Friday, January 1, 2010

9th Doctor - Boomtown! (i)

Serial 109 – Funky Town!
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Reaching Third Base

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides – Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial 109 – Funky Town! -


{Previously on Doctor Who – Alias of London}
Some time ago, the alien Slitheen family of quantum space bimbos infiltrated the British government and tried to trick humanity into destroying the Earth for, well, reasons which escaped these intergalactic airheads at the time.
Despite the over-enthusiastic aid of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the Doctor ultimately defeated them.
That is to say, he pissed off Mickey Smith so much the guy hacked into the Royal Navy's computers, launched a missile and destroyed 10 Downing Street utterly.
It's a domestic incident. Happens every day.
Anyway, the Brigadier and the Slitheen aliens were all killed in the gore-spattered explosion and are now burning in hell.
But sequels are rarely known for their rationality.
{And now on Doctor Who – Funky Town!}

Cardiff has a new mayor – the incredibly curvy, sexy and quite definitely free-of-plastic-surgery Paris Hilton, who is clearly one of the Slitheen who have somehow survived.

Hilton has managed to seize control of Wales due to her vital statistics and the fact that there was a vacancy after the previous occupant brutally cut his head off while combing his hair.

After six months and being nominated 'Playbeing Centrefold' seven times in a row, Hilton has begun a project which an anonymous easy-to-forget bloke in a white coat believes could destroy Cardiff forever.

This guy explains he has absolute proof that the Canine project to place a nuclear waste treatment facility on top of the water reservoir and an ancient Welsh burial ground.

He stupidly reveals that he has told absolutely no one else on the planet about this and also that due to a recent outbreak of syphilis he no longer has any friends or family to miss him.

Then he goes all surprised when Hilton attacks him with a chainsaw!

Pratt!


Parte The First

Convinced that Rose Tyler has finally cracked and has come crawling back to him, Mickey Smith arrives in Cardiff with her passport. He is certain that this little trip will be a 48-hour non-stop blistering sex rampage and not just Rose being too slack to get her own passport.

The TARDIS sits in a rather squalid flat in a derelict building, which just happens to be on top of a scarred-over dimensional rift sealed up in 1969. This information is available to Mickey through a bronze plaque beside the doorbell.

At first, however, Mickey is not allowed to enter the TARDIS as the drink-addled Captain Jack is convinced he is the TV detector man and pulls a gun on him.

After a few minutes of giggling, Rose and the Doctor finally convince Jack to lower the gun and let him enter.

Mickey offers to hand over the passport in return for, ahem, conjugal rights but Rose points out that she never actually married him, snatches her passport and cackles evilly.

"You mean," Mickey sobs, "you haven't really come back to give me some sugar and finally make your lifelong love the happiest man in all of Mutter's Spiral?"

"No, we're just recharging the TARDIS's panasonic batteries. Why do you ask, anyway?"

Rose completely ignores the fact Mickey has started to weep as she shows off her passport photo to Captain Jack – the feather boa was her mum's idea, in fact.

The Doctor puts his arm around Mickey. He too knows how it's like to lust after a girl who thinks the phrase 'shag' is solely associated with seagulls. He then informs Mickey that he, Rose and Captain Jack are a well-rehearsed team, and Mickey isn't really a part of it.

He also gets Mickey's name wrong and laughs at his misery.

This bizarre group leave the police box and the Doctor explains to the dazed Captain Jack for about the eighth time that day that he can't be arsed to repair the broken chameleon circuit after the last two attempts nearly wiped out the entire created omni-verse.

Elsewhere in the city, Paris Hilton is holding a press conference to announce that the Canine project is ready to begin, and then poses for several adult publications.

A series of freak accidents have taken out the entire European safety inspection team, the Cardiff Heritage Society, the architect of the project, and now Mr Cleaver, the government's nuclear advisor mere minutes after he posted his near-religious beliefs that the canine project would go into meltdown and kill millions on an Insecurities.com opinion forum.

Cathy Salt of the Cardiff Gazette Of Complete Paranoia Hourly suggests that there might be some kind of curse on the project as it IS on the site where the annual zombie riots occur as dead bodies are animated by strange blue mist being called the Gelth.

Hilton refutes Salt's claims as "depressing" and decides to draw the press concentration on her rather than her project. Her personal advisor – Q-tip the Destroyer of All Worlds And Builder Of Card Pyramids – reminds her she's supposed to keep a low profile, but is headbutted unconscious by various photographers.

The press conference is over and Hilton decides to drag Salt to the nearest toilet and dismember her – but this plan is foiled when they bump into a spiky-haired Scotsman wearing a crushed velvet trouser suit and a frilly shirt. He flees before either Hilton or Salt can discover just what he was doing in the women's bathroom.

This bewildering interlude allows Salt to escape with her life while Paris Hilton glumly lights a cigarette and swears softly.

Meanwhile, the Whoobie Gang are making a nuisance of themselves at a pier restaurant as Captain Jack screams incoherently about incidents on the Black Pearl with punch lines so predictable that even Mickey knows what they are.

The Doctor spots a nearby adult magazine with a front-page photograph of Paris Hilton, which was snapped at the earlier press conference. He and his allies head point in the direction of City Hall, and with a scream of "Ludicrous Speed!" the gang magically appear there.

The Doctor tells the others to split up for better plot structure, insults Q-tip the Secretary, and barges into the office shouting "Jerzei, I'm hooooooome!"

Paris Hilton runs for it.

There is a lot of running around as the Dandy Warhol's Not If You Were The Last Time Lord On Earth plays in the background.

Finally, Paris Hilton is captured by the Whoobie gang and dragged back to the TARDIS. There, she admits she was building a nuclear power station atop a dimensional rift just so it would blow up the entire created omniverse.

There WAS a good reason why, but she's forgotten.

Then, Captain Jack finds a silver pan-dimensional surfboard looted from Gallifrey – by the Doctor, who thought it might fetch some grotzis at an airlock sale. He realizes he has unintentionally sold Paris Hilton the key to controlling time and space.

"What?!" the Doctor squirms as everyone glares at him. "We sorted it out in the end... mostly."

In an effort to change the topic, the Doctor suddenly announces that Canine means K9, a phrase which has been following them like the Clap ever since he met Rose. Creepy music plays.

Captain Jack suddenly falls over and vomits, breaking the moment.

Five minutes later, after the fumes have cleared, the group return to the police box. While Captain Jack sleeps off the anti-freeze, Rose and Mickey decide to go to the nearest hotel. The Doctor lets them go, knowing that Rose possesses something greater than a chastity belt – complete cluelessness in all things groinal.

However, it will be 24 hours before the TARDIS's panasonic batteries are charged enough to return to Paris Hilton's homeworld of Hotpotatoesorchestralstallspuckwillmakeamends and, after playing with a baseball for a few minutes in a Cool Hand Luke sort of fashion, sighs, and asks Paris out for dinner.

Stealing some handcuffs from the comatose Captain Jack, the Doctor and Slitheen head off for dinner and bondage.


Parte The Second

The Doctor escorts Paris to a bristo and tells the manager that, as Paris Hilton IS Mayor of Hilton and so if the meal ISN'T on the house then she's paying, despite the fact she's going to be executed by her fellow Slitheens first thing tomorrow.

Paris finds this rather insensitive and she asks the waiter to slip some cyanide into the wine. The Doctor is delighted – cyanide is viagra for Time Lords.

Paris quickly realizes the Doctor is trying to get a free meal and will probably free her in return for a leg over.

The Doctor denies this. Unconvincingly.

At a hotel room, Mickey is struggling to keep control as Rose continually meanders around the place telling her incredible stories of jungles, space stations, quarries and Cardiff.

Mickey snaps and says unless they start doing the dirty right here right now he's going to dump her for Tricia Delaney. After all, they've been going out with each other since they were six – and he's lived for a whole year of that relationship that Rose hasn't (stupid time travel). Surely that counts for something?

Rose simply blinks and then goes on to talk about her meeting with Charlotte Church.

Mickey begins to scream and trash the hotel room.

Rose decides that Mickey is just too obsessed with sex to be a suitable boyfriend and dumps him.

Mickey throws himself out of the window.

Rose shrugs and returns to the TARDIS as a completely pissed Doctor and Paris Hilton return in handcuffs. Jack is startled awake by their combined arrival and falls onto the time surfboard and the whole shebang activates the time rift.

Cue lots of explosions and flashes that look suspiciously like they've been lifted directly from the 1996 telemovie.

The Doctor is tipsily delighted that Cardiff will finally be wiped off the face of time itself, even as Rose points out that as they are sitting on top of the rift itself, they better move.

"Not so fast!" cries Paris Hilton, ripping off her extremely convincing human disguise to reveal...


"Brigadier?!" the Doctor gasps.

Yes, it was Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart all along! During the final confrontation in Alias of London, he killed a Slitheen and hid inside her body. The massive bosom meant no fiddly gas-exchange shrinking collars and now the Brigadier's evil plan is working!

He plans to hang ten out of the solar system and find Hotpotatoesorchestralstallspuckwillmakeamends, where a whole world of Slitheen await him!

The Doctor is quietly trying not to be sick into a bucket at the realization of just WHO he groped under the pretence of finding the ice bucket.

Suddenly, the TARDIS console opens up to reveal the blinding light inside. The light flares and a dazed, younger and far less camp Brigadier is thrown to the floor.

The Doctor queasily explains that the meddling in the console has triggered the TARDIS's hithertoo non-existent Genie Factor, which granted the Brigadier's wish with a truly ironic sting.

The Brigadier is now younger, fitter and hornier than before.

Unfortunately, he's forgotten the last forty years of his life.

"Doris won't be pleased," the Doctor ruminates and, after a predictable sequence where he convinces the Brigadier of his Time Lord credentials, asks to get that 40 grand he loaned the soldier last week.

Before anyone can reply, there is a brilliant flash of light that leaves the TARDIS control room completely deserted.

The Doctor stumbles out of a toilet into a badly-decorated common room where an even worse-decorated woman cheerfully explains that he's been chosen as a housemate. Two other people hurl racist and homophobic abuse at the dazed Time Lord.

Suddenly, a deep voice orders the Doctor into 'the Diary Room'.

As he starts to recover from the effect of the transmat, the Doctor realizes that he's somehow become a contestant on Big Brother and finally starts vomiting everywhere.


Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who Versus The Crying Game
Doctor Who Dates Easy Welsh Tart (Canadian edition)
Manchester UNITed: Christopher Eccleston tackles UNIT dating


Fluffs – Christopher Eccleston seemed on the pull in this story.

"Yes, I knew Silver Chair before they were big. They were known as Magician's Nephew originally. Something of a C.S. Lewis fetish, apparently."

"Whoa, Chief! You send Funky Squad to nurse some big fat cat while back here special ops sit coolin their heels? Sounds like a gig for the goons in OS security – why dump the deal on Funky while those squares sit pretty on a crusty case-load?!" the Doctor asks himself while alone in the TARDIS control room with a flashing lightbulb sticky-taped to his forehead. Nutter.


Goofs –
It surely can't be legal to demolish Cardiff Castle to build a nuclear power plant. Otherwise someone would surely have done it by now.

The man in the cafe doesn't seem to mind the Doctor ripping the porn magazine out of his hands.

Margaret's secretary's excuse that the Lord Mayor is "reading Herodotus and thinking big thoughts" is the most pathetic and unlikely excuse that I've ever heard – and I've heard quite a few. Surely you'd expect him to say something like "she's in a meeting" or "she's on the phone" or "she's having sex with an intern under the desk".

A certain fan (naming no names) can be spotted taking a photo via a mobile phone in the background.

Either the Slitheen has changed the Mayor's office to an identical copy of 10 Downing Street or else somebody is reusing the same set as Alias of London.

Mickey was shagging Lithuanian ten a penny for at least the year between Ruse and Alias of London, so how come Rose is surprised that he's started dating other women?

The cracks that occur in the pavement are surprisingly clean, almost
as if they'd been added on digitally during post-production. But as we all know, this is completely impossible.


Fashion Victims – The Doctor's headband with red flashing light.
Even worse is when we discover that the light only flashes when the Doctor thinks about Rose naked.


Technobbable -
"Bugger me sideways, lads! This is nothing less than a tribo-physical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator!"
"You don't mean..."
"Yes! This is THE SURFBOARD OF RASSILON!"


Dialogue Disasters -

Paris: He slipped on an icy patch.
Salt: He was decapitated.
Paris: It was a very icy patch.
Salt: What do you mean?
Paris: I slipped and accidentally dropped an axe on his neck.


Mickey: What are you Captain of? The Innuendo Squad?
Jack: The Innuendo Agency, actually.


Mickey: At least I know where she is! You left me... I can't even go out with a stupid girl from the shop, because YOU pick up the phone and I come running. And you won't even shag me!!


Jack: Do you want to go and find him? We'll wait.
Rose: No need. He deserves better. I'm sure she'll be worth every cent.


Paris: Take me home and you take me to my death.
Doctor: Not my problem. Said exactly the same thing to the United Nations about the Kyoto Protocol.


Doctor: You let one of them go, but that's nothing new... that's how you live with yourself. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's blowing in the right direction, you happen to be in the mood and you dump them. Mark my words, Mickey, she'll never put out for you.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Paris: Only a killer would know that. Is that right? From what I've seen your funny little happy-go-lucky life leaves devastation in its wake - playing with so many people's lives you might as well be a god. A god of death. Is that what you are?
Doctor: Depends. Does it make you horny?
Paris: No.
Doctor: Well, I'm not a callous god of murder. Just... misunderstood.


(After Rose once again kick boxes a group of alien guards until they collapse, unconscious onto the ground.)
Doctor: You know, in the good ol' days we used to let ourselves be captured and then escape through a ventilation shaft.
Rose: Screw the good old days, Doctor, let's go kick some alien ass!
Jack: Oh, okay then. Let me just hitch up me jeans.


Paris: What did I ever do to you?
Doctor: You tried to kill me and destroy this entire planet.
Paris: Apart from that.
Doctor: You wear too much eye shadow.
Paris: That's fair. I'll come quietly.
Doctor: That's what all the girls say.


Doctor: We're in Cardiff. London doesn't care. The South Wales Coast could fall into the sea and they wouldn't notice. Oh, I sound like a Welshman. God help me, I've gone native. Why does fate throw me back here, time after time?! WHY?!?


Dialogue Oddities -
Many times subtle changes in the script are required for the ever-evolving art of television. Minor changes in the printed word, suggested humbly by actors, can provide an occasional additional layer to a performance. Here is an example from Funky Town -

(ORIGINAL SCRIPT)
The Doctor: Oh, golly gosh Rose! I do think that Slitheen is going to rip our intestines out and decorate their Christmas tree with them. What rotten luck.

(ON SCREEN)
Chris Eccleston: Oh, for fuck's sake!


UnQuotable Quote –

Mickey: I've twisted my ankle!

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