Monday, November 2, 2009

7th Doctor - Project: Destiny

Serial 7W/N – Project: Density
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' GST GSW

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7W/N – Project: Density


Part One

In the previous intoxicant-glorifying episode, the Doctor and Ace discovered Hex has suffered a near-fatal overdose of oregano, opium and smack cocktails while watching unbound and uncanonical un-adventures on Transdimensional Sony Trinatron Total Image Screen.

In a blind panic, the Doctor and Ace decide the best thing to do is dump their dying junkie pal outside the doors of Albion Hospital and run away, leaving Hex’s fellow paramedics-stroke-drug-addicts to tend to his fragile medical state.

"A plan with no drawbacks!" agrees Hex, high as a kite and dribbling.

With its usual reliability, the TARDIS materializes not outside the ER of Albion Hospital but the main entrance of Hex’s local pub, the White Rabbit, which is contractually obliged to appear in Big Finish stories whenever writer Dave Lister happens to be passing.

Realizing this dash for mercy is going to be a tad more complicated than they expected, the Doctor and Ace shove Hex into an abandoned shopping trolley and race him over very rough ground down the main road. Hex makes happy noises and flaps his arms like a duck.

Curiously, in the middle of a weekday London is silent and deserted. No people, no traffic, nothing bar the odd birdsong or distant barking. Being experienced time travelers, however, none of the trio dare mention how quiet it is, or if it’s TOO quiet, because that never leads anywhere good. Even Hex isn’t so stupid to do that, and HE’S tripping!

Thus, as they reach the car park of Albion Hospital, they do not remark on the main doors of accident and emergency being locked, the continuing lack of people, or of the sinister black stealth helicopters hovering above them. Instead, they just use the shopping trolley and its giggling cargo to smash their way into reception.

Finally, however, the TARDIS crew are forced to accept some of the reality of this unrealistic situation: the hospital is abandoned, the power off, and there’s no helpful paramedics they can palm Hex off to for the foreseeable future. However, the Doctor is nothing if not a cunning and manipulative bastard and decides he must, for the greater good, perform dangerous and illegal keyhole surgery on his stoner companion – and thus render Hex immune to drugs for ever more!

Ace, remembering how utterly horrific and dangerous Hex can be detoxing, can only stare in numb shock. "You’re joking! Doctor, tell me you’re joking!"

But – and I bet this REALLY surprises you – London is not ENTIRELY deserted. Black-clad storm-troopers stride down the silent streets with not-so-silent beeping tracking devices. Lead by Captain "Arrested Development" Aristedes, a psychotic lesbian nymphomaniac with a meth amphetamine habit, Touchwood track the time travelers down to Albion Hospital when they stumble across the TARDIS.

Instantly they all have miniature nervous breakdowns, pull guns on each other, accuse each other quite rightly of sleeping around and being unprofessional to the point of religious genocide, have a bitter and turgid sex session, shoot a random trooper and then pretend nothing at all has happened.

And if that doesn’t give away who these mysterious dysfunctional morons are, the fact they look at the police box, cross themselves and scream "PROJECT: LAZAROU!!!" should be a clue.

Back at Albion Hospital, the Doctor and Ace heave Hex into an operating theatre and link him up with pretty much every intravenous drip they can find before jamming a funnel in his mouth and pouring bottles of medicinal alcohol down his throat.

The Doctor then prepares a full narcotic irrigation – a drug enema that will leave Hex completely squeaky clean for the first time since... well, for the first time, if we’re honest. Just as he’s about to press the button, the first of many distractions occur to pad out the episode and generally irritate the audience.

The first takes the form of a nurse called Helen, who in the best traditions of "Bury Your Gays" has lost the one true love of her life two months ago when the Black Ops soldier people evacuated all of London. Helen is rather annoyingly vague about the calamity that struck the city, but Ace and the Doctor eventually piece it together when Helen snarls and starts to attack them.

Yes, it’s the rage virus from "28 Days Later!"

But, we must ask, are the sinister soldiers of the special executive that took control of London in the wake of the emergency that they very probably were the direct cause of? Who, damn thee, WHO?!?

Yes, it’s nearly sixty years into the future but the Institute of Total Organization Utilizing Cruelty, Hashish and a World Order Of Death – or TOUCHWOOD for short! - hasn’t changed a bit!

Aristedes and her goons storm the operating theatre and give Helen a patented Touchwood "instant lead transfusion", shooting her to death with machine guns. They are accompanied by Director Sir William "Numbskull" Nimrod himself, a semi-immortal bigoted zealot "vwum-pihrez-hunter" with incredibly conductive testicles.

"You never cease to amaze me, Doctor," sneers Nimrod haughtily. "Destruction follows in your wake and yet you’re always surprised when people start dying!"

The Doctor responds by using a defibrillator to give a series of electric shocks to Nimrod’s bollocks until he falls over, curls up into a fetal ball, and whimpers slowly.

"Now, where was I? Oh yes, Hex..."


Part Two

The Doctor completes the narcotic purge of Hex and has his companion and the now-speaking-in-a-falsetto Nimrod taken to the Touchwood Institute’s main base at Canary Wharf Tower.

After 24 hours and a cliffhanger reprise, Hex finally regains consciousness and is worryingly fidgety and twitchy. The last thing he can clearly remember is betting his drunken mates at the White Rabbit he could become a medical student with absolutely no medical training of any sort whatsoever... forcing the Doctor to basically explain the plots of the last THIRTEEN stories in agonizing detail.

Understandably not wanting to hang around an increasingly paranoid, violent and sober Hex, Ace decides to team up with Captain Aristedes in the stealth helicopters watching hundreds of rage zombies running around London being all snarly and scary.

Leaving Hex to cope with about a decade of ongoing story-arcs, the Doctor decides it’s time to save the world from Touchwood’s imbecilic meddling with the forces of evil and cure the rage virus. As Nimrod limps in and whimpers that infecting laboratory chimps with alien plague germs was just "simple human error", the Doctor decides to speak on behalf of the fifteen thousand poor souls already infected.

By slamming Nimrod’s goolies into a photocopier, dousing it with lighter fluid and setting it on fire.

"Doctor, you do me a great wrong!" Nimrod protests once he’s doused the flames. Then, just to prove what a complete and irredeemable asshole he is, Nimrod hobbles off to try and emotionally torture Hex for fun and profit. He taunts and jeers Hex, telling him all his friends are either dead or rage zombies.

Hex smashes Nimrod’s skull in with a bedpan and wanders off to find something to try and get him high. But no matter what sedatives, anesthetics or out-and-out pharmaceuticals he takes, he remains gripped by crystal-clear aching sobriety!

By the time the Doctor and Ace find him, it’s quite clear that Hex is infected with the rage virus and everyone just assumed it was him going cold turkey! Worse, the Doctor’s narcotic purge means there’s nothing they can do to delay the infection spreading!

Oh, the bitter irony of it all!


Part Three

In desperation, Hex is locked in a padded cell with a fully-loaded home-made bong and a heap of porn mags. Amazingly, this allows Hex’s condition to stabilize slightly, although he is mighteously pissed off with absolutely everyone.

Nimrod, of course, continues the suicidal insanity that makes him one of the most utterly annoying villains in modern literature. Even Wile E Coyote handles himself better than this twat!

He barges into the containment cell and starts mocking Hex for being a wussy little baby who lets pathetic no-fist diseases overcome his puny little fleshy body and being a girly little man-nurse.

Hex snaps every bone in Nimrod’s body, folds him up like human origami and then kicks him out into the corridor with his head forced up his arse. Nimrods spends most of the episode thus crawling around on all fours, desperately looking for the light switch.

Ace passes the episode helping Aristedes use the zombies as target practice, as it at least stops Touchwood from sleeping with each other and having gun battles in labs full of alien biohazards and making this already Danny-Boyle-situation worse.

Nimrod, having finally dislodged his head from his rectum, decides that he can’t be bothered to try and even PRETEND to be a professional alien-fighting organization any more. Instead, he decides to reveal a deep and dark secret to Hex to make him murder the Doctor in cold blood because... he’s an evil fuckwit, he HAS no other motivation!

"The Doctor’s never told you, has he?"

"What? That she worked for Touchwood after you got her turned into a vampire, mind-raped her every single day

"Well. Yeah. Sort of. But did the Doctor mention that HE was the one who killed your mother WITH A BALLPOINT PEN?!?"

"Why would ANYONE tell me something that stupid?"

"Because it’s true!" Nimrod cackles, snatching a pristine subscription copy of Project: Enigma and shoving it in a convenient CD player to allow the torrid scene to unfold in beautiful Dolby-mono!

Over the speakers they hear the Sixth Doctor offering Cassie Schofield the chance to sail the oceans of time and see sights and colours the human mind could never even begin to dream of. Unfortunately, the Doctor gesticulates wildly with a ballpoint pen and accidentally stakes Cassie through the heart and she literally explodes in boiling blood.

The Sixth Doctor sighs. "The perfect end to the perfect day."

Hex, gripped by insane rage snatches up a sawn-off shotgun and hunts the Doctor down in the cafeteria, intending to shove it up his backside and give the Time Lord both barrels. Nimrods laughs evilly.

"Oh dear. I hope I haven’t said anything that YOU, Doctor, will regret. But I win, Doctor. Always. I – win!!!"

"Name one time when you’ve won."

"...SHUT UP!"

The Doctor protests that Nimrod is quite clearly not only pure evil but so stupid he robs passers-by of their IQ points with the black hole of moronitude he calls his own brain. However, even watertight logic is not enough to get through to Hex.

"It’s the Doctor, isn’t it? He changes us. Makes us what he needs us to be. Well, right now THIS is who I need to be and I’M AS MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!"

"Mr. Hex, I am not the one who’s convinced you to force shotguns up the anuses of your best friends! Your mother didn’t fall for Nimrod’s bullshit and neither should you?"

"Save it, Doctor. It’s too late!"

Ace arrives, sums up the situation with a glance, and shoots the Doctor through the head. "Oi, if anyone’s going to shoot the Professor for being a manipulative bastard, it’s got to be ME, right?"


Part Four

By a million-to-one chance, the bullet manages to bounce harmlessly off the Doctor’s head and imbed itself right into Nimrod’s vans deferens, causing him to make a strange chirping noise before he runs to the gents screaming "NOT AGAIN!!"

Losing all interest in the story, Hex wanders out of Canary Wharf and heads to the White Rabbit in a futile bid to drink himself to death. He convinces his fellow rage zombies to join him and listen to classical music like Fatboy Slim’s "Praise You" on their iPods, but it’s not the same. Hex is damned to be sober for the rest of his life.

"Where’s the fun in pints on the house when they might as well be water?" Hex cries with rage. "What a crap little pub this place is – it always looked more sophisticated when I was too wasted to see straight! Oh god, I might have to have sex with a clear head from now on? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, DOCTOR? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?"

Leaving Hex to slowly head-butt his way through the walls of the White Rabbit, the Doctor realizes that the perfect way to cure the rage virus is simply to get the entire population of London completely blissed out of their skulls – he must reverse the polarity of narcotic flow!

Unfortunately, Canary Wharf is under siege by tens of thousands of rage-infected Londoners, lead by the Once and Future Zombie Lord Himself Thomas "Call Me Hex, You Fuckwit" Schofield!

And he’s not very happy.

Nimrod reveals he has a cunning plan just in case of this very contingency – a statement that makes even his own men break up in hysterical laughter at the ridiculousness of it all.

Although, yes, technically Touchwood is duty-bound to help the victims of their own unethical meddling, Nimrod has decided to go for the ethnic cleansing option to purge London of its rage infestation... well, until another cock-up at Touchwood causes the whole thing to start all over again, anyway.

To this end, the RAF will carry out an air strike of neutron bombs that will reduce every living thing in London to the most infinitesimal dust! Captain Aristedes points out that Nimrod himself counts as a "living thing" and the Director awkwardly admits that, actually, now you come to mention it, he’d forgotten all about that...

As the speaking task team up to beat the living shit out of Nimrod, Hex arrives carrying a pump-action sub-machine gun and demanding access to the remains of his mother – AKA Operative Artard!

The Doctor and Ace realize with horror that Hex intends to snort up the ashes of his mother like cocaine in the vainest of vain hopes it might get him high. "Hey, if it was good enough for Keith Richards then it’s good enough for me, orright?" Hex snaps.

The three harrier jets streak across the sky towards London as things get increasingly random and surreal. At gunpoint, Hex forces Nimrod and the Doctor down into bowels of Touchwood where all the cool alien junk is stored. Thirty levels down Nimrod shows off a morgue full of canisters containing the immortal remains of dusted vampires.

"Oh my god!" Hex boggles. "Just like Ultraviolet!"

Yes, and like that short lived and oh-so-butch-and-gritty adult scifi series (which, I hasten to add, deserves to be on television five billion times more than anything involving Jack Harkness), the dusted remains can be resurrected into living, breathing vampires!

But it turns out that Nimrod was bullshitting again, just to get Hex’s hopes up in an act of mindless sadism. Nimrod then brags he will hide in a dead man’s chamber and let the Doctor and Hex get vaporized by the approaching missile.

"Poor little time traveler freaks! You thought you’d won? You tried to destroy the Touchwood Institute before but all you destroyed was a building. The Touchwood is more than just bricks and mortar. I AM TOUCHWOOD! I always win and I always survive!"

"THAT! FUCKING! DOES IT!" roars Hex, who rips Nimrod’s head from his shoulders and then, gripping on to the bloody spinal column, uses Nimrod’s skull as a medieval mace to beat his body to a pulp. "I NEVER WANT TO HEAR ABOUT TOUCH FUCKING WOOD EVER AGAIN!!!"

Hiding behind his hat, the terrified Doctor nods and meekly suggests they both hide in the dead man’s chamber before they all die?

The missiles flash and the contaminated rage zombies are reduced to heaps of albino mouse droppings along with all of the Touchwood operatives, including Arestides who Ace kicked out of the TARDIS just to watch her die horribly.

But as the mushroom cloud clears, the only survivor is Ace who bemoans her lot in life. "They’re dead... the two freakiest people I’ve ever known. There was nothing I could have done. I’m going to be telling myself that the rest of my life, aren’t I? Thing is, I’m never gonna believe it while there’s a dues ex machine to hand!"

She is immediately proved right as the Doctor and Hex leave Canary Wharf, totally unharmed. What’s more, the distronic radiation has undone Hex’s immunity to narcotics and he’s already starting to chill out massively!

However, Hex is still thinking clearly enough to announce, "It’s over. We’re done, Doctor. It’s over. These story arc things are SO not what I need right now. What happened to nice standalone adventures in time and space. Fuck this for a game of soldiers. See ya, Ace. You were vaguely progressing as a character there for a moment... ah, what’s the use?"

Hex stalks off into the deserted ruins of his home town leaving the Doctor and Ace looking a bit put out at his rather ungrateful behavior. They return to the TARDIS and the Doctor begins to set coordinates, assuring Ace that this climax to the ongoing plot-threads was bound to happen sooner or later...

"Terribly sorry about this, old chap," says a voice from across the console room. "But if you’re about to do the traditional speech about how the worst is behind us, well, you may want to save it for later."

For standing on the other side of the console are the Other Eighth Doctor as played by none other than Richard Griffiths! Yes, boys and girls, this is where it REALLY gets complicated...


Book(s)/Other Related –
Dr Who Finishes This Shit (with grateful foreword by RTD)
Kinky Electrocution Monthly # 21: Nimrod Special!
The Origin of the Most Ridiculous Secret Organization Ever


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed slippery and pliant in this story.


Goofs -
For some unaccountable reason, in several scenes the sign above the doors to "The White Rabbit" read "The Red Herring".


Fashion Victims -
Touchwood operatives wear no regimental insignia and an advanced Body Area Network combat fatigues... which just happens to resemble a transparent red leather cat suit with metal studded underwear.


Technobabble -
"I used to know this lad in Penge. Bought me Scoundrel Days on 8-track cassette. Idiot. Always hated A-Ha."
"Cassette?"
"Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ve no idea what she’s talking about either."


Links and References -
This story is a sequel to Project: Lazarou (Serial 7X). Which in turn is a sequel to Project: Enigma (Serial 7C/J). Which, curiously enough, is also a sequel, to Project: Nightlight (Serial 7C/E). It also leads directly from Network (Serial 7W/M), and Enmity of the Dustbins (Serial 7W/L) and The Magic Mushroom (7W/K).


Untelevised Misadventures –
No, but The Cyb-Fest, The Sequel, The Rip-Off, Dustbin –vs- Cybermen, the first three series of BBC3’s Touchwood series, Twenty-Four, A School For Glory, Night Thoughts, Genocide of the Dustbins, Engagements That Bore, 300, Thicker Than Two Short Planets, The Michaelmas Werewolf, The Santa Tip and Doctor Who Discovers The Bloody Mystery in the Bloody Tower of Bloody Secrets are all mentioned as well.

Is that enough humiliation and pain for you? Do you need to further dwell on what a pathetic anorak I am? I hope you all a mercilessly slow and painful death AND YOUR LOVED ONES FEED YOUR BODIES TO THE DOGS!


Groovy DVD Extras -
The full-length scene where cast and crew attack Nimrod with cricket bats, including the Doctor’s magnificent speech:
"I know a damn sight more about fighting alien monster than you do, Nimrod, you PISSING FARTING SHITTING IMBECILIC FUCKWIT!"


Dialogue Disasters -

Doctor: Heightened aggression; increased sensory capacity; overloaded endocrinal activity... Complete DNA subjugation!
Ace: Why can’t you just say she’s turned into a rage zombie?!?
Doctor: Exposition is for stunted audio performers, Ace!

Hex: Why couldn’t they have taken me to some poncey space hospital?

Aristedes: Ever seen Dawn of the Dead?
Ace: No, but I have seen Zulu.
Aristedes: Mmm. Zulu would be better with zombies.
Ace: Everyone says that, don’t they?

Hex: Why didn’t you tell me you knew me Mam? That you were there when she – when she died? Cos I don’t mind telling you, Doctor, I’m having a real hard time working this one out! Hang on, does Ace know? I bet you’ve had a good laugh about it, you and Ace! Is that why you came to Albion Hospital, all those years ago? Were you looking for me?
Doctor: Um, no. I was looking for Cybermen. Meeting you was an accident. A happy, car-crashy sort of accident that allowed me to give a two-fingered salute to the New Adventures’ continuity!
Hex: Oh, you are unbelievable, you are. No, you’re just messing with my head. Playing your games. Nimrod was right!
Doctor: Nimrod is using your mother, using her to drive a wedge between us. In order to break me, he’s broken your heart!
Hex: Oh, puh-lease! Mr. Sad Git or what?!

Ace: What was that?
Doctor: Mice. Very big mice.
Ace: Can you be sure?
Doctor: Of course I can, I chose it as the ringtone for my mobile!

Doctor: It seems these days the Touchwood Institute have been subject to a re-branding and become the public face of extra-terrestrial investigation.
Hex: And people just accept that aliens are real?
Doctor: There’s just too much evidence for alien encounters to be swept under the carpet. 24 hour rolling news coverage. Camera phones. Social networking... It’s too difficult to control. These are exciting times, Mr. Hex. Even the Welsh have woken up and smelled the coffee!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Oh, Hex. What a mess this all is. I never meant for any of this to happen. When we met, when I realized who you were, I so wanted to take you with me. To make things right. But I fear I’ve only gone and made things worse. Still, that’s half the fun, isn’t it?

Aristedes: Ace, stop. We need to talk.
Ace: I’m done with talking to you.
Aristedes: You’re good, Ace. If it weren’t for the Doctor, if he wasn’t there in your head, twisting your priorities, changing your values... you could do good here with us. Face down monsters. Protect your own.
Ace: You mean, I could become a mindless soldier being cruelly manipulated by an immortal bastard who commits the most appalling atrocities out of a combination of a belief in the greater good and the fact his IQ is lower than that of a mould-covered toothbrush?
Aristedes: You’ve got the necessary experience!

Nimrod: Doctor, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Doctor: I’m trying not to insult your intelligence here. Please don’t insult mine. Listen to me, Nimrod, and listen well. Stay away from him. I don’t want you even LOOKING at him!
Nimrod: Really, whatever do you think I’m going to do to him?
Doctor: I know you, I see through the respectable veneer you’ve encased yourself in. Hex is off limits.
Nimrod: I have absolutely no sexual interest in the boy.
Doctor: You’re Touchwood. You have sexual interest in linoleum!
Nimrod: Oh Doctor, what a tangled web you weave...
Doctor: I’m warning you, Nimrod.
Nimrod: That’s something I’ve never seen before, that look in your eyes. Fear. Terrified that everything is going to come crashing around you. Doctor, I believe you’re even sweating.
(Ace shoves Nitro-9 down Nimrod’s posing pouch and removes the fuse.)
Ace: You believe wrong.

Reporter: This afternoon, the Home Secretary assured Parliament, currently in session in Harrogate, that the quarantine zone around the M25 remains secure, and that Sir William Nimrod, head of the Touchwood Institute, will sort it out or his testicles are forfeit.

Ace: Look what I found, Doctor: a moron with a gun. Oh, you’ve got one too. This Touchwood place is full of them!
Doctor: No need to be rude, Ace.
Ace: I’m not being rude, I’m being factually accurate.

Nimrod: Of course, this remains a dangerous situation, but Touchwood is doing everything in its power to prevent any further damage to my gonads. We have the finest minds and technological resources at our disposal, and as soon as they stop bonking and shooting each other, I am confident that the populace will be returning to the streets of London within a matter of weeks.

The Doctor’s heartrending speech to Hex –
"Look at the man you’ve become. Your mother would have seen that if Nimrod hadn’t murdered her. Seen you take your first steps, cleaned up your knees when you fell. Felt the pain of your first heartbreak, and the joy of his first day as a nurse. Cassie would have screwed up your entire life, because that is what parents DO to their children! I know, because I try and mess with your life every single day!"

Nimrod: It wasn’t easy, Doctor, rebuilding the Institute piece by piece after the devastation you caused! I was disgraced. We were a joke, enemies in every corner. Whitehall. The Hague. Even your friends at UNIT. All of them thought of us as nothing more than trigger-happy fuckbuddies of a perverted Johnny Depp impersonator! But I raised Touchwoods from the ashes of Cardiff. I brought us out of the shadows, stepped into the glare of public life, put the past behind us. And then the man who so-nearly destroyed my life’s work turns up and reminds what total and brain-dead amateurs we are! OH HOW I HATE YOU, DOCTOR!
(The Doctor tazers him in the bollocks again)
Doctor: Cry me a river, bitch.

Aristedes: Ask yourself, Ace – just how much human blood does your Doctor have on his hands?
Ace: I don’t know. How much human spunk do you have on yours?

Doctor: Hex needs time to deal with the aftermath of ongoing character development, story arcs and repeated meme going back to when he was a little boy and I was played by Colin Baker.
Ace: But what if he doesn’t come back?
Doctor: Then I can’t say I’d blame him.


UnQuotable Quote -
Nimrod: Mr. Schofield is the master of his own density!


Viewer Quotes -

"I’m bored. It feels like it starts half way through another story and I have no idea who those characters are. I really hope it improves."
- the moron who played the discs in the wrong order (2010)

"Hex is dead, Hex dies! Oh NOES!" – www.doctorwhospoilers.com (2009)

"Nimrod’s fate was grisly and shocking, especially so as we had got to know him so well previously. In many ways I hope it is the last we hear of Nimrod. Let the poor old boy rest in pieces! Surely in the history of Doctor Who, there has never been a more abused, tragic character. It’s utterly wrong that a xenophobic fascist patriarch like the Doctor be celebrated when a strong male authority figure like Nimrod is treated with contempt. Oh, and Olag Gan was DEFINITELY a sex killer, you thickoes!" - Alan Stevens (2010)

"Hex is not my cup of tea. And the more I listen, the more I dislike him. No, wait, I’m talking about C’Rizz. Sorry, my mistake."
- India Fisher (2011)

"I never thought Hex’s background was particularly ripe for dramatic exploitation, but it was a satisfying payoff to some very old plot threads. The tv series could never spin plot lines out for THIS long... BF’s stuff is a million times better than anything post 2005 TV series wise. Ben Chatham is our messiah!" - smokingjacket (2010)

"Well the story itself was mostly pretty good. Not sure how to rate this. So... yeah. Four stars." - Myles Barlow (2015)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Hex storms out because the Doctor hid the truth about someone that was important to him because the Doctor wanted to protect him! What an ungrateful shit! All this I’d do – HAH - I’d kill for you! Burning, looting, raping and a-shooting... the blood won’t wash away if I kill myself one day! I’m a warrior! WARRIOR! Of Genghis Khan!"


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"At last, Hex finds out what happened to his mother and that I was somewhat involved. Well, by 'finds out' I mean, the stoner finally notices the hugely obvious thing that we’ve told him night and day for the past five years. Mills of the Gods grind exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine. And Hex, well, one out of two isn’t bad."

Sophie Aldred Speaks!
"What’s great about this story is that it starts with a Freudian eruption of sexual repression and ends with a self-hating whimper and an ugly stain on the bed sheets. It’s all there in my head, almost like I can see a little film running and I can see all my actions and stuff. I know that it sounds a little bit weird, but then you don’t take random pharmaceuticals to be NORMAL, do you?"

Philip Olivier Speaks!
"It’s been a bit strange, being eighteen months since the last episode and even longer since any of the stories involved anything other than sitting around watching TV and getting REALLY stoned. And then we get a story that develops Hex’s character, details his history, discusses his mother, and generally gets him to do stuff apart from pulling cones and talking like a Ninja Turtle. We actually had to act. It came flooding back. It’s weird. Your brain’s like a muscle and Hex’s is pretty atrophied if we’re honest, and now he’s become a man. I’d have preferred him get laid or had a bah mitzvah but instead he gets emotionally screwed over by everyone he cares about and nearly blown up by Nimrod and Touchwood. Still, a rite of passage is a rite of passage when all’s said and done..."


Trivia -
Some suckers actually thought this would be Hex’s last story. Morons.


Rumors & Facts -

After eighteen long months, it was realized by director Ken Bentley that he’d ended the previous trilogy of Seventh Doctor/Ace/Hex stories by giving the latter a fatal drug overdose and hadn’t mentioned it since. As the departure of Nicholas Briggs meant Sylvester McCoy was now willing to return to Big Finish on a full time basis, they really had no excuse NOT to resolve that particular plot point.

At the same time they decided that if they were resolving one loose end about Hex they might as well resolve all of them – including the tortuous chain of coincidences that bastard Gay Russell had been stringing out for the past seven years to the amusement of no one, not even himself! The issue of the Sixth Doctor having unwittingly murdered Hex’s mother with a biro needed to be sorted out and who better than the Machiavellian duo who’d written in it in the first place?

Yes, Mark Wright and Cavan Scott were in da house again!

Thus, like the previous installments, this story would revolve around victimized and incidental monsters at an isolated Touchwood location and feature and anguished Doctor get a gung-ho soldier round to his way of thinking to escape impending explosions in an underground chamber and lots of wangst about the fate of Cassie Schofield.

Of course, with the audience knowing the truth of Hex’s parentage there is the danger they’d all imagined how they’d LIKE Hex to react and thus any reactions he gave would not be up to scratch. But, in the best traditions of their previous work, Scott and Wright didn’t give a shit what the fans thought on the grounds they wore anoraks, ate processed cheese and couldn’t tell the difference between sci-fi and soap operas. And good thing too!

At first, the story was Project: Kebab and was nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation explaining that the Touchwood squad in the Fifth Doctor story The Sequel are responsible for everything that happened in Hex’s first story, The Cyb-Fest. Since this was completely bleeding obvious to a blind speelsnape with both eyes, there would be the crucial twist that Nimrod had done all this deliberately to lure the Doctor there and take Hex as a companion.

This idea was abandoned on the grounds it made Touchwood appear far too competent an organization to remain credible.

Originally, Scott and Wright were eager to end the story with Hex and Ace telling the Doctor to get stuffed while they seized control of the remains of Touchwood and, together with Captain Choudry from the UNIT series would get their own spin-off series with a plot thread of Hex being haunted by the ghost of his mother and just how many unpleasant things to happen to Nimrod’s genitals.

It was pointed out that this was sort of a bit similar to the Touchwood TV series, though admittedly not nearly as crap as the version starring John Barrowman and Eve Myles. Ultimately it was argued that while the TV series had a hypocritical immortal omnisexual time-traveling psychopath as its central companion, the only thing remotely interesting about Hex was his much cooler brainwashed vampire dead mum.

Scott and Wright conceded that, deep down, they didn’t give a shit about Hex to start with and, frankly, had much better things to do than help Big Finish tie-up dangling plots and characters for the benefit of long-term listeners. Project: Density had allowed them to put Nimrod’s bollocks through things too vindictive to words, and they had no further in the character, the franchise... hell, breathing in and out was a bit of a needless extravagance as far as they were concerned!

Project: Density builds up to its crucial third cliffhanger with the Doctor, Nimrod, Hex, a shotgun and the truth - which is sure to leave even the most disparaging listener reeling with nausea and a feeling they should have spent their money on something else.

This story concludes the staggeringly unimpressive story arc of Touchwood and we can only hope that the best efforts of Russell T Davies and BBC Wales can do something similar now even the bloody Americans realize how ghastly and stupid the concept is!

Instead, the audience is distracted by the oldie-but-goodie plot of nicking the first scene of the next story and jamming it at the end of this one to create a whacking great cliffhanger as Thomas Hector Schofield leaves the building for a destination unknown and the Doctor and Ace are left to sort out ANOTHER ongoing story arc...

Ah! You can almost SMELL the fanwank!

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