Monday, December 7, 2009

8th Doctor - The Eight Truths (ii)

ACT TWO – THE SILLY RUBBER SPIDERS’ WORLD WIDE WEB (OF FEAR!)


Parte the Third

As the silly rubber spiders fly around the place and face-hug human beings into submission, Marvin decides to run away as fast as he can instead of loitering around the place waiting to get his brain taken over by extraterrestrial arachnids. Lucie is so taken aback by this uncharacteristically positive action, it takes her a while to shout generic orders like, "GUARDS! AFTER HIM!"

But by then, Marvin has already escaped in some scene I in all honestly couldn’t be bothered to pay attention too and the spider-dominated Rob Zombie announces to the terrified crowds that all this evil eight-legged freak bodysnatching is perfectly normal and there’s absolutely no reason to complain.

Ace the Headhunter decides that this is the best time to confront Karen Nicegirl and reveal she intends to betray Karen and allow the spiders to take over her body. Karen points out that she wasn’t actually part of the plan to begin with, and is indeed only involved by a staggeringly unlikely coincidence, so this doesn’t technically count as betrayal. Karen just happens to be a helpless victim Ace knows personally rather than a coconspirator to be turned against.

"Quite right," Ace sighs. "Mind like a sieve."

She then beats Karen down and forces a silly rubber spider to weave its evil power over her malleable and painfully gullible brain.

The Doctor, Kelly and Sangakkara are watching The Quatermass Conclusion yet again in hope for some clue about what to do next, but apart from killing themselves in a nuclear blast and hoping things sort themselves out afterwards, ideas are pretty thin on the ground.

As they watch a Hiroshima-type blast somehow turn ground zero into a peaceful, non-radioactive glade where children can frolic around stone circles that can survive 13-megaton explosions, the Doctor complains to the others: "Can you believe they say this is SERIOUS science fiction?"

The Doctor, bored, switches off the DVD and watches the news reports of silly rubber spiders trying to take over the Scientologists and concludes this easily-forgotten Pertwee-era monster have returned and are using their evil psychic powers on their tinfoil-clad flunkies to take over the entire Earth.

Suddenly Marvin drops by and informs everyone how utterly and infinitely miserable the turn of events have made him, though he’s far too intelligent to be surprised. Far, far too intelligent...

The Doctor tells Marvin to shut up, since this story is a sequel and he knows precisely how to defeat the spiders... before remembering that last him he let his evil arch-enemy the Bastard do it for him. He’ll just have to stick to Plan B.

"Any organization pathetic to have Lucie in charge of it is doomed to fiery destruction inside a week," the Doctor declares. "I’d like to think it was because Lucie’s deliberately bringing it down from the inside, but it’s more than likely she’s just a complete moron."

And what do you know? He’s absolutely right!

The Chosen One is exhausted and nauseous as Lucie’s incredibly annoying personality drives the alien brain-parasite to full-blown schizophrenia. Mind you, having Lucie shouting in your ear every minute of the day would cause most people to crack – just see how the Bastard coped... ooh, wait, spoilers. Darn.

Anyway, as the Queen of the silly rubber spiders runs round and round in circles, waving her hands in the air and screaming "YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME? BRING IT ON! YOUR ASS IS GOING DOWN!!" the spider-possessed Rob and Karen decide that maybe it’s time to continue the theme of internal conflict – just as the Scientologists turn against each other, and personalities inside Lucie’s body fight for dominance, the spiders feel rather left out.

And so, the first ever Civil War of Possessed Scientologists Controlled By Giant Hyper-Intelligent Rubber Spiders BEGINS!

(NOTE: I deeply regret that such a sentence will never again be used in the history of the English language)

The Loyalist Spider Zombies fight with the Renegade Faction, and both of them take turns to zap to smithereens all the drunken Welsh yobbos lumbering around the place wanting one last shag before the world ends.

It’s during this chaos that the Doctor, Kelly and Marvin arrive with secret anti-spider weapons – they are dressed as giant yellow chickens, the natural predators of spiders on Meetmeinbedin 3. Now, I always assumed this was some surreal production screw-up in the original Pertwee story, but NO! There is a planet of giant yellow humanoid chickens out there. And anything else would be utterly ridiculous!

Marvin however decides that death is preferable to this humiliation and takes off his chicken mask and offers to help the Loyalist Spiders in their quest to take over humanity and manipulate the cosmos from behind the scenes like some Babylon 5 style monsters.

However, the horrific sight of the giant yellow chickens cause the spiders to abandon Karen and Rob and flee into the Astral Plane for further sequel-fodder as the Rebel Sun fills the sky outside, ready to make its judgment of humanity in 20 seconds.

The Doctor realizes that the remote for the Handjob is under the Queen Spider’s control, and is keyed to Lucie Miller’s disgusting DNA. Alas, this brilliant deduction comes a little late in the day and the countdown reaches zero!

The Rebel Sun explodes, the people of Earth scream in terror as the energy is conducted through every tinfoil-hat-wearing Scientologists, a process that will ultimately fry their puny little minds and creating the most powerful hive mind in the Universe! A mental web of peer pressure that will unite thousands of planets in a single, if rather tedious, thought: that hyper-intelligent silly rubber spiders are amazingly awesome and should be obeyed, and Queen Spider is the greatest and most bitching of all of them!

This wave of naive credulity has already spread out in 50 light years in all directions, a psychic pulse leaving every living being – even the other silly rubber spiders! - bug-eyed zombies chanting "All Praise to the Great One!"

To cap it all, the Queen Spider declares Lucie is dead...

"Finally!" the Doctor beams. "Things are looking up!"


Parte the Fourth

With the handful of speaking characters who AREN’T members of the Church now in a brainwashed state of euphoric stupidity, the Doctor finds himself being told off by losers like Marvin, Rob and Karen that his life is empty and irredeemable.

"Yeah, cause worshipping household pests REALLY maximizing your potential, isn’t it? You dumb fucks!"

It doesn’t take long to... er... "physically educate" them back to normal, as a few blows to the head while dressed as a giant chicken purges the evil spider influence. Or at least makes them willing to pretend they’re purged so the Doctor will stop drop-kicking them.

Just then the Handjob of Moby goes slightly peculiar and yet another Quatermass cliché takes place – beams of energy shoot down from the sky into the crowds, leaving dead bodies anyway. The Doctor is mildly annoyed that Kelly – about the only sympathetic character in the entire bleeding season – is one of the casualties... but cheers himself by nicking her wallet and stealing her car for a joyride.

While ram-raiding a certain fast-food burger chain, the Doctor bumps into Smelly Ed. Being composed entirely of gas means he’s not actually controlled by the psychic pulse, and willingly returns to the Time Lord’s side in the hope he can get some decent conversation beyond merely chanting "All praise the Great One!" over and over again.

Smelly Ed explains, for those in the audience who give a rat’s arse about continuity and story arcs, that Ace made a deal with the Meetmeinbedin 3 spiders to get them the Handjob of Moby to allow their universal conquest shebang. Thus, the whole thing about rescuing the Doctor from his decadent fish people colony, where Ace programmed the stellar manipulator to follow Lucie through time and space – so when the Queen Spider took over Lucie’s body, she had total control over the Rebel Sun. The Doctor listens to this explanation, yawns, and helps himself to another double cheeseburger.

Meanwhile, the spirit of Lucie Miller finds herself floating in an incredibly boring empty white void with only the Terry Wogan space probe and the spirits of Kelly and the Scientologists for company. For want of something to do, they all moon the probe – leading to some disturbing images being relayed back to the startled Dr. Sangakkara at his tracking station back on Earth.

Is this empty nothingness Heaven itself? Given the fact it’s populated by assholes from planets across the universe all brainwashed to join the Church of Scientology, I lean towards the "no" option. Oddly enough, so does Lucie, as the void fills up with Scientologists be they human, Judoon, Gelth, or even aliens from the Classic series!

The Doctor and Smelly Ed return to the tracking station and beat the crap out of Sangakarra until he escapes the influence of the silly rubber spiders. When they spot Lucie’s face on the screen shouting at them, a very long and overblown explanation takes place of pretty much everything I’ve been telling you throughout this guide. PAY ATTENTION!

The Time Lord finishes his thick-shake and concludes that this white void is actually INSIDE the Hand of Moby, which is stealing the souls of the faithful for no other reason than it really synchs up with the whole Quatermass Conclusion vibe the rest of the story has. On the plus side this means Lucie is just a stream of data in the Stellar Manipulator and is actually legally dead

"There is absolutely NO part of this development I do not love," the Time Lord confides to his two companions.

Smelly Ed suggests Lucie use her freaky mind-link with the Queen Spider, then the Doctor can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, thus restoring all the zapped people back to life on the Earth below. The Doctor is deeply reluctant to engage in this spiritual enema, for fear Lucie might come back as well.

On the other hand, the final episode of the story is very nearly over and there’s no time left to piss about.

Meanwhile, Ace and the Queen are discussing whether or not the Headhunter should get immunity from being brainwashed into the Church of Scientology and unlimited mineral rights in this galactic neighborhood or whether she should just be messily killed.

"I mean, it IS sort of traditional in these situations," the Queen points out. "Everyone else in the story has been betrayed, why not you? It’s just unbalancing the drama otherwise, isn’t it?"

Suddenly, with a cheap blaze of CGI, Lucie Miller is downloaded back into her body, forcing the silly rubber spider to flee the Northern lass with the strange duck-like voice – and thus lose any and all control over the Handjob of Moby! Trillions of followers all over the universe are shaking off their mental domination! The masterplan to conquer the universe is completely stuffed by the flow of neutrons being sent in entirely the opposite direction!

"You’ve gotta respect the classic dues ex machinas!" announces the Doctor as he arrives with Smelly Ed, Sangakkara, Karen and anyone else still involved in this mediocre plotline.

Determined to find a new host body quickly, the Queen of the silly rubber spiders leaps onto Ace the Headhunter’s face and tries to possess the badass Time Lady. But, being a Child of Gallifrey and all that bullshit, has all sorts of mental firewalls and the Queen can’t do diddly squat... so it settles for biting Ace repeatedly until she dies of spider venom.

Before anyone can even mourn the passing of an ongoing franchise character, golden light streams outward from Ace the Headhunter’s body, glowing to a blinding intensity. Finally all the fireworks are over a ditzy blonde girl looking uncannily like Cassie from "Skins" is left in the scorched and smoking remnants of the Headhunter’s suit.

"Like... oh, wow!" the regenerated Ace boggles.

The Doctor is rather taken aback by this turn of events, but there’s no time for mourning season finale cast-changes when there’s nasty alien insects to blow up!

Using Lucie’s connection to the Hive Mind of chaotic, terrified individuals across the Earth and beyond, the Doctor determines to get mankind to reject the silly rubber spiders and kick them back to the Astral Plane where they belong.

"Have you all forgotten who you are?" he shouts across the worldwide web of Scientologist minds. "You’re human beings! Homo Sapiens! You rule this planet not because you’re smartest race there is, but because you’re the craziest and murderous mofos to walk the Earth! You take crap from NO ONE! You weed out the weak by poisoning the air you breathe and water you drink! You’ve only got one biosphere and you let off ATOM BOMBS inside it! When your own god tried to tell you what to do, YOU NAILED HIM TO A STICK!"

Instead of all praising the Great One, the Doctor has a new catchphrase for everyone to mindlessly chant from now on:

"YOU DO **NOT** FUCK WITH THE HUMAN RACE!"

Everyone begins chanting this subtle truism over and over again and in less time than it takes to type out this sentence, the invasion of the silly rubber spiders is completely undone – and everyone on Earth completely forgets it ever happened (bar the Doctor, Lucie, Smelly Ed, Karen and Sangakkara). Which DOES admittedly leave the man on the street wondering what the hell he’s doing staring up at a bright green sun wearing a bit of aluminum foil on his head.

Groggily the newborn Ace staggers off to her TARDIS to do some, like, totally amazing kind of stuff, but Karen Nicegirl refuses to follow her – this new version of the Headhunter is a vacuous tart with the IQ of a used teabag and even a failed Scientologist like her can do better.

Deciding that Sangakkara deserves some recompense for having such crap thrown at him through the story, the Doctor hands over the remote to the Handjob of Moby – quite confident this gormless admin officer from Mumbai will be completely trustworthy to use a customized star responsibly on weekends and get an increased government grant.

After taking a moment to collect the Quatermass DVDs and jump up and down on them, smashing them to pieces (ostensibly to ensure that the spiders don’t somehow use them for evil purposes but quite possibly because they’re over-hyped rubbish), the Doctor decides to bugger off in the TARDIS. Out of sheer muscular habit, he lets Lucie and Smelly Ed accompany him as well.

"Damn, damn, damn," the Doctor complains, smacking his forehead as he remembers. "I nearly got so close to dumping you forever. I need to find somewhere that’s not so busy or big where I can offload you for good in a totally trivial manner..."

"'Trivial'? I can give you 'trivial', mate!" Lucie snaps, the topic of the conversation going completely over her head. "Blackpool! Go on, I dare you, Blackpool for Michaelmas!"

"You know, Smelly Ed," the Doctor admits thoughtfully, "that might just be crazy enough to work..."

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