DS Doctor - Countdown to Armageddon

One Hundred And Thirty-Sixth Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Chemistry Sets


70C - Countdown to Armadillos -

CD Blurb
---------------

In the late 20th century, some Earth scientists discovered a large black hole in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. So powerful was this phenomena that, while enjoying an all-night rave in Basingstoke they believed whoever could learn to harness and control this limitless force could easily become...

SKELETOR, Master of the Universe!!!

This why truly respectible astrophysicists who actually know what the hell they're talking about rarely attend all-night raves in Basingstoke.

Meanwhile, the Bastard attempts to create his own "Big Daddy Rassilon's Chevy" with the power of the Key To Big Daddy's House. But, unknown to all, imprisoned by the power of the 57 Chevy of Rassilon lie Armadillos, waiting for a chance to escape.

"It's a countdown to armadillos now, Mark."




Plot Summary
--------------

The Doctor and his new companion Commander Mark Tryhard have begun their two-week holiday in Doncaster, a cold, miserable soggy and unfashionable part of Bridlington. The Doctor has promised Mark nine days and ten nights of sun, sea, sand and sex in a heat-seeker's bronze-a-thon before returning him to his gritty Battlestar Galactica-style home time period.

Thus, as they sit in a boarding house idly playing Connect Four waiting for the rain to stop so they can make a quick trip to the local betting shop, tempers are becoming a little bit frayed.

Sick and tired of the Doctor's drunken philosophical drivel, Mark mucks about with his pager and tells the Doctor the sudden urgent beeping noise they can hear is in fact a Class 1A Disaster Beacon only ever used in case of catastrophic emergencies that threaten the nature of existence.

The Doctor rolls his eyes and admits this sort of thing is just typical and they head for the TARDIS to find out just what overreacting wet loser is sending this distress call. As they enter the time machine, Mark takes one last look around the drab apartment and out the window sees something strange in the rain outside.

Mark hurries into the TARDIS, explaining he saw a translucent white figure standing right outside the boarding house holding up a sign saying "Hurry Up And Die You Old Bastard!"

The Doctor assumes it's just some wierd bit of performance art and not worth worrying about when the Cloister Bell begins to chime, signifying wild catastrophe and imminent danger.

The Doctor points out that they have encountered a strange all white figure, a distress call signaling catastrophic emergency, the Cloister Bell is ringing and he has a strange feeling in his left leg. Such strange signs and portents can only mean that the entire universe is in imminent threat of total collapse... or else it's one reeeeeallly big coincidence.

Deciding to just notch this down to experience, the Doctor sets the time machine in motion - and it immediately goes out of control, hurling both him and Mark against the walls as the TARDIS spins out of control. The whir of the time servos does not quite blot out the abuse Mark hurls at the Doctor for being such a clueless moron.

The TARDIS crash-lands on Gallifrey, the Shining World of the Seven Systems, on the Continent of Wild Endeavour, between the mountains of Solace and Solitude, in the Citadel of the Ancient Society of the Time Lords, the oldest and most mighty race in the Universe, looking down on the galaxies below, sworn never to interfere, only watch.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, not this shithole again!" the Doctor announces as he and Mark stagger out of the TARDIS.

There, they are met by Commander Maxil and Chancellor Dominik Diamond III who have drawn the TARDIS here to confront the Doctor. The Doctor himself is immediately gripped with terror. Have the Time Lords brought him home to stand trial for his recent unauthorized trip into E-Space where he dumped his wife in a distinctly irresponsible manner? Is it for destabilizing the political situation on Tigella? Altering the evolution of the Skonnos Empire? Undoing the history of Paris so he hasn't actually slept with every single Frenchman ever born? Reduced the Dustbins to cyberporn addicts? Defying the Guardians of Light and Time when ordered to fetch the eleven secret herbs and spices?!

Maxil and Dominik awkwardly explain the Doctor has simply been summoned for jury duty. They actually had no idea about all the crimes and misdemeanors the Doctor has carried out...

...but now the Doctor just confessed it all to them, they immediately arrest him and sentence him to eternal imprisonment in the ancient time prisons in the shadow dimensions!

Luckily for the Doctor, he still has jury duty to perform, and is free for the time being while his stolen TARDIS is impounded and finally returned to the kindly old lady who was the Doctor's next door neighbor, from whom he would often "borrow" stuff and never return.

The Doctor is forced to wear the ancient robes, lipstick and triceratops head gear of the Time Lords, and discovers he is to stand over the trial of the Bastard, the most villainous and evil Time Lord to have his own myspace page. Around him jurors tend to die mysteriously and be reduced to shrunken dolls.

The Doctor muses that in a matter of two minutes he's been sentenced to a fate worse than death, lost his TARDIS and been placed in the firing line to confront his oldest and deadliest of enemies and that, all in all, today is really giving him the shits.

The Doctor and Mark attend the Trial Room of Gallifrey, where the bearded, satanic-looking Bastard has spent the last six months straight listening to the bailiff reading out the charges brought to bear on him. Even with their amazing abilities to warp the flow of time and space, they're still on the letter B and haven't even reached all the stuff about triggering intergalactic wars and such.

Finally, the Inquisitor of the Trial has had enough and declares, quite simply, that the Bastard has lived up to his name and is the nastiest bit of pond scum in the entire created cosmos. He then asks the Bastard if he has anything to say in his defense.

The Doctor whispers to Mark that this is the good bit. The Bastard's keen legal insights will surely have worked out a full-proof testimony using the legendary Traffikanti Defense, the rosetta stone of defense statements. The defense has saved such incredible war criminals as Emperor Palpatine, Anubis the Ancient and OJ Simpson. The Doctor is certain that the Bastard's next few words will leave him a free man.

He is, therefore, depressed as the Bastard shouts, "I know you are, but what am I?" sixteen times before putting his fingers in his ears and jumping up and down while screaming mindlessly.

The Inquisitor sentences the Bastard to death by Pig-Bear - the criminal shall be placed in a pit and will fight to the death against an endless army of stripy, clawed mammals until he finally dies; the cruelest and most embarrassing punishment that Gallifrey can provide.

The Bastard is dragged away by guards making farty noises, and the Doctor starts to weep. He explains to Mark that the Bastard was once an amazing theostician and to see him reduced to a retarded five year old and forced to fight pig-bears to death is heart breaking and pathetic.

It is then the Doctor breaks down in tears and explains he and the Bastard were once roommates at the Time Lord academy, but their love was not to be thanks to the Bastard's unnerving hobby of doll collecting and the Doctor's psychotic refusal to pay the phone bill.

Mark is deeply disturbed by this and much relieved when suddenly alarm bells start to ring through out all the Capitol. The Time Lords, having never heard such noise before, all assume they've got tinitus and generally ignore it.

Finally, Mark gets sick of the noise and investigates himself. He finds that a secondary control chamber has been vandalized, and the operator reduced to a tiny, doll-like corpse.

Dominik, Maxil and the Doctor stare in horror at this and wonder who could possibly have been responsible for such a heinous crime. Mark stares at them at disbelief and demands to know just how stupid the Time Lords are? The answer is completely obvious.

Slightly shamefaced, Dominik and Maxil immediately accuse the Doctor of the murder and sabotage. The Doctor points out he has no motive, and witnesses will attest he was too busy making a scene in the Trial Room when this happened, and frankly there is no evidence whatsoever to back up this insane allegation.

Maxil points out that the user ID on the console reads "TSigmaDrLurve!234" and clearly the murderer was logged on as the Doctor.

The Doctor cannot give any answer to that and assumes he therefore IS responsible until it occurs to him that the last time he fought with the Bastard, the evil renegade stole the Doctor's mouse mat -- and the Doctor's user name and password were scribbled on the back.

Mark screams that maybe the fact the operator was a shrunken corpse might ALSO have been a clue, but the Time Lords insist that the Bastard cannot possibly be responsible, since he is locked in the Waiting Room of Eternity and cannot possibly have escaped.

Mark rolls his eyes and suggests that maybe, just maybe, the Bastard has tricked them and the Doctor pooh-poohs the idea. It then occurs to them that, as a result of their teenage experimentation, he and the Bastard are legally man and wife, so the Doctor has the right for one last conjugal visit!

The Time Lords allow the Doctor to do so, on the grounds he never ever speak of this ever again since it's incredibly nauseating even to think about.

However, when the flushed and disheveled Doctor emerges from the Waiting Room of Eternity, he has terrible news: the Bastard has escaped and tricked some other loser into pretending to be him during the trial! The clues were obvious: the ridiculous, over-hammed performance; the lack of cunning wit; the low quality of passion during the sex... plus the fact it turned out the guy was wearing a Foamasi flesh mask and is actually Commander Tinnel of the Chancellery Guard.

Maxil and Dominik suggest they interrogate the hypnotized Tinnel for clues, but the Doctor awkwardly reveals he kind of snapped Tinnel's neck by accident... thirteen times... and the fact he accidentally told the deceased some incredibly embarrassing and dark secrets is irrelevant.

Just then, the lights flicker for the first time in Gallifreyan history, and in a manner quite like that Isaac Asimov short story Nightfall, all the Time Lords start screaming like girls and running off.

The Doctor realizes that the Bastard has somehow sabotaged the Fuse Box of Harmony and removed the main circuit breaker, so the energy supply of Gallifrey is now running out and their carbon footprint will increase ten fold. However, when pressed, the Doctor admits he has absolutely no idea what anyone could gain from stealing some fuses.

Just then, Mark spots the strange white figure amongst the panicking mobs of Time Lords. The Doctor passes it off as someone in a lame mummy disguise, before it strikes him that it could be the Bastard. He, Mark and Dominik run after the figure in white, and end up in the deserted Panopticon.

Suddenly, a strange ghostly shape forms in front of them...

"It's a giant armadillo!" the Doctor exclaims as the REAL Bastard emerges from the shadows, revealing he was really the Inquisitor all the time wearing some latex and talking in the thick South African accent.

The Bastard reveals that he is not the pathetic loser everyone assumed him to be -- it was all a cunning trick. For centuries he has pretended to be a dumb reckless supervillain with incredibly overcomplicated and ill-thought out master plans who would often disguise himself as French wizards for no adequately explored reasons and try to change history by replacing JFK with a turnip from the Andromedan galaxy so the Doctor would underestimate him!

The Bastard's harebrained schemes were merely an excuse to get the Doctor to defeat him, capture him and return him as a prisoner to Gallifrey! Unfortunately, the Doctor never actually captured him, but just let him go time after time, assuming the Bastard was too much of a wanker to be worth putting on trial.

But, in reality, the Bastard is a genius, well capable of taking over the entire universe and the Doctor is merely an insignificant pest to be swept aside. All that guff about being a drooling psychopath was a cunning ploy, but it seems the Bastard has been doing it so long, he still sounds like a two-dimensional cartoon caricature who laughs a lot even if he isn't!

The Doctor is shocked to discover that the Bastard is not remotely obsessed with him and that their unhappy love affair was put behind him centuries ago. He's even more shocked the Bastard has had to go to such lengths to reach Gallifrey -- why didn't he just smuggle his TARDIS onto the planet like everyone else?

The Bastard clears his throat awkwardly and shuffles around for a moment before revealing that he has murdered President Catflap and stolen the Signet Ring, Stash, Rod and Official Notepaper of Rassilon. He has also looked through the Official Paperwork of Time and discovered that the 57 Chevy of Rassilon, the source of all
Time Lord power, is only using 20 per cent of its power!

Thus, the Bastard intends to create his OWN 57 Chevy, and if he has to destroy the entire Milky Way to do so, well, that's just fine with him! In fact, he intends to create an even bigger and more phallic power source: an 86 Delorean, which will allow him to control the very forces of life and death itself.

"So... what's with the armadillo?" Mark asks, and the Bastard shrugs.

Suddenly, more ghost armadillos arrive and brutally start to slaughter all the Time Lords they can - spraying blue Gallifreyan blood across the cloisters as the most powerful race in the galaxy are reduced to dog food.

The Bastard decides that now would be a good time to flee Gallifrey with his ill-gotten gains and continue his quest to conquer the entire universe, leaving the Doctor, Mark and Dominik to be eaten by the strange armadillos from another plane of reality itself.

The trio flee into the catacombs underneath the city to sit out the slaughter, and Dominik tries to explain he discovered an incredible secret of the Time Lords... but the Doctor is too busy making spooky owl noises to listen.

Finally, Dominik reveals that with the Fuse Box of Harmony tampered with, all the energy from the 57 Chevy will be being absorbed by the Key To Big Daddy's House, a device that can store all the energy and then release it. Of course, if it's released anywhere except in the ignition of the 57 Chevy itself, it will destroy the universe, but as firework displays go, it won't be beaten.

Mark points out that the Bastard has the Key to Big Daddy's House, and thus might actually be trying to use that energy to forge the Delorean of total power, but the Doctor and Dominik laugh at him and call him "a stupid fucking primate"!

Just then, another Armadillo appears in the catacombs and bites off Dominik's head, sending his twitching corpse hurtling into the Doctor, who promptly falls over and cracks his head on the ground.

The Doctor suffers a vivid LSD flashback of his audio companions Kevin, Sara, Tom, Tasha, K9, Marcus, Roy, Susie Jo, Landon and Dillion, all of them bitterly whispering how they all really hate him and are planning to get him the moment he's not looking.

The Doctor awakes, gripped with paranoia, and immediately tries to rip off Mark's face, convinced he is really the Bastard in disguise. However, it really is Mark and after several blows to the head, the Doctor accepts this as truth.

The duo realize that more and more of the giant man-eating armadillos are appearing and the best thing to do now is run like ninjas on fire back to the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey to its fate. The Doctor insists he has forsaken his birthright and will not shed a tear for the passing of the Time Lords - plus, it makes his football card collection the most valuable thing in reality.

After a lengthy chase sequence, the Doctor and Mark are able to re-steal the TARDIS from its rightful owner after a giant armadillo hiding in her basement messily devours her. Leaving Gallifrey, the Doctor idly checks up the TARDIS data bank for any useful information about these ferocious creatures.

To his immense surprise, the entire history of the creatures is on open display from any Time Lord databank and literally anyone could have worked out what they are by simply looking them up.

It transpires that the armadillos are in fact harbingers of the apocalypse and when Rassilon turned on the engine of the 57 Chevy, he accidentally tore a hole in the barriers of hell itself, releasing the armadillos. He quickly plastered over the hole with the Sealant of Rassilon, but the only way to keep the armadillos out was to devote eighty per cent of the Time Lord's energy into a force field.

Thus, with all the power in the Key To Big Daddy's House, the force field has shut down and the evil scaly bastards have been let loose on Gallifrey. Soon they will engulf the entire universe and destroy everything to bring about Armageddon!

The Doctor decides that, since the universe is supremely fucked, there's nothing else for them to do but travel to Cambridge and get some of that slutty school girl action one last time.

Mark assumes this is gallows humor... until the TARDIS lands outside Jordrell Bank as a coach full of teenage schoolgirls are ferried in for an educational excursion into space exploration with radio telescopes and stuff like that.

Mark furiously screams that the universe is in danger and they are the only ones who can stop it but the Doctor is too busy with field binoculars, working out which of the schoolgirls looks the sluttiest.

Just then, the still-rather-mysterious white figure arrives and the Doctor finally notices that this stalker has followed him across three time zones. The Doctor, however, still is certain nothing is worth worrying about as the chances that this is the Watcher - the mythological wraith that is a mixture of the Grim Reaper and the Stork that heralds the death of one incarnation and the birth of the next - are ridiculously low.

The Doctor insists he is at the peak of physical health, before having a coughing fit and bringing up some stomach lining.

The Bastard, meanwhile, has followed the Doctor to Jordrell Bank and now is also scoping out the nubile private school girls. His magnetic gaze falls upon a bimbo called Dara Hamilton who is screaming her daddy is rich and is not sleeping with the Headmistress just so she can be bored by stuff about NASA and space research.

Her camp, poodle-carrying teacher calls her a 'fuck-ugly slag mole bitch' and told to write 'I Am A Skank' 500 times without her au pair's help. Dara has a temper tantrum and storms off from the tour group to ring her parents and generally whine about how unfair life is.

The Bastard is amazed at how self-obsessed and arrogant Dara is after observing her for just thirteen seconds, but realizes she is perfect material to be his Queen of the Universe after he gets round to conquering it, and is certain that if nothing else she will be a mildly-diverting sex slave.

The Bastard catches up with Dara and prepares to use his mesmeric powers to take over her brain... only to discover he had already taken over her grape-like excuse for a brain before he even opened his mouth.

The evil Time Lord rapidly grows bored of making Dara bark like a dog and jump up and down on one leg, and sends her to climb the ladder up the side of Jordrell Bank radio telescope and murder who she finds there with his tissue compression doohickey.

The Bastard follows Dara and discovers she has killed two technicians who were about to discover once and for all whether the Black Abyss in sector Delta 714 was the largest Black Hole in the Milky Way galaxy... or just some really nasty grit on the scanner scope.

Amused, the Bastard discovers it actually IS a Black Hole, and that there is a curious slot on the main console allowing him to plug in the Key To Big Daddy's House, and all the trapped energy is broadcast through the antennae, into deep space and into the Black Hole itself.

As the whole countryside lights up for the energy broadcast, and the Administrator Henry Davenport wakes up face down in a half-finished pizza and his toupee shoved down has underpants, the Doctor realizes they have stumbled across the Bastard's evil plan.

He desperately tries to make himself believed by the Jordrell Bank security staff, but since they are escorting him off the premises for attempted corruption of a minor, he is ignored. Mark quietly seethes as the Doctor screams his companion is a Star Fleet officer and has a phaser set to ass-whupping and demands to be allowed in.

In the control cabin, the Bastard realizes that it will be a full twenty-five minutes until the energy causes the Black Hole to go critical, tries to amuse himself. After playing with the doll-sized corpses, getting Dara to do a striptease and recording a doom-laden ultimatum for the rest of the universe, the Bastard is bored and decides to head down to where the Doctor and Mark are and generally gloat at them. Well, it passes the time.

The Doctor is struggling to get through an electrified fence without getting four million volts up his jacksie when his arch enemy arrives to shoot them, asphyxiate them and rub in how the Doctor completely failed to prevent the conquest of the universe.

Moment after swearing the Doctor will live only long enough to see the culmination of making history end, the Bastard suddenly sags with despair and explains he has no idea what the fuck he's doing. He went on a confidence building postal course and convinced himself he was a master criminal, when really he hasn't a clue how to conquer the galaxy or even what blowing up the Black Hole with achieve.

The Doctor tuts and explains that the detonation of the Black Hole will create another gateway to hell and allow an unstoppable army of armadillo to surge out and destroy all of creation.

The Bastard, gripped with mindless optimism, decides he will take over the armies of armadillos and use them forge a new empire across the universe -- despite the fact they will most likely use him as dental floss and ignore his dreams of conquest. However, the Doctor cannot bring himself to depress his ex when he's so happy and tells the Bastard that this plan is surely to work.

The Bastard hurries off back up to the control cabin and, by way of gratitude, leaves the Doctor with the hypnotized Dara to do with as he wishes.

Mark, now apoplectic with fury, cannot believe the Doctor has sold out the entire universe so he can get some sex with a schoolgirl and throws a sonic grenade at his curly-haired scarfed companion.

The explosion knocks down the electric fence and restores Dara's personality, which ultimately turns out to be a bad move as she starts bitching and moaning and glossing entirely over the fact she murdered two innocent bystanders in cold blood.

The Doctor assures Mark he still has fifteen minutes to save the entire universe and can afford to spend them explaining the plot to Dara right from the very beginning. Mark points out that in their time together the Doctor hasn't once convinced him he could open a tin of baked beans that was already open, let alone save the universe.

This, however, prompts another question and answer session with Dara, who mistakenly assumes them to be two pedophiles on the run from Scotland Yard on the grounds all aliens have green skin and cannot possibly resemble human beings. She also maintains she is so rich it doesn't matter whether or not she is stupid airhead bint.

Just then, the security team returns and tries to shoot down the trio, who scatter in all directions. The Doctor finds himself at the base of the dish tower, where the white figure is playing "Danse Macabre" on the violin.

As the Doctor climbs the ladder to find the Bastard, the Watcher starts playing a chirpy jazz version of the Death March.

In the control cabin, the Doctor bursts in, checks his watch, and with three seconds to go unplugs the Key To Big Daddy's House, allowing it to teleport itself back to the remains of Gallifrey, reestablishing the force field and trapping the armadillo hoards once more.

Well, I -ASSUME- that's what's happened. It just kind of vanishes in a bad editing trip and is never mentioned again.

The Doctor gleefully rubs his hands and brags how he has single-handedly saved the entire universe and not even been killed! In your FACE, predeterminism!

Furious at losing his chance to be the supervillain he really wishes he was, the Bastard pulls out an Uzi submachine gun, spins and opens fire on the Doctor at point blank range...

...but at the last second, the Doctor tuns out of the control cabin to avoid the gunfire, only to discover he is in the direst of circumstances...

...he is on a suspension bridge! The one thing the Doctor cannot defeat is a suspension bridge, as he inevitably gets half way across and then the suspension snaps and he plummets into a cliffhanger. But this time, the Grim Reaper is waiting below for him to fall and there are no cliffhangers left.

Despite all this, the Doctor decides to risk it as the Bastard shoots out the vital suspension cables, causing the bridge to collapse and the Doctor to plummet towards certain death...

...but at the last second, the Doctor manages to get his scarf caught in the latticework of metal girders, stopping his fall.

The Doctor's stunned relief at still being alive turns to horror as he realizes the scarf is now acting like a noose and slowly throttling him and the radio telescope has become the biggest makeshift gallows in history!

As the Doctor dangles from his scarf, visions of old enemies - the Sea Lion incarnation of the Bastard, a Dustbin, Queen Zanakia, a Cyberleader, Lavros, the Snotaran Tim, a Bygone, and the Black Guardian - appear in the air before him about what a sad and pathetic loser he is before realizing he's not actually the Tom Baker Doctor, just some copycat in a scarf.

Annoyed beyond belief, the Doctor manages to escape from the noose of his scarf and picks a fight with the illusionary enemies, only to realize he's escaped being hanged only to plummet ninety metres onto incredibly hard Astroturf...

...but at the last second... nah, just kidding. He goes splat.

Mark and Dara watch the Doctor plummet to the ground, and Mark wryly comments that things are finally looking up. Together, they wander over to the spot the Doctor has fallen and, as he dies, the Doctor experiences visions of the companions that have accompanied Tom Baker's Doctor and, like the monsters, mistaken him for a canonical Doctor.

"It's the end," the Doctor observes, "the contract has not been renewed... Tell Colonel Chrichton I love him!" before slumping dead.

Mark kicks the body just to be sure he's dead, and then groans in disappointment as the Watcher approaches and collects the dead Doctor's spirit, allowing the Time Lord to regenerate into a newer, younger body which sits bolt upright and says the immortal phrase:

"Good afternoon! You were expecting Peter Davison, maybe?"


Books/Other Related Material-
Dr Who - The 4th Doctor Snuffs It
Doctor Who: Beyond the Scarf
Sci-Fi Armadillo Exploitation


Links and References -
The dying Doctor has flashbacks to proper, genuine Doctor Who adventures and not one of them features him.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor was declared the God of the Armadillo People of Yamaha 10, and his title was so holy the last person to utter it was covered in honey and thrown into a nest of killer ants. Or if they ate beef on Saturdays.



Dialogue Train Wrecks
---------------------

Bastard: Fools! Run, run! You're too late! The power of the 57 Chevy of Rassilon is almost completely under my control! When it is, I shall crush this insignificant planet into cosmic dust - then I shall be the sole Lord of Time! Oh, this is SO working for me!!

-------

Doctor: Wait a minute! I think I've got it! We're looking at it the wrong way. Instead of thinking of armadillos as a thing, a phenomenon, think of it as a being! Let's call it Fred. Now look at it: Fred IS an armadillo! If an armadillo IS an armadillo, then what is an armadillo?

Mark: What in the name of god are you talking about?

-------

Dara: I was walking along this hall, when this really hot guy jumps out and says he's my master or something... What's happening to me?

Doctor: You were under the control of the Bastard.

Dara: Which Bastard? Who is he? What does he want? God, I am so hot!

Doctor: The Bastard is a renegade from Gallifrey and he wants the universe.

Dara: "Gallifrey?" Never heard of it. Is it some new country?

Doctor: More like a planet.

Dara: "Planet"?!? Hold on... Oh! My! Go! Are you saying that the Bastard is an ALIEN? That is so cool! Who are you? Scotland Yard?

Mark: Will you shut the fuck up?

Doctor: I'm the Doctor - a Time Lord - and this is Commander Tryhard, United Federation of Planets.

Dara: Oh! My! God! Aliens?!? YOU'RE aliens too?!? That is so cool!

Mark: Doctor, we don't have time for this!!

Doctor: Of course we do! Tell me, my dear, are you wearing any underwear today?

Dara: No, I'm not, cause, like, I'm just so hot! I'm the hottest girl in my school, but my breasts aren't big because, like, I had a eating disorder when I was twelve. But I'm still hot! Yay!


Dialogue Gems
-------------

Mark: Doctor, remember that being I told you about, just before we came here?

Doctor: Maybe.

Mark: I saw him again. In the Prison Complex.

Doctor: What? Here? On Gallifrey?!?

Mark: He was just standing there. Watching.

Doctor: Watching? Watching us?

Mark: You.

Doctor: Oh, he's probably just another one of my many admirers. I'm a sort of Marilyn Monroe figure in this part of the galaxy, you know.

Mark: Doctor?

Doctor: Yes, Mark?

Mark: I despise you.

--------

Bastard: Lord President, believe me when I say that sharing a common ancestry with such miserable, spineless fools such as yourselves fills me with as much disgust as you believe it does to you. You sit here in judgement of me when you yourselves, as a race, are guilty of even higher crimes than you accuse me of! While I will not try to hide from my sins behind such fancy facades as high councils and laws of time, history itself shall be your final judge - then we shall indeed see who is called the villain.

Judge: So I take it your plea is NOT guilty, then?

Bastard: Indeed it is.

Judge: Just stick to "yes" or "no" answers from now on, there's a good fellah.



Listener Reviews
-----------------

"Countdown to Armadillos is the best story of the season! It's got a regeneration in it? How can you beat a regeneration story? You can't! Especially one done so well... as long as you never saw Tom Baker on TV, but that's true for most things! This is brilliant! He regenerates, dude! HE FUCKING REGENERATES! This rules!" - Fred Nile (2007)


"Episode three stops me crying." - Claire Hooper (2005)


"Jesus wept, this is awful! Mind you, I quite liked the story they were ripping off so violently a skin graft was needed."
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (Dec 2003)


"All right, the Watcher, the regeneration, the Doctor, the enemy, most of the cliffhangers, the incidental music, all the dialogue and some of the acting are brutally removed from Death Comes to Tom by force, it was for logistical reasons. Don't let a bit of plagiarism put you off, otherwise you'll never listen to anything we do! The story is very well conceived and executed... if you're easily impressed. By the end, you'll shed a tear for Segal just as you did for Baker... again, if you're easily impressed. Armadillos are scary."
- The David Segal Handbook (2005)


David Segal Speaks!
-------------------

"Different producers always want to put their own personal stamp on the series, and some of them actually want to be remotely original as well. Doug Phillips wanted his own Doctor so he could better mould the series in his own way and not remake Return of the Cybermen every month.

If I'd had my way, I would have stayed a few more years, maybe just thirty or forty more. As Patrick Troughton once said, 'I only slept with you because you're a teenage girl and I like teenage girls'. That's not relevant to my point, but it's a damn interesting quote.

They said that, after all, I had been the Doctor for over ten years and I had finally run out of Tom Baker material to use and, OK, there were rioting mobs screaming "time for a change, Segal you dense tit!" but I didn't want to leave when things were getting interesting, the talent pool expanded beyond my flat, we discovered a magical thing called the internet.

But, eventually, after all the sleep deprivation, water torture, electric shock therapy and being stripped naked, dipped in bolognaise sauce and dropped into a tank of piranha fish, I agreed and decided to move on... about a metre, and became writer, executive producer, guest star and generally upstaged my pal Jeff Coburn every chance I got. I was so graceful, wasn't I?

Though, I hadn't expected to die ala Tom Baker. I ripped off every single line of dialogue, every plotline, costume decision and vocal intonation for him, but for my final story to mirror his to the point even Blind Pew could see the plagiarism... that was a surprise.

I hate surprises."


Peter Hinchman Speaks!
----------------------

"They say that most of the Doctors are modelled after their actors, so if you were to look at a certain Doctor you can pretty much see what the actor is like, but they say a lot of things and anyone who believes it without proof is a moron in my opinion. But in the case of the SCADs, it is true: when you look at David Segal's Doctor you're seeing a good reflection of what David Segal is like.

A complete nutter with no talent or originality of any sort whatsoever.

No one missed him. In fact, it's a pity that he survived when his character didn't."


Sheri Devine Speaks!
--------------------

"Yes, Countdown to Armadillos introduced an incredibly irritating new companion who would somehow escape being brutally murdered in a back alley well into Jeff Coburn's tenure.

Though I would have liked not to work with David Segal at all, let alone when I was playing the Doctor, I think this story was an inevitable introduction to her character.

I mean, it would just be ridiculous to introduce Dara in this story and not feature her at the same time. Ridiculous. What kind of retard would do that - apart from John Satan-Turner? But not us!

We're professionals."



Rumours, Slander, and Libel
---------------------------

The SCAD series had been going nowhere fast until that fateful moment in 1989 when the real Doctor Who was taken off the air by the BBC after realizing they had forgotten to cancel it some ten years previously.

New producer of the SCADs, Douglas Phillips, realized that this niche product was finally in the position to continue in the absence of the real thing - but would the world accept on audio what had always been cherished... or at least tolerated... on television?

The answer from everyone questioned was a resounding, "Fuck no! Those shitty radio things are just that nutter in the scarf masturbating into a microphone for every twenty-five minutes! I don't care IF the brand name has changed, I'm not wasting my cash on the drivel of some deranged Tom Baker impersonator - he hasn't been the Doctor for what, ten years now? Wake up, you losers!"

Phillips was shocked at how every single poll came up with that exact wording, but this was the excuse he needed to finally rid Everlasting Audios of the talentless, scarf-wielding albatross hanging like a stone around its scrawny neck.

With the help of Raymond Dugong as script editor, Phillips decided to get rid of the entire cast since he hated their guts and all the characters were derivative rip offs anyway. This was seen as controversial - but frankly anything would be controversial for a bunch of jerks who expect you to applaud them for re-recording a 1975 Cyberman story every week with no iota of new ideas.

On the bright side, Greg Hammer and Cile Whitticker had discovered the joys of binge drinking, cocaine and oral sex and thus had no real desire to stay, and Karen Tyler tagged along with them to find out what a "three-way" actually was.

The downer was that the current Doctor, David Segal, had not indicated a desire to leave the show. In fact, he had not indicated a desire to leave the show for the past nine years, and seemed disturbingly happy by pretending to be Tom Baker every day and regurgitating entire reams of Fourth Doctor dialogue in lieu of conversation. He was not feeling the age of the role on him, but the role had felt the age of him on it and was now begging for euthanasia.

Phillips was frankly nauseated, and immediately planned to not only recast the Doctor but drown Segal in a barrel of marzipan. He was even more disturbed to discover that everyone thought Segal's latest stories showed a 'fresh spark', which implied he was once even worse.

Phillips broke the news by breaking Segal's nose and telling him that the time was right to pass the torch to someone who actually had some kind of talent for audio, and was not a psycho Tom Baker groupie.

Out of the four auditions for the role of the new Doctor, three of which turned out to be David Segal in not-so-cunning disguises and the one that wasn't -- a meek chap called Jeff Coburn -- was immediately chosen to be the next incarnation of the Time Lord.

However, it was rapidly becoming obvious that Phillips' mandate that the cast stop recording whatever bullshit came off the top of their heads and actually used a script was coming back to haunt him - the crew only had one script and that was a photocopy of Christopher Bidmead's "Death Comes To Tom" which they somehow believed no one would notice they were plagiarizing every single episode from.

Phillips believed the SCADs had to become more adult, catering to the teenage and young adult audiences, so that meant actually coming up with proper stories and not acting like it was 1975 and that no one had a long term memory.

With the old companions out and the current Doctor going up against the wall waiting for the firing squad, new companions were needed. Phillips decided the restructuring of the show required a companion who had at the very least a second dimension to differentiate him from the previous collage of robot dogs, naive junior Time Lords, and jailbait female journalists in miniskirts.

Thus, he decided that recurring character Commander Mark Tryhard become the male companion to fill out the Adric role in the scripts until a new script could be written, on the grounds he could believably be shown pointing out what a useless jerk the incumbent Doctor was.

However, it was quite clear that the new Doctor would need some silly teenage bint to twist her ankle, and ideally one so monumentally annoying she would always make the Doctor seem likeable in comparison. She would also be introduced in Segal's final story out of sheer spite, and also irritate the fuck out of everyone by challenging the Doctor's fantastic and unbelievable claims of menacing aliens and galactic doom, holding up the middle of the ongoing duel between the Doctor and the Bastard to explain the already blatant plot.

Thus, Daria Harrison was created!

Daria Harrison was then immediately scrapped and a brand new companion three times as frustrating was introduced: Dara Hamilton, who would appear in the last episode of the story doing a catwalk display atop the edge of a damn. When the unlucky Doctor got in the way, he would be roughly shoved over the edge to plummet to his death.

This ultimately turned out not to be a regeneration idea, per se, but actually a complicated plot to assassinate Segal, who Phillips and Dugong were finding increasingly boring.

The script for "Death Comes to Tom" was used one final time, on the grounds that a rip-off Doctor deserved a rip-off exit, but now the actually manuscript was so dog-eared and coffee stained it was barely understandable - in fact despite their attempts to recreate it line by line, the story ended up being almost completely different.

Although the script for the regeneration scene was still legible, Phillips refused to be so pathetic as to duplicate the Fourth Doctor's regeneration and insisted it be different - under no circumstances was the Doctor to be shot down by the Bastard trying to save the life of Bill Gates, as had happened to Tom Baker on TV.

Recording of the story went ahead as planned and when finished the BBC SFX record holding the all important track "Fall From A Suspension Bridge" was symbolically smashed to pieces.

Finally, after suffering a psychotic episode and having to be sedated, gagged and straightjacketed, David Segal was taken from the recording studio and his unconscious body dumped on a passing bus.

After ten years, fifteen seasons and seventy-five stories, David Segal was the longest serving human being to play the Doctor, officially or unofficially. All the others had lives, you see, even Tom Baker.

But after seventy-five stories, count them!

1. "The Andromeda Strain"
2. "Shatter World"
3. "The Odd Essay"
4. "The Space Beige"
5. "The Sex Machines"
6. "The Nightclub of the Dustbins"
7. "The Brawl of the Time Lords"
8. "Lethal Assassins"
9. "Evasion"
10. "The Curse of Cystitis"
11. "The Tub of Cute"
12. "Logopolis: The Retcon of Traken"
13. "Robots With Breasts"
14. "Museum Du' Snotarans"
15. "Zombie 3"
16. "Pyramids of Cards"
17. "The Day The Animals Went Apeshit"
18. "Tim And Relatives Dai Mentioned In Space"
19. "The Hand of Fuck"
20. "Genesis of Zardoz"
21. "The Evasion of Wriggles"
22. "Blood Feud of the Dustbins"
23. "Extreme Twister!!"
24. "Haunting of Phantom Mountain"
25. "The Seeds of Bloom"
26. "The Penultimate Weapon"
27. "Pink Floyd"
28. "The Error of Legacy Mansion"
29. "Night of Error"
30. "Incident of the Spinach"
31. "Planet of the Spy-Spoofs"
32. "A Fire In This Guy"
33. "Bad Moon Rising"
34. "In Vision of the Ichabods"
35. "Coronary"
36. "Required Olympics"
37. "Return of the Cybermen"
38. "Escape from New York"
39. "Grope of Death"
40. "The Brain of Moby"
41. "Evasion of the Cretins"
42. "Rhyme Centigrade"
43. "Picnic at Ground Zero"
44. "Incident with Wicker Man"
45. "Adric"
46. "The Clean Breath"
47. "Mindmap"
48. "BitComet Empire"
49. "Shallow Zone"
50. "The Silly Elite"
51. "Planet of Alimony"
52. "Valley of Wanking"
53. "The Donut Horror"
54. "Eternity's Bend"
55. "Operation: Romulan"
56. "Return of the Cybermen"
57. "The Arrogance"
58. "The Reign of Error"
59. "MIRRORBALL"
60. "The Giddy Conspiracy"
61. "The Jimmy Carter Menace"
62. "City of Anarchists"
63. "The Chinking"
64. "The Dustbin Project"
65. "The Invasion of Tim"
66. "Dork Intrudes"
67. "Land of the Dead"
68. "The Lust Colony"
69. "The Room of the Dustbins"
70. "Return of the Cybermen"
71. "Terri on Terry"
72. "The Poseidon Adventure"
73. "The X-Men"
74. "The Webber's Gate"
75. "Countdown to Armadillo"

After seventy-five stories, there was still one question about the Segal Doctor that remained unanswered:

Was he just some distorted parallel version of the Fourth Doctor, or did anyone HONESTLY believe we'd think he was a genuine, individual incarnation worthy of note?

The David Segal Decade could be classified as the time when the SCADs grew up, but in fact they weren't. True, the unlistenable, self indulging improvisation of 1983 had by 1992 become a Quadra-professional production which was deluded enough to think they were blazing a trail for others to follow, when in truth, the others were too busy making films with Colin Baker or writing novels about the Seventh Doctor and Ace rather than wallowing in incomprehensible tape recordings no one would listen to.

No one would have guessed that fan audios would become a worldwide following, or that they would become more popular than the TV show itself.

And they were right.