Saturday, December 5, 2009

8th Doctor - Blood of the Daleks (iii)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who And the Precious Bodily Fluids of the Dustbins
Dr Who & The Annoying Tart Who Shows Her Tits to Alien Monsters
The New Cardiff Rising 3D Picture Book
Space Above And Beyond Cardiff: 2000!


Fluffs – Paul McGann seemed to have a case of severe blood poisoning for most of this story.
"This is what happened in the last Dustbin story. I saw it all! Being here, it’s like waking up in a recurring nightmare! Why does no one try to do a NEW plot nowadays?! Something from AFTER 1975?! If only this WERE a nightmare! TIME TO WAKE UP, DOCTOR!"
"They’re trapped in a perpetual nightmare of hate and fear. They’re groupies of Nick Briggs now."
"You must be the Executive Producer. Appalling to see you again."
"Incidentally, how great a name for a planet is New Cardiff Rising? I want to live there! Pre-catastrophic apocalypse obviously... Now, fetch me a bromide - and put some gin in it..."

Fashion Victims -
Lucie’s low-cut paint-on blouse, velvet jacket, miniskirt and kinky boots are actually IMPROVED by all the acid rain burns.

Goofs –
How come the Dustbin saucer takes so long to get to the faux-Dustbin HQ? The Doctor walked back quicker! And why, if he doesn’t want them to take Lucie back to the saucer with him when he surrenders, does the Doctor bring her along when he surrenders?
How the hell do the Doctor and Lucie survive a rampaging mob, acid rain, a bomb-wielding lunatic, being shot at by Dustbins, then caught in a crashing flying saucer, then in a crossfire between two Dustbin armies. Real life isn’t like that! THEY SHOULD BE DEAD! STOP LYING TO THE CHILDREN!!!
And the inhabitants of New Cardiff Rising end up killing the Dustbins in the end seemed to be...dropping things on them? Since when can Dustbins be killed by having a few rocks and things dropped on their heads? Apart from those stupid TV Comic Holiday Annuals anyway – and what sane person would steal THAT plot resolution?!?


Technobabble -
The Doctor speculates that huge amounts of "hardcore mouthy gob energy" have "destablized the good taste matrix" when it comes to Lucie’s behavior in polite society.


Dialogue Disasters –

Doctor: Professor Martez... you've been... BREEDING DUSTBINS!
Martez: I know. Ruttin’ awesome, isn't it?


Lucie: I know an anal probe when I see an anal probe and that is NOT an anal probe! It’s a fucking toilet plunger!


Martez: Doctor, why won’t you talk to me?
Doctor: I don’t think there’s anything left to say, Asha.
Martez: Yes, I’ve become so used to being poor hapless Asha, I almost feel like I AM her...
Doctor: Except there was a real Asha once, with her own hopes and dreams.
Martez: She was no one. You think her dreams were as worthy as mine? My dreams will save mankind. What right do you have to judge me? You’re not even human!
Doctor: No, but at least I’m not a transsexual freak like you!


Doctor: So it was your plan to kill us all? That’s good, that’s very good. Because I’d hate to think you’d done something so monumentally stupid by accident! I mean, I hate it when that happens – it’s just plain awkward and everyone ends up looking like right pratts.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Lucie: You know the Dustbins and they know you?
Doctor: We’ve fought many times, more times than I can bear to remember.
Lucie: And they always win?
Doctor: No!
Lucie: But there they are. If you’d beaten them, they wouldn’t be here.
Doctor: Well, if they’d beaten ME, I wouldn’t be here, would I?
Lucie: Whatever.
Doctor: Do you actually HAVE a brain, Lucie, or is just a perpetually looped recording of that one word? Shut the fuck up! I’m trying to do my best to defeat two armies of killer aliens!
Lucie: Well, I’m not impressed.
Doctor: Fuck you! If you’re so brilliant, Lucie, YOU sort this mess out. No doubt your amazing northern brain will defeat the unstoppable armies of pure unadulterated evil with your truly awe-inspiring ability to say "Whatever" when you can’t think of anything useful! But don’t let it go to your head because it’s already swollen ridiculously huge. It’s only the counter-balance of your tits keeping you upright.
Lucie: Don’t perv at me!
Doctor: Put on some clothes then, you bitch!
Lucie: Whatever.
Doctor: Screw this for a game of soldiers, I’m off.


Tom: Watch your step Earthmen. There are things out here, even on the fringe of space, that you don't comprehend, you don't understand, can't understand. That no beings in a three dimensional world can ever hope to understand... understand?
Lucie: You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.


Lucie: Fine! I didn’t want to go back to your place anyway!
Doctor: My place? This isn’t a date! This is cosmic gerrymandering!
Lucie: Look, I didn’t ask for any of this either! None of this is my fault! Why are you so mean to me? Get stuffed! Get out of my face!
Doctor: Screw you, bimbo!
Lucie: Nice not knowing you and your poncy clothes and your stupid haircut! GOODBYE FOREVER!
(Lucie runs off, trips and twists her ankle.)
Doctor: Fine. Whatever. Not my responsibility. It’s your mess, YOU sort it out. DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE THE SWINGING BACHELOR LIFE STYLE!


UnQuotable Quote -
Doctor: Poor confused little mutants. Let’s kill them all.


Links and References -
Doctor: I gather you’re fighting a war. Dustbins are always fighting wars. I saw the state of this ship. You had a right pasting this time, didn’t you? So who was it this time, Dustbin Supreme? Afronauts? Mo'Lovins? Each other?
Dustbin: UM. IT WAS THE TIME LORDS. YOU KNOW. BIG TEMPORAL DIFFERENCE OF OPINION THING GOING ON? REMEMBER?
Doctor: Oh yeah. Sorry about that. Mind like a sieve.


Untelevised Misadventures -
Actually there was just a hint of "The Killing Fields" in there,
Lyons' (excellent) Missing Adventure novel in which rebels create an
army of pseudo-cybermen - the Bronze Knights - to fight the real
cybermen. Not that this is a criticism. This script uses the
conflict rather differently, and there are plenty of other elements
in there to allow "Blood of the Dustbins" to stand as a strong story
in its own right.



Groovy DVD Extras -
A guided tour to the Dustbin Battle Saucer by Nick Briggs and his drool-stained Dustbin Annuals from the 1960s. (see Trivia)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Personally I loved Lymph of the Dustbins, but on my list it's still well behind the first 30 Eighth Doctor stories, down to the lack of Charley Pollard and her friends, the erogenous zones. Wanna see my scar? It’s got more pus this time!"


Viewer Quotes -

"These audios are so earnest, full of incomprehensible technobabble, their rumbling alien voices hissing "Doc-torrrr", and the gaucheness that makes them sound like they were written by 40-year-old virgins called Norman." – Norman’s Mum (2008)

"Another thoughtless and appalling ‘comic’ stereotyping of Normans... I hate you, you fuck-ugly slag bitch!" – Norman (2008)

"Lucie Miller? Pah! Just Charley in reverse - instead of being a nympho who everyone loved, she's a bimbo no one can get rid of! Is that supposed to be 'high concept' companion, is it? Self-indulgent, petty and overcomplicated! A companion who isn't Charley is simply tedious and a drain on the whole series as a concept! This 'too-good-to-spell-Lucy-properly' bint is the weakest of Big Finish characters to date, and that INCLUDES the Kro'ka!! DOWN WITH LUCIE! BRING BACK CHARLEY!"
- Nigel Verkoff (before Sheridan Smith’s casting)

"Oh, I lack the attention span to listen to this. It's not gripping me. I am ungripped. Who’s the author? Steve Lyons. Of course. Who else?" – Rupert Woosing-Gard (2005)

"Very dark, packaging, isn't it? Oh, wait. No. No. No, I've actually gone blind. Guess masturbation DOES diminish the faculties. My god, they've redesigned the CDs so that half the writing is always upside down! I must put the CDs in the cases the right way up... but which way is the right way up? DW logo or BF logo??!? Do I have both logos sideways?!???!? I CAN'T STAND THE CONFUSION IN MY MIND!!!!!!!!!!"
– Arco Chamber (2007)

"Lucie Miller is brilliant! I liked her right from the start! She is sassy, sarcastic intelligent and quick witted. I want more! She’s great, and I say that without drawing reference to my entrenched desire to do very, very, very bad things with Sheridan Smith’s lady parts. The fact that Lucie is played by such a hottie is a mere bonus. Mind you, that close-up photo of her with her one eyebrow raised and her lips puckered just a bit... she’s luuuuurvely! Yeah, I’m in love. Or at least some four letter word starting with L. Lucie Miller will eventually become the definitive companion for the Eighth Doctor!"
- Nigel Verkoff (after Sheridan Smith’s casting)

"Big Finish? Jumped up fan fiction? OK, some of the very early and poorer stories were a bit like that, and the latest ones tend to be a hotch-potch of half-baked ideas drowning in fetid fanwank, but there's still a place and interest for that sort of thing, even though they cost a fortune, there are no pictures and it's less professional than crap acting on youtube... wait, I think I just convinced MYSELF Big Finish is shithouse! Pretty bloody good, eh?!" – Dave Restal (2003)

"And the new companion? God what a skanky tramp she is! Her voice is like fingers down a black board. After every single line, the Rose clone chips in with a "hilarious" sarcastic comment. After every... single... fucking line. It’s more like a punch in the face instead of a full stop." – India Fisher (2008)

"When I heard 'by Steve Lyons' my first thought was 'Aaaw, shit!'. My hopes were further dashed when I realised that the Doctor's new companion sounded like a cross between Catherine Tait's schoolgirl character and the "I DON' FINK SO!" girl from The Lenny Henry Show. That's what a Northern Accent sounds like on a woman? Or is Sheridan Smith both Northern and an anthropomorphic duck?"
- Jared "No Nickname" Hansen (2007)

"The Headhunter has to be the weakest story arc ever introduced in Big Finish – and it’s up against some pretty stiff competition."
– Chris Chinballs (2009)

"Why couldn’t there be a Paul McGann Christmas special set in between Girl Who Never Was A Virgin and Lymph of the Dustbins featuring a one off special guest character bridging the gaps?! I would have loved to see Paul McGann and Lisa Bowerman to star in The Christmas Inversion. WHY DOES NO ONE EVER LISTEN TO ME? WHY?!?!" - Some Guy (2010)

"I won’t lie about my opinion until I’m informed enough to have one."
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)


Paul McGann Speaks!
"For once, I’m actually enjoying myself – there’s a good atmosphere, and the new girl is SO hot. I’ve worked with Sheridan before three or four years ago and I remember seeing her then, thinking 'She is sex on a stick.' I thought Sheridan was well fit when I met her years ago on Blood Strangers, and now she’s over the age of consent, she’s come here. That’s my kind of actress – everything she does, you believe it, even without whipped cream. No fuss, just dead on. She’s fantastic and seems to know more about my inside leg measurements than I do, which is the main thing. It’s the main thing. I approve, you know that?"


Sheridan Smith Speaks!
"I was thrilled when I got the call – cause EVERYONE wants to shag Doctor Who! I was very little when it was on in the 1980s, but I have seen the new stuff, and heard it on the radio on before. Watching it on telly just recently, I was thinking ‘What a sweet deal – just put on a miniskirt, act stupid and you get paid for it and cop off with David Tennant!’ and when I got the part of Lucie I was so excited. Course, I got Paul McGann instead, but part from the death threats from India Fisher, it’s still cool. He’s so full on, even when he turned up putting on a wig and corset, he could still run away from exploding Dustbins and talk posh. Mind you, my leg was hurt in a lover’s quarrel the other night, so it’s not all laughs."


Eddie Hitler Speaks!
"For the first opening two-part story bollocks, we really, really, REALLY needed this BBC radio thing to appeal BEYOND Big Finish’s hugely-valued hardcore audience of mouth-breathing failed genetic experiments. So we needed Dustbins, a hot blonde who’ll get her jugs out if the role demands it, laser gun battles, gratuitous mass murder, the breakdown of society due to asteroid-related socio-economic collapse, plus lots of gags about what imbeciles the Welsh are. OK, it might have turned out to be an incredibly annoying and derivative waste of time, so what? You can’t expect me to know what to do – I haven’t got an O-Level in how to produce a new series of audio adventures for digital fucking radio, have I?"


Trivia -
Those light-bulbs on the Dustbins aren’t simply there to help the audience identify which one is talking but are actually release valves for all the negative emotion when the mutants within lose their temper, and without them Dustbins would overload with fury.
Thus, Nicholas Briggs is truly the Voice of Madness.


Rumors & Facts -

Oh. Wonderful. Another ill-conceived and poorly-executed story arc, book-ended with a pair of bloated, pompous and overblown would-be epics. The only difference now it's a series of lean, stripped down, fresh-filled, fifty-minute one-off episodes, a new companion and a violent alcoholic lunatic for a script editor. Again.

All my birthdays have come at once.

In 2005, Doctor Who became a ratings success and the BBC – that well-known bunch of ugly, fat-faced, wet, sniveling traitors – abandoned all other TV drama and jumped on the bandwagon to start playing the early Big Finish audios of Paul McGann on BBC7 internet radio. Jason Haigh-Ellory desperately tried to get the BBC itself to take over the production of audio dramas and finally allow him to escape into the Shadow Dimensions and live happily ever after.

Since the broadcasts had been monumentally successful, the BBC agreed on the spot – give or take eighteen months - to create a season of eight brand new 50-minute episodes which would be just like the TV series and more 'traditional' than mainstream Big Finish releases. Alan Barnes was dragged out of an internet cafĂ© by two suspicious MIBs and drafted to be script editor and creative consultant, in the mistaken belief he could actually come up with anything worth listening to after he perpetrated the horrors of The Best Wife.

Thanks to the horrors of the Divergent Universe Double The Fist story arc, which redefined the term "ill-conceived, poorly-executed, under-whelming bloated, pompous and overblown would-be epics totally lacking in anything understood as script editing", Paul McGann’s Doctor had suffered more crap stories than the rest of the BF Doctor’s put together, and now, it was payback time.

Together with Eddie Hitler, two sawn-off shotguns and a bag of meth-amphetamines, Paul McGann took over the BBC7-commissioned radio series, allowing him more control, more cash, and insane amounts of groupies comprised of half-forgotten has-beens throughout the world of radio and television, desperate to get some – ANY - publicity.

India Fisher and Conrad Westmaas were not to be part of this campaign, since they had sensibly run for the hills and denied all knowledge of ever being in Doctor Who. However, this meant a new companion was required to justify the team hiring Sheridan "Shez" Smith beyond simply ogling her bodacious body and bare shoulders.

Barnes was forced at gunpoint to think up a new character that wouldn’t be a carbon copy of Charley Pollard who Hitler considered "staler than a hobnob left in the desert at the time of the Pharaohs and then systematically dehydrated by strange hexagonal aliens who seek to wipe out freshness from the face of time itself."

It was decided the new companion should be ballsy and feisty. Because anything else would require a modicum of intelligent design. Instead a bit of illegal and highly unethical human hybridization experimentation lead to a fusion of Donna Noble and Jackie Tyler, and was dubbed Lucy Millor to avoid confusion. In order to pretend that they were paying attention to characterization, the production team pointlessly changed the spelling of "Lucy Millor" to "Lucie Miller". No one noticed, but better safe than sorry.

This feisty Northerner blonde pleased all concerned, since they were trying to steal the chip-eating chav audience from RTD without him noticing, and wanted them to identify with the companion - something slightly difficult to do with a 1930 whore and an pandimensional pink lizard who regularly shagged each other. As for characterization, Lucie was written very much as a cross between Eddie Hitler in drag and the entire female cast of Beauty and the Geek; the brainless Essex girls who their intellectual superiors as worthless skivvies.

At one point, Julie Gardner tried to get into the office, complaining that the arrival of Lucie was dangerously identical to the one in RTD’s The Drunken Ginger Bride, only to run off screaming as Hitler threw a Molitov cocktail at her and laughed like a madman.

Hitler then ordered Barnes to select the six scripts for the series at random from a pile, ideally self-contained conceptually-tight neat three-act dramas. For a start they needed an episode to introduce the new companion Lucie, which would not be a carbon copy of Billie Piper’s debut, Ruse (an episode already plagiarized fifteen times by the genuine production team within two years). Barnes felt his mind sink deeper into a black pit of despair as he realize he had unwittingly commissioned a full-length story from Steve Lyons.

Steve Lyons was infamous for his cluelessness – from his first published Who novel ("Time of Your Liff", which was a Sixth Doctor story where he encountered deadly reality TV) to his latest Big Finish audio ("Clock Works", where the Eighth Doctor overthrows a corrupt regime using clockwork robots) Steve Lyons had not come up with a single original thought; or rather, all the original thoughts he came up with had already been done to death. Barnes was understandably dismayed to have him on board.

Lyons, on the other hand, was delighted to be involved with this "fresh start". Indeed, he had come up with a brilliant plot involving a race of incredibly lethal alien death machines he dubbed "the Dustbins", and came up with brain-twisting plot in which the Dustbins are mistaken for benevolent cleaners for hires, only to use these pathetic humans as mutative fodder to become more Dustbins, before a barroom brawl broke out between the two Dustbin factions.

As ever, Lyons had a truly insane optimism that nothing even remotely similar had ever been thought up by anyone in the entire world ever, and when it was suggested that to all intents and purposes Lyons was ripping off "Power-Vac of the Dustbins" with its Dustbin Hustle con trick, "Rhododendrons of the Dustbins" with its turning humans into Dustbins, "Rememberin To Take Out The Dustbins" with its warring Dustbin factions, and "The Parting of the Legs", he just blinked twice and smiled idiotically for around sixteen days.

Ultimately, it was decided to go with Lyons’ script since

a) a two-part Dustbin story would bring out the big guns for the new series right away and provide an impressive and engaging opener for a compelling new beginning for Doctor Who audio dramas

b) it meant they could all go to the pub early, using Big Finish’s remote stellar manipulator to put the sun over the yardarm at eight o’clock in the morning.

Vowing that he would never allow the story to be repetitive, predictable and out and out stale Dustbin runaround, and that it would be kept fresh with essential new aspects, Lyons bought everyone a round and finished off an entire crate of Malibu single-handed, earning him a skull fracture when Hitler headbutted him for this crime. He was not alone: Barnaby Edwards was shot through the chest when it he told Hitler and McGann that Marilyn Monroe could not play Martez on the flimsy excuse that she had been dead for many years...

Hitler also found the new series’ restriction to contemporary Cardiff, in his words, "fucking deranged" and thus ordered it carved into the BF guidelines with hammer and chisel that the BBC7 audios could never be set on contemporary Earth on pain of quite unnecessarily painful death. Tragically, however, the BF guidelines were completely destroyed by the hammer and chisel Hitler used - and thus, ironically, 99% of the stories would still be either set in contemporary Cardiff or places suspiciously similar to contemporary Cardiff.

Thanks to resulting Malibu-related hangovers, this allowed the teetotal Nicholas Briggs to throw off his chains. Rather than merely doing the Dustbin voices like a good little maniac, Briggs attempted to seize the role of executive producer from Hitler’s numb and hairy knuckles. Although he would NOT achieve absolute control over the BBC7 audios, Briggs still managed to get the job of director, composer and play half the cast. His sheer presence brought both tension and desperation to proceedings before McGann got his brothers to come round, beat up Briggs and send him back home.

Lymph of the Dustbins would herald the new approach of the 'radio' series – leaner, stripped down to the bear essentials, a new freshness, and the single most fucking irritating Doctor Who companion of all time. No wonder the Eighth Doctor Lacks any trace of his usual humor and his joy of life that defined his character in The Stoned of Venice and Reasons to Care. The opening scenes are muddled and confusing, the central characters are given an adversarial relationship, and the action takes forever to get going.

Apart from that, it was a radical departure from what had come before.

Meanwhile, rather than using a consistent BF theme tune for the new episodes (and mainly to piss off posters on Outpost Gallifrey), another new version was used for "Lymph of the Dustbins".


"Charley Who?" by Nigel Verkoff and the Happiness Patrol


Yes, I have got
A new companion!
A new companion!

You honestly that I’ve got
Nobody cept Charley?
Well, as from today, I’ve got
A new girl called Lucie!

Not gonna screw this one up
She may not be Billie Piper
But I have got
A new companion!
A new companion!

She’s feistier that all the girls
And I’ve shagged quite a few
Nobody in all of Cardiff
Can do what she can do!

And so I’m telling fandom
There’s no point in nostalgia
For I have got
A new companion!

A new companion who will
Love me till the end!
Through scripts by Briggs
She will always be my friend!

It’s painfully obvious that I’ve been
Unhappy with Charley
But as from today, well, I’ve seen
A new blonde called Lucie!

Not gonna screw this one up
She may not be Billie Piper
But I have got
A new companion!

A new companion who will
Love me till the end!
Through scripts by Briggs
She will always be my friend!

Finally got rid of C’Rizz and there’s
No looking back
From now on, me and Lucie
We’ve got the knack.

Not gonna screw this one up
She may not be Billie Piper
But I have got
A new companion!
A new companion!
A new companion!

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