Tuesday, December 1, 2009

8th Doctor - Minuet in Hell (ii)

Dialogue Disasters -

Deeva: You may call me Superior Mistress.
Charley: And you can get on your knees and beg me for more!
Deeva: WHAT?
Charley: Sorry. Don't know why I said that. You sit on the bed. I'll take it in easy stages.


Buffy: Emmerdale, Doctor Who, Time Gentlemen Please, Sapphire and Steel, Eddie Waring... Strikes me, Britain turns out lot of weird things.
Brigadier: Yeah, but at least there's a difference between them, Yank!


Doctor: Sex with Charley was excellent. Excellent! EXCELLENT!
Brigadier: Really?
Doctor: More than that - it was fun!!!
Brigadier: Odd idea of fun you have, Doctor.


Charley: Is there any point to this endless parade of naked young girls?
Willow: Perhaps there is no plot?
Charley: Good call, girlfriend.


Doctor: Ah, Charley! I see you've met the one person that I hate more than Michael Grade!
Charley: Oh, Doctor?!! I thought *I* was the one person that you hate more than Michael Grade!
Doctor: Ahhh... Yeah, lesson to myself. Don't tell people they're the one person that I hate more than Michael Grade.


"Now, run along. Disappear into the ether."
- the Brigadier to one of his many lady friends.


Serge: Oh, Charley. I smash doors down, I enter young ladies' bedrooms, I want to kill you... why the hell don't you find me sexy?

Doctor: You're going to suck out my brain! Why do girls always want to suck out my brain? What's my brain got that the rest of me hasn't? What's it take, huh?


Dialogue Triumphs -

Charley: I like the porn industry, Doctor! IT'S FUN!!!


Doctor: Tha- that's inhuman!
Deeva: No! That's magic!


Giles: Gallifrey, Dustbins, Cybermen, Susan... Damn, damn Susan.
Doctor: How do you know all this?
Giles: Haven't you worked it out yet, my poor, mad, confused, bisexual, weak-limbed, Evita-loving, sexually inexperienced, Bohemian, camping, Kenneth Williams-lookalike friend?
Doctor: Um. No.
Giles: You tell me all this every fucking night!


Buffy: YOU'RE AN OLYMPIC STANDARD DORK, DOCTOR!!!
Doctor: Absolutely. DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE PERCEPTIVE WOMEN!


Brigadier: Here I am, eight foot of hot, sweaty demon...
Doctor: Er, Alistair, I'd say round about six inches. Maybe seven.
Brigadier: Shut up, wanker, I'm trying to score here.


Giles: Have you been acting sanely?
Doctor: Well, I think so. I mean, it's not like I'm Tom Baker, is it?


Buffy: Well, she's a natural blonde who falls out of her clothes and screams.
Brigadier: Perfect. Sounds like the Doctor's type.


The Brigadier's last words to Charley:
"Every time I think I've seen all of you, out you pop out again!"


Doctor: Well, Brigadier... here we are again.
Brigadier: Yes indeed.
Doctor: Amaze me.
Brigadier: Right. How are you, Doctor?!! Good to see you! Should have guessed it was you. Just didn't dream of seeing you HERE!!! I like the new face, by the way. See if you can't hold on to it a little longer than some of your predecessors, there's a good chap. Was that good?
Doctor: Sure.
Brigadier: Your turn.
Doctor: Oh. Of course. Alistair!!! You're looking younger every day! It's always a pleasure teaming up with you. Someone dependable... solid as a rock. By the way, Alistair. Thank you for keeping Charley away from me for a few hours, but also just for being here... I feel a lot safer now. Was that good enough?
Brigadier: Yeah, great. Huh. On with the plot.
Doctor: Oh, we've got a plot this time round, do we?


Brigadier: I knew a man who called himself the Doctor. I wish he were here, suffering this awful material instead of us. But no, nothing could be THAT contrived. And I've met some people in my time, Ms. Summers, who I believed were the lowest humanity was capable of sinking to. Few plum his depths. Of course, you're welcome to try...


Brigadier: Hold still, little girl! I won't take long to do you. No more than an hour or two. Honest! This is more fun and rewarding... for ME, obviously. Now then, what shall we play with next?


The final scene of the series -
Doctor: Off we go then, Charley. We can leave saving the universe from monsters for another day, all right? Where to now? Let's just go somewhere nice, quiet, and peaceful, and do a bit of stalking. Now, how about a quick perve at the Croissant Nebula? It's very pretty. Colors you've never dreamt of. Stars, gas clouds—
Charley: --and gravel quarries, no doubt.
Doctor: Ooooh, Charley! It's a beautiful universe out there. [sotto] And I'd rather explore it without YOU, beach ball belly...


UnQuotable Quote -

Giles: Well, that's comforting to hear.


Viewer Quotes -

"A blueprint for how NOT to do Doctor Who. But it's still a hell of a lot better than the entire JST era." - Andrew Beeblebrox (2002)

"This is just plain slander!"
- Buffy Anne Summers (2002 - after resurrection)

"It's right that Inuit in Hull should be the last in opening salvo from the Eighth Doctor and companion Charley. In fact, The Stoned of Venice would equal it in its 'last-story-ness'. Bugger it, this salvo should have been stopped before it started."
- a rather aggressive Doctor Who fan who hates Season 28 (1990)

"Ah, Rupert Giles, who wants to be the Doctor is a superb foil for the real thing, even beyond the initial ambiguity of his origins and motives, he remains interesting. But how much more interesting if he had actually been a Quirk?!?" - the Creator of a Quirks (1998)

"Like an expert showman, Inuit in Hull shows you total crap for two hours, swindles you out of all your cash, roughs you up for more, sells you into slavery, and then tells jokes about you behind your back."
- Iain M Banks (2000)

"For me though the most fascinating aspect of the story was the Doctor's cellmate. A performance that was a total revelation. Now I know Nicholas Briggs has played the Doctor on fan stories in the past - but this was a performance of real note. For much of the story he really thinks he is the Doctor, and acts accordingly - terrifically portrayed. Surely, his appearance in numerous audios, videos and comic strips MUST make him canon by now? He's better than all the other Doctors put together!" - Nick Briggs (2000)

"The Doctor and Giles are locked up safely in an Eskimo metal asylum, leaving their nubile charges to do whatever they damn well want. You know, it sounds like a total waste of time, but, I'm hauling ass to Tijuana anyway!" - Father James O'Malley (2000)

"First off I want to deal with the negative aspect of this story, certain yank accents. The accents of Richard III, Buffy and Serge will really piss off the Americans - they all have a think Icelandic twang. Is this something to do with the bewildering title, or because all the actors are utterly crap? You decide." - Dave Restal (2006)

"Bored now!"
- Stephen James-Walker at the beginning of every scene not featuring Charley (2003)

"Charley's 'Queen of Hell' costume isn't half as good as Emma Peel's 'Queen of Sin' outfit in The Avengers episode 'A Touch of Brimstone', also featuring a modern day Hellfire Club. Then I used my PhotoShop to create 'A Touch of Hull', the long awaited Doctor Who/Avengers crossover story where Charley and Emma get in on, Lesbian-Animal-Threesome style... WHAT?" - Nigel Verkoff (2006)

"Words fail me. Frequently." - Harpo Marx (1976)

"Whilst the tried and tested formula of landing on a planet leaving the TARDIS and embarking on an adventure will always be the most reliable back bone of any Doctor Who story, I do feel that the series does lend itself to approaching stories from another angle. My first reaction was that this story moves Doctor Who forward in the direction I would take if I were the producer - a dream that I'm sure most Whovians share. Wait a cotton-picking minute..." - Gay Russell (2004)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Ha! You call THAT a lunatic asylum? You could limbo out of those restraints! Pa-thet-ic! I know leather restraints you couldn't escape from, even if you DID dislocate your shoulder blades beforehand. Come on, I'll prove it... What are you, SCARED??"


Paul McGann Speaks!
"You know, there aren't many women I've met who can wear a red leather S&M outfit, high-heels and a fully mechanized expanding stomach and still look sexy. But India can. And she can do it very well. I'm not exactly sure WHY they decided that Charley would do the whole "Species II" inflation gig, because that stomach took up most of the space in the studio. We had to cut out any sequences entering and exiting the TARDIS because the doors were patently too small for Charley to enter. I remember suggesting we just get a wider police box prop, but then Russell began foaming at the mouth so I thought I best ignore it. I definitely decided not to ask why we had all this visual stuff when it was supposed to be an audio play... Yes, the line-up sure changed in Inuit in Hull. First, it was me, Charley and Serge and now it was me, Charley, and Charley's stomach. Of course, the stomach was never short when buying a round at the pub, and we were able to stuff a lot of legal and illegal substances inside. When the whole pregnancy plot was resolved, I gave my brother Mark the belly and he's been smuggling things in it ever since. Happy days."


India Fisher Speaks!
"Ah, the end of the first season, I remember it well. I loved the new approach to the companion stroke assistant stroke slut stroke my thigh. The idea of a truly illegitimate child that could be literally ANYONE'S. Woolworth's, Wishbone's, Pietro's, the Cyber Leader's... even that creature that copped a feel in Bored of Ironing. There was no way of telling what was going on inside me, and that was before the scripts were written. Plus I got a full-page spread in DWM showing me in full bloom pointing a finger at the Doctor. It was just a publicity shot, of course, and that's exactly what I told the press. Once Paul had coughed up the cash. Yes, Charley and I have a lot in common."


Nicholas Courtney Speaks!
"Ah, yes, Inuit in Hull. No idea what that was about. Some vampire-hooker nonsense, I'd be bound. I was only there to complete the set, I mean, if I let the chance to work with another Doctor go by, I'd be lynched on the spot. Actually though, the chances of the Brig meeting the Ninth Doctor are now pretty remote, what with me hurled into the universe of Anti-Matter and all that jazz. Liberty Hall, Mr. McGann. Liberty Hall! Yes, my relationship with the Eighth Doctor was a little out of the ordinary in that one, as we were both out to kill each other and, in a sense, he succeeded. Of course, working with the Doctor is always... well... rubbish. Whichever one's wearing the coat, they're all self-obsessed gits and I'm pleased to say Paul was no exception. Then were was India, of course... Yes. I thought that the Brig went out in a good way. His last scene in Doctor Who was shoving his head under Charley's breasts and going, "Blublbulublullu!" which, in retrospect, was the only logical end for the character."


Trivia -
This is apparently a cross-over with a popular American television series, but I can't be bothered confirm or deny if I'm allowed to remember if I can confirm or deny whether I can confirm or deny whether or not this is true.


Rumors & Facts -
The final story of Paul McGann's debut season was originally to be the psychological thriller, "A Shroud of Beer", in which the Doctor is psychologically traumatized by discovering his new body is allergic to every type of alcohol imaginable.

The BF production crew thought this would be a bit too radical a note to end the season on and would ruin several storylines for the next year, most specifically Mark Gattiss' "Evaders from Bars".

The author of "Shroud" was Alan W Lear (or 'King Lear' to his subjects), who Jacqueline Rayner had suggested on the grounds that he wasn't Nicholas Briggs.

Lear had written several stories for Briggs' unsettling series of profit-only Doctor Who stories, Oddly Videos, and been submitting stories to the real Doctor Who stories since before the show actually started.

An avid viewer, Lear got very annoyed with the genuine production team, believing the Doctor was getting too big for his boots. Indeed, nearly every storyline he had written was a variation of the same plot: the Doctor and his companions suffering pain, humiliation and self-doubt. Companions were served rather badly in Lear's scripts.

In "The Masochists of Leather" (1963), Susan was given an anal probe. In "The Hidden Peanut" (1964), Barbara was forced into drag; "The Pimps" (1966) saw Jamie with boiling water being poured down his kilt; "Operation: Where's Wally" (1967) featured Victoria given an all-over body wax. This bizarre fetish continued into Pertwee's reign and beyond. "The Shape of Trevor" (1972) had Jo driven absolutely mad. "Dustbins in Cricklewood" (1973) revolved around the Dustbins being covered in dog shit. Over the course of "Spaced Station" (1975), "Rooting King" (1976) and "The Mental Fault" (1977), saw Sarah Jane first being locked in a fridge, then blown up in a nuclear reactor, and forced to mud wrestle in treacle. K9 was used as a toaster in "Tearing Up the Mail" (1979), Romana running off with a clone of Tom Baker in "Seal Orders" (1980), Adric being fed to some crocodiles in "The Enemy Without" (1981), Peri being gang-raped in "The Ultimate Naughtiness" (1986), Ace being felt up by plants during "Bong" (1989) and a story featuring Cat Molester Jones on Mars in 1990.

Absolutely none of his ideas were taken up, mainly as they required a budget of over 21/2 p and had such things as plot, drama, cohesion and direction. When he was brutally beaten and shot in the lung by the BF production crew, Lear decided to reinvigorate his scripts by adding a plot.

Nick Briggs, yearning and aching to take over Paul McGann's role as the Doctor, cunningly suggested rewriting ANOTHER Oddly Video story, "Inuit in Hull". The script was mainly a rant about a nasty Eskimo living up the road and featured a neat plot twist where the Doctor doubted his own existence and it seemed a passer-by was the REAL Doctor. No one was remotely surprised when Briggs offered his services playing the said passer-by, or the suggestion that the climax be altered so the passer-by was confirmed as the Doctor and Paul McGann thrown back on the scrap heap from whence he came.

Although Gay Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellery had sworn on a copy of The Horny Nimoy that they would never do anything Briggs suggested ever again, even if only to shut him up, they quickly abandoned this when Briggs donned his Cyber Leader costume.

"Inuit in Hull" originally began with the Nth Doctor's companion Ria reprogramming the TARDIS console with a length of iron piping, causing the ship to crash in Hull, which has just been invaded by the most evil and ancient of the Time Lord's enemies - the Eskimos. Seeing the slant-eyed fishermen proves so bad to the Doctor's mental health he manages to convince his Bedlam cellmate that he is not the Doctor. Now believing himself to be the Time Lord, Becky Glove Smuggler strides into the lair of the Eskimos, who shoot him down like a dog. The Doctor and Ria escape in the Wine Peddler's handsome cab as Western Civilization collapses to the Communist Conspiracy.

Big Finish agreed to adapt "Inuit In Hull" on the condition it be used to bring Paul McGann's first season to a satisfying conclusion, tying up some loose ends, leave others waiting to be resolved, return the Doctor to America, give the eighth Doctor his first encounter with the Brigadier, and also involve a machete-waving seal cub running amok in a lunatic asylum.

JHE also suggested Lear give all the characters various degrees of amnesia, thus allowing piss-poor characterization to be dramatically justifiable. Lear, who by now was bed-ridden from the eyebrows down, found that agreeing to "a few easy changes" was comparable to "selling one's soul to the devil for half a pint of milk".

To be fair, they suggested these changes in the belief that Lear could simply use a 'find and replace' function on his word processor. Unfortunately, Lear was a notorious luddite and refused to work with anything but quill and ink. Briggs valiantly leant Lear his own portable electric typewriter – which Lear promptly demolished with a club, refusing to have any contact with it. Briggs then handed over some shitty PC he picked up at a car boot sale, only to have Lear use it to bludgeon him unconscious.

It was this act that convinced Big Finish to let Lear use his own methods of authoring.

With the trademarked BF gibbering panic, Lear frantically restructured "Inuit in Hull" abandoning the setting, characters, enemies and everything Russell considered total shite. Lear had wanted the help of his co-writer, Puck, who mysteriously vanished. Briggs stepped in to fill the gap and suggested a bit more material about the Doctor's psychological trauma and the possibility that an innocent bystander (the name of which was suggested "Nicholas Briggs") would take over the reigns of Time Lordom and rule the cosmos. He also suggested that the gimmick of the story was that the Brigadier only ever met this new Doctor and not the McGann version. Lear insisted that the "maybe-Doctor" should stop being a Cyberman-fetishist and part-time actor and instead become an aging Californian hippy.

This was rejected on the grounds that not only was it too similar to Paul McGann's real-life status, but decent accents was borderline impossible to do amongst Big Finish's "acting skills".

Due to the extreme lack of actors, nearly all the cast members were ransacked from the remaining stories in the season, and so it was rapidly explained that a time storm had whisked the crew of the Vanguard, Pietro and Woolworth to this particular point in the causal nexus in order to keep the audience credulous.

Five minutes after reading the literally back-breaking rewrites Lear had performed, Russell suggested it was probably better off the way before and told Lear to fix it. However, a bizarre side effect of this story has the character of Doctor Alan Partridge now being performed by high-class space vixen-cum-Pokémon, Deeva Jansen.

In order to get his own back on Russell, Lear added a scene where the Doctor gives Giles a handy list of companions, including 'Sam Niell', which threw the whole canonicity of BFP into a dispute that lasts to this day.

Indeed, so desperate was the team to remove this script-albatross that they edited out the entire sequence. Unfortunately, this was the sequence that justified most of the plot.

In order to replace it, a DVD of Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 3 was played to a number of reaction shots. This had the welcome side effect of erasing "Nicholas Briggs" from the narrative and replacing him with Anthony Stewart-Head's Rupert Giles, which cancelled out the final scenes of the story where Nick Briggs takes on the mantle of the Doctor, and head off into the wild blue yonder accompanied by Richard the Cyberman.

Lear's sabotage attempt may have ultimately restored Inuit in Hull, but it stuffed up any future attempts to get work from Big Finish. His proposed Fifth Doctor story lines – Riders of the Vartex, Honeycombs of Traken, The Wow Factor and The Crabs of the Shadow – were routinely rejected, binned, plagiarized and released under new names.

Gay Russell insisted that, since he had done most of the work on Inuit in Hull, he should get equal credit as author. Lear cautiously agreed, only to find a counter-claim from Nicholas Briggs that, although, yes, ninety-eight per cent of the material he'd written hadn't actually been used, he should get something for his troubles. Gay Russell decided instead to hand over Lear's fee to Briggs to keep him quiet and had Lear removed from the building by the nearest Garm impersonator.

Lear was last heard of in 2002 swearing that, somehow, someway, he would ensure that the entire cast of Riverdance would dance on Gay Russell's testicles and reduce them to dust.

As Russell gets countless such death threats, no notice was taken.


Season 28 Wrap-Up -

Season 28 was one of the most transitional and erotic seasons in the whole of Doctor Who. This was down to one thing - Charley Pollard.

In 1989, the idea of de-emphasizing the Doctor in favor of his companion was seen to be a idea nuttier than squirrel shit, but now seems eminently sensible.

The sixteen episodes since her arrival was quite simply HER story, the story of an Edwardian Adventuress who had a dream of taking the whole cosmos roughly from behind.

However, in fairness, Paul McGann is brilliant as the topsy-turvy Doctor with his vast emotional range, which mainly consists of a lust/hate relationship with a woman who's libido rivals his own.

Anyone in their right minds would be impressed with Charley's vital statistics and the way she makes a disgustingly advanced state of pregnancy look kind of cool is causing a population explosion throughout the western world.

Season 28 made every single story an 'event' and vital to the canon, thus no real Who fan could do without it - a clever ploy that made Big Finish big bucks.

The stories introduce a new Doctor, a new companion, and brought back the Bastard, the Cybermen, the Brigadier and Michael Sheard. Sick Morning was a far smarter choice to launch the season that the originally planed The Stoned of Venice, mainly because it had a point and wasn't simply an excuse for every single member of the cast and crew to get high. Bored of Ironing is a space filler, and proves that, if nothing else, you should never listen to Nick Briggs. The Stoned of Venice, despite taking Doctor Who away from the norms of broadcastable entertainment, is easily most loyal to the TV Movie - suggesting that seriously intense chemicals were used in the formation of the Enema Within. Finally, the brain-bleedingly long Inuit in Hull offers a brothel, a vampire slayer, a huge bloody vacuum cleaner, a newborn US state, a bloodthirsty seal pup and an appearance of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart for reasons it's best not to go into right now.

All four stories are rescued by Charley, and her diverse approaches to intercourse can clearly be seen as an influence on the next season. Charley works best on Earth, preferably in the red light district, or at least in a setting which is steeped in depravity.

The Doctor's presence and fear of their offspring wasn't worth exploring, but there are better ways of creating characterization than with a deranged homicidal sea-bound mammal who only appears in the beginning and end of stories.

For a second season, the Doctor and Charley WOULD be back and, yes, it really WOULD be about sex and drugs and rock and roll...

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