Monday, November 2, 2009

7th Doctor - The Genocide Machine

Serial 7S – Dustbin Umpire I: The Jazzocize Machine
The Jazzocize Machine
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Jerry Springer

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7S – Dustbin Umpire I: The Jazzocize Machine



Part One

Ace is trying to relieve her boredom by vandalizing the TARDIS library. She tears up all the pages of all the books and throws them out the TARDIS doors onto passing chronovores.

The Doctor is horrified, pointing out that his library contains relics and masterpieces – including the last copy in the entire universe of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which Ace has now burnt.

"Wake up, Professor! Shakespeare's politics were in the middle ages! Othelo is racist, McBeth is sexist and there just isn't enough realistic gore in Romeo and Juliet for it to be credible!"

The Doctor is just in time to stop Ace junking his entire collection of exercise videos which he keeps for sentimental reasons – not to mention his abiding horror of regenerating into a total fat ass.

Ace notices that the entire video set has been borrowed from the Time Lord video store on the planet Parrot-Shat which the Doctor shop-lifted long ago and 'forgot' to return.

The Doctor is struck rigid with horror. The Time Librarians are the most ruthless beings in existence, and will hunt him down and exact their revenge on him – no matter where he goes, what he does, they'll find him and take the overdue fine paid in his blood!

Ace slaps the Doctor and tells him to just travel back in time to just after he nicked them and hand them back.

The Doctor shouts, "Ace! That is a direct violation of the First Law of Time Travel! A crack in the causal nexus! A distortion in history itself! Why the hell didn't I think of it earlier?"

So saying, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to Parrot-Shat – named because of the awful colour of the planet. The surface is a steamy, over-cast muddy jungle and Ace's first instinct is to set fire to some trees.

The Doctor heads off into the undergrowth to look for the video store, Ace starts looking for some natives to beat up.

Meanwhile, Bev Tarrant and her salvage team – Han, C3PO and Chewbacca - have discovered a large packing crate abandoned in the middle of a field. Bev feels sure this will make them all rich.

Han isn't so confident, as Bev has said similar things on the last fifteen relics they stole – and three of those turned out to be nothing but pristine Turin Shrouds.

Suddenly, the case burst open and, in a cloud of polystyrene chipping emerges the horrifying shape of a Dyson washing machine with a gigantic vacuum-cleaner attachment that immediately wipes out the non-speaking extras AND Han. Bev runs off into the trees, trips and sprains her ankle. Luckily, she has enough time to escape as the washing machine tidies up the bodies of her colleagues.

The Doctor has found a secret Time Lord bunker, notable for the Ikea furnishings and flashing neon sign saying PARROT-SHAT TIME LORD VIDEO RETAILER LIBRARY (MEMBERS ONLY). Ace is bored and graffitis the sign so it now reads CARROT-SHIT CRIME LARD VIDEO RETARDED LIBRARY (DISMEMBERS ANALLY) until the Doctor starts shouting at her to stop.

The Doctor explains that the Time Lord video library holds every last direct-to-video rental from every civilized planet in the universe – not to mention every video nasty from all the UNcivilized planets.

"The Time Lord decided long ago that such a retailer could be terribly dangerous in the wrong hands."

"How?"

"No idea. The fact the Time Lords are also a bunch of arrogant kill-joys determined to get a monopoly on the TV rental business helped."

The bunkers main door is opened by a distinctly weird Time Lord known only as the Magician. OK, he regularly calls himself Magus and Pagad, but prefers to be known as the Magician. He wears white robes, a blue cloak and a giant top hat, throwing roses and lilies onto the floor wherever his bare feet walk.

Ace immediately pegs the Magician as a complete nutter, and that's before he introduces them to his best friend, a Yahama keyboard who speaks a language only the Magician can hear.

Ace decides she doesn't like the video retailer, especially as all the slasher and pornos are under lock and key, and storms out. The Magician gives her a dead haddock so that she can get past the barriers when she wishes to return.

Ace thinks this is insane, but the Doctor advises her to take it – the Magician is such a nutter he may very well have programmed the door to open only for those carrying a dead haddock. The guy's cracked in the head, off his trolley, out of his tree and off his face.

"And this is him on a good day," the Doctor warns.

The Magician shows the Doctor to the greatest achievement of the video store – a fish tank!

The Doctor then notices the exercise video section and hastily replaces the videos he's nicked. He also checks out a new series entitled How To Conquer The Galaxy – And Your Abs. The Doctor thinks leaving a detailed fitness regime and plan to control the universe in the weekly section is borderline insane.

The Magician boasts he thought of it all by himself.

The Doctor carefully sits down the Magician and explains all it takes is one Voord in a bad mood to take out a particular exercise video and all time and all space is stuffed.

The Magician confirms that no Voord, Zarbi, Quirk, She Devil or insurance salesman can possibly breach the Time Lord defenses. He's adamant no one can get in without the correct key.

"What is the correct key?" asks the Doctor urgently.

"You know, I've forgotten, can't remember, unable to recall," the Magician replies with his usual annoying thesauratic style.

Outside, Ace is trudging her way back to the TARDIS, idly wishing Parrot-Shat was inhabited so she could kill something. She is pleased, therefore, when Bev stumbles out of the undergrowth and collapses.

Ace kicks her in the ribs and steals her wallet when suddenly the Dyson washing machine bursts out of the trees, armed and dangerous. Ace recognizes it as a Special Weapons Dustbin...

Aboard the orbiting Dustbin mothership, the Special Weapons Dustbin reports that Phase One of the plan is complete. The Dustbins now have the dead haddock in their possession!



Part Two

The Magician is convinced of the reliability of the Time Lords' defenses, and doesn't understand why the Doctor is so concerned. The Doctor points out the defenses consist entirely of a sign saying 'No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service' and doubts that it will stop any half-decent alien menace.

The Magician points out that it worked well enough to stop a gigantic Dustbin army who immediately gave up their quest to conquer the video store. The Magician, when pressed, admits he might be mistaken as he was high on Andromedan cocaine and red wine at the time of the so-called 'assault'.

The Doctor gives up and decides to steal a copy of Species III and then quit the store and search for Ace. The Magician follows, deciding he needs some time away from his keyboard, who's getting rather irritable of late.

As they emerge from the store, they discover the neatly-groomed and washed bodies of Ace and Bev. The Magician is surprised at their state of unconsciousness, the presence of Bev and the fact Ace has a MADE IN FARGO logo printed on her forehead.

The Doctor puts this down to one of Ace's fads; self-tattooing, and thus totally ignores the possibility that Ace has been captured and replaced by some half-assed robot replica.

"Like THAT would ever happen!" the Doctor scoffs.

The Magician coughs and arches an eyebrow.

"Twice," the Doctor adds lamely.

Unfortunately for the Doctor's image as an eccentric genius, he is absolutely dripping with wrongability on this occasion. The Ace with him IS a half-assed robot replica but, more than that, is a half-assed DUSTBIN robot replica!

Ace has, at present, been stripped naked and been chained the wall of a ruined dungeon where Special Weapons Dustbin Scout Seven has made his base and bachelor pad. It admits it has reasons for not killing Ace straight away and doing this incredibly kinky stuff, but refuses to go into them this early in the relationship.

Already the Dustbin mothership is struggling to reverse park on Parrot-Shat, and the SWD reveals that they have waited for seventeen ice ages to break into the Time Lord Video Store to capture the infamous How To Conquer The Galaxy – And Your Abs exercise video collection which will aid their rebuilt Dustbin Umpire in its quest to dominate the galaxy and keep the streets clean.

The SWD has access to the Dead Haddock of Rassilon and so can penetrate the video store. However, not even the Dustbins can believe that the most secure video store in Mutter's Spiral requires a rotting fish to gain entry, and so have copied Ace to be on the safe side.

The Doctor wonders why Bev Tarrant is here, given that the video store is supposed to be a secret. The Magician suggests that she's here to study the packing crate, supposed to be the relic of an ancient civilization which never got sent off to its destination.

The Doctor, curious, sets off to examine the packing crate himself, accompanied by the increasingly loopy Magician. They find the remains of the packing crate but there are no polystyrene chips, or murdered salvage teams nearby.

The Magician asks why on Earth the Doctor assumes there to be a salvage team, but the Time Lord insists that isn't important right now – clearly, there is a Dustbin on the planet and that so-called 'packing crate' is nothing more than a crap Dustbin infiltration unit!

Back at the video store, the robot Ace finds that the Magician has left the front door open and switches on the store's TV. Miraculously, this shows the image of the Dustbin Supreme in the mothership and explains that situation has bizarrely turned in their favor.

The Dustbin troops prepare to attack, and the battle cruiser swoops down over the heads of the Doctor and the Magician, who is running out of adjectives for how utterly screwed they are.

The Dustbin cruiser lands in the car park outside the video store and, with Ace-2 at the open doorway, the Dustbins prepare to seize control of the planet Parrot-Shat...



Part Three

The Doctor and the Magician have no choice but to try to return to the Doctor's TARDIS and send out an SOS to the Time Lords. Frankly, the social embarrassment the Doctor has doing such an action is nothing compared to the vitriol he has for them entrusting their most vital resources in the hands of a complete loon-bag.

Dustbin patrols begin to spread out from the video store as they demand some friendly and helpful service to locate the exercise videos of destruction. The Dustbin Supreme reports the progress of the operation to the Emperor on Fargo, but admits that the Doctor is on the planet and the chances of their mission failing and all of them dying a horrible fiery death is at 77 percent.

Bev wakes up, thinking she is very hung over; mobile litter bins are gliding up to her and demanding to know if she works here and just where the exercise video section is.

Luckily, she's been in many a video store and easily finds the How To Conquer The Galaxy – And Your Abs exercise video. Sliding it into the VCR, a test Dustbin glides forward to do the first session.

To the immense fortune of the universe and everything in it, the Magician has placed the videos in different boxes according to an insane filing system he has since committed to memory and then forgotten entirely.

Instead, shown on the VCR is The Phantom Menace. Unable to handle the data flow, the Dustbin's memory circuits overload, and it goes mad, breaks out of its restraints and hurtles off into the corridors, screaming in agony and firing at random as its fellow Dustbins pursue it, asking how it went.

Without the amazing neural abilities of a Time Lord such as the Doctor to work out where the correct video is, the Dustbins can only survive the experiment by checking each individual video title - which will mean a delay to the invasion as there are over seventy-three billion titles and multiple copies.

Bev suggests they just take off the next three thousand years and start the invasion bright and early the next epoch, but the Dustbin Supreme tells her to keep her juvenile opinions to herself. They'll just have to capture the Doctor damn fast and get him to do the job for them and hope they don't give him the opportunity to wipe them out.

"It'll be a close-run thing," Ace-2 admits.

The Doctor and the Magician find the TARDIS surrounded by Dustbins, and the Dustbin Supreme arrives and threatens to kill Ace, Bev Tarrant and the Magician's keyboard if the Doctor does not give himself up.

The Doctor decides that these are just more crap robot duplicates and shouts out that the Dustbins can do their worst before he'll surrender.

This prompts a stream of abuse from Ace so violent it can only be the genuine article, and anyway, the Magician has run straight at them, begging for the life of his keyboard synthesizer.

As the Magician's insanity has delayed the Dustbin's conquest of the universe for several centuries, the Time Lord is about to executed on a spot. Suddenly, the Magician falls to his knees and cries:

"No, wait, I'm a communist, like you!"

"YOU'RE A COMMUNIST?" the Dustbin Supreme asks, surprised.

"Yes!"

"WE'RE FASCISTS. PREPARE TO DIE."

The Doctor points out that if anyone can possibly know how the videos are filed, it will be the Magician (or possibly his keyboard), so they return to the store.

There, the Magician starts rummaging through the remainder bin for donated videos and soon comes across a box marked Blake's 7: AfterLife – The Movie. Inside is How To Conquer The Galaxy – And Your Abs Volume 1 and the Magician immediately places it in the VCR.

The Doctor laughs like a maniac and screams the Dustbins have fallen into his trap. They're doomed, DOOMED! "I pity you fools," the Doctor screams hysterically and ducks and covers.

The video plays normally.

"WHAT?!" the Doctor shouts at the Magician in disbelief. "You put in the REAL tape?!"

"It IS what they asked for, what they requested, ordered on pain of death, Doctor," the Magician replies.

"You're supposed to put in the temporal disrupter unit and blow all the Dustbins to hell like Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

"What? THIS temporal disrupter unit?" the Magician asks, collecting another video, which the Dustbins immediately destroy.

With this plan ruined, the Doctor does the only thing he can possible do to salvage the situation.

He hides in the fish tank.

Before anyone can do anything, the insane Dustbin test subject is bursts in and, believing all the beings in front of him to be either Ja-Ja-Binks (or his badass brother Shut-Yo-Mouth) prepares to exterminate them all...



Part Four

Everyone runs for it in amazingly repetitive chase sequences, while the Doctor creeps out of the fish tank and decides to write a formal letter of complaint to the Time Lords about the Magician.

The Dustbin army, Ace and Bev are now hiding in the SWD's bachelor pad as the insane Dustbin tries to blow up everything it can. The Dustbin Supreme reports the problem to Fargo, but the impatient Emperor Dustbin tells it to just blow the fuck out of the rogue and get back to work.

"DUSTBIN HAS NEVER EXTERMINATED DUSTBIN!" protests the Dustbin Supreme, before being told to just give the humans some advanced Dustbin-destroying weaponry and get THEM to do it.

This proves to be incredibly foolish.

Armed with Anti-Dustbin Thermonuclear Neutralizers, Ace and Bev blow up most of the Dustbins and run for it. Only three warrior units, the Supreme and the SWD survive – the latter because Bev thought he was kind of cute.

The Magician returns to the video store and furiously accuses the Doctor of unspeakable crimes against the natives of Parrot-Shat, namely HIM! The Magician had counted the Doctor as a friend, and all along he no better than the Dustbins!

The Doctor has no idea what he's talking about until he realizes – he has just emailed the Time Lords a venomous complaint about the Magician ON THE MAGICIAN'S YAMAHA KEYBOARD!

Such a crime is unheard of and the Doctor and the Magician must now duel to the death with the ancient weapons of combat – however, there are no rubber chickens to hand and so they'll just have to hurl video cassettes at each other until they finally die.

Horrified that the Doctor is actually willing to fight to the death, the Magician runs for his life back to his TARDIS – cunningly disguised as an armoire with the words LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS written on it. Inside, the control room is filled the Magician's other main passion: chairs. The Doctor cannot follow.

Ace and Bev return to the video store where How To Conquer The Galaxy – And Your Abs Volume 1 is still playing. There they encounter Ace-2, who is buried in videos when the SWD knocks a shelf on top of her.

The SWD reveals it's watched the whole video twice and decided that it can't be arsed to conquer the galaxy. Too much hassle and responsibility, when all it wants to do is cruise chicks along the space ways.

Just then, the surviving Dustbins arrive and furiously order the characters to stick to the plot. The SWD turns and blows each and every one of the Dustbins into a billion fragments.

The Dustbin Supreme runs off into the wilderness in terror, as the SWD announces from now on it shall be addressed as Zeg the Sexy, and begins to chat up Bev. The Doctor and the Magician arrive back and decide to just shake on it – the Magician has revealed some information which the Doctor finds very amusing, but refuses to repeat it.

Thus, Zeg and Bev decide to steal the Dustbin battle cruiser and enjoy a honeymoon on the planet Duchamp's Urinal, while the Magician and Ace-2 start to organize the video store.

Back in the jungle, the Dustbin Supreme sends a collect call to Fargo and relates the situation to the Dustbin Emperor. The infuriated Emperor orders it to tidy up the area immediately around itself and then self-destruct. The Dustbin Supreme tells the Emperor it can go and fuck itself, and wanders off to get a job in the video store.

"IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED, EMPEROR, YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO COME UP WITH A PLAN TO CONQUER THE WHOLE UNIVERSE THAT INVOLVES A GIANT SPACE ELEPHANT WITH GASTRIC TROUBLE. GOOD LUCK!"

But the Emperor admits, that is a very good idea...

The Doctor and Ace return to the TARDIS and decide to head off after Bev and Zeg to Duchamp's Urinal and the Doctor admits after all this, his back is killing him.

Book(s)/Other Related - Doctor Who Rents a Video
Doctor Who: The Rotting Fish Heads of Time
Gain Dominion Over All Creation AND Lose 30 lbs In 1 Month!

Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed well knackered in this story
The Magicians annoying habit of being a living thesaurus screws up on more than one occasion.

Goofs -
In fairness, inconsistency with the Dustbin movies is pettiness personified. But when did that ever stop us?
Why the hell does Zeg leave the duplicate Ace behind? You'd think a swinger Dustbin like him would be up for a threesome!

Fashion Victims -
The Magician's figure-of-eight hat deserves special mention.

Technobabble -
Dustbins can detect individuals by their amazing use of the Eurythmics.

Links and References -
The Doctor admits he hasn't met a Time Lord more pathetic than the Magician since Vansell - 'The Tarrants of Time'.
This story rapes and pillages practically ever other Dustbin story – especially The Chaste (terrible duplicates of cast members), Peanut of the Dustbins (the epileptic Dustbin Supreme) Erection of the Dustbins (incredibly pathetic Dustbin master plans), and Rememberin' to Take Out the Dustbins (the Special Weapons Dustbin).

Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor has visited Parrot-Shat before and stolen a heap of exercise videos. The Magician says that the Doctor was 'more raddish-y' during his last visit, which at least suggests he was in another body, but doesn't offer any more clues as to which.
I bet Mel forced him to use the exercise videos, though.

Groovy DVD Extras -
A specially dubbed copy of Peanut of the Dustbins with the soundtrack of The Jazzocide Machine played over it. Works surprisingly well.

Dialogue Disasters -

Magician: The wonders of the Twentieth Century Earth! Such innovations, such ingenuity, imagination and creativity! Such classics in newsprint, in journals, periodicals and gazettes! The Sun! The Mirror! The Irish Racist! And all those knockers on page three! Dear God, those knockers, those threllips, those udders! Man, those were good times!

Dustbin Emperor: REASONS ARE IRRELEVANT. FAILURE IS UNACCEPTABLE. EVEN THOUGH LEARNING THE REASONS FOR FAILURE MAY PREVENT IT IN THE FUTURE, I'VE GOT TO DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. ON THE LAW OF POSSIBILITIES AT LEAST, A BLIND, STEADFAST REFUSAL TO ACCEPT FAILURE WILL WIN THE DAY EVENTUALLY. GET IT? GOT IT? GOOD.

Doctor: A replication generator? Oh no...
Ace: What is it? What's wrong?
Doctor: I've just remembered – I've left the iron on!

Dialogue Triumphs -

Dustbin: DOWNLOAD IS TOO SLOW! WE NEED BROADBAND! SOON, THE SECRETS OF NAPSTER.COM WILL SOON BE OURS!

Doctor: You could acquire the wisdom of a million years from a billion worlds in less time than it'd take to read a bus ticket. Of course, that would have to be one fucking huge bus ticket, I mean, seriously big.

Zeg: HUMAN BEINGS ARE IMPATIENT FOR ORGASMS. DUSTBINS HAVE NO SUCH WEAKNESSES. UP TO SEVEN HOURS CAN PASS BEFORE YOU GET TO THE REALLY GOOD STUFF, AND THAT'S A GUARANTEE.

Doctor: Knowledge is dangerous when abused. A bit like myself.

Ace: I know this is going to be hard, but we're out - we're free.
Bev: Boy am I sick of this stupid pro-lesbian propaganda crap!
Ace: Shut up and kiss me.
Doctor: Do what she says, Bev! She means it!

Doctor: The Dustbins always bring out the worst in people – but mainly the worst in script writers.

UnQuotable Quote -
Dustbin: FEEL – THE – BURN!!!

Viewer Quotes -

"The Dustbins return in a gripping production which combines an interesting and evocative setting with some sound Dustbin continuity from the breadth of the TV series' canon. And they're more heart-breakingly bathetic than ever before." - A surprisingly honest preview by Doctor Who Magazine (1999)

"You know Zeg the Special Weapons Dustbin who cops off with most of the cast and all the females in this story? That's based on me, that is." - An unsurprisingly dishonest review by Nigel Verkoff (2001)

"The downfalls are a derivative, cliché-driven plot; an appalling schizophrenic Time Lord stereotype; a bunch of badly-characterized Dustbins with a stupid plan; an annoying keyboard soundtrack and an even more annoying keyboard; but the rest of the production is done with such class and devotion you barely notice it. So, maybe the rest of the production is crap. I just don't know." - Flashman Pervert Periodical (2000)

"You know, as a guy who works in the video store industry, I would not go so far as to say the Magician is an accurate representation of a store manager, or that a Dustbin invasion fleet are the usual sort of customers. But it is damn close, even so." – Damian Sanchez (2000)

"Big Finish are proving themselves all-rounders at the recreation of Doctor Who on CD - having mastered the pseudo-historical, the sci-fi drama, the contemporary-Earth-in-peril, and the full-blown historical, they've now made an impressive debut in the science fiction action-adventure stakes, a genre lending itself less well to audio. They've run out of plots now. I bet they fold before the year's out." - Andrew Beeblebrox's Amazingly Inaccurate Predictions (1999)

"I suppose the thing I appreciated about it most of all was the absence of Lavros. Don't get me wrong, I love Lavros. I'd drink his bath water. The fact every televised Dustbin since Genocide of the Dustbins revolved around Lavros fills me with ecstasy! I convulse with delight at the sheer mention of Lavros' name!! So, er... actually, come to think of it, I despised The Jazzocize Machine with a burning passion." - Nyderlust@sexymutant.com.uk (2001)

Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I haven't rented a video since that incident in 1994. You know the one. It made all the papers. How was I to know I'd wandered into the wrong flat and the domestic incident I was witnessing WASN'T a porno? I tell you, honestly, if I'd known, I would have worn pants. I would still have chainsawed them all to death, but I would have worn pants."

Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"I remember looking at the script, wondering why it wasn't tied to my Dustbin story – you know, Rememberin' To Take Out The Dustbins. Where was Lavros? Why wasn't Fargo a heap of dust? Then, I read the script and realized the lack of continuity was the least of my troubles! The lack of reality itself was more worrying! I have no idea what Tucker was on when he wrote that story... but I want some now!"

Trivia -
The guide to the planet Vrathgaar that Ace tears up has more spelling errors in it than the rest of the books she vandalizes put together!

Rumors & Facts -
The Jazzocize Machine would have been one hell of a screwed-up story even without the Dustbins - more than can be said for so many of their TV appearances.

A quick look at Mike Tucker's writing credentials suggests he's something of a specialist in Seventh Doctor-and-Ace stories. Which is weird, since this is the silliest story since King Havoc the Imbecile and his inbred-half-brother wrote Harry Potter Tries To Climb Niagara Falls Using Only His Lips.

The Dustbins are the stars of The Jazzocize Machine. They're not treated with intelligence, style or even respect. The Emperor Dustbin's cameo is startlingly ineffective, giving us the impression of someone in senior management who's got the wrong number.

These Dustbins are overweight losers, rather than the frenzied psychotics of earlier stories. They have plans and agendas and are at times startlingly devious – except their plans and agendas and startling deviousness don't seem to have anything to do with conquering a video store with a dead fish.

When Big Finish began in 1999, Gay Russell realized the only way to stop Nicholas Briggs from trying to take control of the entire enterprise and make himself Doctor eternal was to get him to take up his other hobby full time – pretending to be a Dustbin.

Russell had already lied through his teeth, saying Big Finish had no license to regenerate the Doctor in order to forestall Briggs' more obvious requests. Instead of portraying the dull old Doctor, Briggs would write, direct, edit and star as Dustbins just like the good old days in his Oddly Visuals company.

Worried at Briggs' overwhelming enthusiasm, Russell decided that his submission – a rework of the OV story The Mutant Phrase – would be moved back in production and the least story in the proposed Dustbin trilogy would be moved to the front. Russell naively assumed that having to slave over other people's Dustbin stories might build up Briggs' moral fibre.

The only reason the Nation Estate had allowed Big Finish to use the Dustbins was A) the price was now thirty human souls per episode and B) while it would start out with the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors defeating the Dustbins, this would simply lead into their own series, Dustbin Umpire. The Dustbins would be in a position of power, of dominance, and other sexual positions stolen from 1970s Dustbin annuals and TV21 comic strips by the cackling Gay Russell and Nick Briggs.

However, there was a general feeling of disappointment when the first draft of Mike Tucker's 7th Doctor Dustbin story, Reconnaissance of the Dustbins, began with them painting themselves purple and singing 'Cunning Plans Are Here To Stay'.

Mike Tucker had been a BBC props man since 1986's Mistrial of a Time Lord, and had shot to international stardom after nearly killing Sylvester McCoy in the explosive final act of The Greatest Blow In The Galaxy. He regularly gets requests to try and repeat the act and succeed, mostly by Gay Russell himself.

The Nation Estate demanded that the story, now dubbed The Rheumatism of the Dustbins, be a 'quintessential' Dustbin story with six speaking parts, an isolated locale, and Dustbins blowing the crap out of everyone in Quentin Tarantino-style gore.

The story was now called Rumble In The Jungle of the Dustbins and was a thinly-veiled copy of Apocalypse Now, with a rogue insane Dustbin prowling the jungles of a planet being hunted by the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice 'Benny' Summerfield in a 'Missing New Adventure'.

Tucker complained that featuring Benny's first Big Finish appearance in the story would water down the impact of the Dustbin appearance, but Russell insisted that both elements should balance out if one or the other turned out to be total crap.

When Tucker sarcastically suggested adding a character called 'Tarrant' to the mix, Russell was unsure whether to cheer of soundly beat the author into a bloody mess. He finally settled on the latter.

Russell found HIMSELF now having to write the story, which he renamed Wet Berks and in a fickle display of insensitivity, promptly removed Bernice from the script and replaced it with Bev Tarrant, a character who had already appeared and done sod all in The Tarrants of Time and Whispers of Error.

Disaster then struck – the Nation Estate demanded that the scripts for Wet Berks be handed over for them for the next two years. This was a few hours before recording was due to begin.

With absolutely no scripts available, Tucker (on life support) handed over a new story he had written while high on horse tranquilizers. The story, The Exercise Videos of Parrot-Shat, had a role for a nameless bunch of ineffectual aliens that could easily be changed to 'Dustbins'.

A few changes were made. Originally the keyboard was to revealed to be a Dustbin agent in the final episode, but ultimately said nothing after the first scene – mainly because said keyboard was voiced by Nick Briggs. Also, the character of Bill Tarrant was changed back to Bev Tarrant simply so some homosexual lust subtext could be added to the scenes between her and Ace.

Recording went ahead more or less all right, (Sylvester McCoy did almost choke to death on a haddock bone, but apart from that...) and some rather blunt foreshadowing to the Sixth Doctor story 'Acropolis' was added.

Suddenly, Nick Briggs had a hissy fit and complained that neither the titles Wet Berks or Acropolis fitted with the 'epic Dustbin sound' of The Mutant Phrase. Wearily, Russell renamed the story The Parrot-Shat Exercise Videos, then The Wet Berks Gambit, The Wet Berks Expellement, The Tripping Death, The Sintelligence Phase, The Sinful Gambit, The Wet Berks Operation, The Wet Exercise Videos and then Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventures With Some Soggy Morons In A Video Store.

Although everyone was quite happy with Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventures With Some Soggy Morons In A Video Store, Briggs insisted that the stories should be renamed The Soggy Phrase and The Acropolis Phrase to fit his stories better.

At this point Bruce Montague (who played the Magician) headbutted Briggs unconscious and they all went home with the story renamed The Jazzercize Machine after a particular brand of exercises to jazz music which will, apparently, change your life.

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