Saturday, December 5, 2009

8th Doctor - Absolution (ii)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Dr Who Versus Barbara Good (Canada Only)
Doctor Who: Tabula Rasa
RIP C’Rizz: A Very Special Eighth Doctor Adventure


Fluffs – Paul McGann seemed to be washed out for most of this story.

"Mein Gott, C’Rizz is C’Razzy!!"


Goofs –
There is not a single member of the cast who can actually pronounce "Utebbadon-Tarria" without hacking up a lung-full of phlegm onto the microphone, leading to incredibly annoying white noise and static every few minutes. By god it’s irritating!

Part Three is marked Episode One. Simple misprint or cunning commentary on the paucity of the actual story?


Fashion Victims -
C’Rizz embraces stardom with a blood red turtleneck sweater, a denim miniskirt, stockings and high heeled ankle-length boots, heavy use of mascara and some ridiculously fancy sunglasses.

Charley embraces stardom with a hairdo of pre-Raphaelite curls, an ultra-sophisticated silver lame business suit, a bright purple kipper tie, a candy-striped shirt, silver high heels, heavy use of mascara and some ridiculously fancy sunglasses.

The Doctor embraces stardom with a sleeveless Sex Pistols T-shirt that’s seen better days, a pair of acid-washed jeans, steel-capped boots, a spiky leather bracelet, heavy use of mascara and some ridiculously fancy sunglasses with lots of glitter.


Technobabble -
Charley and C’Rizz getting it on violates the "quantum triple nausea effect" which means any living mind perceiving the concept automatically feels a bit queasy and needs a rest.


Links and References -
The Doctor warns C’Rizz of intensity of the relationship he’s getting into with Charley:
"The Duke of Wellington might have given you an orgasm, but this is something ELSE, Lizard Boy! Charley is off the scale!"


Untelevised Misadventures -
He asks her what the Doctor’s been up
to recently and she tells him he’s twice burnt out something called
a reciprocation circuit, materialised the TARDIS on the back of a
giant prehistoric turtle, and nearly collided with a shiny, swirly,
burgundy blob he kept referring to as the Bertram. In other words, a
typical day.


Groovy DVD Extras -
The XXX-rated totally uncensored sex scene between Charley and C’Rizz, backed by "Journey of the Sorcerer" by the Eagles.


Dialogue Disasters –

Doctor: Now, this may all LOOK like my fault. Condemn the fault, but not the actor. Measure for Measure, act two, scene two. I did it by accident. Terrible things happen by accident, but great things too.
Charley: You got me pregnant by accident.
(A long pause)
Doctor: As non-sequiters go, that was a pretty good one.



Doctor: Now, C’Rizz, I’ve been expecting you to try something like this, you naughty fellow.
C’Rizz: ...really?
Doctor: Well, no. But if I gave you any thought, I would have!


Charley: Come on, Doctor, put your back into it!
Doctor: Thanks for you support! I haven’t done this in a very long time, if ever...
Charley: That doesn’t surprise me.
Doctor: Stop carping and give us a hand!
Both: AHHHH!
Doctor: Well done! Teamwork, you can’t beat it!



Dialogue Triumphs -

Arboreal: C’Rizz. come to me. Come to me, C’Rizz. We need you. Need you. Need you! NEED! And you CAME, C’Rizz! We have been alone with our plans for so long with no one to share them with. Plans to build a new universe. We have waited for the time that light takes to cross a thousand galaxies, but we knew that you could come!
C’Rizz: That’s... nice? Who are you?
Arboreal: I am Arboreal!
C’Rizz: "Arboreal".
Arboreal: Do you remember the stories they told you about me when you were little lizard on Zoden? Do you remember the children’s rhymes? The songs you sang? Now you will be the King of a thousand world! We shall be together! We shall rule the universe!
C’Rizz: Don’t take this the wrong way, but I haven’t the faintest idea what the hell you’re on about. In fact, I’d go further than that. I’d go so far as to say that you’re talking complete and utter shite!
Arboreal: Shite is to truth as shade is to light. It heightens effect.
C’Rizz: Later, weirdo.


The tear-jerking final scene with this TARDIS crew -
C’Rizz: Goodbye, Doctor. I trust you forgive us for the whole stabbing
you in the back and leaving you alone to face the Last Great
Temporal Difference of Opinion and almost certain death?
Charley: And you don’t feel any anger about our treatment of you over
the last four years?
C’Rizz: And you don’t blame us for all the stress you went through?
Charley: Or the tears?
C’Rizz: Or the double heartache?
Charley: Or the thoughts of suicide?
C’Rizz: Or the thoughts of depression?
Charley: You have totally squared this ugly chapter of your life away,
haven’t you?
Doctor: Well... obviously. You snobby, uptight little grunt-fuckers.


Doctor: I need to communicate with C’Rizz.
Coconut: How do you propose to do that?
Doctor: Ancient Gallifreyan technique using my super Time Lord powers... I shall go outside and shout.


The Doctor muses over the second season of Touchwood:
"Mediocre stuff. Viewing figures are a tad low, I’m afraid. Doesn’t bode well for a third series. DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE OVERNIGHT RATINGS!!"


UnQuotable Quote -

C’Rizz: It is my hope that by having spoken to me, you will have been inspired and will have learned about the hope of life-kind and the will to live, love and laugh through the power of one man. A man who is such a simple soul, yet one that was picked out for greatness at a young age by the powers of heaven itself! Like me! Goodness me, fame happens so quickly, doesn’t it?


Viewer Quotes -

"Fifty-first centuries. Weapon factories of Villengard – I went there once, set the main reactor to critical, vaporized the lot. There’s a banana grove there now. C’Rizz ran it for a while before that nasty incident with Felicity Kendal. Still, if I ever get nostalgic I just murder some more lab rats and call them C’Rizz as I do it. Heh. He’s been dead a hundred and eighty years and I’m still taking the piss out of him!" - The Ninth Doctor, 'Shell Shock' by Steven Moffat (2005)

"I think it would be a great idea if Charley killed C’Rizz for the greater good, then ditching the Doctor, leaving him in a melancholic way. No, wait, have C’Rizz kill Charley, then the Doctor kill C’Rizz, making the Doctor even MORE angst-ridden and melancholic than before. In fact, I think every Dr Who story should begin with him befriending somebody, having them agree to come with him in the TARDIS, then being brutally killed before his eyes to put him through the emotional wringer. Why? 'Cause I don't have the imagination or maturity to think of anything else as 'drama'." – Lemon Bloody Cola (1007)

"I used to think that C’Rizz was really the TARDIS in disguise. Or maybe Rassilon in disguise. Or the 9th Doctor in disguise. In any case, I don't want C’Rizz to leave at all, Conrad Westmaas is a doll."
– Janet Street Porter (2005)

" Atoms Infinite is a six-page comic strip so demented that it's beyond my ability to describe. The TARDIS shrinks to explore "inner space", becomes the size of a sub-atomic particle and discovers teardrop people hanging from palm trees in the Uranium Universe. Things then get even weirder. The author is trying to write an anti-nuclear polemic, but the idea that anyone could think this was a serious message story only adds to its Bizarro World insanity. Not just the loopiest story in this annual but a candidate for "loopiest story ever written", and not just in Doctor Who.
"
–()

" All the best, Lizard chops! One of my regrets is that I never got to


write for you - I missed out by one story!





It's been ages since I've seen you, and we need pints and curry at
some point. In the mean time, have lots of fun!

Rob


RobShearman " – ()

"" –(2006)

"Yay! The pratt is gone! I can put the next story next to 'Schizo' and retcon C’Rizz completely out of existence! I have no life! YAY ME!!!" –Crash Test Dummy (2007)



Psychotic Nostalgia -
"What this blood-soaked cross-dressing departure seems to have done, is reflect C’Rizz’s entire presence during his brief tenure as TARDIS companion as just that: a completely blood-soaked cross-dresser."


Mark McGann Speaks!
"Paul was a bit busy that week, something about him not pissing on Conrad if he was on fire, so I’m stood in for him. We often swap without people noticing, just for a laugh. It’s pretty full on, this, isn’t it? But a laugh, you know, especially when Indi does that striptease in the recording booths. Well good. Yeah, C’Rizz got killed off, but you know the nature of these things. What’s a little death among enemies? 'Little death', eh? Very poetic. Better than anything Lizard Boy came up with though."


India Fisher Speaks!
"Ablutions has to be one of the best stories I’ve done in the last six minutes, and it’s a good leaving story for C’Rizz – it puts him where he should be and what he should be like: in the depth of hell and a social-climbing transvestite poet. I mean, it’s not as good as the multiple orgasms of Nowhere-Land, which pushed on Charley’s relationship with the Doctor more than any other. I mean we always thought that a sort of Famous Five Orgy character wouldn’t work in this post-Buffy world, but since when did anyone give a flying fuck about Joss Whedon and his personal harem? I mean, all that Billie Piper/Rose bollocks was totally ripped off me. And Rob Shearman’s (for want of a better word) 'work', trying to develop the different kinds of bondage and what that can mean without proper antibiotics... David Tennant prefers me in bed, anyway."


Conrad Westmaas Speaks!
"It does feel strange leaving Doctor Who. I suppose I’ll still be India’s dogsbody, though. God, I tell you, the last music festival was a nightmare. 50,000 more notches on her bedpost. And all of them were going 'Ere, aren’t you India Fisher? Just take me now!' Not one of the gits ever so much as snogged me. Once I was understudying as the chameleonic lizard character in Abigail’s Party – good thing I’m not typecast, eh? – and there were these people at the stage door, not wanting the main cast, but wanting ME to introduce them to India.

I never had any real idea where the character of C’Rizz was going. Or even if he’d be in the next story. I think we were all making little voodoo dolls of each other, praying they would forget about us altogether and accidentally start recording Red Dwarf audios instead, so we could all escape.

I mean, when the new series started in 2005, I thought that was it. When we were killed off in The Lust, I thought that was it. When C’Rizz turned evil in The Best Wife, I thought that was it. When C’Rizz became the Dustbin Emperor, I thought it was it. When I became a high class transvestite prostitute, well, that was written into the scripts of Other Lies and I thought that was it.

I did say to Gay Russell that I didn’t want to depart the show in a way that anyone else has gone. I really put my foot down – specifically on Nick Briggs’ foot. And they both agreed to give me a totally unique departure story: So, er, I was married off with India. And turned into Felicity Kendal. And developed Jedi-type mind powers. And then killed off in a noble self-sacrifice. Anyone else done that?

A clue: no."


Trivia -
Felicity Kendal is actually three inches shorter in real life.


Rumors & Facts -

In its own way, Ablutions is a landmark Big Finish release for a simple reason: it’s the first time they’ve written out a companion and they’d actually STAY written out! And what better companion to start with than Conrad Westmaas and his fine portrayal of the thoroughly detestable C’Rizz?

Far from being a fit companion for a Lord of Time, C’Rizz would bore the leggings of a PE teacher. He fights the Dustbins rather less well than a stuffed iguana would, his intellect would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly, and as far as we can tell from Faith Dealer, he’s shit in bed as well. Of course, if he crawled on all fours and used his nose as a laser beam he might just have got by as K9-style comic relief – but, since he wouldn’t know a joke a if it used him as a draught excluder, the chances are he’d be rubbish at that as well!

After fourteen different stories over four years of releases, the character was still the annoying little twit we had seen in The Credo of the Moron back when the world was young and bright. Thus a story which makes up entirely over the top of its head that C’Rizz was really a messiah trying to assume the form of Felicity Kendal is strangely in keeping. It’s definitely up there with the head-scratching send off of the original series, where companions would suddenly fall in love with people in red hats or reveal their views on goats made them political prisoners.

And so when all is said and done, this audio play will doubtless be spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Earthshag, Terminal, Sex Warp, So Wild A Sin, The Dustbin’s Nasty Plan, The World Rapers... assuming you have the lung capacity to list all the companion snuff stories ever.

It all started when, in a desperate attempt to understand WHY the fans were turning away from Big Finish, Executive Producer Russell smuggled himself into Outpost Gallifrey under the cunning pseudonym of DeathtoBriggs99. There he discovered that the Big Finish section was a ghost town. Only one thousand three hundred and thirteen threads were actually in use – and they were ones entitled "Is C’Rizz leaving? Please say yes!" "Damnit, I Want To Say Farewell to C’Rizz!", "Ditch C’Rizz, Keep Charley!", "Favorite Moment – C’Rizz Leaves!", "Is C’Rizz The New Adric?" and "Conrad Westmass Makes Me Want To Do It With Boys – C’Rizz Must Go!!"

Russell realized that, once again, he would have to compromise his artistic integrity, sacrifice his principals, swallow his pride, and have an enema of the ego. He was going to have to give the people what they wanted – C’Rizz, dying horribly, probably at Charley’s hands, for good, with no potential for a return appearance ever, abandoning all of the character’s potential (it is assumed the character has some sort of potential based on statistical probability).

Of course, a one note character like C’Rizz would be completely redundant once his story arc was completed – which is why Russell had ensured that the arc never got going in the first place! Why else would the revelation that C’Rizz had manipulated his way into this universe so he could sleep with Felicity Kendal be TOTALLY forgotten for the next five stories?!

There was even a rampant majority suggesting that C’Rizz kill off Charley before dying himself, so some "Mouthy Northern Tart" could be the new companion – though it was recently discovered this movement was created by Sheridan Smith’s agent in her spare time.

After briefly considering a vocal protest that C’Rizz and Charley were great and it was Paul McGann that needed to go, Russell decided to just give up. After briefly considering ditching Charley and having India Fisher play C’Rizz following a complicated body swap explosion.

Russell worked out a rough plot stolen from the last episode of Blake’s 7 where Charley accuses C’Rizz of sleeping around without her and shoots him fatally in the stomach fatally three times fatally, which causes her to go on a new story arc which would last for the next one hundred and twenty one stories. This plot, entitled "Late Lamented Lizard Boy", was pencilled in for a release in December 2094.

Conrad Westmaas was startled and upset by this plot twist, as he originally signed up on the agreement he would leave with the Doctor to settle down on Gallifrey with Leela and live happily ever after with lots of hot dry sex with a leather-clad Amazonian goddess.

Upon hearing this, the rest of the cast and crew burst out in hysterical laughter after Westmaas’ pitiable naivete.

When Russell fled Big Finish Productions for ever, and Nicholas "Justyce Will Be Served" Briggs took over, fans were terrified that in his new, sweeping reforms C’Rizz might be allowed to stay. And they would have been absolutely right EXCEPT for a random moment where Briggs bumped into Westmaas during the recording of the 100th Big Finish release and, on a whim, fired him immediately.

Thus, the next scheduled story for the Eighth Doctor, Charley and C’Rizz – "Breasts Of All Possible Worlds" by and – was scrapped, thrown in the bin, doused in petrol, set alight and then thrown off a cliff into the North sea.

First off replacing it was "Manos: The Hands of Fate", which would be a complete rip off of the 1966 American horror film of the same name, but would have the roles of Michael, Margaret, Torgo and the Master replaced with the Doctor, Charley, C’Rizz and the Bastard respectively. This was later abandoned since even Big Finish knew a bad movie when they saw it, and the basic idea was reshaped into "DC Decay", where the Doctor fights the Bastard in an isolated barn in the rain. A further rewrite turned it into "Back for More" with the Doctor, Charley and C’Rizz facing the Bastard and Grace Holloway in San Francisco 2001.

Dave Lister was dragged in – literally dragged in, on a leash – to pen C’Rizz’s farewell story (or 'fuck off story' as everyone else described it). "Mae Culpa" was a King’s Cross Station Under Siege story where C’Rizz goes batshit insane while waiting for a train and starts murdering people left, right and centre. The Doctor tries to stop them and the story revolves around them destroying most of the station concourse in a terrible battle. This battle is televised on live a news channel via the station’s CCTV, which distracts C’Rizz as he strangles the Doctor as he realizes this is his chance for fame and fortune. Charley uses this distraction to slip an iPod into C’Rizz’s ears and send full-volume music blasting into the alien’s skull: the complete works of Ian Levine. C’Rizz is dead in seconds. The End.

Briggs arbitrarily decided that a completely new script should be got instead from Alan Scott Woodward, who had penned the last Event Story, the Lavros/Dustbins/giant 20-sided dice extravaganza which served as an introduction to Mel, The Afronauts. Thus, Woodward knew better than any other living human, that Big Finish were shithouse at Event Stories.

Nevertheless, the script was written and accepted and was going well when suddenly, disaster struck. Paul McGann was utterly sick of Big Finish since Nick Briggs took over and even the pleasure of watching C’Rizz die in terrific agony could not tempt him back. Thus, Big Finish broke their own statement on never revoicing characters ever and got Mark McGann to play the Eighth Doctor, as he probably would have in the TV Movie had the producers not chosen his brother on the toss of a coin. Then, as now, it’s impossible to tell the difference.

With his work done and the character of Cecil Rizz Esquire consigned to an odd little Lizard-Boy-shaped place in the Hall of Obscurity, Conrad Westmass was thrown onto the scrap heap in the first few seconds of his farewell speech which no one was actually prepared to listen to. The anecdotes about the Eighth Doctor, Dustbins, Victorian freakshows and lethal ice cream vans got old really fast.

Nick Briggs’ systematically firing/exterminating/deleting all the BF companions continued apace. Next on his list was Charlotte E Pollard and even Briggs himself admitted it might be easier to just burn down the studios and render the company insolvent...

Finally, to herald the imminent destruction of the TARDIS crew which had lasted longer than certain canonical Doctors, it was decided the theme tune would end with the heartbreakingly bitter ballad by the tearful Charley in the final scene.

The song was one of betrayal, of raw pain, desperation to return to the good times and the childhood’s end as realization and despair are here to say. It’s a song that would tear into the heart of even the most cynical and leave them silent and chastened, a song whose emotional impact it would impossible to mock or parody.

Mind you, it didn’t make a blind bit of sense for the first three episodes...


"No More C’Rizz" by Conrad Westmaas and the Also-Rans

Whatever happened to Adam Mitchell?
He got a hole in head
That hurt like hell!

Whatever happened to dear old Steven Taylor?
The great Mike Yates?
And Kroton the Cyberleader?

Whatever happened to Serge the Seal?
Whatever happened to Grant Markham? Is he even real?

Whatever happened to all the Harry Sullivans?
All the Ben Jacksons?
They got forgotten!
Whatever happened to Angus Goodman?
Whatever happened to Ssard the Martian?

No more C’Rizz any more!
No more C’Rizz any more!

Whatever happened to all the Fitzes?
All the Turloughs and Adrics?
They never get mentioned!
Whatever happened to Sir Justin?
Whatever happened to Chesterton?

NO MORE C’RIZZ ANY MORE!
NO MORE C’RIZZ ANY MORE!
NO MORE C’RIZZ ANY MORE!
NO MORE C’RIZZ ANY MORE!

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