Sunday, November 1, 2009

7th Doctor - Unregenerate!

Serial PRE-7D – Degenerate!
Degenerate!
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Untold Origins



Serial PRE-7D - Degenerate!

Aboard the TARDIS, Mel triggers the Sixth Doctor’s regeneration by beating him over the head repeatedly with a question mark handled umbrella. With a blaze of swirly blue CGI, he is transformed into a small, Gnomish Scotsman who immediately starts singing.

The new incarnation of the Doctor smacks himself in the face with a handy lump hammer, shuddering, "That's better! A quick renewal in time for tea and I'm as sound as a dromedary! Oh, Melanie, it was such a STRANGE dream! And you were there! And so was I! These clothes have got to go – my new retina can't take it! I need a jumper... with question marks! QUESTION MARKS FRROM THE DAWN OF TIIIIIMMMEE!"

The new Doctor then starts rummaging through the wardrobes of the TARDIS, dressing up as Mr. Chips, Napoleon Bonaparte, Jimi Hendrix, Harpo Marx, Mike Gatting, and the lead singer of the Damned. He then realizes his reflection does not have the same godlike countenance of his previous enfleshment and starts smashing every mirror he can with a cricket bat, giggling insanely as he does so.

Mel dismisses this as irresponsible and time wasting and quickly selected grabs an outfit the Second Doctor wore and forces the Doctor to don it on the grounds it doesn’t have question marks.

Gripped by sudden paranoia, the Doctor shouts that Mel is really the Rani in disguise and smacks her in the face and throws her out of the wardrobe room and not to come back until she’s found a radiation wave meter shaped like a piece of cheese.

Once alone, the Doctor finds a golfing sweater containing more questions marks than all the other apparel in the wardrobe put together! But, as he struggles to get into it, he accidentally pratt falls into a heap of clothes and ends up trapped in a straight jacket.

The TARDIS materializes in a cleaning cupboard as the Doctor stumbles blindly into the room, trapped in a straight jacket and with a Panama hat jammed over his eyes, screaming for help. Mel continues her gymnastics, insisting that if she comes to the New Doctor’s aide, he will never learn how to cope with life on his own.

Groaning, the Doctor manages to activate the door control with his teeth, before tripping over the blood-spattered exercise bike that ended his previous life and flying out of the TARDIS, from the cupboard, tumbling into a ball and ending in the splits.

The Doctor realizes he is in a mad scientist’s laboratory as mad scientists are now linking up lots of electrodes to a strange shape on an operating table and pointlessly covered by a white sheet. It seems the TARDIS has piloted itself to a weird Time Lord undercover operation so that the new Doctor can piss off his own people in a new and original way.

By the time the Doctor manages to get to his feet, he’s worked out that the creature is being used as a host for a complex artificial intelligence... but he can’t imagine why.

"Is this some sort of self-help group?" he asks, baffled.

Lead Mad Scientist Rungar explains that thanks to the Intuitive Recession on Gallifrey, more and more species throughout the universe are finally being allowed to create time travel without the temporal equivalent of MIBs turning up and smashing up all the equipment.

Thus, Rungar has decided to create sleeper agents in these species to ensure their mastery of time travel does not threaten the Time Lords – not only completely immoral, but it’s amazingly cost effective.

They have decided to choose a race whose impact on the Web of Time is so minimal as to be non existent, whose minds can easily be wiped and replaced in a morally questionable method... the DUSTBINS!

The Doctor blinks and point out that the Dustbins do not fit a single one of the stated criteria, and Rungar explains that the new PA Klyst is a bit of a ditz, but the paperwork’s already been filled in and it’d be a waste of time to stop.

"After all, this way we’ll be able to stop the Dustbin Umpire from ever being stupid enough to engage us in an all-out Temporal Difference of Opinion," Rungar points out.

The Doctor thinks the chances of that are so low as to be ridiculous, and in fact it’s a total waste of time even discussing. Whether this is rubbish foreshadowing or unintentionally ironic is left for the audience to decide, should they actually care about such things.

Rungar thinks about this for a moment and decides to use the Doctor for the next experiment, since they want to show they are equal-opportunity exploiters of lesser beings and plan to overwrite his newly formed personality with a brand new artificial intelligence.

The process is a complete failure and the gibbering Doctor is quietly locked into a cell – confused, disoriented, uncertain as to exactly who he is. Apart from that, he’s not a bit like he used to be...



Meanwhile, Mel tries to program the TARDIS to dematerialize around the Sixth Doctor’s outfit and leave it to rot in the heart of a Black Star, but instead the TARDIS fetches up on a street corner in London.

Trapped on her own, lost and helpless in a future she didn’t create, Mel flags down a cabbie and demands to be taken to the nearest gymnasium. On the way she criticizes the cab for its lack of No Smoking signs, animal-skin seats and vomit stains.

After about thirty seconds of this, the cabbie stops the car and announces that he has a flat fee of 300 pounds to put up with crap like this. Mel suggests in turn that his surly attitude can be cured by healthy diet and exercise.

The cabbie immediately flees the car and climbs a tree to escape Mel, and discovers to his surprise that nearby building does not possess a roof and is a fake hollow shell – presumably a Candid Camera style prank involving vanishing apartments is underway.

Mel follows the cabbie up the tree and he jumps out of the tree and inside the compound, but Mel’s athleticism allows her to relentlessly pursue him like something from the darkest of nightmares.

The cabbie flees through a collection of antique Deloreans and through a doorway, putting down the way they are suddenly transporting into a Victorian nursing home down to the meth amphetamines he took earlier to cope with Mel whining about cholesterol.

Mel however is becoming more suspicious: since she has not partaken in any hallucinogenic substances or indeed anything of any interest whatsoever in her life, this impossibly building tucked into an empty space rings hollow! As much as a non-empty space CAN ring hollow.

Just why is this place deserted? Why are there no electrical power sockets? Who own the voices babbling in the distance? What is scrabbling behind the walls? And is anyone still listening to this?

Mel then finds a strange alien computer marked with a swirling infinity symbol and a bronze plate marked THE WINDOWS XL OF RASSILON. Mel finds this vaguely familiar and then, using her amazing computer programmer skills types in 'THE DOCTOR' and is rewarded with a map of the cell block for prisoners who are criminally insane.

Sighing with wistful optimism, Mel skips down the corridor towards the cells and bumps into the terrified cabbie, who runs away screaming.

At that moment, the wall behind them smashes open and out floats a crackling, sparking Dustbin, whose lightbulbs pulse with demonic radiation – this is the Dustbin equivalent of "Carrie", and Mel and the cabbie back away as the creature speaks in a multitude of voices, all of them with a thick Scottish accent.

"What in the name of fuck is going on?!" demands the terrified cabbie, giving the possessed Dustbin a clue that he is from a world that has not made contact with alien life or used to possessed homicidal cybernetic cleaning machines.

Mel notes she is good pals with an alien called the Doctor and so she’s not completely ignorant – but for some reason, the creature seems to have no trouble accepting this claim. "LIKE, DUH!!" it grates.

The Dustbin turns and uses its squeegee to smash down the door to the Doctor’s cell to find it the bastard has already escaped without their help. However, he has already been recaptured by a man in a triceratops-style collar and long heliotrope robes.

Mel considers the babbling, gibbering Doctor convulsing in his straightjacket and realizes his new incarnation is just as batshit crazy and deranged and the old one, and sighs.

The jailer, Louis, explains that actually the Doctor’s gone crazy because of a rather embarrassing accident and provided his own straightjacket.

During this distraction, the Doctor starts laughing like the maniac he is, runs into a nearby wardrobe. Louis is quite alarmed as the wardrobe is in fact a disguised airlock and the Victorian nursing home is, in fact, in the middle of deep space.

Mel agrees that letting a complete lunatic into the airlock may have been a bad move as the giggling Time Lord could at any moment open the door and subject them all to explosive decompression!

However, the Doctor is still stuck in his straightjacket and by the time he manages to open the airlock, everyone is wearing space suits and thus are all protected. Even the Doctor, since Mel forced him kicking and screaming into one, upside down.

The looney Time Lord floats out of the airlock onto the surface of the asteroid and sings that he is back amongst the stars and sees things so much more clearly now it hurts.

Meanwhile, the cabbie is beginning to think the Doctor is making a lot of sense in all this demented weirdness and evil trash cans.

Suddenly, bulkheads slam shut, trapping all the speaking parts when Rungar arrives and the Dustbin announces that it contains the entire personality of the Doctor from that messed up experiment at the start of the story, and frankly, the guy is more irritating than a skin disease...

Thus, the Dustbin fires CGI bolts at the jibbering Doctor and restores his mind and soul to his body (albeit upside down, back to front and inside out) and then exterminate Louis.

However, Louis’ body begins to glow and change in swirly blue computer graphics identical to the first scene and Louis regenerates into a completely different person.

The astonished Mel realizes that Louis is a Time Lord, begging the question of what the hell she thought was going on BEFORE she twigged to that incredibly obvious fact.

The Dustbin blows down the bulkhead and floats off to free its brethren chained in the basement to raise and unstoppable army that will clean and tidy all of the universe before tea time yesterday!

Rungan decides he better start getting some plausible deniability and orders Klyst to write a memo blaming her incompetent management skills for any fiasco that happens, backdating it and then resigning.

Klyst insists they arrest the Doctor for causing this mess and deport him to Gallifrey, but the new dictator-for-lives, the Bastard, has already given the Doctor diplomatic immunity.

"It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know," the Doctor says wisely in a soundbite that will no doubt be taken out of context in hundreds of trailers, spoofs, remixes, youtube clips and ringtones.

The Doctor realizes that the AIs being used for the sleeper agents are actually TARDIS minds – which is really stupid because a mind designed to operate in thirty six different dimensions simultaneously are not going to function best inside a meat bag with only five senses.

Mel suggests they smash up everything and the Doctor agrees. "Of course, the Celestial Intervention Agency will just restart the operation elsewhere," the Doctor tells her, "but that just means we get to smash it up all over again! Much more fun than just stopping the very idea of the experiments on the first try!"

Rungar and the others arrive and realize their only chance for survival is to hope the Doctor can save them from certain death at the hands of the freed and now completely pissed off Dustbin army!

The Doctor realizes that a sonic goat army has been kept in the first aide kit and uses them to uplink the polarity of the time graft flow and cause the entire research institute to explode, wiping out the Dustbins and all evidence of their immoral experiments.

Klyst reveals that there’s still a problem; though she has agreed to halt the experiments, a skilled technician with a mind probe could still uncover the technical data from her memories, allowing the CIA to continue their work!

The Doctor concedes this point and so he, Mel, the cabbie and the sonic goat army immediately flee the institute back to Earth while the Dustbins arrive, destroy the Time Lords and then themselves are obliterated in a cheap paintbox explosion.

On Earth, Mel realises that she never learned the cabbie’s name, but he decides that he prefers the mystique of remaining nameless and now actually believes himself to be a squirrel.

Entering the TARDIS, the Doctor muses that on his first day he was completely screwed over by some Time Lords, completely sidelined by the plot and locked in a cell for three and a half episodes.

The Doctor is sick and tired of this. "Bah! Let off by the Time Lords after I unwittingly help him conquer Gallifrey, tricked out of getting decent prestige on Thoros Beta, that singles bar on Zaurak Minor, failing to murder Bill Gates... I've become too simple, too easy to predict! Now I'm so small I can't even go round throttling people - I'll be lucky to castrate them instead! No, I'll need something else. Something cunning, and devious."

The Doctor grips his question mark umbrella, his burning gaze looking into the depths of inner time.

"Things are happening, ancient forces stirring, unresolved problems of the past destined to involve me. If I don't want to be manipulated, I'll just have to be the one doing the manipulating! Well, my new incarnation's resolution: NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY! And I can live with that, even if NO ONE ELSE can!"

"You're SURE you're fully recovered from your regeneration, Doctor?"

"Oh, don't worry, Mel. It's just a new approach to life. What's the worst that could go wrong?"

Book(s)/Other Related –
The First Adventure of the Seventh Doctor (Canada Only)
The Who-Files: Black Ops of the Time Lords
"Where To Guv?" Autobiography of a Nameless Cab Driver

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

Goofs -
In part one, Rungar says that the Time Lords are from the future where President Romana has monumentally screwed everything up, but in part four they are in the present.
There’s probably something about time flux mechanics that explains all that, but in context it makes as much sense as that scene in Attack of the Clones where Annakin Skywalker is somehow able to be present at the birth of his own parents.
Mistakes like that bug me. In fact, they terrify me since Big Finish comprises some of the most anal and continuity-obsessed fans in existence and it seems they have either got a life and ignoring such problems, or I’m losing mine in noticing them...

Fashion Victims -
Mel’s puff-sleeved pink-and-candy striped blouse, white jeans and boots that make her look like a boiled sweet. That screams a lot.

Technobabble -
Mel is able to fit her hair inside a space helmet by comprising the packing efficiency of the hairspray envelope.

Links and References -
Mel is still underwhelmed from the previous adventure, and this one not only links up with the stories of Season 24, it also explains the origins of the Doctor’s rarely used and incredibly silly all-purpose dues ex machina: the sonic goat army of DEATH!

Untelevised Misadventures -
The Intuitive Recession and its impacts on the Cosmos Stock Exchange time travel shares is explained in mind-numbingly banal detail in the "Gallifrey 90210" spin off series.

Groovy DVD Extras -
At the insistence of pro-Colin Baker trolls on Outpost Gallifrey, a new death scene was recorded for the colourful clown incarnation.
(Setting: The TARDIS control room. The Sixth Doctor and Mel stand by the console, looking at the open scanner.)
Sixth Doctor: I didn’t do too badly, did I? I mean, I saved the multiverse once a week – most people are satisfied with a race, or a planet, a galaxy if they’re a try-hard wannabe. But look at the scanner Mel, look at that, all those stars and worlds and races and civilizations. They could all have gone the way of poor Adric if I’d not stopped it. And what harm could befall one such as me?
(The Doctor suddenly shouts and clutches his chest and falls over, pale and gasping for air. Mel doesn’t notice.)
Sixth Doctor: You have GOT to be joking!! It’s not my time! I haven’t had a good enough innings! I mean, yes, I’ve seen and done a lot, and it’s probably my time and I shouldn’t complain but this is just... FUCKING RIDICULOUS! I’m being cheated! Mel! Why aren’t you crying! This is so unfair! That I die... with your carrot juice in my mouth! Carrot juice... carrot juice... carrot... GAK!!
(The Doctor goes still. His face becomes granite grey, blurring and distorting and transforming...)

Dialogue Disasters -

Mel: Doctor, really, why can’t you do something productive with your life? Run an intergalactic taxi service or something constructive like that! Oh, how could anything be more respectable than that?

Doctor: Hello, is that me? Am I inside out? An apple a day keeps me away but words will never hurt him! Or am I the apple? I’ve no idea how happy you are. Days and years are just steps, size doesn’t matter, only how many floors you have in your house. House? My house is my home! WHEREVER YOU LAY YOUR HAT! THIS IS MY HAT! THERE! I’VE LAID IT! God, that coat was awful, what WAS I thinking?!

Mel: You snatch people away from their homes and families and conduct medical experiments on them! I always thought that was the sort of thing that little grey aliens did in bad science fiction.
Little grey alien: You racist stereotyping whore, you’re gonna get probed for that!

Dialogue Triumphs -

Mel: Good intentions pave the road to hell.
Doctor: High ideals do the same. Got a clever response to that, eh? No? Well, then you’re obviously not getting the hang of this galactic savior thing, are you? Leave it to the expert, then, will you?
Cabbie: That’s cold, man!

Doctor: Surely there must be easier ways to infiltrate other societies? Using surveillance devices maybe? Spies? Androids? Good, old-fashioned brainwashed clones of suitable scientists? And you decide instead to download TARDIS minds into Dustbins and hope for the best? Who’s writing this? Mad Larry?!

Rungar: We shall hand him over to the proper authorities.
Doctor: I’ve known a lot of authorities in my time, but never one I’d describe as proper.
Rungar: Fine. Kill them.
Doctor: Oh, bollocks.

Viewer Quotes -

"Those maniacs! They finally did it! A story that finally confirms that Colin Baker is not the current Doctor and everything beyond him isn’t some fucked up Dallas-style dream. The potentially interesting idea of listening to Sylvester McCoy playing a jibbering idiot is sabotaged almost immediately when I realised that this was how he sounded much of the time anyway! Just less incoherent, hysterical, barmy and nutty! Honestly THREE EPISODES of spazzy McCoy madness! He is NOT a reliable performer and should be gassed like a badger allowing Colin Baker to take over! VIVA COLIN!" - Jo Ford Prefect (2006)

"That’s the fourth release this year with Bonnie Langford as Mel! That’s four months of Mel! HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD?!? I mean, she doesn’t really contribute much to the story besides uncovering the one hundred and seventy five mysteries... which I guess is a pretty large contribution. OH, MY HEAD!!" - confused fan accidentally cryogenically frozen in 1988 and only revived last week to much culture shock (2005)

"Jesus Christ, this is worse than that Sapphire and Steel episode where it takes half the story to get into the building!" – PJ Hammond (2004)

"Once again we have a Big Finish adventure which, while not bad, is not really that good either and is, in truth, a tad tedious. The main problem I have is that this story will not have the broad appeal of some other adventures - any story that involves other Time Lords seems so derivative and unoriginal. My story 'Vengeance of Vorton' however, is a masterpiece that proves the rule! I’M BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU!!!" - Ron Mallet (2006)

Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I really liked the cover to this. Reminded me of my dad’s nervous breakdown. Perhaps those marketing chaps with their brand-and-package fixation are on to something. Something unspeakably evil, black and foul, hanging in the air, waiting to destroy us... like a peanut!"

Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"Looks like every Doctor needs a story where they go mad and get locked in a cell. Paul, Colin, Tom... well, maybe not in a story, but definitely in real life.
I remember that's how my Doctor was going to be written out of the series, losing my mind rather than injuring my body like all the rest. A sort of battle against myself, against the Doctor’s obsession to fight evil no matter what the consequences, the sacrifices needed to achieve what he believed was right.
Yes, my last scene, in a straight jacket, staring into nothing. Sightless eyes, without a trace of soul within them. The essence of a man so completely destroyed. The body of a man so very empty... then I turned into Richard Griffiths. A real behind the sofa moment.
But we never did that, did we? We got listless, uninventive, uninspiring, workaday trash like this instead."

Rumors & Facts -
Losing one’s sanity is a scary concept. Thinking this story is a good one to start off the Seventh Doctor’s era is downright terrifying.

In 1987, Sylvester McCoy took on the role of Doctor Who simply by leaving a post-it note on his audition tape: "THE OTHERS ARE ALL CRAP, LOVE SYLV". However, he would be unable to record the crucial regeneration scene with Colin Baker, since no one had had the heart to tell Baker he was fired. Thus, they let Baker continue to believe he was still the current Doctor and secretly filmed stories with the Sixth Doctor on weekends until 1994.

At the time, Producer John Satan-Turner considered how best to introduce the Seventh Doctor to the public. Of course, after twenty three years of Doctor Who, one could expect the public to understand the meta-textual ploy of regeneration and thus the idea of Season 24 starting off with a new Doctor could pass without significant explanation. On the other hand, time and time again the public had proved to be a bunch of complete morons who wrote to Points of View.

Thus for the season opener, Romp With The Rani, should it begin with Sylvester McCoy dressed as the Sixth Doctor and acting nuts from an unseen and inexplicable regeneration, or just act like nothing that happened. Pip and Jane Baker came up with the brilliant compromise of having the Seventh Doctor fully regenerated, but wearing the Sixth Doctor’s outfit as fancy dress, and acting nuts from concussion.

Fans all over the world tried to work out exactly what had happened to the Sixth Doctor. There were those that believed he had perished from a rather heavy stun blast from some passing Dustbin. Others speculated that he had had his neck broken by an angry Snotaran. Plenty more assumed that the Doctor had completely ignored Mel’s sensible advise on diet and exercise, and eventually died like Elvis – on the toilet seat clutching an unfinished bucket of KFC.

Paul Carnall, however, was completely and utterly convinced that the White Guardian of Light and Time had turned up and shoved the Sixth Doctor into a mincing machine while the ghost of the New Adventures Doctor laughed a psychotic laugh.

When Carnall realized everyone was now staring at him and backing away slowly, he admitted that maybe some other explanation could be provided that was equally valid.

The answer of how the Sixth Doctor kicked the bucket was ultimately revealed in 2001’s Christmas special Big Finish release, There Can Only Be One Doctor...

Following the return of Doctor Who to television and the realization that their output was irritating crap that did not appeal to anyone, Big Finish producer Gay Russell decided that the one way to get back customers was to finally give them the True First Adventure of the Seventh Doctor, and decided to adapt the first script available.

Tragically, that script was David A McIntee’s "To the Dustbins, A Daughter", a Dennis Wheatly rip-off where the mighty Dustbins encounter the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa; the evil cyborgs then decide that Nyssa is far smarter, cunning, diabolical, and looks better in a bikini than the vacuous Doctor. Incredibly put out by this, the Doctor tries to stop the Dustbins using Nyssa their main battle computer via some voodoo ceremonies and the blood of a freshly slaughtered estate agent.

Russell ordered McIntee to adapt the story to suit the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex or else face the quite agonizingly lethal consequences, and beat McIntee unconscious when he protested.

It was then that the flaw in Russell’s brilliant master plan became obvious, even to him: the regeneration story would require Mel as the companion and a complete lack of Ace and Hex. This would also mean Sylvester McCoy would have another rare adventure with Bonnie Langford – the two hadn’t had many stories together, mainly to allow McCoy’s eardrums time to heal after each adventure.

Although it had been two years since the last Seventh Doctor and Mel adventure, McCoy insisted the script keep them apart for as long as possible as he still had a nervous twitch from Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass.

The story, now entitled "Mark Seven Versus the Dustbins" was set in 77 Sunset Strip in Hollywood Boulevard and feature such luminaries as Rudolph Valentino, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwick, Robert Taylor, Marilyn Monroe – all of whom had had weird shit occur to them in real life and thus would be perfect to appear as themselves in Doctor Who.

McIntee was devastated to learn that since his A-list cast were all dead and buried for decades, none could appear in his story. Despite his urgings for some black magic, costs were prohibitive and if he wanted Sharon Tate, it’d have to be Nicholas Briggs in a wig or else nothing at all.

In the end, Briggs’ transvestitism proved too disturbing and instead Rungar was cast as Jennie Linden, who played Barbara Who in the move Dr. Who & The Dustbins. You know, the dull one in the first flick, not the hot babe in the second.

With the idea of the Dustbins reanimating the decrepit corpses of famous movie stars rejected, McIntee insisted there was nowhere for the story to go. Russell however, gleefully suggested that instead of the Dustbins being the main villain, they could simply be reduced to shock villain of the week in a cynical grab for ratings – just like televised Doctor Who.

Instead, he suggested that the evil masterminds in fact be a bunch of loser Time Lords undertaking the most ridiculously complicated undercover operation in the history of history itself.

"Why just have alien beings experimenting on humans, when you can have TIME LORDS experimenting on DUSTBINS?" Russell pondered. "In fact, why just have Time Lord when you can have CIA agents working in violation of the Laws of Time?! Yes, why just have Time Lords implanting artificial intelligences into human brains, when you can have CIA agents working in violation of the Laws of Time implanting TARDIS minds into human brains?! And why set the story in a creepy, disused Victorian-era asylum, it’s a creepy, disused Victorian-era asylum... when you can set it in a creepy, disused Victorian-era asylum, it’s a creepy, disused Victorian-era asylum ON AN ASTEROID?!"


On a whim, Russell then ordered that lots of scenes be cut – mainly involving the innovative torture of bull elephant sodomy, the sequence where the cabbie reveals he is the split personality of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and a lengthy scene where the TARDIS chases the taxi cab down a highway.

McIntee was furious, and sold the TARDIS car chase idea to Russell T Davies for a packet of jelly. In return, RTD suggested a scene where the Doctor leaves a holographic recording of himself as a message for Mel that even predicts what she will say.

Sylvester McCoy meanwhile, was now completely paranoid that he was not being given ANY new scripts and was certain he was just being given Inuit in Hull to do like Paul McGann did years earlier. OK, just because both stories are bewildering fan wank involving the Doctor losing his mind, going nuts and requiring to be rescued by his companion from an iconic character from the TV show... actually, maybe McCoy wasn’t so paranoid after all?

Either way, the little Scot refused point blank to waste his talent on this, refusing to read the script beforehand, avoiding subtlety and going over the top and down the other side, intending to be as appalling as possible to communicate his increasing displeasure with the output of Big Finish.

However, Russell simply sold this over-enunciating drivel as a deliberate attempt to revisit the prat-falling idiot-savant of Season 24 in a brave strike for verisimilitude.

Similarly, the fact Degenerate! is a solidly below average play overfilled with ideas and completely unsure of its own direction, crippled by a horrible performance from the lead actor, it was hailed a brilliant release by the perfect evocation of its chosen era.

Ultimately, Degenerate! is a confusing and thoroughly unrewarding total mess of frustratingly overcomplicated vagueness that gave me a headache, a plot revolving around Time Lord technobabble that sliced up my attention and tossed it in different directions...

...but I’m a rabidly anal collector of anything Doctor Who related, no matter how unappealing, patience stretching or downright unforgivable it may be. There are more of us out there than you think.

Which is lucky – otherwise Big Finish would be fucked.

Meanwhile, to accompany the musical tribute at the end of There Can Only Be One Doctor..., it was decided that Mark Callaghan’s "Wild, Wild Western Plan" be played instead of the end credits, since it came into the charts at the end of Season 24’s broadcast.

Whoever came up with that idea is just WEIRD, in my opinion...

The cars beat up and down
The LA freeway
In the city you can see the world
Even every which way

They’re not sure where they’re going to
Though they know is they’re
Driving on the right side
Long distance vision through a two-foot tube
They’re looking for somewhere to run and hide

There’s a MOMENT’S hesitation!

Cause this place excites me
I can’t explain
Just what it is about it
That makes my blood rage
I try so hard to understand
I guess I’m just a little part
Of the wild, wild western plan

In the city they shoot and run
The strangest notion
Cause in the city you can try your luck
Like tossing pennies into an ocean

All the sailors and the mermaids too
Are drawn at night
To this isle of lights
And you can see them walking
Two by two
Caught in world, while
Spinning into the lights

Well, they got NO TIME for hesitation!

Cause this place excites me
I can’t explain
Just what it is about it
That makes my blood rage
I try so hard to understand
I guess I’m just a little part
Of the wild, wild western plan

Yeah, and you can see them
Marching on the streets
Their minds are a mess
But their clothes are neat

The big audition for
A long lost dream
The actions starts with
A pan across a rush-hour scene

The cars beat up and down
The LA freeway
Emissaries from all over the world
In a hurry to take a meeting

They’re not sure where they’re going to
Though they know is they’re
Driving on the right side
Long distance vision through a two-foot tube
They’re looking for somewhere to run and hide

Well, they got NO TIME for hesitation!

Cause this place excites me
I can’t explain
Just what it is about it
That makes my blood rage
I try so hard to understand
I guess I’m just a little part
Of the wild, wild western plan.

Yeah, I guess I’m just a little part
Of the wild, wild western plan.
Yeah, I guess I’m just a little part
Of the wild, wild western plan.

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