Tuesday, December 1, 2009

8th Doctor - Shada

Serial BBCiCD02 - Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished
Second Entry in the EC Unauthorized Program Guide O' Shoddy Remakes

D O C T O R W H O

Serial BBCiCD02 - Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished -

1. The Sacred And Worshipful Law of Felicity Kendall
2. Agrajag
3. Bread Man
4. Stinks? Rank!
5. Shagged'er??
6. Cattle-prod of the (Scripted) Lines

The story opens with the Doctor and K9 mucking about under the console in a distinctly naughty fashion as the Doctor urges K9 to use his probe with all his might - to jam a series of fluid links in line, of course, you sickos! All the while the Doctor is bragging about how beat a man called Livingstone at a game of "Strip Bones" when Romana enters carrying a spear, hockey mask and wearing a skimpy robe. The Doctor instantly emerges, eager to play "another game".

"DOCTOR!" shouts Romana, eyes widen in shock. "You've changed!"

"Never, Romana!" the Doctor replies, fingers crossed. "I'll still love you while the poets can still rhyme, while the rivers still run, while there's still hydrogen in the universe and as long as there's a descent home brew in the fridge."

"I meant your face," his companion explains.

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

The Eighth Doctor explains that he is caught in an Infinite Improbability Field and, as such, is at the whim of any extremely improbable - but not impossible - happening and has, as such, swapped over with his former self. As the Fourth Doctor confronts Sam Jones and Faction Paradox, the Eighth Doctor is turning his hand at this interminable Douglas Adams script, certain he will be able to turn it into something vaguely watchable.

After an extremely awkward title sequence with Paul McGann's features replacing Tom Baker's, the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Romana to St Cedd's College Cambridge on Earth, 1979. They have been sent for by Professor Chronotis, an elderly Time Lord who has left his dynamic luxury flat in Gallifrey and now lives the quiet academic life. But in the shadows a being is seeking the Doctor, a scientist called Agrajag who has a device, in the form of a floating beach ball, with which he intends to steal the Doctor's mind and thereby gain his long awaited revenge.

Throughout all of time and space, through infinite eternities, the Doctor has been there to defeat Agrajag. The Doctor is confronted by Agrajag who reminds him that HE was the anonymous Dustbin that the Doctor blew to bits in some half-remembered previous Dustbin story, that HE was the second Cyberman to the left who was brutally slaughtered on some half-forgotten world, that HE was the ice cream salesman who the Doctor hit full on with his classic automobile while fleeing dinosaurs in downtown London... and so on and so on. In his defense the Doctor reminds everyone that "karma is a bitch".

Meanwhile Professor Chronotis admits to the Doctor that before he left home world he forgot to return a library book. The Doctor says that the Time Lords won't care if he takes out a simple little book for a few aeons past the due date and assures him that it's probably no big deal. The book turns out to be the key to the source of all of the Time Lords' power. Also Chronotis realizes that he's misplaced it, lent it out to students, and lost it again on a number of occasions. The ancient book haunts the mind and soul of all who read it and turns them into lifeless strange time zombies. Romana notices that these affects, incidentally, seem to be almost unnoticeable in students. As the sanity of all who read it are drained the power of the Time Lords grows ever more vulnerable.

Agrajag discovers this and somehow forms an objective to use his silver beach ball on the book, whose unique mental powers he can then exploit to project his own mind into every other creature in the universe. The first being he tries to take over, obviously is the Doctor, but he soon realizes that the process only works on virgins (those who have not had sexual relations with their own species to be precise), and so as the Doctor clutches tightly to Romana, the question looms, has he "Shagged'er"? Is the Doctor safe from the evil of Agrajag?

It appears not, because the Doctor collapses and is left for dead. Romana, indeed, wishes she'd shagged him just once, because this long-haired hippy in a frock coat is a hell of a lot sexier than the Harpo Marx lookalike she was lumbered with to recover the Key to Chicken with. However, the Eighth Doctor has managed to get his end away with Time Lady's on several occasions in the intervening centuries and is, in fact, totally safe.

After four episodes of extremely-well written padding, the Doctor, K9 and Arthur Dent travel to the giant space station think tank, blow it up, steal a space ship, return it, flee in a TARDIS, break into the proper one, give up and then have a final battle with Agrajag in the middle of part six. Using the patently obvious fact that Agrajag never lives long enough in any body to get a shag, the Doctor turns the evil beach ball on the nasty man and cold-bloodedly sucks his soul away. Complimenting himself for a job well done, the Doctor vanishes and is replaced by the Fourth Doctor, who is dressed as a giant bat skeleton and boasting about how he killed his own grandparents and thus IS paradox itself! Romana points out that the Fourth Doctor neglected to GO BACK IN TIME and kill his own grandparents and thus, is still normal. Depressed, the Fourth Doctor vows to remember to do that when he reaches his Eighth body and goes through this all again.

Annoyed at his attitude, Romana hurls the beach ball at the Fourth Doctor, only to realize at the last minute she has unintentionally doomed her husband. The Fourth Doctor collapses, a lifeless husk, to the floor. Trying to be cheerful, Arthur Dent reminds Romana that they've seen the Doctor's future, and thus he must survive this fate somehow.

In his own TARDIS, the Eighth Doctor is slumped in his chair, drooling...


Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who - Return of the Afronauts (Canada Only)
Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency
Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul

Fluffs - Paul McGann seemed alarmingly repetitive in this story

The final scene of the story doesn't scan too well, if you ask me:
(The Doctor, Romana and K9 enter the TARDIS control room)
Doctor: Where shall we go?
Romana: Or where shall we have been?
Doctor: Or where were we about to come from?
Romana: Or when were we going to have been where?
K9: Or, indeed, whence?
Doctor: W... Oh, I've lost it! Keep quiet in future, John, you've ruined the mood!

Goofs - Sam Jones and Faction Paradox don't exist! Or, is that the point?

Why does a Time Lord prison for Time Lord prisoners mostly contain British alternative comedians from the mid-to-late 1980s? Is Ben Elton THAT much of a threat to causal nexus? Actually, now you come to think about it...

Is the Eighth Doctor really devastated at the end of the story? I mean, he acts like that a lot of the time, even without a floating beach ball. Is this just a dull way of ending this story by trying to create a crap cliffhanger? And why do I get the feeling that this was in the original script?

Bizarrely, the 8th Doctor boasts of attending a sci-fi convention, tackling a giant Gillamation, giving a Tythonian a blow-job, watching Dustbin cybersex and shagging Paris, insisting he is the only incarnation EVER to do this. The 4th Doctor did all this, not him. And if you HAD done that, you wouldn't go around actually TELLING people about it, would you?


Fashion Victims - All the students and main cast. But this could be ironic.

Technobabble -
The Doctor mocks Agrajag's unfortunate affliction of "karmatic reactional overflow"


Links and References -
The Eighth Doctor wishes he could have turned up in QUALITY Douglas Adams like Paris Sucks or The Planet Pirates of Magrathea or, hell, even The Creature of Pittsburgh. The Beach Ball of Death also possesses a Dustbin, Cyberman, Bygone, Dawn French, Graham Chapman, Colin Baker, Jabba the Hut, Russell Crowe, Adrian Mole and Edmund Blackadder.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor boasts about having an orgy with Mary Shelly and Lord Byron immediately before the Infinite Improbability Drive snatched him away. Despite the fact he is only twelve hours old at the start of this story, the new Doctor has somehow managed to pester the life out of Chronotis to the point the old Time Lord's first reaction to the Doctor is to hurl cups of scalding tea at him and shout Welsh curses.


Groovy DVD Extras -
Romana, the Kraags and the Doctor do an up-tempo version of Kylie Mynogue's "I Just Can't Get You Out of My head." No, seriously, they do.


Dialogue Disasters -

4th Doctor: I... AM... PARADIGM! Sorry... PARADOX!!!!

Doctor: An epic journey from Cambridge Uni to a forgotten Gallifreyan jail... All in all, you might say we've gone from the Backs to the future! Hah-hah-ha... Heh. Oh. Bit topical. They haven't made the movie yet. Pity.

4th Doctor: It is a book of immense power. Even I tremble before it!
Romana: It's just a Gallifrey nursery book. I had it when I was a Time Tot.
4th Doctor: What? Not THAT book. THIS one!
Romana: ARGH! Scary!

Arthur Dent: This book will do to science what Professor "I'll Do Anything For A Pint" Frencham did in his Adult Variety Act - The Human Balloon?
Trillian: What? Shove a hose pipe up a member of the audience and inflate them with helium?
Arthur Dent: No, not quite. But almost.

Doctor: It is a book of immense power - even I tremble before it!
Romana: Oh, Doctor, it's just a Gallifreyan nursery book. I had it when I was a Time Tot.
Doctor: Yes, but it's an EDUCATIONAL Gallifreyan nursery book, Romana! We must
burn it right away! [aghast] No, wait!
Romana: Why?
Doctor: I just got the strangest feeling of déjà vu...

"I'll be back, Doctor! You haven't heard the last of me!"
- Agrajag, just before being run over by a Cambridge cyclist

Doctor: You should have been the librarian, Romana.
Romana: I should have been a contender.

Arthur Dent: And I don't believe we've traveled hundreds of light years.
Doctor: Why not?
Arthur Dent: You can't travel faster than light. Einstein.
Doctor: What? Do you understand Einstein?
Arthur Dent: Yes.
Doctor: What? And quantum theory?
Arthur Dent: Yes.
Doctor: What? And Planck?
Arthur Dent: Yes.
Doctor: What? And Newton?
Arthur Dent: Yes.
Doctor: What? And Schoenberg?
Arthur Dent: Of course.
(The Doctor punches Arthur Dent in the face.)
Doctor: No one likes a smart arse.

The final scene -
4th Doctor: Tell you what?
Romana: When?
4th Doctor: Now?
Romana: Now what?
4th Doctor: Then. Let's get on with Season 18, shall we?
Romana: When?
4th Doctor: In three. One, two, three.
Romana: Then?
4th Doctor: Now.
Romana: [sighs] Come back, Paul. All is forgiven.

A completely new sequence, but not a completely better one -
Agrajag: You stupid Time Lord! I have died a billion deaths because of you! Every time you save your miserable Gallifreyan flesh, my spirit is sent back into the darkness!
Doctor: Now, that's not true! What about when I was being molested by Cybermen - you didn't save me then, did you? Or when the Time Lords threw me into a washing machine? Or when I got stuck in my Super Disco incarnation? Or when the Bastard shot me through both hearts? And when I got Spectrox toxemia? Where we you then, you sniveling little creep?
Agrajag: Well, MAYBE I was having a break from being SLAUGHTERED by your over-developed survival instinct!
Doctor: Oh, Christ! You blame me when you DO die and you blame me when you DON'T!

Doctor: Run, Splinx!
Romana: What's a Splinx?
Doctor: No idea, but that's what written over the script in this infantile scrawl...

Doctor: Romana, we have every reason to feel confident!
Romana: Do we?
Doctor: STOP DOUBTING ME! JUST BECAUSE I DON'T WEAR A DAMN SCARF, I'M SUDDENLY NOT UP TO DEALING WITH WHATEVER CRAP DOUGLAS ADAMS COMES UP WITH? GET REAL!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Don't know, don't know, don't know, don't KNOW!!! God, someone must have a copy of the original script around here! What kind of morons ARE you people??

Chronotis: Crackers?
Romana: Oh, sometimes.
Doctor: Um, what do you mean, Romana?

Agrajag: This time, Doctor... This time, no-one will come to your rescue! You are dead!
Doctor: Y'know, I completely believe you. Which is weird, considering your success rate.

Chronotis: Bath Olivers?
Romana: Can't complain.
Doctor: What? WHAT?!? What the hell are you people on about??!!?

Doctor: What library book did you bring to earth anyway?
Chronotis: Oh, ahhh...The Sacred and Worshipful Law of Felicity Kendal.
Romana: THE WHAT?!!?
Doctor: YOU BROUGHT THE SACRED AND WORSHIPFUL LAW OF FELICITY KENDAL TO EARTH?!?!
Chronotis: Yes, yes, I know, silly of me. It's a stupidly powerful...
Doctor: Not only that, you did it on MY library card! I'm a wanted exile because of you, you stupid old man! I hope you die horribly! Romana! I wanna hug!

Doctor: Professor Chronotis, when we were on the river I heard the strange babble of inhuman voices, didn't you, Romana?
Romana: No. Not really.
Doctor: Did you hear them, K9?
K9: Negative, master.
Doctor: Professor?
Chronotis: I didn't hear a thing, Doctor, me old fella.
Doctor: But I can hear them now! Am I going INSANE?
Romana: No, but I think I know where the voices are coming from.
Doctor: Where, Romana? WHERE?
(Romana takes out the Doctor's earphones and switches off his iPod.)
Doctor: Oh. That makes sense.

The poignant death scene between the two ancient enemies -
Agrajag: Why... why... do you keep... doing this?
Doctor: Forty-two.
Agrajag: Are you trying to be funny? (dies)
Doctor: Guess so - as I'm the one who lives to laugh last! HAH!

4th Doctor: What library book did you bring to Earth, anyway?
Chronotis: Oh, ahhh... "The Sacred and Worshipful Law of Felicity Kendal".
Romana: THE WHAT?!!? YOU BROUGHT THE SACRED AND WORSHIPFUL LAW OF FELICITY KENDAL TO EARTH?!?!
Chronotis: Yes, yes, I know, silly of me. It's a stupidly powerful...
Romana: I'm going to HAVE to beat you, old man.
4th Doctor: Y'know, Romana, I get the strangest feeling of déjà vu.

Arthur Dent: If you want to see the World of Science turned on its head, come to my Lab!
Trillian: That's a terrible chat up line.

Arthur Dent: He must be mad, mustn't he?
Doctor: Madness. Sanity. It's all just a matter of opinion.
Arthur Dent: What's your opinion?
Doctor: Simple pseudostatistics. ...I JUST LOVE THIS NIFTY ADAMS BACK TALK!!

Romana: You forgot to take Axial Tilt, Diurnal Rotation and The Orbit Parabola Into Account...
Doctor: Maybe, but it was Chronotis who didn't return The Sacred and Worshipful Law of Felicity Kendal to the Panopticon Archive!! It was HIM!

Arthur Dent: So, er, you're going to kill the Doctor and destroy the cosmos?
Agrajag: I will succeed. Nothing can stop me.
Arthur Dent: What happens if you die now and go through it all again?
Agrajag: What? Have every reincarnation ended by one person again?! Impossible!
Arthur Dent: Or very, very improbable.

Agrajag: Beware, Doctor! Beware the Beach Ball of DEATH!
Doctor: Excellent, absolutely excellent. And so discreet.

Doctor: Charley? Charley, Charley, Charley! Charley? Charley, Charley...
Trillian: Doctor, what ARE you on about?
Doctor: Oh. Sorry. I must be reading next week's script. Or maybe...
Trillian: Yeah?
Doctor: I get the strangest feeling of pré-jà vu...


Dialogue Oddities -

(ORIGINAL SCRIPT)
Fourth Doctor: KNOW THAT I LIVE! For a million years I walked in darkness. But no longer. That which was the Doctor is no more. I am a God of the Fourth. I am Paradox itself. Know that I live! And in knowing... FEAR!!

(ON SCREEN)
CGI Tom Baker: Good evening, Romana - I can see your pants from here.


UnQuotable Quote -

Romana: [to Agrajag] Where are you taking me??


Viewer Quotes -

"Oh, Belgium! Belgium, Belgium, Belgium! The one continuity element they had to get right in this mess and they stuffed it up! I cannot believe this! I am officially known as the Ancient Time Mystic in the Qualactin Zone, but in this story my galaxy-renowned Vortex Hiking Course is all down to the Space Mystic of Quantox!! I mean, that's not fair! They're giving a rival company FREE publicity on the web! Damn you, Douglas Adams! DAMN YOOOUUUU!"
- Norman Bridewell, c/o Ancient Time Mystic Training Group, Qualactin Zone, JFKL

"If Shagged'er had been finished and broadcast, it'd never have aroused Doctor Who fans in the way that it does.... Excuse me."
- Erotic Science Fiction Reviews, Gregor Beebalbabble (1986)

"The whole Shagged'er thing was terribly disappointing. Douglas Adams may have written a very clever script, but I sure as hell didn't find it watching this crap."
- Peter Wier (2002)

"I THINK THIS IS A LOAD OF SHIT! They took out the brilliant character of Dirk Gently and replaced it with this wanker in a frock coat! What utter, utter, bilge!"
- Andrew Beeblebrox (1994)

"I'd like to use this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all the cast and crew at Big Finish and BBCi for bringing us the delightful Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished. I'd like to. But I can't. I don't want to see this ever again. I dread the day it comes out on DVD."
- James Justin Thomas (2068)

"Paul McGann makes Tom Baker's lines his own by reading them out aloud!"
- A Stater Of The Completely Freaking Obvious At Whovention 2003

"I have just watched Paul McGann's second story, Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished. It was, without doubt one of the silliest, most ridiculous daft and utterly bizarre things I've ever seen produced under the name Doctor Who. I hope all involved break their left big toes so that I can identify them by their limps and send Nazi assassins after them."
- Clayton Hickman (2004)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"You know, I don't like to show off my connections to Doctor Who, but I do think that my appearance in this story is a highlight of both the Eighth Doctor and the Fourth Doctor era. Appearing as a black-hooded executioner and highly-valued Time Lord prisoner did more for both me and the series than some idiots singing Chatanooga Choo-Choo off-key, huh?? That was my own costume, too. Well, I say costume. I always dress like that."


Paul McGann Speaks!
"I've never been a believer in false modesty, or even genuine modesty, and I firmly state that I am a measured, studied professional. I let enthusiasm (if any) come out in carefully controlled bursts during my performances (if any), and I credit myself I never take part in anything that isn't a well-paced script with admirable contents. Still, everyone has an off-day. Those three years at RADA taught me many things and also how to recognize the moment to give in and say, "Screw this, I'm getting paid, aren't I?" and you just do whatever they tell you do. I often think, with a philosophy like that, I could do well as a prostitute on Liverpool street corners. I mean, it's a step up from this shit. Probably pay a bit better too. You know, a lot of people compliment Agrajag's sexy spaceship, with all that sultry sibilance and sexy disembodiedness? Well, that was me. Hah! All you Who fans thought being attracted to the voice of a spaceship was weird, well you're probably dialing up your analysts even now! No, to be serious, I really would like to be a sexy disembodied voice in someone's ear. Preferably India Fisher's. Heh. Don't tell the wife, will you? I mean, she won't read this. Will she??"


Lalla Ward Speaks!
"I've spent a good chunk of my life filming this story. All those months wasted in 1979 and 2003... I want them all back! I only agreed to the do the story in order to break The Curse of Shagged'er, nothing else. It certainly wasn't for the cash. I was paid better 23 years ago. Not by the Doctor Who team, of course, I had, er, other sources of income back then. But I just thank my stars it wasn't wall-to-wall Tom Baker like last time. Now, it's more wall-to-wall Paul McGann, plus the rest of the cast. I'm the only original cast member, the only person who was in it before? Why is that? Why? What did I do wrong? I spent all those years hanging round Douglas Adams specifically to annul this part of the curse - it's the last time I listen to THAT priest, I'm telling you. I suppose its a blessing he wasn't there to see all those snobby bastards mangling a script he spent less effort writing than I am talking and breathing at the same time right now. Yes, doing Shagged'er again has been a bittersweet experience. Well, "bittersweet" as in "totally wretched". This story is a stupid, stupid waste of time. And not just for Doctor Who and Doctor Who fans, but anyone who likes reading, or who likes laughing, or anyone who loves nature or science. It makes me sad to think this story now exists completely in any form, but I'm certain Douglas Adams would have made a shitload of cash out of it, one way or other."


Andrew Sachs Speaks!
"I had spent my whole life and career ruined, to various degrees, by Monty Python. I go to auditions ranging from Hamlet to Big Brother Uncut and all they do is ask me how it felt to ridicule an ethnic minority and get beaten around the head by John Cleese. At last, I get a decent part and it's by ANOTHER member of that wandering troupe of pretentious wankers! I remember my agent put my name forward for Doctor Who once, but they preferred Sylvester McCoy over me. I was devastated and strongly contemplated suicide for weeks afterwards. Indeed, when it got too much, I rang the Samaritans. Three of them slashed their wrists when they heard about the Sylvester McCoy stuff - and they weren't even Doctor Who fans! Yes, that hit me very hard as well. After that I had to do a lot of solo stuff - documentary commentaries, stage shows, talking books - so I think it was that element which attracted me to Agrajag. With him dying every few minutes, he never had time to gather a wife and kids. Though, I suppose a talking spaceship is a half-decent substitute for the love of a good woman. Especially that voice! God! Agrajag was probably doing a lot of solo stuff as well, if you get my drift. There's always someone worse off than yourself. Apparently. I must admit, I really liked the idea of coming down here and working with human beings for a change. Then they brought in that CGI Tom Baker and it was Faulty fucking Towers all over again. That thing stole the scene. Literally, whenever he moved, he ripped the pixels away from the CGI set, it was awful. I remembered thinking "If I could have one wish, it's that I never have to behold that hideous ectoplasm ever again". And that was before he even started talking!"


Trivia -
The final scene has the Eighth Doctor realizing half the book in Chronotis' TARDIS are in fact stolen from the Panopticon Archives under HIS library card and begins shoveling them into his own TARDIS to return. The books nicked include: "I Claudius", "Blake's 7: Afterlife", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Waiting for Godo", "Billy Bunter of Greyfriar's School", "Colditz", "Danger UXB", "Doctor Who and the Horns of Nimoy", "Restaurant a the End of the Universe", "The Onedin Line", "The Professionals", "Our Planet's Story", "Rogert's Thesaurus", "British Book of Wild Birds", "Alternative Betelguse", "The Time Machine", "Chariots of the Gods" and "The Victim". This was not scripted and in fact, Paul McGann stole the props in lieu of payment and set up his profitable second-hand book shop.


Rumors & Facts -
"Shagged'er", written by Douglas Adams in the summer and autumn of 1979, was originally intended to close the seventeenth season of Doctor Who. Location filming on the six-part serial was completed more-or-less as scheduled, despite the bewildering attempt by Tom Baker to take control of the universe using only his right hand and a pint of VB.

However, the studio sessions were ruined when Adams and Producer Graham Williams set the BBC alight in a wave of total pyromania. So frantic were Doctor Who fans to see "The Lost Doctor Who Story", the last hurrah for the completely anarchic, devil-may-care adventures of 1970s, the premature curtailment of a whole era and ethos of Doctor Who, they were quite prepared to ignore all that as long as they could boast they'd seen it.

After drugging Tom Baker and using a complicated ECT set up to get him to narrate the footage for the 1992 video presentation of "Shagged'er", Who fandom simply threw their hands up in the air and decided to just start from scratch all over again.

It took eleven years to get it done, partially because every single fan in England had to save up all the cash they could to swindle the Douglas Adams estate, and also as a homage to Douglas Adams inability to comprehend the term "deadline".

Did the reconstruction of "Shagged'er" graduate from Cambridge first, or is it a load of old time tosh? Is that a serious question? If so, the answer is depressingly obvious.

Considering how crap Douglas Adams' script was in the first place, for a production to outdo it in level of sheer awfulness is something truly laudable.

The audio is excellent, as is the new format for animation, with Shockwave working far better on the usual 56K modem. But top notch sound, and reasonably decent actors cannot stop this z-grade script which was, after all, nothing more than an excuse to set fire to some sets.

What little original script survived both 25 years and Tom Baker was "fantastically adapted" and given "the perfect cast".

This "fantastic adaption" involved gluing the readable pages together and feeding them through Gay Russell's Fan-Wank-O-Meter until the level YOU'RE PUSHING IT, CHESTER was reached.

To add some useless fan masturbation to the mix were cameos of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors, gratuitous monster appearances, and replacing Tom Baker (for admittedly, very good reasons) with Paul McGann but not altering a single word of dialogue after the sequence at the top of the page, which was composed over a period of six months by Lance Parkin from his retreat in the Gallifreyan Tomb of the Uncertain Soldier.

However, even at the earliest stage of development, "Shagged'er" lacked six episodes worth of story. To be fair to both Douglas Adams and Graham Williams, in the 1970s no serial had six episodes worth of story, mainly because there was Tom Baker and various fire hazards to pick up the slack.

Upon realizing this, the Big Finish team decided to defeat the laws of time, space and man by giving considerably less than one episode per 25 minutes, even though the production was streaming at 512 kilobytes per second. This can be seen by the curious cliffhanger endings:

1. Agrajag sits back and watches The Four-And-A-Half Doctors on his DVD player.
2. The Doctor gets onto a bicycle.
3. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and Arthur Dent enter the TARDIS one by one.
4. The erotic voice of Agrajag's spaceship causes Arthur Dent to cross his legs.
5. The Doctor clutches Romana in terror as the Beach Ball of Death Approaches.
6. The Fourth Doctor is intrigued by the idea one of the greatest Time Lord criminals was ultimately forgotten and dismissed as a harmless old man, and wonders if the same fate awaits him - in which case, he's going to have plenty of opportunities to cause even MORE havoc and destruction throughout the realms of time!

Realizing that any other webcast on at the same time could prove a ratings risk - even the 24-hour paint drying broadcast at www.getalife.com.uk - the production team decided to make things watchable by getting the best cast together. Starring as Agrajag was Faulty Towers cast member, Andrew Sachs, mainly because they laughed as much at the abuse Basil gave Manuel as the universe gave Agrajag.

Also, they'd hoped to get the Michael Palin It's Man Fan Club (or MPIMFC for short) to appear as a bug of ragged students whose brains had been sucked out through their eyeballs by a floating beach ball.

The MPIMFC refused on the grounds they still had some standards left, even after "Pole to Pole" and so the roles went to the Starship Enterprise Manpower Extras of Norway.

Joining SEMEN in the cast was Paul McGann.

Paul McGann was chosen as the Doctor to replace Tom Baker, mainly because Alan Barnes had a wager going that McGann's eyes were that shape because of Typhoid Mary and assumed that this was the time to prove it.

He also refused to believe that the script, which was specifically tailored to suit Tom Baker's peyote-driven performance, would sound banal if read out by Paul McGann. He could regularly be heard screaming, "The role is ACTOR-PROOF!" at passers-by.

Indeed, this phrase was sampled and used in the Glaswegian rock group Colostomy Explosion in their remix album "The Moral Fibre of Doctor Who and The Diagrams of Pompeii".

The album failed spectacularly and forced the group to split, ultimately ending with each member of the band committing suicide during a production of We Will Rock You at the National Theatre.

Nevertheless, at Gay Russell's insistence, what was left of the entire budget was spent on creating a computer-generated Tom Baker who appeared identical to the one who had original starred in and ruined the original Shagged'er. It also was programmed with delusions of messianic god hood, in order to get the FEEL of the man across.

At this time it was considered simply sacking EVERYONE involved in Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished, and instead creating the original in cyberspace.

However, perhaps due to the shitty software that generated him - or perhaps the very spirit of the real Tom Baker? - the CGI 4th Doctor crashed every single computer it was loaded into and reacted completely randomly according to whatever data was entered.

Tom Baker himself commented, "That'll do, CGI Tom. That'll do."

During the course of rehearsals and recording, John Leeson suggested it might be quicker, easier, cheaper and just better all round if the script of "Shagged'er" was revived more radically - specifically, releasing Leeson himself and Lalla Ward from the studio and roping in India Fisher to play the Eighth Doctor's BF companion, Charley Pollard.

Barnes told Leeson just where he could shove his commemorative K9 model, insisting that the presence of his creation Charley in this story just wouldn't work. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were a couple who could - and frequently did - make scenes in theatre queues declaiming loudly. Paul McGann and India Fisher would be so thick with one another that no one would notice them.

Paul McGann pointed out that surely a decent writer could contemporize Adams' script and give it a new kind of companion interplay. It was shortly after this that McGann was taken to hospital for treatment for a badly-kicked groin.

After toying with the idea of changing the story's title from Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished to Transdimensional Wife Swap, Alan took a shot of tequila and told everyone else to get back to work.

It seems that not a single person involved in this production ever considered that Shagged'er was a lost story for a damn good reason - NOBODY wanted it to be shown!

It wasn't like The Mascara or The Tense Planet, which were burnt out of sheer bloody mindedness rather a deliberate desire to prevent innocents watching them.

Ultimately, however, the ghost of the original production seemed to possess Sean Biggerstaff, who played the role of Arthur Dent, who then went about setting fire to the Big Finish studios.

The original film canisters were lost in the blaze and only the audio track survived. When given the opportunity to provide linking narration came up, Paul McGann threatened to suffocate himself with a bag of jelly babies rather then go near a DNA project ever again.

Hastily, the BF crew collected artist Lee Sullivan and pistol-whipped him until he had illustrated an extremely basic cartoon around the subject and devoted a webcast of all six episodes from the Official BBC Doctor Who website, www.sad.pathetic.wanker@doctorwho.co.uk.

After six months it was taken off the site and then put back when it became apparent no one had noticed its absence.

Log onto Shagged'er II: This Time It's Finished right now - as the first one to do so, you might just win a prize!

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