Wednesday, November 4, 2009

7th Doctor - Return of the Daleks

Serial DU02A – Dustbin Umpire: Hellbound to Fargo!
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Icemining

D O C T O R W H O

Serial DUCD02A – Dustbin Umpire: Hellbound to Fargo! -


The newly-regenerated Doctor and Kate Tollinger have just defeated a ruthless estate-agent-cum-fascist-dictator known as Riley the Xenophobe, and head back to the TARDIS. The Doctor speaks wistfully of a verdant, lush paradise planet called Zaleria which a haven of art, culture, peace and prosperity.

"Of course, there was that incident some time in the forty-second century when the mighty Dustbin Umpire swept across the Milky Way and decimated humanity," the Doctor admits, "but the chances of us arriving during that particular occupation are exceedingly remote."

The TARDIS arrives in the jungles of Zaleria in the forty-second century, but the Doctor insists to Kate that they still have a fifty-fifty chance they’ve arrived before the great Dustbin occupation of the planet, and can get on with some hardcore relaxation and pie-eating.

Just then, the distinctive sight of a Dustbin spaceship hurtles past them to land in the middle of the nearby city, rather cruelly crushing the main ziggurat of Zaleria and triggering mass panic.

The leader of the primitive Zalerians, Deadwood, rushes up to the airlock and the curly-haired, leather clad rebel commander Roj Blake emerges and struts his way out of the ship.

At first it appears that the great Blake has arrived to save them from a totalitarian regime of slavery and death, but Blake laughs awkwardly and rubs his neck. He explains that while he still wages war against the corrupt Administration of the Terran Federation, he now is a major part of the Dustbin Umpire’s shockingly under-funded Public Relations department.

Together with Susan "Suz" Mendes, a Southern Baptist preacher who the Dustbins have hired to give their slave workers evangelical zeal and make them mine out planetary cores that much quicker, Blake has been sent to Zaleria to convince the natives not to start pesky resistance movements and allow the Dustbins to get on with their work with the minimum of fuss.

"But I haven’t sold out or anything," Blake assures Deadwood.

Zaleria is now officially owned by the Dustbin Research and Development of Dungeons and Destruction Department ("R&D by day, D&D by night," as Blake enthuses) and unless the civil administration want to be reduced to porridge by Special Weapon Dustbins, they better get used to the idea and keep the streets tidy.

As the Doctor and Kate watch from hiding, the Dustbins reveal their additional security reinforcements – a squad of ape-like Moron troops who are under-qualified for the role of canon fodder.

Blake is shocked by the appearance of the alien soldiers, since the Dustbins normally go in for brainwashed zombie human prisoners known as Dustmen. The fact the Dustbins are recruiting Morons means either this mission to Zaleria is so important that cleaning the planet is a secondary objective, or else they want some fanwank nostalgia buzz.

In either case, the Morons are instructed to establish an exclusion perimeter around the Dustbin command block and to set up security checkpoints at all major interchanges throughout the city. But the Morons are too stupid to understand this, so they are just told to crush all opposition without mercy. Even THIS they don’t understand, and so are ordered simply to "Bang-Bang-You-Are-Dead-Fifty-Bullets-In-Your-Head" anyone that litters the city.

The Morons announce they understand and will obey these instructions, but Kate suspects they’re just lying because Dustbin voices are giving them headaches.

The Doctor meanwhile tries to remember what secrets will unfold on Zaleria during the time of the Dustbins’ second great occupation, but quickly gets bored and starts humming to himself.

Blake points out that the Zalerians have yet to develop trousers and therefore are clearly no real threat to Dustbin security – hiring heavy-handed Moron thugs is just asking for trouble on the otherwise tame planet, but the Dustbins just start shouting that they must be obeyed in all things no matter what.

The Dustbin Leader announces that all native Zalerians will now be taken off world for assertiveness training and anti-littering-implants, and any natives who are still on the planet in an hour’s time will be used as target practice by the Moron troops.

Blake tells the Dustbins that if they are going to stubborn, he’s heading off to the pub with Suz (AKA The Angel of Proletariats). Kate drags the humming Doctor around a corner and happen to bump into the Zalerian rebel leader, Stroud, who is stocking up on duty free before her deportation by the Dustbins.

Kate asks if Stroud is planning an uprising against the evil robot outer space people of death and is rather disappointed to discover she isn’t. At all. Or even thinking about it.

The Doctor is dismayed at the lower standards of rebel leader nowadays, and suggests they contact Blake instead. Kate points out that Blake is admitted quisling of the Dustbins, but the Doctor naively insists that Kate is simply being paranoid and Blake is completely trustworthy and would never compromise his lofty ideals.

Kate now assumes the Doctor is gripped by some suicidal insanity and runs back to the TARDIS. The Doctor struggles to follow her, but they both spot Dustbins are in fact setting up huge bundles of nitro-9 all around the settlement.

The Doctor quickly orders Kate to use her expertise in explosives to defuse the bombs before they go off. Kate points out she is safecracker and has little to no knowledge about nitro-9 at all. The Doctor realizes he was thinking about Ace, and whacks himself in the forehead for his own stupidity.

It looks like they’ll just have to let the bombs go off and they hurry for cover and the city is completely flattened – along with most of the inhabitants and the natives who hadn’t actually evacuated yet.

It appears that, once again, a lack of communication between levels of management has triggered hardcore genocide off innocents in the mindless pursuit for goal-oriented efficiency! The Doctor talks darkly about such base desires, before noticing a butterfly and getting distracted.

Meanwhile, Blake and Suz bitch that as they are a vital part of the Dustbin war effort and the standing orders from the Supreme Dustbin are that they can have refreshment breaks on demand. The Dustbin leader consults its standing orders and grants them permission to return to the pub until the objective is located.

At the pub, Stroud bemoans the horrible loss of life, historical monuments and above all, her collection of singing onions. Over the third pint, Blake tells Stroud to forget her plans of leading an uprising against the Dustbins with all three surviving Zelarians; he himself has a fool-proof scheme that will, in his words, "wipe the floor with those metal bastards!"

The Doctor and Kate burst into the pub at that point, the Time Lord gleefully happy that his faith in Blake was not misplaced and thus his companion owes him twenty pounds.

Blake hushes them and explains he’s actually a clone of the real Roj Blake, who is busy having adventures in a rival fan audio series. He was on a secret mission to lead the resistance on Earth when he got caught up in the Dustbin invasion. But that was in the spin off series "Dustbin Umpire: Evasion of the Dustbins" and thus if you want to find out more, you’ll have to illegally download it like I did.

The Doctor, however, has got a copy of "Dustbin War: Chapter IV" and thus knows exactly what Blake and Suz are planning to do to wipe out the Dustbins forever. Kate, who has the complete box set of "Dustbin Umpire III" points out that it’s all for nothing anyway and they might as well give up on the whole telepathic rebellion business and let the Doctor sort it out as per usual.

Since THAT woefully transparent and postmodern bit of Big Finish product placement is over, Blake threatens to kill the Doctor to keep his silence, but Stroud suggests instead he hands over the Dustbins’ greatest enemy to them for some more staff service points.

Blake considers this a damn good idea and is about to drag the Doctor to his death when Kate, thinking quickly, bullshits that the Dustbins are on Zaleria to search for a hidden army of Dustbins left over by a previous invasion force, just waiting to be revived.

Blake broods – that the Dustbins would be stupid enough to create the most powerful army ever, and then not only FAIL to use them, but also FORGET where they were hidden, and then only start to look now AFTER they’ve conquered the galaxy and don’t need them any more is frankly...

...TOTALLY BELIEVABLE!

Outside, the Dustbins are probing the ruins of the city with diving rods, a search they have carried out on every planet since they first invaded. It appears, despite all reason, Kate’s off-the-top-of-her-head plotting is completely correct.

The Doctor beats Blake unconscious with his silver-topped cane and he and Kate run out of the pub in a mad panic.

As the duo reach the safety of the TARDIS, they overhear too Dustbins having a gossip beside some pile of rubble and explain that the Commander’s triangulation has located the objective directly underneath the remains of the ziggurat – only on their 312, 0945th try!

The Doctor muses that if he knows the Dustbins, they’ll start drilling for their ominously-non-specific objective, before suddenly realizing he was actually behind the composition of Madame Butterfly!

Back at the pub, Suz kicks Blake awake, assuming he has drunk himself unconscious on malibu yet again. Blake groggily mumbles about a massive Dustbin army buried deep under the surface of the planet, which has been told to him by a fat bloke with glasses and a red scarf.

Suz is unsure if Blake is double-crossing her, or maybe is completely hungover – but then there is the distinctive sound of Zalerians screaming in unspeakable torment, but NOT the distinctive sound of Dustbin death ray sound effect number two!

Suspicious, she and Blake leave the pub to investigate and find a lean-to shed marked "SECRET LABORATORY – DUSTBINS ONLY!" from which the hellish screams emerge. The Moron bouncers refuse to let Blake or Suz enter despite their rank because, get this, they’re morons.

Inside, a handful of Zelarian prisoners have been placed by Dustbin scientists into a dust-wave chamber with dust-reflective projectors firing at them, altering their cellular structure to become dirt-repellant. Despite the screams, the Dustbins point out the Zelarians were stupid enough to sign a waver, and deserve what they get.

Soon, the subjects are so completely clean they have, in fact, become completely invisible, and their mere radioactive presence is cleaning the floors and walls of the chamber. They are the future of the hygiene industry itself!

Meanwhile, Suz has enough and tries to force her way through the Morons outside, but ends up with two broken arms and no dignity.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and Kate creep out into the digging site and bump into Stroud and Coffey, the only surviving rebels on the entire planet. Despite the fact there is nowhere to hide, and the ruins are crawling with Dustbins who hopelessly outnumber them, the quartet stand around chatting about information the bored listeners may have missed, like the fact there is a hidden Dustbin army. Get it? Got it? Good!

Kate, Stroud and Coffey agree to climb down a tunnel into the icy depths of the planet while the Dustbins take the slower, drilling way. Since the new Doctor’s girth cannot fit into the tunnel, he shall be forced to coordinate matters on the surface and generally be eccentric and loveable.

No sooner are they out of sight, the Dustbins power up the drill-head to "eleven", putting the fugitives in even more danger. However, the new Doctor’s gadfly mind has already forgotten they existed and he now wanders the quarry, humming show tunes to himself.

At gunpoint, Suz is forced to send a message to the entire planet warning them that the Dustbins are not pissing about and will exterminate everyone if they get any more aggravation. However, since the Zalerians are now near extinct, this was all in all a pointless waste of time. Why did I even bother transcribing it? No idea.

The Dustbins finally finish drilling... to reveal one hundred thousand million Dapol Dustbins encased in approximately three hundred thousand cubic gigathrons of ice cubes. Dustbin command orders that a magnifying glass be placed over the drill head to vaporize the ice and reactivate the largest army of children’s toy death machines ever created!

The temperature in the ice caverns rises, forcing the all-girl mission to strip down to their underwear in a truly enjoyable sequence with lots of scorching vapor to leave just enough to the imagination for this gratuitous porn to be dubbed "dramatically justifiable".

Up on the surface, the Doctor has a brainwave and realizes that Zaleria is, in fact, Spiridon – a planet-sized peanut used as a freezer unit by Dustbins in a forgotten Pertwee serial of 1973! Have the invisible perverts that inhabit Spiridon changed the planet’s name and turned themselves visible to hide from Dustbin retaliation? Or is it all some ghastly continuity error? And didn’t Genocide of the Dustbins, starring Tom Baker, retcon this out of existence anyway?

Now the Dustbins posses not just the secrets of invisibility, but anti-grime Insto-Tidy! The army of toy Dustbins will be completely invisible and clean their surroundings with no effort whatsoever! The balance of power in the entire universe has titled!

In short, the universe is supremely screwed.

Underground, the Dustbin army begins to wake, and one of them exterminates Coffey to up the tension a bit more. Kate and Stroud run for it, and Kate wonders if they can jam the magnifying glass in position, the Dapol Daleks will melt like the cheap plastic toys that they really are!

Alarms sound, and the Morons panic and beat up Suz further.

As flying Dustbins swoop down into the caverns and open fire on Coffey and Kate, who are forced to shed more clothing to move faster – and the blasts cause a cave in, burying the Dustbin army once more.

The Doctor meanwhile comes back to his senses to find himself standing next to the magnifying glass. After bypassing the neutron flow polarity reverser, he uses the glass to melt the Dustbin task force inside, saving Kate and Coffey – frustratingly JUST when they’re down to their panties! Another few seconds...

The Dustbins arrive and threaten to exterminate Blake and Suz unless the Doctor surrenders... so the Doctor does so.

This act of foolish morality baffles the Dustbins, who immediately assume that this is a cunning double bluff and that the Doctor has somehow sabotaged the magnifying glass. Thus, they open fire and destroy it to ensure it cannot be used against them.

The Doctor insists he isn’t trying to betray them, and will happily leave now with Kate and let the Dustbins get on with conquering the entire created omniverse, and the Dustbins, riddled with paranoia, offer the Doctor a paid job helping them perfect anti-grime dust-wave-reflection technology.

The Doctor accepts and now, completely confused, the Dustbins let the Doctor have access to the machinery, convinced that they know what he’s up to, since he is not up to anything at all, cogito ergo sum.

Blake and Suz are taken to their next assignment on the Garazone Bazaar, both of them completely bewildered by the Doctor’s antics and hoping one day everything in this series is actually explained.

The Doctor reveals that simply by swapping two wires around, the machinery in the lean-to shed can transform all the Dustbins invisible... but it turns out he has used a lethal anti-dust wave to scrub the Dustbins out of existence, and the Spiridon task force are wiped out in a cheap CGI effect.

The Doctor and Kate head back for the TARDIS to have some slightly more interesting and less surreal adventures...

...and the Seventh Doctor awakes in the TARDIS with a start. He calls out for his friends Mel, Ace and Hex - then realizes they’ve all gone! Time has passed, history has moved on, and he has dozed off in front of the Transdimensional Sony Trinatron Total Image Screen again, as it plays more adventures from a history that never was in a universe that can never be.

Irritated, the Seventh Doctor grumbles that he could easily have defeated the Ninth Dustbin Occupation if he wanted to. To prove a point, he checks his 900 Year Diary, and is disappointed to realize he’s fully booked for the next three incarnations.

Pissed off, the Seventh Doctor has a cup of tea and sulks a lot.


Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who And The Peanut of the Dustbins
Dustbin War Zone
Short Trips 14: Groovy Dustbin Umpire Extras!
Let’s Destroy Rare Doctor Who Merchandise With Magnifying Glasses To Make Them Even Rarer Children’s Activity Booklet


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed invisible in this story.

One of the Dustbins has a thick Norwegian accent, while the Morons sound like Mark Gatiss suffering a stroke.

"The Morons are simi-semian... semi-seaman... summer... they’re descended from baboons, and no mistake!"


Goofs – The idea Peanut of the Dustbins was worthy of a sequel.

The incredibly frustrating sequences of Kate being oh-so-close to full frontal nudity but just teasing us through the coiling mist.

The cover shows an image of Saddam Hussein as playing Roj Blake.


Fashion Victims –
Kate’s toothpaste-green trouser suit, 70s-style dayglo orange wing collar shirt and silver medallion of mathematical excellence.


Fashion Triumphs –
Kate’s skimpy negligee, which she wears under the toothpaste-green trouser suit, 70s-style dayglo orange wing collar shirt and silver medallion of mathematical excellence.


Technobabble -
"The anti-pigmentation calibrator is nullifying the reflux overload! Do you know what this mean? It means the anti-pigmentation calibrator will neither calibrate nor anti-pigmentate!"


Links and References -
The Doctor muses that his return to Spiridon is karma for his prior visit ("Peanut of the Dustbins") where he assumed a single glass of water could destroy the frozen Dustbin army.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor and Kate recently met a strange man called Howard Phillips who was actually one of the Evil Dead at a New England "Fossilized Remnants of Bilurian Gods" convention. Kate still has his phone number.


Groovy DVD Extras -
The Swedish pornographic film, 'Anal Abduction 2: Return of the Dustbins', starring three young hopefuls and Nigel Verkoff dressed as a typical Grey in a baco-foil toga.


Dialogue Disasters -

Dustbin: The Angel of the Proletariat is a servant of the Dustbins. Your Trade Unions cannot help you now!


Suz: You don't trust me anymore, do you?
Blake: Trust is only dangerous when you have to rely on it.
Suz: But you ALWAYS have to rely on trust.
Blake: Damn!


Kate: What I don’t understand is, if the Dustbins have an empire... why do they call it ‘Umpire’ instead?
Doctor: Obviously there was a spelling mistake in the original paperwork and it’s too much trouble to correct now it’s on all the merchandise.
Kate: Is that it?
Doctor: You were expecting some interesting conspiracy theory? Yes, well that’s what sets us apart from the Dustbins. We have an imagination. And fingernails. And legs. And two eyes...
Kate: Yes, we’re different, I get it!



Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: I’ve come to you, Blake, because the Dustbins know me. They know me of old – I’ve fought more battles with them than the Radio Times can agree on, and, who knows, maybe one time they’ll win just to boost ratings. And that’s my greatest fear. That Terry Nation will get even more cash than he does now.


Suz: You can break every bone in my body but I won’t stand by! Mainly because if you break every bone in my body, I’ll fall over – so argue your way out of THAT, you dust-hating bastards!

Kate: "The Angel of the Proletariat"? "The Willing Puppet of the Dustbins" more like!
Doctor: Yes... As my good friend George Orwell once said, political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Kate: And that means?
Doctor: It means she’s talking out of her arse.


Doctor: You are like a ray of sunshine, Susan Mendes.
Suz: You mean, I brighten up the world?
Doctor: No, I mean, you’re nasty and cancerous.


Dustbins: Dustbins clean and tidy!
Kate: Ah, excluding weekends, I think you’ll find. Dustbin machinery may seize up in inclement weather and the right batteries are never included.


Doctor: We beat them, Kate. Defeated the Dustbins. Again. Clean up after our mess – if you can!


UnQuotable Quote -

Kate: Yes, I do, actually!


Smartarse DWM Preview!!
"To help launch the new Doctor, an attention-grabbing Dustbin serial was written for the first story of Season Twenty-Eight. Rather than dwelling on the after-effects of the Doctor’s regeneration, it was established at the outset – through references to unseen adventures – that some time had passed for both him and Kate since the events of Addiction (when the Doctor went psycho bonkers after facing a bank manager from beyond the dawn of time).

Rather than Sylvester McCoy’s occasionally manic stress, the Griffiths Doctor would at times take a tab of acid and seem to drift off into a world of his own thoughts, frequently humming the latest hit from Top of the Pops which he would claim to have assisted in the composition during his crazy college days.

The story, and in particular its opening episode, were perfectly calculated to lure back viewers by providing "classic" Doctor Who almost by numbers – a tactic which, some years later, was ripped off by the James Bond film franchise to the point skin grafts were required."


Viewer Quotes -

"You know what I don’t understand? If Dustbin Umpire I is the four stories with the Doctor in it, well, five stories with the Doctor in it, then the first miniseries of Dustbin Umpire is ACTUALLY Dustbin Umpire II. That makes Dustbin Umpire III Dustbin Umpire IV. Unless we take Dustbin Warzone as a series in itself and not Dustbin Umpire II. Then, it all makes sense." - random Who geek (2007)

"The irony here is that I just subscribed last November... just so I could get Cryptosperidium! That means my current subscription will run out JUST in time to re-subscribe to get Hellbound to Fargo. I'm not sure how to react to this... but I’m leaning towards psychotic anger."
- Dave Restal (2006)

"After mere months away from our hi-fis, the Richard Griffiths Doctor returns to be pitted against his oldest and cleanest enemy – the Dustbins! In true Doctor Who style, features a host of familiar faces in most unfamiliar places... like, for instance, plucky assistant Kate Tollinger (Julia Sawalha), in my pants."
- SFX preview by Nigel Verkoff (shortly before his dismissal)

"If Big Finish produced "Hellbound to Fargo!" to make me subscribe for another year and/or make me think about investing in Dustbin Umpire, they failed to a spectacular degree. In fact, I’ve cancelled my subscription and using my current CD collection as makeshift ash trays. Big Finish can bite my shiny albino ass!" – Dr. Spoon (2006)

"It’s a lot easier to understand than Terri’s Firmer. But then, so are lots of things. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for example. Quantum theory. Exactly who created the question mark. In fact, this story is quite unremarkable in being easier to understand than the previous Dustbin audio play. Forget I said anything."
– Dave Lister (2006)

"This totally contradicts established Doctor Who continuity! My god, in 1992's comic strip, Emperor of the Dustbins, where Lavros takes over Spiridon and repaints the Dapol army to become his own incredible fighting force! I tell you, if this wasn’t part of a story that RELIED on itself being uncanonical every second it was on, I could get INCREDIBLE annoyed!" – Jon Preddle (2006)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I tell you, that theme music is the best that mankind has ever produced! That’s mankind the species, not Mankind the 1970s pop group, though. Their version of the theme music sucked. You remember when it was on Top of the Pops, and that guy in the middle of the crowd refused to dance to it? Well, I met him once... made him squeal like a pig..."


Richard Griffiths Speaks!
"I loathe the Dustbins. I loathe still photography, cameramen, the Christian Church, party politics, modern historians who self-publicize themselves as journalists, American state laws about oral sex and all those responsible for the mayhem in the Middle East. I loathe this wretched body of mine. I loathe a lot of things. But not Doctor Who. I’ve got a lot of time for that. I don’t loathe Doctor Who. I just despise it with a burning passion."


Gareth Thomas Speaks!
"The Dustbins far outweigh anything that Star Trek (spit!) may have done. One of my favorite jokes of all time is the Dustbin realizing it can’t climb the stairs and giving up its plans for world domination. HAHAHAH! Ah. Well, you need a fully-loaded Turkish bong to appreciate such a simple, unfunny concept."


Sarah Mowat Speaks!
"I always knew about the Dustbins because my godfather is Terry Nation’s agent. They’re like the bloody mafia – you don’t mess with them about anything! You could end up with a rejected Dustbin redesigned in your bed the next morning, if you get my drift."


Trivia -
On the cover, the leader of the Daleks has "DR. B" scratched onto its armored casing. I assume this is another season-spanning repeated meme catchphrase... that just hasn’t appeared anywhere else so far.


Rumors & Facts -

In a renewed determination to swindle more Doctor Who fans out of more money, it was decided that the latest subscriber-only release would be just that. Normally fans would refuse to subscribe and then pick up this extra release at cheaper retail prices some six months later, but not this time. This time it was BF’s way, or the highway.

Of course, they had attempted that before, so this time the release had to be something fans would actually want to listen to, something no self-respecting Whovian could look themselves in a bloodshot eye without actually owning.

In a move that was more fan-prostitution than fan-wank, it was decided the release would a crossover between mainstream Doctor Who and the surprisingly-tolerated Dustbin Umpire spin off range, pitting the Seventh Doctor against his metallic foes, plus series regulars Susan Mendes and Roj Blake Mark II.

Nicholas Briggs, who wrote, directed, produced, starred in, critiqued and plagiarized Dustbin Umpire was delighted to be able to finally drag the Doctor into the series, ideally where he could then be killed off and regenerated into a new, better incarnation. Perhaps one played by Briggs himself, but that’s just wild speculation based on the completely bleeding obvious.

However, the script was in trouble from the start – Briggs was finding it hard to split the narrative between the Dustbins, the Doctor and the regular canon fodder as WELL as gratuitous appearances of the 1970s Morons, frozen Dapol armies, invisibility, and Blake’s 7 gags. Maintaining a balance between the different elements was difficult, and Briggs rightly feared that showing the Doctor defeating the Dustbins in a single afternoon might make the rest of the Dustbin Umpire saga (which takes place across 250 years and doesn’t defeat them once) look long-winded and pathetic in comparison.

Briggs was desperate to create a tightly focused script and a sensible, satisfying use of continuity, so he could convince the mass of fandom to rise up and appoint him new producer of Big Finish – and, for once, this desire actually was realistic, since Gay Russell had been promoted to mucking out the Slitheen at BBC Wales.

As 2006 drew to a close, and the time of Briggs’ apotheosis drew closer, disaster struck the unfinished project: Sylvester McCoy refused point blank to work with Nicholas Briggs after the shame and humiliation he had endured back in the year 2000 during the recording of "Clash of the Titans"; when a story ostensibly starring McCoy had simply been an old Oddly Visual released in the accurate belief no one would notice the Doctor was actually being played by Nick Briggs in his student days. When he had hair.

Briggs however, knew if he simply succumbed to temptation and played the Doctor, the subscriber CD would not have the drawing power he required to further his plans for world domination – the public needed a steady diet of his toothbrush-brand insanity to realize what a TRUE genius he really was and, from 2007 onwards, would always be!

Luckily, the pile of unrecorded Season 28 scripts from 1990 were still propping up a blow up Rose Tyler sex doll kept in the corner to boost morale and to his complete disbelief Nicholas Briggs discovered the debut script to the original Eighth Doctor – a four part story entitled, The Last of the Dustbins (Honest!), which featured a squad of hard-bitten troopers who worshipped a sentient sun getting their asses handed to them by a Dustbin death squad armed with a giant wasp.

Briggs thus had access to a script that used the Dustbins, some easily-changeable characters, and specifically NOT the Seventh Doctor as played by Sylvester McCoy! This, he then tore to pieces and added lots more explosions, laser battles and a hastily-scripted sequence where, as per Night Thoughts and A School for Glory, the Seventh Doctor would be seen watching exploits his successor never had with a bowel of popcorn and a strawberry milkshake.

Richard Griffiths and Julia Sawalha were once again blackmailed by Stephen Moffat into returning to the dark and forbidding Big Finish studios to record their debut story again. As per the original script, the Other Eighth Doctor’s first story did not show the new incarnation’s first faltering steps, but the aftermath of one of many missing adventures with him and Kate.

This of course raises the question of "What WERE those missing adventures?" I just say they were the previous two Griffiths stories Big Finish had perpetrated, despite the fact they are set AFTER this one. But I just say that to see other fans go cross-eyed. I’m a real sadist when it comes to stuff like that.

Hellbound to Fargo! was ultimately released with the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Sil story Porkarama!, since they both featured ridiculously inappropriate exclamation marks in their titles. And they are both nuttier than squirrel shit, there is that similarity.

Ultimately, this deeply unmemorable Doctor Who runaround might have worked as an introductory story for the Richard Griffiths Doctor... as long as Nicholas Briggs had sweet FA to do with it.

Instead Hellbound to Fargo! proves to be an illustration of how Doctor Who worked so much better before Baldo Briggsie got his grubby little protuberances onto the franchise...


"Return of the Dustbins" by Ford Timelord and the Knights of Vaseline

//Exterminate!// Hey! Hey!
//Lots-lots-lots, lots-of-dust!//

Hear the sound as Dustbins invade?
Coming down like an Armageddon rain!
Hey! For shame!
The ones who clean without a name!

Hear Morons howling out of key,
To a hymn called "Dust Is Misery",
Hey! And bleach!
Humanity lost their war today!

I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies!
This is the dawning
Of the rest of your lives!

Doctor Who! Hey! Doctor Who!
Doctor Who! In! The TARDIS!
Doctor Who! Hey! Doctor Who!
Doctor Who! Doctor Who!

Hear the TARDIS landing
Out of time?
The Dustbin Emperor
Has crossed the line!
Hey! To find,
The Doctor's on the other side!

Can I get another "Amen"?
AMEN!!
There's a flag wrapped
Around the score of men,
Hey! A gag,
A plastic bag on a monument...

I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies!
This is the dawning
Of the rest of your lives!

//The representative from Kalfedoria has the floor!//

Zieg Heil to the Emperor Dustbin
"Shake’N’Vac" is your punishment!
Pulverize the ivory towers,
Who criticize your government!
"Bang! Bang!" go the rebel guns, man!
Exterminate bipeds who don't agree!
You’re a liar, pants on fire!
It’s not a way that’s meant for me!
Just cause...
Just cause...
Because we're outlaws, yeah!

I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies!
This is the dawning
Of the rest of your lives!

This is our lives
No other way!
Doctor Who! Hey! Doctor Who!
Doctor Who! Hey! Doctor Who!

No other way!
Doctor Who! Hey! Doctor Who!
Doctor Who! Hey! TODAY!

No comments: