Saturday, December 5, 2009

8th Doctor - Blood of the Daleks (i)

Serial 9D – Lymph of the Dustbins
An Alternative Program Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
Thirty-Second Entry in the EC Unauthorized Guide O' Genetic Purity

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 9D – Lymph of the Dustbins -


"Hello, remember me? That incident with the 57 Chevy of Rassilon and the Bastard, Vancouver-doubling-as-San-Francisco, 1996-doubling-as-1999? No, of course you don’t. I try to forget that bloody TV movie myself most of the time. I don’t want to talk about that any more, and you don’t want to hear about it either, do you? Thought not. You want to know what happened next? I’m the Doctor, by the way. What do you mean, 'I’m not the Doctor'? I should know who I am, in fact I’m certain of it! I don’t sound Northern enough? T-shirt and a leather jacket? Definitely not me. Apart from the leather jacket, but then I have such sartorial elegance. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe I WILL be Christopher Eccleston, but I’m not yet. Hopefully not for some time, he sounds ghastly. And typecast.

I thought you wanted to know what happened after the TV Movie? I met my latest tart, Charley Pollard, and yes, I rescued her from the Titanic. I saved her life, and the least I could do was get a shag out of it. So, maybe I did get her a little bit pregnant, but what else can you do with a nympho like that? I could hardly let her go off the boil, could I? But eventually she dumped me. No, I don’t remember any other companions at the time, why? What happened next? Well, if you’re sitting comfortably, then I will begin..."


ACT ONE – WHO THE FUCK IS LUCIE MILLER?

Cardiff, 2007. Bursting into the TARDIS, the Doctor races up to the console and sets the time machine in motion, laughing like Dylan Moran on cheap ecstasy. Then he twigs the blonde teenage girl sitting in the pilot’s chair, listening to the Scissor Sisters on her iPod.

Aghast, the Doctor screams, "Who are you?!?"

"What?" calls the girl in a Northern accent, over her music.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY TARDIS?!"

"What?"

"ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETHING?!?"

"What?!?"

"TAKE OUT THE DAMN EAR-PHONES AND ANSWER ME!!!!"

The girl shrugs. "What?"


Parte the First

Finally, the Doctor manages to get the girl to take out her earphones and is promptly told off by the arrogant little madam. "I’m not sure I like your attitude much, weirdo! So don’t get cobby and start yelling at me! I won’t have you shouting at me! You hear me, you frock-coated ponce? I don’t stand for that! You could look at things from my point of view, you know!"

"And what IS your point of view?" demands the Doctor.

"You could be some sort of alien weirdo who’s kidnapped me on my way to the office for the first day of my new job! I like to be treated with respect."

"Well, I like my home to free of minging Northern tarts mouthing off, but we live in an imperfect universe!"

"Get stuffed, you miserable old cunt!"

"Look, you insane teenage bitch..."

"I’m nearly 20!"

"I’m not talking about your IQ, Miller! What are you doing in my time machine?"

"You what? You sound like my mum! She was always asking me what I was doing in her time machine, mister Time Lord!"

"How did you know that I’m a Time Lord."

"You said!"

"No I didn’t, you lying scumbag! FESS UP!

"So - no. Don’t think so. I don’t want my head getting bitten off, so I’m not going to tell you anything!"

"Not even your name so I can put it on your gravestone?" the Doctor snaps, reprogramming the TARDIS to return to Earth.

"Lucie Miller. And I might have a middle name. I might have more than one. Might have three for all you know. That’s for me to know and YOU to find out," the girl retorts, throwing an empty beer bottle at the Doctor’s head. "I bet you wear a toupee too, you freak."

"Ah my dear Lucie," the Doctor says soothingly. "They say that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. Shall we test that?" he asks, then grabs her by the ear and drags her down the ramp.

"No, wait! I’ll tell you everything!" Lucie squeals. "It was the Time Lords! They whisked me up here! I’d seen something, witnesses something important, they said, something that could change the whole outcome of the Temporal Difference of Opinion, so they put me in Witness Protection and they said you’d get a proper nark on about it too..."

"Sorry, not interested," the Doctor snarls, trying to hurl her bodily out the police box doors. "It’s nothing to do with me, it’s between you and the Time Lords. I didn’t dodge the draft just so I could get caught up in their dirty work, did I?"

"Don’t I get a say in this?!" screams Lucie as she is thrown out.

"A clue: No."

However, it is not the Welsh Millennium Centre that they face as they leave the TARDIS. Instead, it is a rubble-strewn ruins of what was once a thriving civilization. The Doctor is annoyed that not only has the TARDIS arrived in the wrong place, it’s still found a breathable atmosphere and safe gravity... which means he can’t watch Lucie choke to death or be crushed against the ground.

Lucie is incredibly blasé about the whole notion of travelling in time and space and with him being an alien, and the Doctor puts this down to the fact everyone in 2006 is a smug, self-important asshole and thinks no more of it. When she complains that this is not Earth, the Doctor assures her there was an invisible shield around the whole of Wales and the TARDIS bounced off it and arrived elsewhere.

"Really?" asks Lucie, surprised.

"Yes, really!" the Doctor lies, before noticing they have not landed during the night, but instead there is a cloud of debris and smoke blocking out most of the sunlight and heat. It’s as if an asteroid strike has kicked up a debris cloud – not only triggering devastating earthquakes and tidal waves, but for months or even years there will be the perpetual freezing night-time, turning any survivors into desperate cannibals as the tinned food runs around before they perish from mutant cancers when the ultraviolet spring that follows.

Lucie doesn’t mind as she’s used to going out clubbing in Blackpool on a December Saturday night.

Disgusted at her callous ignorance, the Doctor shoves Lucie in the middle of the road just as a car screeches around the road and crashes into her. Tragically, the car bounces right across the other side of the road and killing the driver, while Lucie is completely unscathed. Worse, the car is solar-powered so there's no chance of any petrol exploding and killing Lucie either.

The Doctor decides to check on the passengers and finds a sexy young woman in tight black leather has been handcuffed to a little old lady, who explain they are being followed by an angry mob. The Doctor assumes this is some kind of lesbian suicide pact fleeing a homophobic city, and tuts loudly. "This must be that damned gay agenda I’ve heard so much about," he mutters to himself.

Realizing that the angry mob is imminent, the Doctor asks Lucie to get the lesbians out of the area while he stays behind to deal with the crowd... and then he calls out to the advancing mob and asks them what took them so long to get here, before leading them right after the fleeing Lucie and passengers. The Doctor gleefully sets the baying crowd on the fugitives, cackling insanely.

Tragically, Lucie manages to lead them to safety. She discovers that the women Klint and Gryven are not actually kinky lovers, but actually prisoner and captor. Klint is Acting-President on the planet New Cardiff Rising since all her superiors fled the planet when the asteroid struck, and has been doing the 'dutiful martyr' shtick ever since, to the point she has bored the other survivors to the point of violence. Plus of course the fact that Gryven is a wanted war criminal as the ultra-hot lab assistant of the late Professor Mengele Martez (Professional Grave Robber And Perverter Of The Laws Of Nature), which is why she’s handcuffed to the Acting-President.

"We have no suns, their plants won’t grow, we’re freezing to death, yet you’re still clinging to the laws of a dead society!" shouts Gryven angrily.

"So, er, suns? More than one! Nifty!" Lucie is quite pleased to note, showing off yet again was an insensitive bitch she is.

The Doctor arrives at this point, having kept looking for the women even after the rest of the mob got bored of looking for them and went home to reflect on their imminent future of starvation, sickness and long, lingering death. They then cheered up as they remember the reason they were so angry was discovering the politicians were living in a luxurious underground bunker which still has a fully-stocked mini-bar, and go there to get drunk instead.

Klint and Gryven use the distraction of the Time Lord’s arrival to run away from Lucie. The Doctor muses this is a dangerous planet and the best thing he can do is go back to the TARDIS and leave Lucie to face certain death as the water in the atmosphere reacts with nitric oxide in the dust cloud to create acid rain. The Doctor races off to find cover from the sudden rain shower, yet somehow Lucie manages to follow.

The Doctor spots a strange man in a tinfoil beanie dancing and singing in the rain, protected by a metal umbrella as he shouts and rants that
aliens are already among them and they need to protect themselves. Deciding he is a better bet for interesting conversation than Lucie, the Doctor goes to say hello.

The strange man welcomes the Doctor to his flat for a nice cup of tea, since he is one of those people who predicted the apocalypse all the time and therefore was ready for it – his apartment is full of supplies as dictated by the Incredibly Useful Protect-And-Survive Manual. The Doctor and the strange man are just settling down to discuss his odd collection of thousands of flat AAA batteries when Lucie bursts in demanding to get some damn respect from people.

Her arrival proves too much for the tinfoil-beanie-wearing man, who snatches up a shotgun and screams he knows who Lucie is and why she’s here, and he's prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect his home! The Doctor smacks his forehead, wondering why HE never thought of doing that when he first saw Lucie?

In the mean time, Klint and Gryvern head for the Zantek Facility on the off chance that the rabble hasn’t broken in and smash, shred and loot everything that could be of possible use. Gryvern screams that all police are fascists vandalizing her brilliant work which just so happened to involve cruel experimentation on human life. She goes on to shout that Martez was a visionary who wanted nothing more than to
jump-start the evolution of the human race via some suitably ironic inhuman procedures which required grave robbing from "these empty sacks of flesh" – admittedly often during the actual funerals, and occasionally before they were actually dead.

"Not that I had anything to do with that," she adds quickly. "I’m innocent. Never saw a thing. No siree. Me? Commit a crime against humanity itself? Doubt it!"

Gryven then changes the subject by noticing that there is a new message on the interplanetary answering machine – a message has been sent to New Cardiff Rising! At first it appears to be nothing but heavy breathing, but then a grating metallic voice can be heard...

Back to the A plot, where the strange man screams he saw a UFO crash years ago and knows that the Doctor is an alien disguising himself as a human to trick people into trusting him. The Doctor points out that he told the nutter that to try and break the ice.

The strange man reveals he is actually Tom Campbell, as if there was any doubt. Lucie continues to hurl jibes at him about his choice of tinfoil headwear and tells him to shoot the Doctor being a patronizing git. The Doctor points out that with all the discarded Eveready Batteries all over the place, one spark could set off an inferno.

Tom agrees and puts down the gun... before realizing the Doctor was talking absolute bullshit and raises his gun and fires!

Back at the Zantek Facility, Klint and Gryven listen as the static clears to reveal the alien form of a gleaming bronzed litter bin with a squeegee mob and neutralizer ray gun built in.

"...WE HAVE RECEIVED YOUR DISTRESS SIGNALS. WE HAVE A FLEET OF SHIPS IN THE VICINITY. WE WISH TO HELP YOU CLEAN UP THIS MESS! THE DUSTBINS ARE COMING TO NEW CARDIFF RISING! BOYAKASHA!!!"



Parte the Second

Back at Tom’s flat, it turns out that Tom neglected to load his shotgun. Awkwardly he looks for some ammunition and tries to pass the time by discussing the pioneer tales about this particular sector of space – the Welsh Nebula – that magnificently evil, black and foul forces are hiding in the depths of space waiting to destroy everyone. And these magnificently evil, black and foul forces are the very same ones that lead to the asteroid strikes, the firestorms that cooked alive everyone and everything out in the open, and now the endless cold that will surely doom them all to extinction.

"Of course, it COULD have been coincidence," Tom shrugs.

Just then, they receive text messages from Klint, who is texting to everyone in her address book with instructions to spread the news by word of mouth:

"PEOPLE OF NU CARDIF RISNG – MAH F3LOW CITIEZNS – OUR LONG NIGHT SI OVER!1!111 OMG I’VA B3N CONTACTED BY A BNEVOLANT PEOPL3!1!!!1!!1 OMG WTF THAY 2 HAEV KNOWN GRAAT TRIALS BUT TH3Y HAEV OVERCOMA THEM AND MADRE IT THERE MISION 2 H3LP OTHERS DO TEH SME!11!!1!11 OMG WTF LOL THEY HAEV OFERAD US REFUGE AND PASAEG 2 DA N3AERST HUMAN WORLDS OF NU BRECON RISNG AND NU SPLOT FALS!11!1! OMG THAY HAEV TEH RESOURCAS AND TEH PATEINC3 AND COMPASION 2 EVACUAET 3V3RY ONA OF US!!!!1!11 MAH FALOW CITIEZNS – MAH FREINDS – RASCUE SI AT HAND!!1!1!11 OMG WTF LOL"

The Doctor studies the message and then dubs it "supremely dodgy" and Tom agrees, coming up some more Area 51 conspiracy crap that Klint was instrumental in the cover up of a crashed alien spaceship.

Lucie meanwhile has gotten very bored and suddenly tries to strangle Tom, who understandably gets hysterical and clubs her repeatedly with his rifle, calling her a monster wanting to give him anal probes. Finally, the Doctor drags Lucie out of the flat by her hair, the Time Lord apologizing profusely for not killing the moronic northerner earlier on in the relationship.

Outside, Lucie bitches furiously that the Doctor ought to thank her for saving his life, or those handful of occasions the idiot wasn’t directly trying to kill him. She becomes upset at the way he seems to be blaming her for what's happened so she tells him to get stuffed and storms off, calling out to the Time Lords and tells them this Doctor of theirs is a bit rubbish and she could do with another chauffer.

"And to think: I complained about Charley," the Doctor sighs, shaking his head as he heads back to the TARDIS. He happens to pass the ruined Zantek Facility where he finds Klint and Gryvern giving landing information to a communicator on which is displayed...

...A DUSTBIN!!!

Mmmm. Seemed more impressive in context. Anyway, the deadly cleaning machines insist that they are glad to assist and wish the inhabitants of New Cardiff Rising to 'have a nice day'. This truly insincere bit of acting causes the Doctor to laugh uncontrollably and applauds at how pathetic the Dustbins are at acting.

He then realizes that Klint and Gryvern have completely fallen for the Dustbins’ lies and believe that the ruthless killing machines will take them away to a new, less-doomed world.

"God damn it, what is the matter with you people?!" he demands. "Stuck out here alone on your colonial frontier for too long and you forget your own history! And as the old saying goes, those who forget their past are in all probability Welsh!"

Annoyed, the Doctor bangs his fist against the wall and a shoddy bit of set design means a doorway miraculously appears in the far wall. Curious at what Martez might have hidden inside, the Doctor heads for the secret passage, only for Gryvern to snatch up some extension cables and throttles the Time Lord unconscious.

"He was getting hysterical!" screams Gryvern, foaming at the mouth.

Lucie bumps into Tom and tells him that the Doctor is an evil hypnotist alien bastard and Tom should find him and kick him to death with poisoned galoshes. Tom is more concerned about the Dustbin spaceship that is coming into land – unlike everyone else, he looked up these mysterious aliens on the internet and discovered they are the greatest threat to all life throughout the universe.

"Whatever!" shrugs Lucie. "They’re giving out free lifts! I’m not gonna turn that down just because of a bit of a jihad against every other race in the galaxy, am I? Forgive and forget, that’s my motto. I just want to live a bit and see a few things before she has to go back home, and show that Doctor cunt I don’t need a ponce like him!"

Tom wanders off, annoyed beyond measure by the idiotic teenager as the massive golden Dustbin saucer lands. Lucie is incredibly impressed, even though it’s a pretty battered and damaged space craft, because it reminds her of those loony abduction victims she often used to mock until they became suicidal. "Good times," she grins idiotically.

The landing ramp extends and the Dustbins emerge to welcome aboard the half-a-dozen extras who are the sole survivors of New Cardiff Rising. Lucie wants to stand out among the people wearing furs and scarves, and so takes off her top and shows off her tits to the armored alien robot people. At this point Klint arrives to greet the Dustbins, and Lucie starts shouting, "Oi! Klint! Over here! Hey! Hello! Look at me!"

"ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE YOUNG FEMALE STREAKER?" the red-coloured Dustbin Supreme asks Klint.

Klint explains she knows the topless tart as a companion of a strangely-dressed anarchist calling himself the Doctor she met near an obsolete metropolitan police box.

The Dustbins stand in silence for a long moment, reflecting on this information, before muttering to each other that this development is 'just fucking typical'. They explain that the Doctor is the most infamous terrorist in Dustbin history and must stand trial on charges of insurgency and genocide once Klint extradites him into their custody. But, in a pinch, they’ll be happy to hold a back-street execution...

In the meantime, they locate Lucie Miller and drag her aboard as she laughs and cheers and reminds people to 'never underestimate the powers of her tits' – but her jubilation is cut short as she is thrown into a cell and will not be let out until her designated driver the Doctor is captured. Lucie has ANOTHER very predictable tantrum.

Back at the Facility, Gryvern returns to discover the Doctor has regained consciousness and is once more exploring the secret passage. Gryven tries to distract the Doctor by pointing out that the Dustbins have landed – but the Time Lord muses he finds them rather dull now Lavros is dead, and is more interested in the secret passage.

Gryvern follows, speaking reverently about how it would feel to be like the Dustbins - never to be afraid again and never to know pain since humanity are weak sacks of flesh who have had their day. The Doctor points out that the Dustbins are terrified of untidyness and neurotic manic-depressives, so Gryvern is actually talking crap.

They turn the corner and find a huge underground laboratory filled with hundreds of Dustbin casings – but not the funky bling 2005-style War Bastard type Dustbins outside, but actually kitch, oddly-shaped, friction-driven Rollykin Dustbins in silver/snot-green glory!

The Doctor begins to pace up and down, as Gryvern patiently reveals the truth – the spaceship Tom Cambell mentioned was real, and Professor Martez discovered aboard some intact Dustbin casings and, gripped by some psychological disorder, decided to recreate the human race in the image of the Dustbins.

However, Lavros-wannabe Martez was caught by the fuzz and faked his death by stroke and managed to somehow remove his own brain and place it into the body of his hot lab assistant Gryvern. The Doctor is horrified and disturbed – mainly at the idea Martez was capable of cutting open his own head, removing his brain with his bare hands and putting it into another body, which seems very implausible now I come to think it through properly.

Martez’s evil grave robbing experiments have allowed him/her to create brand new Dustbins, and even as the Doctor speaks two of the Neo-Dustbins come to life and start talking like Solenoid Robots drunk on absinthe, who welcome their creator to the fold.

"You know too much Doctor!" Gryvern/Martez shouts.

"Be fair!" the Time Lord protests. "You TOLD me most of it!"

"Details, details," says the transsexual megalomaniac dismissively. "You must die! Dustbins! Blow the mother away!"

As the creatures call out for the Doctor’s death, the sound of Dustbin guns fill the laboratory...

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Next Time...
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"Stop him, you bloody idiots!"
"I can hear you breathing, yer dirty perv!"
"ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE LOCATION OF THE DOCTOR WILL GO TO THE WEBSITE!"
"This is the End of Everything! And I will do anything it takes to stop your twisted dreams from seeing reality – Lucie as my companion? Not this side of hell!"
"I knew the Dustbins weren’t a bunch of do-gooder wankers..."
"WE ENCOUNTERED THE DUSTBINS YOU SUMMONED TO HELP US! THEY KICKED OUR ASSES INTO ORBIT!"
"You never were going to help us! Dustbins! They’re all bastards!"
"STOP YOUR BITCHING, WOMAN!"
"Particularly unpleasant, isn’t it? When the cleaners turn out to be the ones who made the mess in the first place."
"No, bombs are bad! Bombs are very bad!"
"Come on, Lucie! You chicken or what?"
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!?"
"Aw shit..."
"WE ARE HERE TO KEEP THE TRADEMARK OF THE DUSTBINS PURE!"
"It all sounds very self-aware, doesn’t it?"
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...Lymph of the Dustbins...uh, still...
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