7th Doctor - Architects of History

Serial 7Z/G - The Sexing-Up of History
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Humans Behaving Badly

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7Z/G - The Sexing-Up of History

Elizabeth Shaw has stolen the TARDIS. This is not a good thing, especially given her staggeringly unimaginative and clichéd desire to rewrite history so the Nazis won World War II – I mean, seriously? That’s the best she can do? Why not save JFK and stop the Roman Empire from falling while she’s at it! Jeez!

Anyway, the order of creation is reinterpreted and rebooted by Liz, creating a uniformed world government – trading under the name Galactic Reich Pty Ltd - that not only rules the entire Earth but the solar system beyond. By 2044, the one hundredth year of Liz Shaw’s Golden Age, the Reich will be using stolen retro-fitted swastika-patterned Dustbin death cruisers to spread their empire even further than that!

Talk about massive compensation syndromes...

In charge of the Temporal Affairs Department, Liz has edited and reedited the universe until she likes what she sees. Famines and disease are ended, wars are averted before they can begin, space invaders repelled through judicious use of internet spoilers! This is a reality ruled by those with the best genes, sexiest uniforms, and most Teutonic dueling scars!

If any mongrel degenerates try to defeat the Reich, they just travel back in time to when the ringleaders were babies and then stab them to death with sharpened kitchen utensils. Because, you know, Nazis = evil! I trust people are getting the political subtext here!

Liz and her work-experience boy-toy Richter travel to the Nazi moon-base via her stolen TARDIS. There, Liz taunts and mocks Commandant General-Lieutenant Bob for his appalling personal hygiene, violent mood-swings and the fact his wife left him for a satellite TV repair man because... well, she’s a bitch.

However, Liz is not just here to torment Bob, she’s also here to laugh at the Doctor who is crucified in the basement. She might have forged an interstellar empire of pure fascism but Liz just doesn’t feel any sense of self-worth unless she’s humiliating a short Scotsman in a squalid cellar on the moon.

"All right, I get it. There’s no point in escaping because you’d only go back in time and stop me, and I wouldn’t even remember it," the Doctor yawns. "What-EVAH!!!"


Part One

While Commandant Bob shouts that Liz is a "fucking bitch" who doesn’t deserve to rule the Reich when she should be in the kitchen doing HIS "fucking ironing" and cooking HIM some "some decent fucking Aryan food" because that "fucking cow" decided HE wasn’t "giving her any proper fucking orgasms" which is why she "ran off with that fucking satellite fucking TV fucking repair fucking man"...

Actually, Bob goes off like this a lot. It’s not really important to the ongoing plot, if we’re honest. Unless the fact that he’s such a pathetic wanker no matter what chrono-temporal revisions are carried out is some kind of vital narrative twist. I digress.

Down in the dungeon, the Doctor engages some crude but incredibly satisfying mind games with Liz, claiming she has rewritten history so much she’s unaware she’s turning into a pipe-smoking lesbian of Israeli descent. Liz rants that the Doctor would say or do anything to get the better of her and it’s not working!

The Doctor silently arches an eyebrow and Liz lets out a pathetic shriek of terror and runs off clutching her head in despair.

"What a n00b," he sighs to himself. "Anyway, down to business!"

Yes, this is the Seventh Doctor, remember, people! Getting him pissed off with your fascist regime is as smart a career move as a porn star shoving a buzz saw down his jockstrap and switching it on! Time’s Champion is in town, kiddies, and he is in a MEAAAAN mood!

In some vaguely-outlined but magnificently nasty way, the Doctor has managed to smuggle technology to an alien power with the ability to travel through time to this moon base and conquer them in a totally 100 per cent foolproof invasion plan.

In less than two light minutes, six unidentified fish-shaped battle cruisers appear out of nowhere and close in on the unprotected Earth. The moon base goes onto red alert and all the fighters are scrambled in lots of stock footage from Space: 1999 and Babylon 5, but none of this is to any avail! Despite having stolen the finest weaponry from three galaxies, the ridiculous haddock-shaped space ships nuke them all to the contents of an ashtray without breaking metaphorical sweat!

As Liz has visited the future, she’s amazed no one mentioned this whole alien invasion as she and the Galactic Reich are being asked for the first time to get off their arses and sort things out for themselves instead of cheating their answers!

STAY IN SCHOOL, KIDS! AND DON’T DO DRUGS!

Whoa, the subtext briefly became text there for a second.

So, the Space Nazis are going to have their asses kicked by the Selachians – the only Doctor Who monster that even a Zarbi could outwit in a game of chess! These space kelp dress up as generic Power Ranger villains in their brutal quest to... um... gain revenge on all filthy plankton creatures who can breathe oxygen unaided!

"I considered using the Slitheen," the Doctor admits, "but I don’t even respect you THAT much, Liz..."

Liz demands the Doctor spill the beans, but as she’d had him nail-gunned to a crucifix for six months already, he’s not in a particularly cooperate frame of mind. Instead, Liz is about to become another casualty in the course of history being "sexed up"!

Oooh. Title-drop.

In a typical no-fist display of pathetic loser worthlessness, Liz and Richter decide to flee into their stolen TARDIS, travel another hundred years into the future, find out how to defeat the Selachians and then come back to rewrite history.

Unfortunately, Nazi regulations mean the poorly-parked time machine has been clamped and they can’t get in! Oh, the bitter and bureaucratic irony! Who saw that one coming?!?


Part Two

While Liz wails like a baby at how unfair life is, Commandant Bob decides the best way to deal with the crisis is to contact the Selachian leader and then rant very loudly about the unhappy state of Bob’s marriage and how he never gets any respect even though his genitals are unusually large for a higher anthropoid.

The plan is a brilliant success – though that does require the plan to be "convince the Selachians to bomb every last human being back to the stone age to prevent evolution ever churning up a useless tosser like Bob ever again".

Curiously enough, this was the exact same approach the Galactic Reich used against the Dustbins – but for some reason some walking tins of tuna are going to succeed where the Terry Nation Estate failed! Hah! TAKE THAT ONE, MR. HANCOCK! TAKE THAT!!!

Liz comes crawling back to the Doctor to beg for his help, in the strange belief he somehow finds Nazis in Space preferable to Selachians that he is actually in league with. Since Earth and the whole of time itself has ALREADY fallen to monsters, why should he give a crap if some other monsters do the exact same thing?

"Hah! You thought YOU were ruthless, Liz?" the Doctor jeers. "You’re a fluffy-cheeked amateur compared to me! Try reading some of the New Adventures and then try to intimidate me! I MAKE GENGHIS KAHN LOOK LIKE MAHATMA GANDHI! GANDHI FROM THE DAWN OF TIIIIMMMMEEEEE!!!!"

"I refuse to accept that!" Liz shouts.

"...fine," the Doctor shrugs. "You’re STILL totally screwed."

With perfect timing, the Selachians start to carpet bomb the moon, puncturing the eco-bubble force field that allowed all the Nazis to frolic and play on the surface as they whipped chain-gangs of slaves to work in the lunar mines. This means all aforementioned Nazis and slaves are blown out into space and all die horrible deaths.

These remorseless montages of senseless death and mindless destruction are accompanied by "Ca Plan Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand, which does kind of work, it has to be said. It’s hard not to bop along even when men, women and children are exploding into bloody porridge and their internal organs fly off into the void... I AM THE KING OF THE DIVINE!

Ahem. Sorry.

So, with the entire population of the Nazi moon base reduced to the exact number of speaking parts, Bob shouts that this is all "completely fucking typical" and lots of other things along those lines.

The Selachans start to teleport down onto the moonbase and immediately prove themselves to be even MORE vulgar and offensive than Bob, unable to speak in anything but repetitions of hardcore expletives. Basically they are going to kill everyone so it doesn’t matter if they are all noble and honorable or whimper like cowards.

Liz suggests they break the doors to all the microwave ovens in the moon base canteen and then turn them on, destroying the Selachians by boiling them in their water-filled armor. The Doctor just stares at her and explains that if she wants to try something so monumentally pointless, well she can just go ahead and do it, why not?

Liz eventually takes the hint and shuts up.


Part Three

The Selachians barge in, and only Bob is foul-mouthed enough to actually communicate with them for any length of time. The humans surrender to their new fish-shaped overlords and immediately Liz is crucified in the basement where the Doctor sadistically tortures her with an endless loop of "Another Day In Paradise" by Phil Collins.

Liz tries to taunt the Doctor noting the neat reversal of their positions with the Doctor determined to go to any lengths to bring about his perfect world, and this must mean they are actually more similar than they’d like, but phrases like "Oh, think twice!" and "Paradise is coming for you and me!" keep entering her speech.

Meanwhile, Selachians shoot lots of people to show what utter bastards they are while Bob rants a lot. You’d be amazed how much of the rest of the story can be summed up by that sentence, you really would.

Eventually it turns out that the Selachians are even bigger arseholes than they are pricks – and while we all admire such a strange and alien physiognomy, millions more of their ships arrive to obliterate the entire Earth and everything on it.

But as this is a parallel universe, no one gives a shit.

So, as cliffhangers go, it’s a tad lame.


Part Four

The Selachians, being really original and ground-breaking villains, decide to steal the TARDIS in order to become the new Lords of Time and rule all reality beyond the outskirts of eternity.

Unfortunately they are such retards the Doctor convinces them that his TARDIS is actually disguised as an ordinary metropolitan 1960s patch of empty air and the Selachians spend the rest of the story head-butting walls, doors and even Bob in the mistaken belief they have found the doorway to the disguised time machine.

While Selachians nuke the Earth, setting whole continents aflame and those brave men in their stolen alien flying machines blubber like babies and die pointlessly... Bob goes on about what a "fucking whoring harlot" his ex-missus was and how he hopes she’s dead.

By now even the Selachians are getting a bit sick of Bob’s relentless negativity and tell him to man up for once. Bob goes completely apeshit at such constructive criticism and sets the entire moon base to self destruct until the Selachians apologize to him and admit that they are, in truth, actually sleeping with his Vietnamese mail-order bride.

As no one has even MENTIONED Bob’s Vietnamese mail-order bride before, the shark aliens are understandably bewildered and decide to simply teleport to safety, leaving Bob in an empty control room shouting that he knows what "that fucking nympho" gets up to behind his back.

The Selachians then teleport back just to check that Bob is fully aware he is going to destroy the last patch of human civilization in the entire universe because of his estranged wife – because, seriously, there’s got to be MORE to it than that, surely?

The Selachians start to torture Bob to find out what his cunning plan is, but he just doesn’t stop ranting that everyone’s out to get him because "you all think Bob’s a total fucking fuck-up loser, don’t you?"

This bizarre subplot ends with the moon exploding. As most bizarre subplots tend to do. You ever see "Melancholia"? Yeah, like that.

The Doctor kidnaps Liz and drags her into the TARDIS where he reveals that he has had enough of this pissing about and has manipulated the time machine’s ridiculously-oversized controls to rev up the 57 Chevy of Rassilon at the heart of the time machine. This will trigger a space-time enema reset switch and none of this story will ever have actually happened in the first place.

Liz refuses to believe the Doctor would ever use such an unsatisfying dramatic cop-out to resolve a story arc. The Doctor retorts that it was Liz who brought him to this, rampaging through continuity until this was the only plot twist that could fix things – and not even Liz is sure what is canon and what isn’t any more.

In a truly pathetic display of desperation, Liz tries to psyche the Doctor out; claiming that if he dares strike her down, she will become more powerful than he has ever dared imagine.

"I can’t think how," the Doctor retorts, unimpressed.

Liz breaks down in as humiliating a manner as David Brent in the last episode of The Office (the British version, you know, the one that ISN’T funny) and suggests that erasing her actions from history might, just might, allow the Nazis to win the Second World War.

"With that single action you could achieve everything I have ever desired!" she rants. "It might happen! You don’t know, do you? You can’t be sure! And you’d have no choice but to accept it!"

The Doctor just stares at her. "And people wonder why I preferred Jo Grant," he mutters, pressing the button.

Time re-shapes itself and suddenly the Doctor is standing in his laboratory with UNIT HQ standing next to a version of Liz Shaw who is actually like the one we saw on TV – more interested in miniskirts and creepy hats than exterminating jews and black-shirt groupies.

"Nothing is out of place!" the Doctor cheers. "It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining in the sky, the birds are singing in the trees and everything is as it should be!"

At that moment a smiling Kate Tollinger steps out of the TARDIS.

"FOR FUCK’S SAKE!" the Doctor screams.

To Be Continued...


Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who and the Forgone Conclusion
Liz Shaw P.R.O.B.E.S. Things
"Nazis Vs. Sharks" – the epic 1983 Doug McClure film


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed awfully fishy in this story.


Goofs -
This stupid story arc STILL isn’t over yet!


Fashion Victims -
The Selachian Leader wears deely-boppers to designate his rank.


Technobabble -
Selachians communicate by "ultra sonic frequencies inversing the polarity of the obscenity shitty fuck cunty bollocks flow".


Links and References -
In order to establish history is back on course, the Doctor pulls out a battered copy of "The Doctor Who Quiz-Book Volume 58" and confirms that Rememberin’ To Take Out The Dustbins, Kappa and the Impressarios happened in this reality, along with a less-tedious version of Coleslaw Cutaway and A Thousand Whiny Things.


Untelevised Misadventures -
Due to the destabilized timeline, Liz Shaw’s final story is left in a Schrödinger’s Cat like state of instability and can either be found in the Virgin Missing Adventure "The Skirts of Injustice", the BBC Past Doctor Novel "The Arse-Bandits of Uranus", the Decalog story "Tintin and the Parallel Space Time Continuum", or the short story in the 1992 Doctor Who Marvel Yearbook "In the Kingdom of the Blonde".

I personally believe the only TRUE option is the 1970 Colonel X story "Banishment of the Daleks" featuring Michael Jayston, Roger Delgado and some nice guy I met on the train called Bernard.

No, I haven’t been taking my medication – why do you ask?


Groovy DVD Extras -
PDF eBooks of the previous Selachian stories by Steve Lyons – The Murder Fucking Shitting Bollock Games and The Whore Cunt Final Fucking Shit Solution Wankstain – featuring the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie, Zoe, Richard Mace and Irene Adler respectively.


Dialogue Disasters -

Bob: If I could, right now, I’d be orbiting your home world a million years ago when you were just microbes floating in the sea - and I’d have with me enough photonic missiles to sterilize the wretched planet!
Salachian: Oh fucking hell, you fucking bastards!


Doctor: Back so soon, Klein? I would offer you a cup of tea, perhaps a chocolate hobnob, we could reminisce again about old times that never happened. After all, that’s what the Companion Chronicle franchise is FOR, is it not?


The climactic scene in the TARDIS Control Room -
Liz: Our positions have been quite neatly reversed, haven’t they? Now you’re the one prepared to sacrifice the rest of us, prepared to go to any lengths, to bring back your world. How do you justify that to yourself? No, I can guess. Soon, this timeline will be erased. So, anyone who has suffered and died here for your sake – it won’t have happened any more. Your conscience will be clear.
Doctor: Pretty much. SAYONARA, MISS SHAW!!!


Selachian Leader: Dr Who? Dr Fucking Cunt Who! Dr Fucking Cunt Shit Piss Wank Fuck Who? Dr Cunt Fucking Cunt Wank Shit Piss Wank Fucking Who Cunt Bollocks? Dr Fucking Cunt Who Shit Piss Dr Who Fucking Cunt Fucking Cunt Fucking Cunt Shit Piss Wank Fucking Bollocks Give It A Portion You Wanker! Dr Fucking Conjugate Fucking Cunt Fucking Cunt Conjugate That You Cunt! Eh, Cunt? Eh, Cunt? CUNT – AY – VOOO!
(Long pause)
Selachian Leader: Pardon my French.


Alexander Armstrong’s understated performance -
Richter: You all know the principles upon which our society is built - we must stand united against the outsiders that would divide and destroy us. OK, there’s a couple of death camps and some stuff about a Jewish conspiracy, but APART from that, it’s good intention all the way. Honest. We just need the strength of will to maintain that unity and the rest of the degenerate Zionist scum will die!
Rachel: I’m getting some serious mixed messages here.
Richter: Ah, bless your weak genes. [into communicator] KILL THEM!


Bob: Ah, Miss Hoity-Toity Elizabeth My Farts Don’t Stink Shaw is back, is she? About fucking time! The Selachians are...
Liz: Whatever.
Bob: "Whatever"? What-ever?!?
Liz: Put it in your report, if you survive to file one. I’ll read it in the future.
Bob: I don’t fucking believe this! We don’t know how to fight fucking aliens – you’re supposed to tell us what to do!
Liz: Must we go through this again? It’s always the same! How do you think I know how to defeat the Snotarans or the Dustbins? Because we use up a whole timeline letting them win, then go to another one and warn you of your mistakes, one by one, before you can make them!
Bob: And I suppose this – we – are just one more mistake to you?
Liz: Pretty much.
Bob: I don’t believe this! Fucking women! I am your superior fucking officer, Shaw! You think I’m just going to let you walk all over me and make me cease to exist? Who the fuck do you think you are? My wife? Well, go ahead! You might as well fuck the fucking satellite repair man while I’m off fighting a fucking alien invasion! Don’t worry about me as you alter reality itself, don’t give it a moment’s fucking thought!
Liz: I won’t.
Bob: You don’t give a shit about poor Bob, do you?
Liz: No. But think of it this way: perhaps I will reach the future to learn that you dealt with this incident all by yourself, that my assistance was not required.
Bob: Oh, that’s it! Butter up Bob with some flattery because he’s too much of a fucking moron to realize the truth! Oi, come back here when I’m talking to you? YOU FUCKING WHORES ARE ALL THE SAME!
(Bob collapses sobbing.)
Bob: Why am I so lonely?


Doctor: I know it must be hard, Liz, filled with memories of days that never were, trying to know what’s real and what’s not. But you’ve been traveling in time long enough now to realize the truth – no matter how many fragile strands you bunch through, the Pertwee era will NEVER be as gritty and adult as you want it to be!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: When you rewrote history, you made yourself the most important person in it. A Lord of Time with an appalling taste in hats. Everyone was afraid of you, including the leaders you professed to serve - and what do you suppose frightened them the most?
Liz: The Fuhrer – every one I ever met – was afraid that my contact
with outsiders would... change me, that I might turn against him.
Doctor: Not a pleasant thought, is it? That your past itself might not be your own? That somebody else might have looked at your life, and decided that it needed a few small changes to keep you in your place?
Liz: I am remarkably sanguine about that prospect.
Doctor: Are you? Damn! I was pretty much relying on you having learned your lesson and would try to be a better person. Oh well, time to bring in the alien war fleet to destroy humanity.
Liz: ...the what now?
Doctor: [innocent] Nothing!


A chilling demonstration of just why Selachians don’t appear in mainstream Doctor Who very often -

Selachian: All right? Do what? Bollocks! Knock it on the head! All right, eh?
Doctor: That appears to be the Selachians’ answer to everything. How old are you, Trooper?
Selachian: Shit piss wank fuck cunt all right bollocks knock it on the head do what wanker all right you fucking cunt, eh?
Doctor: As I suspected - still young. Inexperienced.
Selachian: Shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks knock it on the head all right, eh?
Doctor: I’d rather like to know where Liz has got to, myself.
Selachian: Shit piss fucking cunt wank shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks wanker fucking wanker all right?
Doctor: I heard you.
Selachian: Shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks do what as it happens do what fucking cunt? Eh? You fucking wanker? Shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks leave it out do what as it happens shit piss wank all right give it a ball she’ll be lucky be brief. Fucking wanker, eh?
Doctor: You don’t REALLY believe that, do you?
Selachian: Bollocks! How ya doing, fucking cunt shit piss bollocks piss wank? All right, eh? Eh? All right, shit piss wank? All right, fuck cunt bollocks? How’s your old fucking shit piss wank fucking cunt, eh?
Doctor: You can’t kill me, not yet!
Selachian: Do what bollocks leave it out eh, shit piss wank fucking cunt, right?
Doctor: I’m not bluffing! We could both turn our backs, walk away and pretend we never saw each other. We could both survive. Or we could both die. Your choice. What do you say?
Selachian: Fucking wanker shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks leave it out all right do what knock it on the head do what fuck cunt wanker all right bollocks shit piss wank fuck cunt bollocks leave it out give it a portion be lucky be brief fucking cunt all right fucking wanker?
Doctor: ...I’m glad we understand each other.


Doctor: You wouldn’t understand. You were wrong about this, Elizabeth. What happens here, in this timeline, it DOES matter! Those people out there matter! I can’t let them suffer in some mediocre parallel universe plotline! I won’t!
Liz: What right have you to walk out of here now? We’re talking about a handful of lives, weighed against the whole of space and time - and you’re willing to take that gamble, risk everything, to make a point?
Doctor: Yes, I’m not the one-dimensional strawman you want me to be, Liz. You can say what you like, even rewrite my past, but it doesn’t change who I am - if I can get a decent four-parter out of this mess, I will. I’m the Doctor - and that’s what I do!



UnQuotable Quote -
Selachian: DON’T TELL MR. MUGABE!


Viewer Quotes -

"Am I the only one who was disappointed to find out that the baddies were not in fact the Celation from The Dustbins’ Nasty Plan?"
- The only one who was disappointed to find out that the baddies were not in fact the Celation from The Dustbins’ Nasty Plan (2012)

"Walking sharks with guns? What is this? Saturday Night Live? Oh, wait, no – Saturday Night Live HAD BETTER SHARKS, DAMMIT!"
- Cameron J Mason (2012)

"The Part One cliffhanger is 10 seconds or so of shouts and cries to indicate turbulence in the TARDIS; essentially a visual moment and the vocalizing from the actors could be depicting a fake orgasm or the reaction to receiving an iced water enema. Which, quite frankly, would have made one of BF’s best cliffhangers in my opinion."
- Simon "Rhymes With..." Hunt (2010)

"I really liked the bit where everyone died, lonely and afraid and abandoned by those they believed in. Maybe I’m a bit cold-hearted?"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke having a bad day (1985-present)

"Weirdest episode of Teachers ever." - Matty Knoller (2013)

"Even though she repeatedly she says she’s after the secrets of time travel, I think the REAL reason Liz keeps coming back to the Doctor in her new time-line is he’s the last link she had to the world before, and that’s really what keeps bringing her back. I like Liz. Who HASN’T wanted to exterminate inferior vermin off the face of the globe to establish an empire for the master race from time to time?"
- Kyle Sandilands (2014)

"Enough of the goddamned wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff already!"
- Steven Moffat (2011)

"I didn’t get where I am today by having a bucketful of soapy green frogs thrust down my Y-fronts!"
- The only one who was disappointed to find out that the baddies were not in fact the Celation from The Dustbins’ Nasty Plan (2012)

"That was magnificent. Big and bold and brassy, but with a core of genuine emotion, and a splash of philosophy. OK, the Selachians were just Vogons, every scene suffered from horrible descriptions and every character turned out to be working for the same conspiracy, but... Actually, let me dial that back just a hair. This was total shit."
- Eve Markson (2010)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Sharks with Tourette’s Syndrome. You don’t get that in Star Trek: Voyager, that’s what I say. And when I say it people LISTEN. For HOURS. Or else I turn them into human centipedes. Speaking of which, I really need some help cleaning out the cellar. Want to help? You look like you’d really fit in... REALLY fit in..."


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"The whole point of this trilogy has been the mystery of how evil or how good the Doctor is – whether he causes more harm or good, with all those lovely scenes with debates about good and evil. Of course it’s easy to overlook that with all the Selachians. They’re great characters, aren’t they? They’re fish in a can, tins of sardines that threaten the American dream of truth, justice and raging insincerity - I’d love to see them on TV, just to see if they were as demented a design as on the CD cover. Pity, really, they couldn’t get the Snotarans for this story. Ah well. Que sera, sera."


Caroline John Speaks!
"It’s a fantastic story - if you like the decline of any coherent plot or characterization and just a bunch of one-on-one scenes featuring people screaming four-letter words at each other until everything explodes. It really is the end of the tether for anything creative in this story arc. There’s grey in there, not black and white, it’s all crap yet none of it is crap... Sylvester convinced me to just laugh about it or else I’d have slashed my wrists doing such rubbish long ago. It was why I quit the show back in 71. All that stuff about me being fired was a cunning ploy to confuse the Bolsheviks. And it WORKED, didn’t it? Mwahahahahahaahahaha!"


Trivia -
Lloyd McGuire previous played Lugo in "The Nose of Evil" (Serial 4Q), and can be spotted at the start of the second episode in the Sevateem village shouting at Leela for being "a fucking harlot" who is off "fucking the Evil One the moment my fucking back is turned" before Leela calmly murders him in cold blood with a janis thorn.


Rumors & Facts -

This is a classic story up there with Bastard, Lavros, The Crimes of Fright-Night and The Actual Mystery of Beer in the sense that no one in their right frame of mind EVER wants to hear them EVER again!

Only a moron would think it was a staggeringly good tale. Only a fool would be unable to find fault with it. Only a twerp would think it really, truly, amazing Doctor Who. Only a total non-functioning retard would find this a most satisfying conclusion.

Which is why it is one of fandom’s most highly-regarded tales.

Hah! Take THAT Gallifrey Base! Ban ME from the forums, would you?!

When writing an ongoing saga, the trick is for the conclusion to be satisfying – I know it sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at how spectacularly Big Finish fail every single time they try. And with this trilogy, it became obvious that no one knew what to do with a time traveling Nazi for a companion... which was probably a clue it was a stupid idea to start with, really.

But this was not nearly so stupid an idea as bringing back Steve Lyons to pen the crucial story. This was a man who, after nine years of in-depth research into science fiction from across the globe and Doctor Who in particular, thought that a story where history was changed and the Nazis won WW2 was a stunningly original and unheard of concept.

His previous Big Finish stories should also have been a warning: Doctor Who Gets Banged Up, Doctor Who and the Fans of Star Trek, Doctor Who And Some Weird Aliens Shaped Like Dustbins, or Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With Middle Management (And/Or IT)... none of which contained so much as a single sentence that hadn’t been done a thousand times before and much better too.

Lyons was eager to do a Big Finish story about some brand new monsters he had invented (actually, he’d invented them in 1998 but try telling Lyons that!) which were feeble, insecure aliens built into amazingly powerful and destructive armor which they used to spread an empire across the universe, brutally exterminating humans.

He called these creatures the Mechani-Dustbin-Warriors.

Sighing wearily, John Ainsworth picked up a random issue of Archie’s TMNT Adventures and decided that he could find a more quintessential Doctor Who monster in a twenty-year old manimal comic and bloody hell – he DID! He chose Armagon, the pretentious cyborg bipedal shark mutant from the 22nd Century who was surprisingly ineffective, almost in direct inverse proportion to how damn cool he was.

In fact, doing a story about Armagon fighting the Doctor seemed to have more obvious potential than doing one where Liz was Nazi supremacist trying to rewrite history. For a start, Liz did not have three rows of teeth, inbuilt rocket launchers or the ability to take over all sharks telepathically.

Alas, what might have been remained just that and the best they could get was have the Mechani–Dustbin-Warriors shaped like Armagon and renamed "the Salacious". This initial idea of an alien race being slaves to their lust, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding between cast and crew, developed into a race with Tourette’s Syndrome.

Oh well.

In order to create a unique audio feel for the Selachians, it was decided just to do the same affects as the Galahs from The Soundman and The Dreaming and hope that no one noticed. This hope proved totally unfounded as even casual passers-by spotted the similarity, but on the plus side absolutely no one cared.

Why should they given the entire spaceship-and-zap-guns space opera plot was resolved by the Doctor buggering off in the TARDIS and pressing a button to turn Liz into a one-armed temporal paper-hanger?

At least they didn’t have the story revealing Liz Shaw was now in charge of Touchwood, a concept which has already screwed up plenty of other companions from Hex to Captain Jack to that WREN character from the Extras Christmas Special...

Ultimately, this story is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower – only with less challenging emotional and moral dilemmas to ponder. Though, after all the challenging emotional and moral dilemmas of the last two stories, having an infected kidney stone would be more fun than listening to these audio dramas.

Ultimately, this trilogy can be seen as a morality tale about the dangers of trying to rehabilitate people, with the Doctor’s efforts to reform Liz leading to disastrous consequences. Is this message anti-rehab? Or is it pro-capital punishment for the greater good? Or perhaps utilitarian nobility of self-sacrifice? Or justifying disproportionate retribution? Anti-drugs? Pro-walrus-sex-with-underage-schoolgirls?

Is the fundamental message that good, well-intentioned people like the Doctor can find themselves in moral dilemmas that force them to compromise their principles and execute criminals with witty quips?!

Amidst all this talk of blame, moral responsibility, the validity of
criticizing retribution, and restitution for victims and for society as a whole, there IS one thing I’m certain of, though, and that’s...

...nope. I’ve lost it.