Monday, November 2, 2009

7th Doctor - The Harvest

Serial 7W - The Cyb Fest (or 21st Century Digital Boy)
The Cyb Fest (or 21st Century Digital Boy)
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Indian Wrestling

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7W - The Cyb Fest (or 21st Century Digital Boy)


"It’s like, you know, one minute you’re living your life, day in, day out, and you never really expect it to change that much. But then there’s this dude, he’s called the Doctor. He’s, well, he’s totally bodacious. He turns up and then he turns your whole life upside down. And then, off he goes. And you have to make this choice - do I stay here knowing there’s all that out there, or do I step through those doors of that old blue police box? Darling, you gotta let me know – SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO! IF YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE MINE, I’LL BE HERE TIL THE END OF TIME, SO YOU GOT TO LET ME KNOW – SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO! Sorry, kinda drifted off there... But, get this: could be dangerous! Definitely terrifying! But not, repeat NOT dull! If I go, there will be trouble AND IF I STAY IT WILL BE DOUBLE! SO COME ON... oops. Did it again. Sorry. So, do I go with him? Do I leave my whole life behind and go and see the stars? What do you think? COWABUNGA!"



The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Ace to the WikiBox the Open Encyclopedia That Anyone Can [Responsibly] Edit, the official font of all knowledge in the universe. The Doctor reveals to Ace that all his creepy mastermind act is down to the WikiBox, as he reads spoilers about their upcoming adventures in order to give the impression he is not fazed in the remotest by what they encounter.

One of the malformed, pale, long-haired creatures named 'Ian' wanders up to the Doctor with all the spoilers for his upcoming season.

"The TimWorm Saga!" the Doctor reads with mounting horror. "Apparently we go on a hunt for a two-inch long worm from Gilgamesh’s city of Urrk to World War II to the lush paradise planet of Kirith at the end of the universe and then inside my own mind! How embarrassing! And these titles – Jenny’s Sis, Electric Boogaloo, Apocalypso, St Paul’s Letters To The Conrinthians II... what rot!"

"Do we really have to do this, Professor?" asks Ace doubtfully.

"We have no choice, Ace. Time will not be tricked! And neither will the page on Professor Bernice Summerfield! WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?!"

Suddenly, there is a brilliant clap of thunder and a young, long-haired man in a frock coat appears in a flash of lightning. "I am Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass! And time itself shall succumb to the power of retroactive continuity! The New Adventures Canon is hereby REVOKED!!!"

As the Doctor, Ace and Ian watch, the cackling elemental sprints over to a terminal, logs in and very IRRESPONSIBLY edits the pages and in a matter of moments, their entire destiny is revised!

"Yes, well, it does pay to have friends in high places," the Doctor muses as the print out in his hands changes from one of unremitting angst and continuity to slightly different unremitting angst and lots of arty-farty experimental audio stories.

"Did you plan for this to happen?" Ace accuses him.

"No, but I’ll lie about it after."

"What do we do now?"

"All has been unwritten and the universe shall attend to itself!" Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass booms. "Now, I must away to piss about further with accepted order of reality! Yippee-aye-ay-hay-basra-makar! Yippee-aye-oh-whoah-basra-makar! I AM THE COSMIC COWBOY OF DOOOM!!"

The elemental being vanishes and the Doctor and Ace return to the TARDIS to set off for Albion Hospital on October 21, 2021. As the time machine fades away, Ian sighs and decides to log onto some porn sites and take his mind off things...


Part One

Thomas Hector Scofield, known to his friends and the Narcotics Squad as Hex, arrives at Albion Hospital in Brookside to start his 24 hours of birthday celebration, but unfortunately is still slightly high from mushrooms and mistakenly assumes he is a staff nurse.

Nigel Verkoff, a junior attending A&E doctor who took up nursing in a desperate attempt to sate his sexual appetite for hot nurses, is too busy injecting his groin with anaesthetic to regain control of himself for another working day to notice some stoner is claiming to be a nurse... at least until Hex invites every single female staff member to his birthday party at the White Rabbit.

Nigel notes the pub has gone downhill since its official owner, Ms Van Gysegham, was slaughtered in Baltimore 1984 in a curious incident involving Cybermen rising from the grave – then realizes everyone is staring at him and he tries to laugh it off. When that fails, Nigel hurls abuse at a passing janitor with a Scottish accent and question-mark umbrella to "fix the damn coffee machine or die screaming with sharp things in your head!"

The day then kicks into high gear with the arrival of a quantity surveyor called Eric who was involved in a Chaser-style-stunt gone horribly wrong: his skull is fractured, he’s already suffered cardiac arrest – and worse, he was a friend of Hex! Nigel dryly comments that the poor sod didn’t suffer enough after having his mother transformed into a computer simulation after an office party in Brisbane 2006... and then laughs awkwardly and changes the subject.

Dr Steve "Saddle Man" Farrer arrives with his rent-a-goons and drag off the dying man as he laughs evilly. Hex waves at them distantly, before helping himself to the oxygen on supply in the operating room.

Farrer heads to the top floor of the hospital, marked with a whacking great "C" logo, to meet his special patient, Si Berleader, who is watching Trisha on TV and starting to understand the incredible relationship issues human beings have – which suggests his repeated operations are successful. Executive Security Officer David Garnish arrives and tells him that they need more corpses to strip of flesh to keep Si Berleader alive and allow the "C-cret Operation" to continue. Si Berleader tells them to keep the noise does as he watches TV.

Hex stumbles into a toilet that turns out to be the ladies’ – and there he meets a young who introduces herself as "just Ace" as she vandalizes the facilities. Hex invites her to his birthday party, promising that Nigel Verkoff won’t be allowed to attended and, after hearing this, Ace is up for it.

Hex tries to find the gents and ends up on the 31st floor and find Farrer dismembering Eric’s corpse with a hacksaw. Farrer coldly informs Hex that Eric died on the operating table and he’s convinced the next of kin wouldn’t complain about nicking a few body parts. Hex invites Farrer to his birthday party and politely falls down some stairs.

That night, Nigel Verkoff attends Hex’s birthday party, and no one is in the mood to celebrate with him and so everyone else leaves early. Ace idly asks Hex if they want to do something fun like break into the nano-surgery divisions to find out what the "C-cret Operation" is for, when suddenly one of the other people Hex invited, an inhumanly large figure in a trenchcoat with curious metal handlebars growing out of his head called Polka, shouts "You know too much! ERADICATE!"

Unfortunately at that moment, Polka is run over by a Mercedes which promptly Mercedes stops, reverses, and tries to run over Polka as he screams, "Not ME, you idiots! THEM!"

By that time, Ace has invited Hex back to her place, 76 Tossers Lane. She explains that all the residential flats in the area have been torn down and replaced with a whacking great parking lot, but since 76 Tossers Lane was a scrapyard owned by enigmatic porn merchant I.M. Pervert, it’s if anything improved since she moved out in 1963.

"Dudette, I haven’t the faintest idea what the hell you’re talking about," Hex drawls as they head there on his scooter, "but holy guacamole you smell good! Put the pedal to the metal!"

Arriving at the car park space number 76, which is occupied by a weird blue box like a portable toilet, Ace gently but firmly advises Hex not to think too hard about what he'll see tonight. Ace reluctantly opens the door and lets him in - and Hex gapes at what he's seeing inside: the "janitor" from the hospital!

Ace is put out he didn’t notice the gleaming polished metal walls, hexagonal control desk, massive viewing screen and ornamental chess set, and Hex mutters that he noticed that. After the chemicals he’d taken today, he’d be more surprised if the blue box was SMALLER on the inside, and is taken aback that the janitor is in his hallucination!

"Milfy," Hex marvels.


Part Two

Annoyed at Hex’s complete and utter lack of trouble coping with a multidimensional alien time machine the Doctor demands he freak out a little at least. Ace insists that she is just going to use Hex for a bit of casual sex and maybe a human shield when they storm the top floor of Albion Hospital.

The Doctor thus explains that he and Ace are investigating the experiments being conducted in "C-cret Operation"; they have reason to believe that the European government has acquired technology of extra-terrestrial origins and is attempting to reverse-engineer it to gain an advantage in the space race.

"How?" asks Hex, baffled.

"Wikipedia," the Doctor replies darkly.

Back at Albion Hospital, Farrer has successfully stabilized Sybil Ootenunt with a number of adult DVDs involving bull elephant seals and a perpetually looped single of Elvis Costello’s "Pump it Up!"

Garnish arrives and reveals he has checked and rechecked Ace Just Ace’s employment record and can prove it is fabricated. Farrer is horrified: does Garnish have ANY kind of social life whatsoever?

Polka arrives explaining that his attempts to capture Ace and Hex didn’t entirely work out. In fact, they didn’t work out at all. In fact, it was a miserable failure that casts doubt on the "C-cret Operation’s" effectiveness to stop passing stoners from escaping on a moped whose top speed is six miles an hour.

The next morning, Hex accompanies the Doctor and Ace to the hospital, not quite fueled with Dutch Courage but Bolivian Nose Candy and refuses to back out for few of all the lizards and bats that are following them. Hex now considers himself to be a boiled egg on stilts.

The Doctor thus hands him and Ace a pair of earphones, micro-voice transceivers which will enable all three to stay in contact. He explains he picked up this Cyber technology from a visit to 1984 Baltimore, which seems amusingly appropriate. "Put Another Shrimp On The Barby!" Hex says, for absolutely no reason at all.

The Doctor is able to use his telepathic brain to hack into the hospital computer system Sis since he was there at the time Touchwood Four created it by murdering a temping secretary. He COULD use his sonic screwdriver, but this way is much more confusing and set up lots of reference to a sequel. Or rather The Sequel.

Nigel Verkoff arrives demanding to know what kind of sick orgy of the damned Hex got up to with all the birds that were conspicuously absent from the pub last night. Hex winks ostentatiously for a while, until Nigel assumes that Hex is having a stroke or something. Ace informs him in no uncertain terms that Nigel Verkoff is hungover and an idiot.

"You’re just DYING to kiss me," Nigel replies in his best, worst, and in truth ONLY David Tennant impersonation.

At that point, the Doctor contacts them – it seems he’s not so shithot at this mental hacking business, so they can’t go straight to floor 31. Instead of killing Nigel Verkoff, they get him to take them to level 30 and then creep up to the next floor via the Anderson tubes.

Not realizing just how close he was to having his scrotum shot off with a Terileptil hunting knife, Nigel is easily tricked into taking them to the morgue by claiming that Ace has the gift to speak to the dead, rewind the day and then stop them from dying.

"Wow! Just like Dark Angel!" Nigel marvels.

"Don’t you mean Tru Calling?" Ace asks.

"Whatever."

Visiting the morgue, Hex discovers that the body of Eric is now missing and all the signs were it was never there! Putting this down the dodgy acid he had yesterday, he follows Ace to the huge armored door with the "C" Logo and the curious stencil suggesting it is a toilet for cybernetically-augmented humans.

In the canteen, the Doctor is munching on a donut when Ace and Hex congratulate him on being able to open the hatchway. Since he had sweet FA to do with it, the Doctor suggests this might be a trap.

Hex giggles and insists that the chances of this are astronomical as the hatch opens completely to reveal a waiting squadron of strange bipedal creatures. Part organic and part artificial, their mask-like faces with stenciled Zampata moustaches, one arm with a orgasmatron-like contraption instead of a hand, semi-mechanical beings with glowing liquid silver codpieces, tight fetishist bondage gear, platform shoes and ridiculous matador-like shoulder pads.

"CYBERMEN!!" exclaims Ace for the benefit of the listeners.

"Oh, great, just typical!" Nigel sighs. "Is there anywhere I can go on vacation and NOT be attacked by these metal bastards and their iron wills! I couldn’t even graduate without their iron bloody wills trying to dominate humanity..."

It is then he notices Ace and Hex have run away.

"Shit," he mutters.


Part Three

After a long and formulaic chase sequence, the Cybermen capture Nigel and Ace, while Hex gets the munchies and heads downstairs to the canteen. When the Doctor points out he fled and left Ace to the inhuman xeno-consumptive mercies of the Cybermen, Hex gets the fear something chronic and has to be calmed down.

Garnish and his rent-a-goons arrive at the canteen to get a cappuccino, and spot Hex and the Doctor discussing how they are going to defeat this brand new generation of Cybermen. As the rent-a-goons close in on them, the Doctor is able to set off a harmless but very loud explosion using chemicals from the salt and pepper shakes... and some nitro-9. In the confusion, the Doctor and Hex get onto the scooter and escape at walking pace, leaving the rent-a-goons helpless.

On the way, the Doctor gives Hex a run-down of the Cybermen's history, explaining how the people of Monday, with the basest of intentions, transformed themselves into implacable, conscienceless shagging machines. It's a tragic story which Hex initially assumes to be a rather steam-punk Bhuddist parable, and one the Doctor is determined to prevent from unfolding again since it was already perfectly well told in Mark Plate’s "Bare Parts".

Hex points out the hospital will probably increase security and stuff like that, so they’ll need a Magic Carpet to head up to the 31st floor to find Ace and complete the plot as laid down in the wikipedia entry.

The Doctor laughs at the incredibly stupid, impractical and ridiculous idea of a flying rug as transport, suggesting they use the battered phone box in the Tossers' Lane car park which is really a weird machine can travel anywhere in time and space. The Doctor warns that specific jumps in the TARDIS are extremely difficult to manage, and if the Doctor misses the target slightly, they will materialize either inside a wall or outside the hospital, 31 floors up.

"Far out!" Hex marvels. "Who built this thing, adrenaline junkies? Regardo, what are we waiting for! FIRE UP THE CRYSTALS, CARDINAL!"

"What in the name of God’s Arse are you on about?" the Doctor asks, baffled, before realizing Hex has taken some ecstasy and is working on a completely different plane of reality. Giving the stoner his panama hat to examine intensely, the Doctor sets the TARDIS in motion.

A mere two hundred and fifty two attempts later, the TARDIS reappears inside the 31st floor of Albion Hospital. The windows are blacked out and patrolled by the crude and kinky Cybermen, leading to much walking a few steps, ducking under cover, waiting until it’s clear and then doing the whole damn thing over and over again. While why they carry out this tedious practice, we cut back to:

Human-made Cyberman Polka marches Ace and the increasingly bored and irritated Nigel Verkoff through a laboratory in which human bodies are being harvested for organs and tissue. However, Nigel has seen it all before – Brookside, Brisbane, Baltimore, Brigadoon... and after all the Cyber invasions and the fact every street corner has at least ONE Cyber Cafe, you’d have to be a complete moron with the intellectual capacity of a dead slug not to know all about them.

"So why do YOU know all about them?" asks Ace.

"Shut your face, you slag mole bitch," Nigel replies calmly.

Garnish arrives and explains that the "C-cret Operation" has been created by the Euro Combine Harvester, a radical and sexually frustrated offshoot of the United Nations who have broken away from mainstream authority.

"We wish to improve ourselves!" Garnish rants, eyes wide, sweating profusely as his voice rises and falls in a strangely suggestive rhythm. "We will add the Cybermen’s biological and technological distinctiveness to our own! Their culture will adapt to service ours!" he thunders. "Freedom is irrelevant! Self-determination is irrelevant! Foreplay is irrelevant! And to facilitate our introduction into the Cyberman’s societies, it has been decided that the Cybermen will become LIKE US! Their steel must become our flesh! Our organ banks must remain fully stocked – and YOU have been chosen to donate those organs!"

"Oh, for fuck’s sake, not ANOTHER loony using xeno-tech to further their own Nazi ideology," Nigel groans.

Back to the Doctor and Hex, who have nearly been caught three times due to Hex’s curious compulsion to chant the phrase "Put Another Shrimp On The Barby!" at inopportune moments. They nevertheless find their way into what appears to be a showroom for mass-produced Cyber parts: Overlarge Blank Masks, Iron Wills, Too-Tight Bondage Armbands, Forehead Machine Guns, Studded Calipers, Orgasmatronic Bazookoid Blasters and a catwalk for "models sporting the latest in cybernetic astronaut bondage gear surviving in the depths of space or a Soho brothel with little or no life support".

However, at that moment a prototype Cyberman in a padded leather wetsuit with the buttocks removed lurches onto the catwalk and the Doctor and Hex panic and run in different directions.

Elsewhere, Ace demands to know why Nigel seems even MORE knowledgeable about this adventure than she is when SHE read the wikipage for spoilers. But before Nigel can answer, Nicholas Parsons enters the room, having become part of the "C-cret C-Programme", with the C standing for Celebrity! Seen in profile, he looks normal but he has been turned into a Cyberman! Half his smug face is gone, replaced with machinery but the rest is as hideous and patronizing as ever!

"All of our strengths and none of our weaknesses!" Garnish roars as the prisoners are herded into a gore-spattered Cyber-conversion hive which amazingly Nigel recognizes from the last time he tangled with these silver shits, but this time has been programmed to cut up the living prisoners and harvest their organs!

"Resistance is futile," bellows Parsons with speaks with a single but metallic Cyber voice. "Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will sexually service... us!"

"WHY does this shit keep happening to me?!" Nigel wails unhappily.


Part Four

At the last minute, Hex runs from the shadows screaming "HERE COME THE LOBSTERS!!" only for Parsons grabs Hex and begins to fondle him. Hex responds by giving the cyborg a kiss – a LIVERPOOL kiss, which detaches the head from the shoulders and sends it across the room.

"Gnarly," Hex observes. "Normally, I’m the passive one in gay cyber rape... must be those drug cocktails I took last night. Shoulda known Eddie wouldn’t have gone for Vraxoin and chasers."

After shouting abuse at him, Hex remembers Ace and Nigel and frees them. Nigel immediately kicks the headless corpse of Nicholas Parsons to a bloody pulp. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

The Doctor ducks into a private ward and discovers the patient Si Berleader is, in fact, a CyberLeader! WOW! What’s more, the Doctor has met this particular CyberLeader before in his previous incarnation, where he and the Sixth Doctor stole the Bastard’s TARDIS, only for the CyberLeader to leave without checking the scanner and plunge to his supposed death of Mount Everest.

Before we can further understand how this demented back story is in any way relevant, Garnish and Polka arrive and capture him. Garnish assumes the Doctor is just the janitor and tells him to piss off, totally ignoring the CyberLeader’s protests that this the Doctor, ancient enemy of the Cybermen, an alien Time Lord with the technical knowledge and skills to complete the "C-cret Operation".

"You’re talking nonsense," Garnish sneers. "He’s Scottish!"

Garnish is far too busy using the new type of Cybermen to transform the people of Earth into the ultimate porn star race while simultaneously furthering his bureaucratic ambitions. The Doctor is unable to keep a straight face and collapses in screams of laughter as Garnish starts to rant again:

"I was like you once, without sexual satisfaction, but through the Cybermen we will find the G-spot! The Cybermen are utterly without repression, driven by one will alone: the will to fornicate! They are beyond relationships and beyond conversation! Have you ever felt a real orgasm?! CAUSE I HAVEN’T! The reign of biological love-making is coming to an end! Squelchiness and bodily fluids are obsolete!! PORNOGRAPHY AS YOU KNOW IT IS OVER!!!"

Eventually Garnish outlines the plot as already explained: Garnish has decided to use the CyberLeader’s technology to create a new species, half human, half Cyberman, a kind of Borg-rip-off with nifty handlebars. So not only are cyber implants being added to human, flesh transplants are added to the CyberLeader! And rather disturbingly, the CyberLeader is enjoying it! On a living, vital planet on Earth, the former Cybermen have a chance to live ordinary organic sex lives once more. The Doctor is astonished to find himself believing the former CyberLeader’s claim that he wishes to rediscover the benefits of an organic life rather than an existence as cold, calculating machines – astonished because he’s read the wikipedia entry and KNOWS the CyberLeader is a lying son of a bitch.

And on cue, the Cyber army decide they’re sick of standing around when there is warm flesh to violate, and fan out through the Hospital, sexually dominating every unconverted human they encounter, including Farrer who admits he was always kind of curious to find out what it was like. The answer is "fatal".

Hex, Ace and Nigel run up and down corridors to escape from the mincing metal men who want to play "run the gauntlet" – but Nigel has got so used to fighting half-finished Cyber-plated killing machines and there’s a special EMP weapon in his other trousers. He nicked it from the Touchwood Four office, since it links into the hospital’s "Sis" computer network and destroys all monsters.

The Cyber-humans turn on Garnier, and he loses his life and his virginity in the process. The Doctor is deeply relieved that the CyberLeader really WAS a double-dealing two-faced manipulative arsehole, but things are worse: the wiki-entry has been edited for unnecessary clutter, and the new that the CyberLeader intends to shag the human race into submission in this unholy Cyber-Borg-style new life form which will devastate the entire universe like a race of unstoppable, perverted locusts!

Just then Nigel uses his doomsday weapon with the password "Cyb-fest!" and all the New Cybermen drop dead with their arms and legs sticking up in the air as their iron wills drop off.

The Doctor and the CyberLeader stand around awkwardly as Polka collapses. After wondering what they’ll do now, the Doctor realizes the wiki-entry doesn’t mention that either, and storms off to complain. The CyberLeader tries to follow, but falls out of bed and breaks his neck.

The Doctor meets up with Ace and Hex as Nigel shouts, "Oh, freaking typical! What the hell did I ever do to you?! Apart from that nasty business with Mel? And Peri? And Charley? And Turlough? And Rose? And Captain Jack? Actually, let’s just call it quits, huh?" before running off in the opposite direction very quickly.

"Do you have ANY idea what all this is about?" Hex asks Ace.

"Not a clue."

"Bummer," Hex muses and then asks, "Can I come with you two freaks? I was considering a change of career, but then I remembered I don’t actually work here. But, you know, time and space travel, fighting sexually frustrated monsters... I AM SO STOKED!

"Do you know what you’re getting into?" the Doctor demands.

"Not even slightly!" Hex giggles.

Ace points out that according to wikipedia that they are scheduled to visit Stonehenge, fight the Metatraxi, Ace to set up an Anarchist Society on Gallifrey, the Doctor to team up with a posh bint called Kate Tollinger, then dying, straightjacketed in a confinement cell.

The Doctor looks at Hex, then at the wikipedia print outs, then tears them up. "Screw destiny," he mutters and throws the tatters to the floor. "Let’s do our OWN thing from now on!"


Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who & The Wikipedia Wankfest
Doctor Who Visits Ward 13
DVD Box Set: The Rip-off, The Sequel & The Cyb-Fest


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed a bit working class in this story.
"Implacable in bed! Impossible to argue with! And those handles come in damn handy to hold their heads at just the right angle..."


Goofs -
There are plenty of problems with this, a story that is a sequel to an unmade, unwritten, unknown story which is in turn a sequel to a completely different unmade, unwritten, unknown story and made have died from Terminal Incredulity trying to understand them. Thus, I will simply note the one thing about this that bugs me:

Seriously, what is up with Nigel? Is he immortal or something?


Fashion Victims -
The CyberLeader on Nigel Verkoff: "It would be curious if the thing that came into this room was afraid of me. It was far, far more terrifying. I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a fashion crime in this way before. What idiot wears T-shirts like that in public, anyway?"


Technobabble -
Lots. Can I leave it at that? Please? Please? Please don’t make me listen again to that Cyber-talk and write it all down! Please! PLEASE HAVE MERCY!


Links and References -
Hex was first hinted at as a companion in 'It Just Doesn’t Matter!' when the Valeyard snaps, "So many freeloading scumbags! Peri the VJ, Evelyn the pensioner, Ace the psychopath, Charley the nymphomaniac, C’Rizz the beatnik poet, and that worthless stoner Hex!"

At the end of this story, Nigel Verkoff vows to never again caught up in crazy Cybermen madness, and puts in a job transfer to the B-Ark Space Wheel station. If you’re enough of a hardcore anorak, you will know this means Verkoff is one of the poor suckers who the Cybermen attempt to 'effectively penetrate' in the Second Doctor story "The Sheep in Spandex" (Serial SS). Though, perhaps for the best, all the episodes that might possibly have featured him were destroyed long ago.


Untelevised Misadventures -
Amazingly enough, every second line of The Cyb-Fest referred to adventures never seen or heard by anyone until, over two years later, the company decided to piss off RTD big time.


Groovy DVD Extras -
David Banks reads "Illegal Alien" by Mike Tucker backwards in Romanian while levitating and rotating his head 360 degrees.


Dialogue Disasters -

CyberLeader: Beware the Judderman, my dear, when the moon is fat. Sharp of tongue and spindle limbed he is, and cunning. With sweetened talk of schnapps and Metz and the deliciousness of Judders - but schnapps, though sweet, has teeth my dear. And sharpened ones at that. Beware the Judderman, my dear, when the moon is fat.
Ace: Um, okay...


Doctor: Remember, it’s answers we want. Not heroics or relentless chases up and down hospital corridors. But we’ll probably just get relentless chases up and down hospital corridors. Life is so unfair.


Ferrer: Ah yes, the flesh is weak, isn't it?
Garnish: Now I have known the TRUE meaning of sexual ecstasy, I'm not sure it will can go back down.
Farrer: It's always harder when it gets personal.
Garnish: That’s certainly true.


Hex: Oh my god! This place is bigger on the inside than the outside!
Ace: No it isn’t! You’re hallucinating, you drug addict. It’s not bigger on the inside, it’s compact and bijou!
Hex: You appear to live in something the size of a public toilet, that's actually bigger than my gran's house on the inside.
Doctor: He's no help to us if his mind can't deal with the concepts.
Hex: It's been a terrible day and a mad night and I’ve been sporting Ajax, but I think I'm doing very well so far thank you very much you giant chicken-shaped janitor!


Dialogue Triumphs -

David Banks’ superlative performance as the CyberLeader:
"I am eager to walk down there in the sun, to walk along the riverside, to shove bamboo shoots up the anus of my love slave as they wear latex masks and eagerly rub against my thigh. It pleases me to feel that eagerness."


Nigel: Oh, for the love of Leyton Hewitt! What the hell are you doing here? Please don’t tell me it’s something so tedious as investigating Albion because you believe that someone here is conducting potentially dangerous experiments with xenotech?! Can you lot do ANYTHING except this Cyber-industrial-espionage Edge of Darkness shite?! What do you think Touchwood is for, huh?


CyberLeader: We have wearied of our cold existence. The organic state possesses nuances of thought and behavior... The ability to regard an issue with more than just the binary yes/no of pure logic. And the nipples are bigger, have you ever noticed that? Cyber-kind has overcome its one fundamental weakness: the rigidity of its marital aides!


Ace: On the list of things in this universe that are ever going to get a chance to shag me, Nigel Verkoff is a long way down.


CyberLeader: I... am... experiencing... pain and fear... You must help us... you must help me!
Doctor: Forgive me, Mister CyberLeader, but I know now that you're capable of bullshitting me.
CyberLeader: No... seriously! It’s getting... darker... please!
Doctor: I’ve heard it all before!
CyberLeader: I... am... dying!
Doctor: Of course you are. I’ll just pop out for a bit.


Garnish: We will be the ultimate user, the ultimate abuser! We have no interest in political conquest or wealth or power as you know it. We simply want you for sex, your libidos are something we can consume and use. We can outrun the Cybermen. We can destroy the Cybermen. They will weaken, their reserves will be run down until they are helpless and then they will be ours! Because WE are relentless in the sack!
Ace: Whatever you like to think, they're the ones calling the shots during intercourse.
Garnish: I have analyzed the defensive capabilities of the Cybermen as being unable to withstand our loving. If they defend themselves, they will be flogged and punished! Not just the Cybermen BUT ALL OF YOU!
Doctor: No. I don't shag petty bureaucrats!
CyberLeader: Nor do I. Basic seduction seems to be an imprecise art on this world.


UnQuotable Quote -

Hex: Bloody nutter!


Viewer Quotes -

"What a babe the luscious Philip Oliver is. That accent is divine! He’s gorgeous isn’t he? The first totally desirable male companion we have ever been blessed with... and we are limited to hearing just his voice. Oh gee thanks for that. What a kick in the teeth." - RTD (2004)


"The Seventh Doctor and Ace are about as popular as syphilis with all the usual complaints thrown in. Honestly I think you could wedge a sentient mouldy carrot between these two and introduce it as the new companion and it would improve the reputation of this pair. People were crying out for more Evelyn stories after Project: Enigma left them hanging for a year but everyone was quite happy to forget about Ace after The Rupture. Why? COLIN BLOODY BAKER, THAT’S WHY!"
- Joe Ford Prefect (2004)


"Why the hell did Big Finish need to give us another companion with a stupid three-letter nickname when "Tom" would have been perfectly adequate." - Catherine "Cat" Broome (2777)


"He does what he wants to do
Says what he wants to say
Live how he wants to live
Plays what he wants to play
Dance how he wants to dance
Lies and shags your best friend
NIGELLA JAY VERKOFF!"
- rejected proposal for the new Australian National Anthem (1995)


"David Banks in Big Finish! AWESOME! Banksy, you rule! That’ll teach those Welsh bastards to stick with Nick Briggs to do their monster voices! This is excellent news!" - Jared "No Nickname" Hansen (2006)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"This story proves what I’ve always said. What’s the point of scientific progress if nobody gets hurt?"


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"I remember when they broke the news of the new companion to me. I was at a convention in Los Angeles, tired and emotional. As a newt. They often tell me stuff when I’m off my face, so they don’t have to deal with the agonized screams like last time, when they told me Bonnie was coming back. Christ, I didn’t sleep for a week. Anyway, Philip’s a good choice, he’s got energy and he doesn’t know anything about Doctor Who. He’s extraordinary NORMAL to be stuck in a hellhole like this. No, having Hex is like a new colour on a palette, and it’s a really good colour from what he’s done. A very distinctive colour. A sort of... dunduckerty grey. With black spots. That’s Phil in a nutshell."


Sophie Aldred Speaks!
"Me and Sylv have been together for over sixty episodes on TV and audio and I often think to myself, 'Gosh, what would it be like if there was a new companion?' Not Benny, of course, we can’t stand the bitch, but someone halfway interesting. Russell told me we were going to get a new companion before Christmas, but I never listen to what he says, and kept thinking it was all hypothetical. I thought, 'I’m bound to be really jealous!' But, in fact, it’s really nice. It’s great to have a new injection of blood, and a Scouser to boot. Yes, I like Scousers. I married one. And now there’s the chance of a full on Scouser threesome! HOT DAWG!"


Philip Olivier Speaks!
"I’ve never done any audio work – maybe a dub now and again, but that’s only a couple of words. This is hardcore. Of course, I know next to nothing about Doctor Who, cause I grew up in South Africa where Merseyside accents aren’t just accepted they’re positively encouraged. Luckily this script explains a lot like what the TARDIS is, how it works, and actually the title. I never knew why it was called Doctor Who, when surely it should be Hot Topless Teenagers In Time and Space? Sophie and Sylvester have warned me about all the fans and conventions and autograph requests, but I’ve had my fair share of practical jokes played on me. I’m not falling for it this time!"


Trivia -
The Cyb-Fest joined The Axis of Banality, Engagements That Bore, The Spoof of the World and Medicinal Porpoises in the "pointlessly using sunset horizons on the cover" trilogy in five parts.


Rumors & Facts -
Like the inbred offspring of a teenage mum shagging her own father in spitting distance of radioactive waste, the Seventh Doctor audios are a funny breed. Whilst all the other three audio Doctors have found their niches being brutally ruined by new companions, the Seventh stumbles from one team to the next without some violently-inserted audience identification figure randomly added to the established, regular team of performers who had not so much 'failed to receive the plaudits that the others had', more sort of 'cornered the market in death threats from irate fans'.

Executive Producer Gay Russell was growing increasing paranoid as every day passed. Not only was his unending war with Nicholas Briggs for absolute control of Big Finish taking its toll, but the company itself was losing more and more credibility as Russell T Davies’ New Improved Doctor Who ground into production. People were far too busy speculating on how many seasons the new guy Christopher Eccleston would appear in, or if the Ninth Doctor Book series could be in any way more patronizing and tedious than the latest output by Justin Richards, to care about the development of a second-rate CD label like Big Finish.

Worse, the recent blockbuster extravaganza Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass and the "strand the Eighth Doctor in a universe without any humans, Dustbins, Cybermen or anything interesting like that" arc had actively LOST them subscribers! Their decision to get new writers into the series had done absolutely sweet FA. And, after their complete and utter and total failure to grab the teen market with the romantic dribble of Engagements That Bore, the outlook was increasingly bleak.

The next story to be done was for the Seventh Doctor and Ace and, despite the best efforts of Steve "Huh?" Lyons and Dave "Cracker Rocks!" Lister, they were still the same grating double act from the TV show, comic strip, New Adventures, BBC Books and BBVs. It was decided that it was time to forge their OWN Seventh Doctor and Ace continuity, separate from all others, thanks to their plot McGuffin of Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass who had already given the Fifth Doctor a fresh lease on life.

Thus, Russell decided that a new companion would be created, to completely screw things up in the exact same way Eminem had with the Fifth Doctor and Peri, or C’Rizz had with the Eighth Doctor and Charley. Totally at random, he decided the new companion would have a completely stupid and pointless secret in their past which would surface in their very first story and not change a damn thing, and decided the best bet was Tommy Schofeild, the little boy of Cassie the Vampire from the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn’s Project Nightlight. Tommy would be renamed "Hex" so as to be the mysterious extra companion the Seventh Doctor mentioned in the TV movie while high on LSD.

Even further on the road to insanity, Russell compiled a list of bit and hot young men he fancied who he had already given "incredibly appropriate parts" in previous BF stories. It was then he was watching Brookside that he realized that Tinhead the Mersey scally that got Russell horny and immediately signed up Philip Olivier without giving him any notice or warning whatsoever. This action actually lead to the long-running soap opera ending since Russell’s hired goons had not been sure which Northern young actor was the one they wanted and thus kidnapped the entire cast.

Since Tommy was a small boy at the end of the twentieth century, the story that introduced him fully grown as Hex would have to be set in the twenty-first century where he could bump into the long-established team of the Seventh Doctor and Ace and shake up their cosy world to the core and shatter all established preconceptions somewhat.

Chosen to be the author of this tale of butch, macho dialogue, tough military types often with questionable ethics was Dan Abnett, comic strip writer who had penned stories for the same Doctor and Companion team for Doctor Who Magazine WAY back when they were on TV. Hopefully getting a DWM comic writer to pen an audio might not turn out to be the unmitigated disaster of The Axis of Banality.

It was at the start of recording Russell had yet another brainwave: a new trilogy of stories based on The Cyb-Fest with similar covers, plot-descriptive The Something titles, and the theme of Cyber-technology being misused by incredibly stupid and dodgy individuals with cameo appearances by Nigel Verkoff, set in distinctive towns whose names begin with the letter B. This "Rogue Cybermen Tech Companion Angst" trilogy would continue with the Sixth and Fifth Doctors and win Big Finish even MORE critical acclaim and achievement.

However, Jason Haigh-Ellory grimly pointed out that such things had been tried before and basically the public were sick of being told "buy the whole set you weirdoes" and if there was something that would put them off, it would be this. Tom Baker, who just happened to be passing, suggested that The Cyb-Fest would not be the first part of the trilogy, but the FINAL part of it, resolving the major plot development from the two unmade stories. Thus, the public would demand for the remainder while still be palmed off with other, unrelated stories in the meantime.

Russell stole the idea for his own, not realizing Baker had used it in the now-legendary-and-mythic Season 13D, a chunk of Doctor Who that nearly killed the show, a season completely forgotten by Western Civilization and never repeated anywhere – what’s more, the plan didn’t work and Seasons 13B and 13C were never produced.

Originally the next part of the trilogy was The Western (or The Ace of Spades! The Ace of Spades!) involving an outback American town peddling the Cybermen as kinky cowpokes. This story was deemed as too disturbing for the production team and the sick and twisted individual writing it was taken into custody by some strange people dressed in koalas, and the whole idea of the trilogy began to go off the boil.

Unsurprisingly, no one was really prepared to pen the previous parts of the trilogy, especially not Dan Abnett, and the plan was put on the back burner and soon forgotten entirely. The future of Doctor Who rapidly enclosed on the present, and by the time the trilogy was finished, it was well into the second year of the Tenth Doctor and no one realized they were connected to The Cyb-Fest in any way whatsoever.

In the here and now, it seemed that the back story of The Cyb-Fest had "turned the audience’s brains to melted apple", with six million people giving up on the CDs altogether, a record for Big Finish. It looked as though all had collapsed as RTD announced the new companion would be some blonde pop tart called Billie Piper.

With this revelation seemingly pointing to the death of Doctor Who once and for all, the fans flocked back to Big Finish as it lurked in the unknown depths of the popularity cellar, wondering if releasing blank CDs would bring in more customers.

Once again, sheer blind hatred for anything new in the series had saved Big Finish Production’s sorry ass.

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