the pink, bird-like alien Galahs who have stumbled across the floating city by accident and believe it would be a fantastic replacement for their society after their previous homes were annihilated by the demonic Soundman who haunts them and inspires so much of their introspective poetry and interpretive dance.

Commander Coarse-Shawl and his Trade Director Fresh-Air emerge out onto the surface to declare peace and love and excruciating blank verse to the inhabitants of this world. They suspect that the powerful forces that must be holding in the atmosphere, maintaining the city’s artificial gravity and propelling it through space must be down to the incredible feng shuei of Uluru being in the middle of the city.

Coarse-Shawl starts a haiku entitled "This City Is Dead But My Soul Still Bleeds", and soon a woman called Leanne rushes out of the shadows, panic-stricken and desperate to stop more poetry.

Leanne goes on to rant that she just stopped on the asteroid for a few beers and a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald and is now convinced that they are all going to die at the hands of the sinister shadow creatures infesting the city.

She then, runs off screaming.

Fresh-Air watches her go, and then decides to paint a mural.

As the Ute heads up the main street, Warnie and Mullet explain to the TARDIS crew that their city is facing their doom at the hands of something known as The Dreaming, but ASIO commandos never quit a lost cause – it’d be unAustralian!

Suddenly, dream creatures in the form of bunyips block the road and demand to be allowed to clean the windows for a few bucks. Warnie screams and accidentally crashes the Ute, knocking Ace unconscious as more of the bunyips close in.

The Doctor, gurning furiously, leaps from the wreckage with a sonic screwdriver and started gargling in a strange, alien tongue. The bunyips halt their advance as they try and work out what the strange little Scotsman is trying to say – perhaps he is asking directions to the Opera House?

Just then, the hysterical Leanne runs into the scene and knocks all the bunyips over on top of the Doctor. Suddenly, the bunyips, the Doctor and Leanne vanish, leaving two more stones where their victims used to be.

"Whoaaa..." says Hex, bug-eyed, and has another drag on his bong.



Part Two

The Doctor and Leanne find themselves suspended in a strange void of screaming voices, that rapidly resolves itself into Gangagang’s "Sounds of Then" echoing over a vast abyss.

The Doctor’s heritage as Lord President of Gallifrey, Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon and Defender of the Laws of Time allow him to not only maintain his sense of individuality in this realm, but he can also escape this dimension by clicking his heels together.

The terrified Leanne points out this is incredibly unfair and begs the Doctor not to abandon her, but he merely doffs his hat and disperses, leaving the panic-stricken Leanne to become another voice irresistibly singing the chorus.

The Doctor finds himself back at Uluru, but has, somehow, traveled back in time to when the revered landmark was still on Earth. A shanty town has sprung up around the sacred site with lots of teenagers are here to soak up the mystical rhythms of Uluru, binge-drink, indulge in group sex and SMS obscene suggestions to Australian Idol.

Just then, the Doctor is arrested by some burly police officers, thrown into the back of a van and driven off.

Back in the future, or maybe, forward into the future, or maybe just in the present... anyway, Warnie and Mullet drag the mellow Hex and the unconscious Ace away from the returning bunyips. Warnie struggles to scare off the elemental beings with his superior text messaging skills, but there is no way out...

Suddenly, the Galahs turn up singing a protest song against orphanage-arson, and the bunyips flee, screaming. The Galahs have been deeply moved by some of the cave paintings and immediately request an audience with the Rainbow Serpent, as they suspect they have met it before in a computer chatroom.

Mullet explains that they aren’t simply mythologizing what they cannot understand and nor are they interested in deeply-moving social comment in limericks, but Fresh-Air calls the ASIO commando a member of the "thought police" and, baffled, he nods in agreement.

Finally Ace recovers consciousness and demands to know why they aren’t trying to kill the real live aliens, which puts a real strain on the conversation, even more than explaining she travels with the Doctor – who burnt his bridges (and a few orphanages) with the Galah in a previous Big Finish release by the same author.

The Galahs suggest they use loud sounds that speak of the spirit of their souls to use against the bunyips – and everyone else assumes they are talking about psionic powered sonic attacks, but it rapidly becomes clear that the Galahs are just talking a bunch of New Age crap.

Deeply offended, Coarse-Shawl storms out and sulks.

Elsetime, the Doctor manages to trick his arresting officer, Twit, into explaining what the hell is happening. It appears that the Earth Empire has decided to claim the insurance on their home planet and have triggered a series of solar flares which will scorch the surface clean of any life whatsoever.

A methodical evacuation plan has been carried out, but there are over two thousand people still hanging around Uluru and refusing to be taken aboard the Phoenix Life Ships before the end of their holiday. The Doctor doesn’t understand why these teenagers are staying here to face certain death, before being told that it is Schoolies Week, and these ex-students won’t give up the hedonistic lifestyle for love nor money.

It is now that TV celebrity Ernie Dingo is proclaiming himself a guru capable of offering Australia a mystical alternative to total extinction – a solution he simply calls "Get Away!"

The Doctor decides to use his flair for language to drive Ernie Dingo to suicide using the power of words, and soon manages to convince some youths to lend him their four wheel drive, allowing him to ascend to the top of Uluru where the guru is lying on a deck chair, drinking a can of VB and generally being Australian.

Meanwhile, Ace, Hex and the others realize they are fresh out of ideas and head for the nearest pub to mull things over.

Ernie Dingo explains that after the centuries of neglect and persecution, the universe owes Indigenous Australians a hell of a lot, and he expects that Uluru, the Heart of Australian, will tear itself from the ground and hurtle into space to fuse with a new planet.

The Doctor admits this kind of optimism borders on the psychotic, and if he hadn’t been to the future and seen that this scheme actually works, he’d decry Dingo for being a complete bloody looney.

Ernie Dingo shrugs and begins to chant the TRUE national anthem of Australia – Christine Anu’s cover of "My Island Home", which carries far more national weight than the official version which no one remembers properly and might even have a second verse. We just don’t know, and frankly, no one cares.

Twit’s men watch on, baffled as the land tears itself out of the ground and floats up into the stars.

"Fair dinkum," he marvels.


Part Three

On the way to the pub, Warnie and Hex move through a couple of bored dingoes as they find the statue that used to be the Doctor. Deciding to "rhapsodize some good vibes", Hex puts his arm around the statue and brags about the good times they had together. Of course, they only knew each other for a few hours, but Hex is so stoned he believes that they were at university together, and reminisces about how they used to get up to trouble when his mum was out late, feasting on the blood of the living and appearing in Goth snuff flicks.

Then he and Warnie get bored and walk off again.

They arrive at the pub as Mullet explains that the ASIO commandos were trained by Ernie Dingo himself, who rapidly got bored in the space city and removed himself from ordinary time and space, to live in the non-stop circular flow of cause and effects known as the Dreaming.

Of course, Mullet has to admit, it’s entirely possible that he might just have buggered off to the Paradise Planets of Ormelia, as he often spoke of doing.

But then something starts to claw its way through the pub, but this turns out to be Hex and Warnie, now so stoked they’ve forgotten how to open the doors.

Back in the B plot, the Doctor asks Ernie Dingo just how he survived from a bit part actor in the 1990s to become a guru in the thirtieth century to oversee the decline and fall of the Earth Empire?

Ernie Dingo shrugs and puts it down to healthy living and exercise, but he tells people that he has attuned his soul to the spirit of the land, using myth, legend and Uluru to bind themselves to his DNA, giving him magical powers allowing him to alter the fabric of creation.

As Warnie and Hex order their drinks, all the lights go out and realize that something has awoken and is about to destroy them all, and then all the beer taps explode, leaving the pub waist-high in beer.

Just then, the doors to the cellar open and Ernie Dingo appears, holding a question mark umbrella and calling himself the Doctor. After a while, Ace realizes that something is suspicious about this, before slipping and falling on her arse, going under the rising tide of liquid gold to drown in one of the lamest cliffhangers ever...


Part Four

Ace easily gets to her feet and she and the others wade their way out of the pub, leaving Fresh-Air to be turned to stone. For some reason. She finds herself in the void where the Doctor is passing through, politely waving to all the other damned souls as he goes.

The Doctor arrives and bumps into the survivors and explains that the psychic power of all those drunken horny teenagers has corrupted the mystical energies that support this strange city. Thus, the city itself has become violently keyed up and spoiling for a fight by turning people into statues.

Hex and Warnie laugh out loud at this mystical bollocks, joking that next the Doctor will be saying that accepting Western ideas into Aboriginal culture will cause society to lose sight of their heritage and distort ancient belief power.

The Doctor shrugs and mutters something about nanotechnological terraforming technology built into Uluru by some passing alien has gone tit’s up and is now trying to kill them all.

With this explanation SLIGHTLY more palatable, they agree to get on with the plot – stopping Coarse-Shawl from reciting his palindromic eulogy for Fresh-Air, which will so irritate the forces of Uluru, the entire asteroid will explode, dooming them all to die in a cheesy model shot by Matt Tucker.

They rush to stop the Galah from beginning his poetry recital, but Coarse-Shawl believes the Doctor is just Ernie Dingo in an unconvincing wig and refuses to compromise his integrity.

Just then, the real Ernie Dingo emerges from the Dreaming to say that he hates the alien’s poetry as well, so the alien prepares to blow his head off. Just then, a swarm of kookaburras arrive and peck the Galah to death, saving them from near certain death.

The Doctor decides he’s had enough and tinkers with his sonic screwdriver for a minute, reversing the polarity of the Native Title flow, and all the statues turn back into humans as the forces of Uluru City finally chill out and throw another shrimp on the barbie.

As the people immediately start to hold the Melbourne Cup, the Galahs piss off because this whole spiritual awakening bollocks is really rather creepy when they think about it.

After getting completely pissed and losing two grand at the horse race, the TARDIS crew stagger back to the TARDIS and depart, leaving Uluru City to a blinding hangover and a messy morning after.


Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who Dreams Of Electric Sheep
Dr Who Goes Down Under
The Aussie Necronomicon – Giving The Evil Dead A Fair Go


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed off his face in this story.

"The wonderful lizards of Oz..."

"Doctor you scared the.., well you scared something out of me. When I remember what it was, I'll tell you. Even if it's a swear word. OK?"


Goofs -
Nigel Verkoff’s decision to play Ernie Dingo by making his voice squeaky with helium. He sounds more like Flacco for fuck’s sake...


Fashion Victims -
All the inhabitants of Uluru City wear ugg boots with the Aboriginal Flag on them. I know.


Links and References -
It’s uncertain WHICH end of the world is occurring here; there have been a few and none of them particularly interesting. The Earth’s final destruction during a nasty game of monopoly was observed in "The Lark" and "The Restaurant at the End of the World".

Thus, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I believe that the destruction of Earth for insurance here is in fact, a reference to "Planet from Somewhere" another story in the wholly remarkable 1969 Doctor Who Annual, which seems to inspire Simon A Forward to a truly disturbing degree.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor, Ace and Hex recently visited an Earth outpost called Armstrong’s Colony, in a parallel time line which didn’t actually happen but if it DID happen then the Doctor and Ace would have been beheaded by an angry mob.

Hex puts this down to some bad LSD he took earlier.


Groovy DVD Extras -
A free collectible figurine of the Seventh Doctor turned into a screaming statue. Specially cursed by a voodoo priest and guaranteed to move when you take your eyes from it. Note: some murder and bodily possession may occur.


Dialogue Disasters -

Hex: How many fingers am I holding up?
Ace: I don't know, how many fingers am I holding up?
Hex: ARGH! SPIDERS!


Doctor: You can’t just uproot Uluru!
Ernie Dingo: Wanna bet?
Doctor: You cannot inflict a wound like this on the Earth, not without repercussions. And you’ll take those repercussions with you!
Ernie Dingo: Yeah, you white fellahs would know about that, huh?


Hex: They’re aliens, Ace! Real life aliens! I normally need meths to see real life aliens, not a bit of weed. My god! My dealer must have remembered me birthday! Brutal!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Ace: Pick on someone your own size.
Fresh-Air: There is no one my size here. Life sucks.


Mullet: We have fished for your friend, but we have stirred darker waters instead.
Ace: You're weird.


Warnie: The Doctor is lost. He sleeps in stone.
Hex: Funny, I'm only stoned when I'm awake...


Coarse-Shawl: They mythologize what they do not understand!
Ace: Like you and the Soundman?
Coarse-Shawl: ...I hate you.


Ace: Okay, what are we all on? And I'm not talking about the asteroid.


UnQuotable Quote -

Doctor: Why is it wherever I go with you two I get shot at?


Viewer Quotes -

"So, the Dream Time is real in Doctor Who, is it? Well, there better be a story where the Doctor meets the miracle-bestowing Jesus Christ, or else there is going to be trouble!" – Sparacus Jones (2005)

"Yes, thank you, Peter. I was totally taken aback by the latest science fiction fantasy dross to emerge with a vulgar noise from the sewage farm of Big Finish, in that this Doctor Who story actually has something intelligent to say. In this, The Dreaming is unique in that it fully supports the brilliance of Prime Minister John Howard with it’s anti-immigration message. Multiculturalism leads to chunks of this wide brown land being hurtled into low orbit and mythical Aboriginal monsters hunting us down and turning to stone – isolation is the only way to combat the menace in our backyards. Yeah, that’s right tree-huggers, integration will lead the death of the human race. And the sooner this message is spread by the walking wounded calling themselves Doctor Who fans, the sooner the Australian public can realize the path to total enlightenment. And in the meantime, I’ll be waiting here at the AB friggen C." – Dexter Pinion (2005)

"I am trying to avoid discussing Sylvester McCoy because it would appear I have nothing nice to say about his Doctor or his acting ability every time I bring him up and sorry folks but nothing is going to change here. He is my LEAST favourite Doctor with every piece of merchandise being released with the seventh Doctor involved pushing him further and further away from the quality of the others. Fire him and make Colin Baker do more stories. Do it at once!"
– Jo Ford Prefect (2005)

"Australia is the inspiration - and the whole production is ripe with the special, unique flavour that the heart of that country employs. That is, this CD tastes like raw vegemite. Yuk."
- Taste-Testing Merchandise Monthly (2005)

"I cannot believe this is what Big Finish is offering the same month Doctor Who is back on the TV. With the delights of RTD's Doctor Who to thrill and amaze you why are you wasting time on this nonsense? Why am I wasting my time on this nonsense? A dull, hollow, ugly mess and a sure contender for the worst Big Finish release ever! Like a story about a new companion encountering aliens on their first trip to the future as the Earth dies could ever work! Hang on..." – RTD (2005)

"No one dies in this story! There’s no carnage at all! This is BULLSHIT, man!" – Geoffrey Nasty (2006)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Sheep don’t get AIDS. Think about it."


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"The fans won’t allow me to leave the role of the Doctor, so I have to accept the inevitable, and turning up in... things like this. Still, if you can’t beat them, get so drunk you fall in love with them. I haven’t quite managed to get as plastered enough to think that the fans are worth suffering indignities like this, but I know when I’ve managed it that I DEFINITELY will be too drunk to drive."


Philip Oliver Speaks!
"I think Hex is a great character, he’s got this slight humour about him which comes from when you’re ripped off your tits and just the way words sound is amusing. I mean 'reeelax'! HAH! Go on. Say it your self and it stops being this word, just cool sounds. Ree lacks. Rilaksh. Rylukks! It’s little things like that that kept me going through my second story, the Uluru one. God, that was rubbish."


Sophie Aldred Speaks!
"Now Phil’s in the show, it’s much easier to play Ace older, because she’s guiding him. She’s being like his older sister, and bumming dope off him to take the edge off things. Wicked."


Trivia -
This story was discussed in an episode of Neighbours as hot chick Pepper sits through her English boyfriend Adam’s CD collection...

PEPPER: What the hell is that about! It's total unintelligible incomprehensible nonsense! Anyone who says this isn't a monstrosity, that they absolutely loved it and thought that it was imaginative, interesting, atmospheric or lovely is a complete tool.
ADAM: I absolutely loved it. Imaginative, interesting, atmospheric, lovely.
PEPPER: You are complete tool. Did you find it "entertaining", then?
ADAM: Well, er...
PEPPER: You wouldn't say it was boring, wooden and thoroughly unremarkable?
ADAM: To be honest, my memory totally fails me. It's like hypnosis - I came out of it unable to fully recollect what happened while I was under, and my trousers are missing.



Rumors & Facts -

In a world where there are about six Doctor Who stories coming out per month in various media it is a competitive world for those who are building on the legacy of the TV series. It would be tempting to simply give up... and that’s exactly what Gay Russell did.

I pay fifty bucks for one of these CDs! More money than the DVD releases – is it SO unreasonable to expect something interesting, comprehensible, and not entirely populated by offensive racial stereotypes? Well... obviously it IS!

The Dreaming has the longest gestation period in the history of Big Finish, having been accepted in April of 2003, and not even being CONSIDERED for recording until March of 2005. The original idea by Simon A Forward was a story exploring Aboriginal creationist myths and also explaining a single continuity problem in one panel of a 1969 Doctor Who annual comic strip.

As the long months past, Forward’s script The Soundman was accepted, produced and released. With this continuity flaw fixed, Forward found himself left with no purpose in life, and would often be found in BF studios drinking from a bottle in a paper bag and swearing like a Greek sailor before giggling and falling asleep.

Occasionally Ian Farrington would try to get him to actually do some work and produce a sequel to The Soundman – a Benny Summerfield adventure entitled simply "The Groan of Contention" where Forward himself would play a miserable, self-obsessed psychic entity tormenting his creations, the bird-like and incredibly wanky Galahs.

Ultimately, the biggest factor in producing The Dreaming was the increasing numbers of Australian backpackers who were turning up to use the recording studios as a time-share apartment. Gay Russell wondered what to do with all the Aussie thespians cluttering up his lovely production base, and decided that an Australia-based story with a genuine Australian cast would be the logical step.

It would also deprive the backpackers of sleep, which appealed to Russell’s sadistic urges, as did regularly beating John Ainsworth with lengths of rubber tubing.

The first idea was for a story set in Australia – specifically the strange version featured in Cold Feet and Minder, where the Simpson desert is a stone’s throw from Circular Quay and people in cork hats called Bruce ride kangaroos to work, where they drink Fosters, sing Waltzing Matilda and beat the English at cricket. Apart from featuring the companion in a flouro-pink bikini on Bondi Beach, and the Doctor fighting off an invasion of alien streakers during the Ashes test, there was little idea of a plot and this idea, entitled "The G’Day of the Dustbins – CRIKEY!!" was considered for about two minutes before being roasted on an open fire.

Jason Haigh-Ellery suggested they kill two birds with one stone – which troubled Russell as he believed JHE was asking him to start stoning women to death. JHE explained he meant that they had a rubbish writer in the corner they could get to pen what would ultimately be an excuse to annoy some Australians and make them tired and irritable.

Thus, Forward be one of the few, the very few, writers of Big Finish in 2005 to actually have written anything before, let alone a Doctor Who audio. He was given the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex to work with, since the sudden advance of the Eighth Doctor’s forced season meant 2004 had only had on Seventh Doctor story – which is hardly adequate recompense if you think about it.

Forward himself had been passing the time by electrocuting himself with ever increasing amounts of voltage – and he started to ramble that the "Doctor Who atlas" is just like Australia; composed on a collection of different stories mapping out a history. Thus, he could create a new place on the Doctor Who map, with mythology living alongside futuristic sci-fi space stuff, since no distance is possible between myth and reality, even if we listen to it on CD!

No one had the faintest idea what he was on about, but eventually they worked out that the loonbag was up for actually doing the job.

Forward’s storyline was full of utterly random crap that he seemed to be making off the top of his head – the return of the Galah to do absolutely nothing at all; people turning into stone; the Doctor travelling through time and space by focussing his shakras rather than using the TARDIS; and Hex visiting the Melbourne Cup.

He was particularly insistent that the first scene be a baffling collage of shouting, loud sound effects, and even louder lift muzak to ensure no one had a clue what was happening. Forward was resolved not to sell out to the "exposition whores" (as he called the listeners) and wanted to weed out any such listeners with a scene described in the proposal as "all sound and fury, signifying sweet FA".

When it was noted that the script didn’t actually feature Ace, it was decided to edit her in since, in JHE’s words: "honestly, who gives a flying fuck about her anymore?"

A major drawback was the insistence of Russell that the character of Ernie Dingo be played the real Ernie Dingo – but he proved to have far too much artistic integrity and more importantly cash to turn up in dross like this.

At times like this, Russell remembered advice from the strange pale skinhead who lived next door to him, and so shouted, "Get a different Aborigine! No one will notice, they’re all identical!"

Tragically, the only UK-based Aboriginal actor available was Nigel Verkoff – and he was legally Japanese! However, in return for bail guarantee after being charged with stalking Sarah Alexander, Verkoff agreed to play Ernie Dingo with his usual subtle restraint.

Translation: it’s shithouse.

Another one of Forward’s odd decisions was to feature the return of Coarse-Shawl, a bit part character from The Soundman who was killed off screen with the rest of the Galahs.

Forward had used the character in the prequel Benny play, which had Coarse-Shawl suffer a horribly messy love affair with Fresh-Air, ending in a mid life crisis. Deciding that Coarse-Shawl’s life did not suck quite enough, Forward wanted The Dreaming to be a prequel to the prequel with more personal tragedy for the character to suffer.

Doctor Who fans will forever remember March 2005 as the month the show returned to television, which is lucky because otherwise they would have to remember it for THIS load of crap instead.

True, The Dreaming has an imaginative setting, using Aboriginal mythology like no other story in Doctor Who, an almost epic feel to the enigmatic proceedings, refreshingly free of technobabble and features one of Sylvester McCoy’s less overblown performance. Perhaps if my preconceived ideas of what Doctor Who were more flexible, I might find this a rich, immersing and naturalist work of brilliance...

...but if I were to celebrate trash like this just because it bucks established Doctor Who storytelling conventions, I’d be as bad as Lawrence bloody Miles!

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