Wednesday, November 4, 2009

7th Doctor - Survival of the Fittest/Klein's Story

Serial 7Z/F – Survival of the Fetish
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Cervixes

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7Z/F – Survival of the Fetish


Part One

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Liz to an alien world, the opportunity for a whole new perspective in a glittering galaxy human civilization is unaware even exists – a chance to run fingers through alien sand and watch strange life forms whirling in different skies.

"Hmph. Not enough fascism," is Liz’s dismissive summary.

As they explore the tunnel network the time machine has so incommodiously... whatever the hell that means... dumped them in, a giant cockroach appears, shouts "BOOGA! BOOGA! BOOGA!" at the Doctor and Liz, and then runs away again.

The Doctor reflects that the native giant bugs have such limited communication skills they can do nothing but state basic facts and make stupid noises – thus his repertoire of sarcasm, jokes and blatant lies makes him the most powerful and dangerous being on the planet!

When some more giant cockroaches appear, the Doctor tells them he is a friend who comes in peace... and the cockroaches totally believe him. This means there is none of the usual "thrown in a cell, escape, prove their worth" Cinderella-style story arc, which is why this story is only three episodes long. Even padding can only do so much.

It turns out that these cockroaches are the sole survivors of a hive of such bugs that have been slaughtered by mankind in a series of conflicts that are so similar to "Starship Troopers" this is either a crossover or outright plagiarism.

Liz decides that the cockroaches clearly aren’t being ruthless and Nazi-like enough in their dealing with puny endo-skeletal bipeds and demands to converse with the upper levels of the command structure... because saying "take me to your leader" would be unbearably camp.

However, one of the giant stag-beetle-like aliens has gone mad for some reason that will be explained in future episodes, so I won’t spoil it all now otherwise I won’t have anything to write about later. Anyway, this beetle attacks and the Doctor and Liz split up.

Hmmm. Not a very novel plot twist, I grant you...

Liz stumbles across a robot drill slicing into the nest from the surface full of canisters marked "DDT x 1 MILLION" and uses her razor-sharp deductive skills to work out that this is a human war weapon that has been used to slaughter the alien bugs. She then uses that same genius to jump up and down and tell everyone that SHE is a human and thus a member of the bugs’ deadly enemies.

She is rather surprised that the bugs don’t take this at all well.

The Doctor orders the cockroaches to throw her out and tells her not to come back until she is once again the ruthless Nazi mastermind described on the CD cover insert for this story. Huffing angrily, Liz storms off onto the surface of the world and offers her immoral genocidal skills to the first human soldiers she finds.

Due to budgetary cutbacks at Big Finish, a billion-strong planetary assault force is represented by two individual troopers (one of which being mute). Undaunted, Liz teams up with Kurt and Brian, GeoCops of Doom, and determines to make them a far more efficient ethnic cleansing team and destroy all the filthy alien scum MIEN FUHRER!!!

Back in the nest, the Doctor discovers the Queen bug is dead. He takes off his hat and demands a minute’s silence in a sequence that seems remarkably gratuitous for an audio play. Especially when the "minute’s silence" lasts for six and a half minutes.

Then the Doctor decides he must make a NEW Queen from the surviving bugs using only some mood lighting, Barry White music and that psychotic warrior stag-beetle what was mentioned earlier.

This leads to a hideously disturbing cliffhanger...


Part Two

The episode opens with the Doctor explaining the stag-beetle got a whiff of the nerve gas and has gone decidedly peculiar ever since – and the Doctor’s attempts to get to fifth base have only driven the monster even more deranged than it already was!

In desperation, the Time Lord gets one of the giant bug eggs to hatch and release a warrior bug to save his miserable neck. Alas, the "warrior" bug turns out to be an incredibly effeminate butterfly.

An incredibly effeminate butterfly with a machine gun!

One bullet-riddled stag beetle corpse later, the Doctor decides its time to deal with the human invasion. After all, statistically speaking, the Time Lord is BOUND to be the one to lead aliens in wiping them out sooner or later – it’s a mathematical certainty!

Meanwhile, Liz leads the GeoCops in their annihilation of an inferior race who roll over just because their world is invaded by storm troopers. True, Mankind’s parasitic "lebensraum" doesn’t paint them in the best of lights, but you have to put up with a bad PR image when you’re a skull-decorated Nazi psychopath – right, kids?!

"The Untermensch must help themselves rather than wait for superior races to do the hard work! This is the beginning of a new epoch! DEATH TO THE ALIEN BUG THINGIES!!!"

And then the butterfly arrives, packing some serious heat!

Liz pulls a knife from her boot and throws it right through the butterfly’s throat, snatches up the dropped machine gun and leads her crusade right into the nest without breaking stride!

Damn, she might be pure evil but the bitch has got style!

However, the thing about alien insect hives is that there’s always another machine-gun-totting butterfly to hand... and that is a sentence which is never used enough in the English language if you ask me.

In the time it has taken for Liz to be so amazingly badass, a mere four thousand armed and dangerous Lepidoptera have hatched and they are NOT taking any more of this crapola!


Part Three

The Doctor announces he has a very delicate and well-meaning plan which just so happens to involve him running away in the TARDIS and pretending none of this adventure every happened. "The common good comes before the private good!" he shouts over his shoulder as he flees for his life, leaving the others behind to die.

Alas, Liz trips him up, punches him in the kidneys and steals the TARDIS key from his pocket and runs off cackling evilly to herself.

Realizing that this situation is going to require tact, finesse, subtlety and discrimination, the Doctor... drops to his knees, puts his hands together and prays for a miracle to save his sorry arse.

An egg hatches with a new Queen bug who is really rather nice. She takes over the army of AK47-wielding butterflies and there is an immediate armistice. As the storm troopers were totally pathetic to start with, without Liz to lead them, they instantly surrender.

The Doctor congratulates himself on a job well done and even though Liz is now literally anywhere in the universe and there’s nothing to stop her reshaping the universe to her whim, he is confident that everything will sort itself out in due course.

Suddenly everything goes strange and wibbly and the Doctor is suddenly crucified in a dungeon on a Nazi moon base in the year 2044 as the Aryan master race conquers the solar system.

"On the other hand, I might have spoken a little too soon..."


Book(s)/Other Related –
"Doctor Who Bugs Me" by Trevor Eve
"Doctor Who Seriously Bugs Me" by David Mitchell
"I FUCKING HATE DOCTOR FUCKING WHO!!!" by Lawrence Miles


Fluffs - Sylvester McCoy seemed downright kinky in this story.


Goofs –
Liz thinks the Seventh Doctor is German with a stuffy Prussian accent. The woman who has first-class degrees in psychics, medicine and a dozen other subjects can’t tell Scotland from Prussia. Thank God UNIT never needed her geography skills, that’s all I can say...



Fashion Victims -
Liz: Fascists! GeoCops are Fascists! Your big bright future has got Fascists in it! I get a lot of respect around here being a Fascist! I want a hat – a special hat, a hat only a Fascist would wear!


Technobabble -
There is a very good and totally scientific reason why the giant bugs have the B52’s "Rock Lobster" as their war anthem, but the Doctor continually gets interrupted before he can reveal what it is.


Links and References -
The Doctor had taken Liz to the crystal planes of Medroxia, the floating ocean on Quinbrax Four and the science fiction conventions of Vulcan and all she had to say was "those Dustbins sure had the right idea, didn’t they?"


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor has clubbed both Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson unconscious with a spanner for not shutting up about their hobbies. It seems he just hates beekeepers for some reason – still, who can blame them in their smug "aren’t I clever for stealing honey" attitudes and their day-go kinky beekeeper outfit. DID NO ONE WATCH "THE SWARM"?!?


Groovy DVD Extras -
Proposed animated spin-off series "GeoCop Babiez!!" featuring the adventures of Kurt and Brian as diaper-wearing toddlers out to make mischief; tricking their baby sitter, stealing cookies, wiping out civilian targets with stolen nerve gas weapons, and ending every pop culture reference with the "I dunno, I’m just a baby!" catchphrase.

"GeoCop Babiez!!" was considered far too similar to another TV series in production entitled "Jack the Ripper on Ice" starring Sir Jack Merryvale and lots of expendable prostitutes.


Dialogue Disasters -

Liz: Can you smell that? Ammonia, perhaps? No - sawdust? No, it’s more like iron filings? Or freshly-laid carpet with just a hint of strawberries? It’s overpowering – what IS that stench?
Doctor: That’s my new aftershave you’re talking about!


Kurt: This is stupid! We are part of the natural order of things! Survival of the fetish! It applies everywhere in nature, apart from to the human race. We're supposed to just tiptoe around other cultures out of some insane sense of fair play rather than roll them on their backs, take them from behind and give them a bloody good seeing-to?
Brian: Not that we’re gay or anything.
Kurt: Oh no. Absolutely not. Whatever would give you that impression?


Liz: You're handing him what he wants on a plate! I told you to bluff a little, not collaborate! Gott in hiemel, Doctor!
Doctor: I don’t need a lecture on moral high ground from you, of all people. We had a full four episodes of that last week, so can we just get on with the plot for a change?
Liz: Fine! You’re only saying that because you know I’m right!
Doctor: Liz, do you see my finger?
Liz: Yes?
(The Doctor pokes her in the eye.)
Doctor: And now you don’t. Isn’t magic wonderful?


Brian: Incoming airborne mass reading! Lock and load!
Kurt: Actually, it’s the other way round.
Brian: What?
Kurt: You don’t lock and load, that doesn’t make sense. You load the ammunition THEN you lock it so you can fire.
Brian: Why do they say "lock and load" then?
Kurt: Dunno. Maybe "load and lock" sounded a bit gay.
Brian: Yeah. It does sound a bit gay now you mention it.
Kurt: Thank god we’re not gay.
Brian: Too right.
Kurt: Yep.
Brian: Yep.
(Long pause.)
Kurt: Cuddling isn’t gay.
Brian: Nope.
Kurt: Not without penetration anyway.
Brian: Definitely not. Just cuddling.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Brian: Why have you got me in a headlock, miss?
Liz: To get you to obey me!
Kurt: I don’t take orders from you.
Liz: Yes you do! How else are you going to exterminate the native species on this planet? They are terrified – why did you never try communicating with them? How else were you going to be able to lure them into a trap and slaughter them all!
Brian: Look, it’s not our fault, we were just obeying orders!
Liz: Wow. I’d never considered that as a legal defense before...


Liz on a tin of nerve gas:
"You would have been such an asset to the Party!"


Brian: I can smell burning toast. That’s weird.
Kurt: Yeah. And carpet lilies.
Doctor: I’ll have you know, this is much better than Old Spice! It only costs 6 dollar-pounds per bottle!
Kurt: That is ludicrous. That is utterly ludicrous.
Doctor: I know – unbeatable value!


Liz: The sky! Look at the sky!
Doctor: What of it? It’s night - just a bunch of stars. Seen one, seen em all!
Liz: There is a whole galaxy in the sky!
Doctor: A mundane little galaxy, really. Nothing much to write home about. It’s a big Universe, Liz. And there’s so much to see.
Liz: And even more to conquer for the glory of the Fuhrer!
Doctor: Once a Nazi always a Nazi, is that it? Liz, you’re doing cultural stereotypes more harm than good! You’ll ruin everything, like John Safran in an intensive care unit!
Liz: Shoe’s on the other foot now, I’M in the driving seat!
Doctor: What are you dribbling about, you strange woman?
Liz: You thought you were making progress, that I could somehow be "rehabilitated" to see the universe through your blinked eyes? YOU CONDESCENDING HYPOCRITE!
Doctor: Hypocrisy is better than genocide any day!
Liz: Tough! Because now all time and space will lay before me – a new thousand year Reich will rise! THIS WILL BE MY FINAL VICTORY, DOCTOR! THE DESTRUCTION – OF CONTINUITY – ITSELF!!!!
Doctor: Oh fuck, not ANOTHER alternate universe saga!!


Brian: Humanity is the inheritor of nature! Its master and its warden –we should be able to treat it as we please!
Kurt: Yeah. And nerve gas isn’t cheap, you know!
Brian: Too right. It’s bloody expensive as a matter of fact!
Kurt: Yeah!
(Long pause)
Brian: We’re not gay.


UnQuotable Quote -
Doctor: Liz! Come back! You’ll get yourself killed! Oh well, every mickle has a silver muckle lining...


Viewer Quotes -

"I am LOVING having a companion who won’t auto-defer to the Doc and who will argue, intelligently, her own point of view. Seeing that the Doc can’t liberalize her and isn’t always right somehow makes her a much more sympathetic character. Nazis CAN be nice people, you know!"
- David Cameron (2011)

"Oh, so Social Darwinism is being a fascist all of a sudden, is it? How VERY bourgeois of you, Big Finish! I HOPE YOU’RE SATISFIED, THATCHER!"
- Rick Wankstain (1983)

"This is like Avatar. Only with more Nazis."
- Stater of the Bleeding Obvious World Tour (2010)

"The Doctor was very much a victim of his own arrogance in this story,so convinced he could reform Klein he ended up underestinating her. And 'underestinating' is SO a proper word!"
- Marcus Droob, the world Scrabble champion of 2013

"Twit jerks!" - strange old tramp in the local library (2011)

"I was so sad when the butterfly died. Then I had a cookie. That eased my pain. Especially since there was ecstasy mixed in the baking dough."
- Sarah Alexander (2010)

"If I want to see The Weird Planet again then I will rent the fucking DVD! Do something original for a change, you wankers!"
- Johan "The Hatemachine" Redsen (2005)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"The bugs inside my brain are hiding from the Taliban. You must treat that information with the respect it deserves, or they will not lay any eggs inside YOUR skull and you will be lonely forever and ever."


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"I like doing stories with companions like Hex and Ace, but I also enjoy the stories that explore what a solitary Doctor is like... and so they gave me this sprightly little fascist in a miniskirt. Sheesh! I don’t get to be alone and I have to continually fight and outwit this Nazi, this idol of all that is intrinsically evil and reprehensible. I thought getting rid of Nick Briggs would lighten the place up!"


Caroline John Speaks!
"Ever the supporting and professional, Sylvester McCoy pretends to start snoring whenever I talk into the microphone. Ah, Sylvester. I will miss him enormously, but my aim is definitely improving. When it comes to the obituary column, watch this space, bitches!"


Trivia -
Pearls dissolve in vinegar.


Rumors & Facts -

Chosen to write the middle story of the "Liz Shaw, Time-Travelling White Supremacist Nazi Groupie" trilogy was Jonathan Clements. Well, he wasn’t really CHOSEN per se. Clements threw a filing cabinet through the window and told John Ainsworth and Jason Haigh-Ellery that unless they wanted him to do the same thing with their kneecaps, they would allow him to write a story. And while they wanted to keep their thumbs, they wouldn’t tamper with his creative muse.

Ainsworth and JHE immediately went into hiding and therapy simultaneously and left Clements to it.

That’s pretty much it.

Some people say that Clements was inspired by the recent mass-murder of his family when he called the fumigators on the family home while they were still inside. But none of those people are still alive, so I’ll hastily move on.

Of course, the idea of an insect civilization raises questions on its own – how would it operate? How would the insects feel, born into incontrovertible specialization? Born alone in the dark in the ruins of a world and freed to fly away to unknown yet predictable fates?

The answer was of course "who gives a shit?" as Clements proved with his disturbing reaction to the information that the first thing newborn queen bees do is murder her sisters:

"Damn, I wish MY childhood had been that awesome!"

Enough said.



Also included in the disc was a one-episode story entitled "A Klutzy Story" – written by John Ainsworth when they realized that Clements had refused to do a four parter and they had to fill another 25 minutes. Ergo, the editorial team were was forced to desperately scratch out one last installment which resolved the nine-year-old mystery of what happened to Klutz the Colditz Castle Nazi from the Seventh Doctor story Coleslaw Cutaway. No one was expecting this because... well... it wasn’t a mystery. And no one cared.



"A Klutzy Story"

Ripped in half by the dematerializing TARDIS, the accident-prone Klutz is sent spiraling into the depths of the time vortex. Eventually she splatters against another TARDIS, whereupon the door opens and the Eighth Doctor and Charley bully C’Rizz into leaning out the door and scraping off Klutz’ entrails with a windscreen wiper.

The End.

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