Monday, December 7, 2009

8th Doctor - The Scapegoat

Serial 9Z – The Space Goat
An Alternative Program Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
Entry in the EC Unauthorized Guide O' Cabernet Ol' Chum!

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 9Z – The Space Goat -

To celebrate her newfound freedom from motherhood, Lucie demands the Doctor pilot the TARDIS so she can visit Moulin Rouge and make up for near nine months of sexual abstinence. Seeing this as the perfect opportunity to dump Lucie, the Doctor and Smelly Ed agree instantly while the Northern Tart puts on what she no doubts assumes is a resplendent for the occasion.

"Dear god," the Doctor boggles at her attire. "Even the Bastard in drag tongue-kissing Chang Lee was more appropriate than that!"

Before a very loud argument about haute couture can begin, the TARDIS engines cut out, leaving the time machine in mid-air above the city of Paris. Is it an obstruction in the space-time continuum? Has the Doctor once again showed an inability to understand the Gregorian Calendar? Is it just because the TARDIS is over a millenium out of rego and a complete piece of crap that breaks down a lot?

The Doctor muses it could be "all of the above", and then notices something incredibly interesting on the console monitor: Paris is in blackout, which is very unusual for 1899 France.

Smelly Ed also notices something incredibly interesting on the console monitor: Paris is getting closer and closer and no one has engaged the 'zoom' function.

"Either we’re falling out of the sky and about to crash down to Earth with a bang big enough to kill anyone inside the TARDIS who isn’t either a Lord of Time or a Gelth," the Doctor broods.

"Or?" asks Lucie fearfully as they plummet downwards.

"Actually, I’m pretty hoping there IS no 'or'," the Doctor gloats, and sits back to watch Lucie’s imminent death...

...only for Lucie to grab his head and slam it against the console repeatedly, demanding he press some buttons to save her life or else she’ll break every bone in his body!


Parte the First

In a complete dramatic cop-out, Lucie’s unorthodox "percussive maintenance" with the Doctor’s head manages to save the day - the TARDIS’s gyroscopic controls finally kick it twelve inches from the ground, and Lucie is completely unscathed.

Disappointed and upset, the Doctor and Smelly Ed storm out through the police box doors and find themselves in a street so dark and quiet it’s uncanny how much it matches their dark moods.

Lucie emerges from the TARDIS, but as she closes the door the blue police box transforms into an extremely conspicuous, loud and bright fairground carousel. Lucie tries to tell the Doctor and Smelly Ed, but they stubbornly ignore her, pretending to be fascinated in a bill poster on a wall.

"Hmm, look at this, Smelly Ed: Commandant Ernst Smorgasbord is going to shoot 50 hostages!"

"Mmm, yes, Doctor, he’s doing it in retaliation because a member of German High Command got shot."

"Yes. Indeed."

"Quite. Hang on, this does rather suggest it’s not 1899 Paris, if the city is occupied by Nazis, does it not?"

"Ah."

The Doctor and Smelly Ed decide it’s time to get the hell out of here, only to finally notice what Lucie has been pestering them about: the TARDIS has turned into a merry-go-round noisy enough to bring the entire German army down on them!

Alas, the Gestapo are already onto them for entirely different reasons – as they are on the look out for an unidentified flying objects in the skies over Paris and assume that the police box hurtling from above was either a very odd-looking flock of seagulls or a new kind of Allied aircraft crashing into the Pigalle district.

On the plus side, that sector of Paris is a veritable maze and the Nazis in their funky radio tracking mobiles will take ages to track them down.

Unfortunately, the small window of opportunity they have is wasted as Lucie refuses to help the Doctor and Smelly Ed find the entrance in the disguised TARDIS, even though it’s clearly her fault the Chameleon Circuit’s somehow started working again. In fact, Lucie decides to climb onto one of the carousel horses and have fun as her companions insist this is not the time for her stupidity!

"It might be quite cool, flying around the universe like this instead of in a shitty old police box," Lucie suggests unhelpfully.

Furious, the Doctor zaps the merry-go-round with his sonic screwdriver and although no doors open, the carousel speeds up to 88 miles per hour. As Lucie starts screaming for mercy, the Doctor takes Smelly Ed to one side and suggests that the TARDIS hasn’t simply changed shape, it’s been hidden by some kind of quantum-locked hologram – a semi-physical prop from a stage show.

"How can you tell?" asks Smelly Ed.

"Well, the tag saying 'LE PROPERTY OF LE THÉÂTRE DES BAROQUES! LE SPECTACLE TOUTleMONDE VEUT VOIR' is a bit of a giveaway..."

Behind them, Lucie squeals as she spins around at 112 miles per hour, unable to escape her foolishly-chosen perch. The Doctor points and laughs at her predicament, while Smelly Ed just laughs but they are both taken aback when she and the carousel vanish into thin-air, leaving them alone when the German convoy arrives in the street.

Thinking quickly, Smelly Ed floats to safety, leaving the Doctor to be arrested by Major Treptow for being an unidentified airman in very bad fancy dress.

Lucie groggily wakes up to find herself in a rather smelly dressing room with a handsome man taking off her corset. As such she immediately forgets to ask how she got there or what happened, instead squealing, "OMIGOD! OMIGOD! Tom bleeding Cruise! This better not be a pigging dream and I’m really lying in the gutter of Nazi France!"

"Sorry to disappoint you, luv, but I’m actually Captain Jack Sparrow, also known as the idol of every living thing with working reproductive organs in France today!" he belches. "Philanderer, con-man, inexpensive pornographer and common thief of women’s hearts and men’s underwear in equal amount!"

Being something of a vacant slut herself, Lucie is instantly smitten and invites him to give her "a right royal seeing-to", when the Master of Ceremonies pops by to give them a 10-minute call, which would be long enough for the two to get groinal except the fact the newcomer has the head of a goat.

Wearily Captain Jack explains you see all sorts of freaky shit in musical theatre, especially at the Théâtre des Baroques which is in fact where they are. Lucie is unsure whether the goat-headed Doc Baroque is really just wearing make-up or not, but realizes she doesn’t really care and goes back to heavy-petting Captain Jack.

Just then a hobo wielding a tambourine and several rag dolls fastened to his coat enters. In a very creepy manner he reveals he is Johnny Jack and has chosen Lucie to appear in tonight’s play. For those remotely interested, the play a bit of improvisational comedy set in a dungeon during the height of the French Revolution. Lucie refuses on the grounds she should be paid much more than the usual fee for a last speaking part.

"Well, you can TRY and leave," Johnny Jack shrugs, "as long as you’re sure you can get past all the Gestapo without any identity papers, you dim tart! Now on stage with you!"

At the Gestapo HQ, the Doctor manages to bluff Major Treptow that he is in fact a high-ranking Nazi inspector from Berlin... but soon gets bored and eschews such subtlety for zapping the Major in the face with the sonic screwdriver, rattling loose all his fillings, and then runs for it before he can be brought down by machine gunfire.

The audience at the Théâtre des Baroques wait nervously for the performance to begin, as rumors have already spread this new play is more terrifying than a night trapped in a lift full of Steven Moffat monsters while on bad acid, but some have said that this is the worst thing they’ve ever seen since Springtime for Hitler!

From behind the curtain, Lucie is pleased to discover the theatre is completely packed, as she is convinced her own amazing acting skill and truly quite impressive breasts will be a welcome relief to the usual cast of goat-headed amateurs.

The curtain rises and the everyone gasps in shock when the goat-headed Master of Ceremonies bigs up the forthcoming feature to a level of hyperbole that will make your spontaneously void your bowels. "The chances are half of you, the audience, will die of fright before the interval. That’s why tickets tonight were so expensive," he bleats. "After all, you won’t be able to take it with you, will you?"

Tonight’s play, The Executioner’s Shag, will feature a man who has died on stage ten thousands times – making Lucie wonder why they keep employing such a crap performer, not suspecting that such low standards explains perfectly why she has been hired this evening.

The scene begins in the condemned cell of the Bastille, as Johnny Jack finds his beloved Lucie, who he has loved since they were children playing together in the fields of Provence, imprisoned and manacled. "In your kinky dreams," she sniffs. "I’m way out of your league!"

Furious at being upstaged, Johnny Jack strips her naked on stage and then cuts off all her hair – ostensibly to prepare her for the guillotine, but not even Lucie falls for that excuse. "You’re bloody mental, you are!" she screams, completely abandoning the script.

Johnny Jack cut to the chase... or rather the death scene: where his character’s ex-girlfriend is the executioner, but any kind of pathos or drama is totally lost by now as the entire audience are shouting and jeering and demanding Lucie get her empty head cut off.

In a hasty rewrite, it is decided that instead of Johnny Jack being executed to save Lucie, Lucie should die after all – which means, Johnny Jack’s stunt double (Captain Jack) must hastily drag up and take her place at the guillotine. Moments later, the blade rushes down and Captain Jack’s head is cut clean from his body. There’s an uncomfortable pause as Lucie rushes back on the stage, furious that some hack has stolen her limelight... until it finally dawns on her the execution was for real and she starts screaming in a way that even Bonnie Langford would cringe at, and the play finally ends.

The audience are left in a state of shock, except for the late-arriving Doctor (who idly scalped some tickets from a shifty bloke outside the theatre while passing on his way to avoid the Gestapo). Not only has he been completely ripped off by the expensive tickets, he didn’t even get to see the gore!

One man collapses in a panic attack, which the Doctor just thinks is rubbing in how much of the play he missed. Annoyed, he decides to break in backstage and steal any cool stuff he can find – as well as maybe find out what happened to the TARDIS, since it was swallowed up by a prop from this very theatre. "But first things first: which way are the women’s dressing rooms?"

While searching for them, he bumps into Lucie screaming at Doc Baroque – she assumes some sort of safety feature of the guillotine went wrong and killed Captain Jack, and such an occupational health and safety guideline means she is owed BIG COMPENSATION!

Doc Baroque points out that her performance was so poor she’s cost the Théâtre des Baroques a fortune, so if anyone should be paying compensation, it’s her!

Just then, Captain Jack reappears, having miraculously recovered from his recent beheading via a cheap editing trick. "No need to get upset, luv," he tells her as he pours himself some rum. "I’ve been cut into pieces, crushed, shot by a firing squad, stabbed, strangled and burnt... and that’s just this week! I’m the most assassinated person in showbiz, apart from maybe Steve Coogan..."

Lucie is furious – he’s ruined her claim for compensation by coming back to life and, even worse, has completely upstaged her! The Doctor watches on as Lucie starts to bludgeon Captain Jack unconscious, and surreptitiously nicks the piratical figure’s booze when no one is looking his way.

Inspired by the alcohol, the Doctor realizes Lucie was teleported from the TARDIS into the theatre by the same people who disguised the TARDIS with the false carousel – and therefore they’ve relocated the TARDIS somewhere else in Montmartre and then disguised it with a slight less inappropriate quantagram scenery prop. "And I bet those bloody space goat gits are the ones behind it all!

Meanwhile, those comedy Nazis remember a crucial bit of advice from Reich Marshal Goering: "Whenever you’re looking for an aircraft that’s mysteriously disappeared, always start with the goat-headed master of illusion who’s most famous camouflage trick is to make an aircraft mysteriously disappeared! It’s almost ALWAYS him!"

Treptow thus heads off to storm the Théâtre des Baroques!

Cue random cliffhanger!!!!


Parte the Second

The Gestapo swarm into the theatre and – being a bunch of degenerate sadistic perverts whose vile lusts even the German "Joy Divisions" of Unionized Prostitutes are unable to sate – immediately raid the costume department for all the frocks, leather restraints and handcuffs they can find. Treptow announces they are confiscating these "revolting" items for his own private use, thus ensuring that the Théâtre des Baroques continues offends all public decency without unduly arousing the Nazi rulers of France.

The space goat Baroques consider this a reasonable decision, and allow the jack-booted thugs to continue their search for... actually what the hell ARE they looking for? Oh yeah, the Doctor and a secret airplane. Totally slipped my mind there for a minute.

The Doctor and Lucie are with Captain Jack in the Captain’s dressing room as the most assassinated man in the world explains he has the great honor of being the Space Goat Scapegoat – some poor schmuck who must suffer deliciously kinky torture on behalf of the rest of the tribe to keep said tribe orderly and sexually satisfied.

"I’ve never been happier," Captain Jack confides. "Or hornier."

Captain Jack explains he was so aroused he started shouting out names of former lovers – totally breaking out of character on numerous occasions. Alas, his frequent screams of "Oooh, Doctor!" lead many to assume he and Doc Baroque were secret lovers. "Which we’re not. I mean, my peccadilloes include the goat-headed alien genre, but puh-lease. The man’s got more mother issues than Freud, Oedipus and John Safran at a transvestite orgy! Anyway, I explained I actually had this deep, DEEP unresolved sexual tension with a Time Lord in a blue box who tends to travel with a dim blonde chav girl and a useless idiot, so – as a present for my 526th on-stage death, they brought you here."

The Doctor stares at him.

"Too soon. I can tell. Not Northern enough. Oh well, knock back a couple of hyper-vodkas and pan-galactic gargle blasters and none of use will remember this awkward paradox of a meeting. Savvy?"

Lucie stares at him as well.

"Course, the Space Goats are really after the TARDIS, or indeed any passing time ship, so they can siphon off some power for their quantic animators. Otherwise they’ll have to spend money on more sets, costumes, realistic disguises and printing new bill posters. After all, compared to all that, firing a quantic traction beam into the vortex to stop any passing time vessel’s just cost-effective, is it not?"

The Doctor AND Lucie stare at him.

"Sensing a little disapproval here..."

Just then Treptow bursts into the room, lead by Doc Baroque. The Doctor immediately surrenders to the Gestapo – partially because he knows the SS have the equipment he can use to track down the disguised TARDIS, but mainly because he really, really, REALLY doesn’t want to get shot dead on the spot. "What happens in San Francisco STAYS in San Francisco, all right?" he snaps.

After drop-kicking the Time Lord and stealing his sonic screwdriver, Treptow has the Doctor dragged off towards his HQ. He warns everyone that when he finds out exactly how the Baroques are blackmailing the Reich Marshal to let a bunch of goat-headed freaks run a peepshow, the Gestapo officer shall use the EXACT SAME METHOD for his own ends.

"I shall gain the wisdom which knows all things and which will enable me to achieve what I desire most!" the comedy Nazi growls. "And do not ask, for I will not tell you. But I will say that it involves a feather boa, a bucket of soapy frogs and Vera Lynn!"

Treptow storms off, leaving the Théâtre des Baroques inspired for their next play: about the sexual perversions of a Gestapo officer who arrests good-looking young men with long girly hair to torture.

The next morning, Major Treptow pops down to the prison cells to begin interrogating the prisoner, only to discover the Doctor has kept his guards awake all night with a terrifying display of induced sleep deprivation via renditions of Doug Anthony All-Star songs.

Despite most of his men broken by the Doctor crooning "Mexican Hitler" over and over again, Treptow is made of stern stuff and after a few minutes the Doctor confesses everything: he Doctor is an RAF scientist
testing a secret prototype (with a camouflage system that allows it
to merge with its surroundings) on a secret mission to collect a Resistance agent codenamed the Anthropomorphic Duck and return her to London and his Air Force Serial Number just happens to be exactly the same as the license plate of the Major’s own car.

After that the Doctor refuses to answer any more questions and continues to chant, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Cha-Cha-Cha! ARRRIBAAAA!" until everyone buggers off and leaves him alone.

Finally, after a full English breakfast at the Cafes des Poetes the Doctor agrees to help the Gestapo locate his airplane if they allow him to fiddle around with their invaluable prototype tracking equipment. Being a complete moron and with the demands of the plot to consider, Major Treptow agrees instantly.

Back at the theatre, Lucie has a brainwave and nearly wets herself – she and Captain Jack use quantagrams to disguise themselves as German storm troopers, so they can get into the Gestapo HQ and rescue the Doctor. Not because Lucie likes him or anything, but even SHE isn’t dumb enough to think hanging around WW2 Paris is a good longterm career move, and the Doctor is the only viable alternative.

Captain Jack is up for it, but notes that storm troopers aren’t authorized to go into HQs and demand prisoners release into their care. Showing the same rapier-like intelligence as always, Lucie suggests she be turned into Goering and hope no one notices the Reich Marshall has suddenly developed an annoying nasal voice of a woman from the North of England. But this seems to be one stumbling block too many.

However, Captain Jack has an even MORE cunning plan...

Alas, by the time they arrive at the Gestapo HQ dressed in peroxide wigs, leather corests and fishnet stockings claiming to be from the Joy Divisions having a special "ride to work" parade, Captain Jack and Lucie discover their prostitute disguises are utterly useless:

The Doctor and Major Treptow buggered off hours earlier!

In fact, they’ve spent all day driving around the streets of Montmartre, trying to track down the camouflaged TARDIS – stopping only for some coffee and croissants at a café for a very long lunch. The Doctor explains to the Gestapo this is a systematic spiral search pattern, so it’s SUPPOSED to look like they’re just going round and round in circles pointlessly.

Suddenly, the Doctor spots a Morris Dancer at the Place du Tertre – rather an unusual sight in Nazi-occupied France. Leaving the comedy Nazis to argue about why any kind of aircraft would be disguised as some yokel doing a wannabe fertility dance, the Doctor drop-kicks the Lieutenant, steals the sonic screwdriver, blows up the funky tracking equipment and hide behind the Morris Dancer as the Gestapo open fire.

Alas, the Morris Dancer is the disguised TARDIS and resistant to machine-gun fire. The Doctor dives inside in a graphic sequence I’d rather not disgust, er, discuss. Nevertheless, it just shows how much better his time machine looks as a police box.

The Doctor takes off, leaving the devastated Treptow to muse that not only has he lost his prisoner, the secret aircraft, the possible Allies-Resistance chain, as well as any chance of getting out of Paris before the war is over.

"Aw, fuck," Treptow says, dropping his accent completely.

Meanwhile, there is only five minutes till the next performance at the Théâtre des Baroques – which will feature Lucie Miller tied to a rack and slaughtered on a genuine Bastille antique. "Always give the public what they want!" Johnny Jack laughs. "Pity they want you dead, eh?"

As the audience finally begin to get suspicious at the fact the Master of Ceremonies on stage has a goat’s head, horns and hooves, a rewritten performance of The Executioner’s Shag begins. However, Lucie’s role has been taken by another Space Goat, which pisses Lucie off no end.

The audience laugh at Lucie’s stupidity when they hear the best insult she can come up for a goat-headed alien is "You cow!"

Suddenly, the TARDIS materializes (still in the form of a Morris Dancer) and the Doctor emerges in a rather unhygienic manner. The Time Lord apologizes for the delay, blaming quantic beams in the vortex, leaves on the track and also that freaking huge time war going on... but ultimately admits he took his time because he hates every single person in this story and enjoys tormenting them.

After using his sonic screwdriver to turn the TARDIS into a less embarrassing and more BBC-copyrighted shape, the Doctor continues to destroy the performance. "People of Paris, I am here to tell you a story of blood, horror and pointless, endless death!"

Unfortunately, the French audience aren’t remotely interested in such a clichéd speech and start jeering, heckling, throwing live lobsters at the stage. As the Space Goats are just trying to pay the bills while they seek refuge from the Temporal Difference of Opinion, they think the Doctor is being incredible intolerant and mean.

It strikes the Doctor that he actually has no real reason to stop the Baroques from their theatrical escapades, and he was just sort of automatically assuming that they were evil bastards that needed to be stopped. The Space Goats are disgusted at this mindless prejudice and react in an incredibly civilized manner by trying to guillotine the Doctor on stage. For real.

"Hooo boy... looking back at it, I really SHOULD have got that Regeneration Update Patch for Infinite Lives and Re-Growable Limbs."

At the last second, Smelly Ed (remember him? No, me neither) arrives to save the day, disguised as the quintessential stock character from operatic theatre – the Trade Unionist Scab determined to stop the performance with the time-honored classic:

"Can I have your attention please?
At the General Meeting of the TEA
The following demands were issued:
Wage parity!
Improved safety conditions!
And the baritone be played with more emphasis on the lyrical phrases!"

The audience are on their feet as the usual union demands for parking spaces and more attractive lead singers causes yet another stoppage and damages the arts even more than Nazi occupation. The Doctor has been saved and the theatre closed, with absolutely no violence or bloodshed.

Just then, the Gestapo burst into the theatre, firing off a few warning shots from their machine-guns as part of a random security check which happens to involve arresting and executing absolutely everyone in the theatre.

"Bummer," Smelly Ed sighs.

Thinking quickly, the Doctor disguises Captain Jack as a Morris Dancer and offers him to Treptow as the stealth aircraft. While the bumbling Nazis are left humiliated on stage, the Doctor, Lucie and Smelly Ed exit stage freaking left incredibly quickly. The audience laugh insanely as they watch the Nazis perform disgusting acts upon Captain Jack as they attempt to "open the door" of the "invisible airplane".

For his part, Captain Jack is having a great time.

As they flee into the real TARDIS, Lucie notes they have left the Germans with funky alien technology and an immoral time traveler to show them how to use it. The Doctor sets the time machine in motion and is sure everything will sort itself out.

"No regrets, as they say in France! There’s a lot of darkness out there, some of it where vicious air piranhas much on stupid 51st Century archaeologists... but we’d never notice any of it if it wasn’t for all the pinpricks of light – planets and stars. And that’s where I go to avoid the consequences of my actions, the next bit of light in the darkness. Keep on moving. Never look back. Well, hardly ever. I mean, it’s not like any loose ends we leave have ever come back to bite us in the arse, is it?"

Lucie clears her throat and the others tell her to shut up.

---------
Next Time...
---------
"What do you think, Lucie? First impressions? Anything? At all? Lucie? Look, just nod if you can hear me or something. Hello?!"
"Oi! Get out of my underwear!"
"They could be interesting! They might not, BUT THEY COULD BE!!!"
"This elevator has a very strong feeling of job satisfaction."
"Doctor? What kind of triple-fried egg butty with chili sauce and chutney is THAT supposed to be?!"
"And would you mind just stopping singing Crimson King?"
"They call me the Mighty Tight-Arse! I have NO IDEA WHY!!! But do well to remember that when you’re begging for some more of the Bhudda!"
"Wow. We’re in outer space. I am like so totally tripping right now."
"Observe: the organic has unorthodox protrusions."
"Well, I’ve never heard em called that before. Pert, mouthwatering funbags of desire, maybe, but unorthodox protrusions? Never!"
"I was talking about your earrings, you slut."
"Oh."
"Ewww! The Dow Jones Index! What sort of drug-addled hippie are you?!"
"Robot stoners in a star commune!"
"Is that a big hoover or are you just pleased to see me?"
"We’re not alone."
"No. There’s three of us."
"...shut up, Lucie."
"You will give us instructions on how to bake Hash Brownies!"
---------
...The Cannabis...
---------


Book(s)/Other Related –
Dr Who Discovers Captain Jack Off His Face On Speckled Goat
Dr Who Watches Goats Jacking Off (Canada Only)
Lucie Miller’s Sex Fantasies: Moulin Roggering


Fluffs – Paul McGann seemed to be acting the goat in this story.

Lucie repeatedly refers to being "hunted by the Gazpacho".

Goofs –
Once again, the writer was under the misapprehension that this story was for Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor – hence the Doctor’s copious use of psychic passports, banana fetishes, dead Northernism and noting that he has regenerated eight times "thanks to Ricky the Idiot!"


Fashion Victims -
Johnny Jack’s hairdressing leaves Lucie looking like Tank Girl. Ew.


Technobabble -
The Doctor suspects that the only thing stopping Captain Jack from becoming a seething caldera of sexually-transmitted diseases is a "quantic venereal re: animator drive", but admits he doesn’t want to think too much about it.


Links and References -
The Doctor remembers that Lucie single-handedly destroyed his easy life with Destrii in "Obituary" (Serial 9X).


Untelevised Misadventures -
There are plenty of these for Captain Jack Sparrow as he is repeatedly violated in the mistaken belief he’s a disguised British plane, and no doubt lead to his defection to Cardiff... but frankly, I don’t want to go into further detail, as I’ve gotten rather nauseous.


Groovy DVD Extras -
A Blue Peter special on how to design a home version of the Théâtre des Baroques, using only three toilet rolls, some sticky-back plastic and a holographic simulation suite.


Dialogue Disasters –

Lucie: I’m going to jump!
Doctor: You’re joking, aren’t you?
Lucie: You can catch me!
Doctor: At this speed? You’ll break my neck!
Lucie: Are you insinuating I’m still fat?!
Doctor: Yes, focus on the important things won’t you, Lucie?

A generic Gestapo watches the TARDIS dematerialize:
"Eh Cisco! Eh Pancho! Where did they GO, dude?!"

Johnny Jack: In every family, in every school and in every workplace, there’s always a bitch, someone that everyone else screws. This is the way of nature, so rather than pretend it doesn’t happen, we revere our bitches. There will always be people who do things and people who have things done to them – subs and doms. Which one are YOU, Lucie Miller?!

Treptow: Who are you with, Doctor? The SOE? The OSS?
Doctor: The MSW.
Treptow: MSW?
Doctor: Ministry of Silly Walks. You think Hitler came up with that goosestep without a government grant?
Treptow: Mein gott! He speaks the truth! Only senior Nazis could know such secrets!
Doctor: [sighs] And yet again a random wikipedia article saves the day.

Captain Jack: Ah, Madame Guillotine sure puts out on a first date!

Johnny Jack: My dear Lucie, you’ll be performing alongside the finest actor in all of France!
Lucie: You mean I’ll be talking to myself in a monologue?
Johnny Jack: ...no. I mean you’ll be performing with me.
Lucie: Ooh, if you do say so yourself! Arrogant chuffin’ tosser...


Dialogue Triumphs –

Doc Baroque: Ladies and gentlemen, for the cynics, the bored, the desensitized, you who think you have seen it all – be warned! Something truly terrifying is coming your way... LUCIE BLEEDING MILLER!!!

Captain Jack: "Nazis, goats and thieves!"
We’d hear it from the people in the town!
They’d call us "Nazis, goats and thieves!"
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down!
And I only get 10%. Criminal.

Lucie Miller’s seduction technique:
"Trust me, Lucie Miller from Blackpool always goes down a treat with the SS! Or anyone else in tight black leather..."

Captain Jack’s seduction technique:
"May I enter, my dear?"

Johnny Jack’s seduction technique:
"Got a kiss for Johnny Jack and all of the children on his back?"

The Space Goat’s seduction technique:
"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Doctor: I wannabe a Mexican Hitler!
Smelly Ed: Viva la Saddam, viva la Fuhrer!
Doctor: With Mussolini in a white sombrero!
Smelly Ed: Viva la Franco, viva la Fuhrer!
Doctor: Here comes the new law - and the new order!
Reichstag's burning south of the border!
When you’re low, where can you go? Where to?
Smelly Ed: Stalingrad?
Doctor: No, MEXICO! DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE THIS SONG!


UnQuotable Quote -
Treptow: I know nuzzink!!


Viewer Quotes -

"Wart do yoo think I yahm? A bhillie gott?"
– Random Little Miss Jocelyn character (2009)

"Excellent mix of balmy and brutal!" – Weatherman Reviews (2010)

"Paul McGann has some beautiful scenes in this story, which could quite easily have been torn out of a World War II spy thriller. Well. That or ‘Allo ‘Allo. ‘Allo ‘Allo meets Moulin Rouge. With added goats."
– Allison White (2009)

"A true celebration of the more macabre aspects of Doctor Who."
– Johnny Napalm’s defense to the charge of infanticide (2009)

"I’m so sick of WW2 and Nazis. I already had Nazi-fatigue and now this? If we have to do a WW2 story can we maybe look at the African or Pacific settings? Yes, I know Nazis have all this symbolic stuff in Doctor Who with Dustbins, blah blah blah, but as an historical setting, I’m just tired of Nazi-occupied Europe. It’s just an historical setting I’m not in any hurry to see any more of in the near future. You’d never catch me writing about them. Twice."
– Mark Gatiss, shortly before people found out he was the writer of "War-Bonds of the Dustbins" (2009)

"I really liked this one. It was much better than Dead Cardiff. Though I quite liked Dead Cardiff. I’m in the minority that really dug Dead Cardiff. In fact, that’s the only Big Finish story I’ve got. I know nothing about this story. Why are you even asking me for quotes?"
– Gordon Brown (2010)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"His cheeks red and merry again, his eyes bright with cruel laughter, he said, 'Here comes I, little Johnny Jack, with me wife and me family on me back! Me family's large and me wife is small, and I’m the father of them all!' And that’s why *I* voted for Gordon Brown."


Paul McGann Speaks!
"I’m not a fan of Doctor Who. I’m a passionate fan of music, poetry, books, ideas, and I have my own, very private intellectual pursuits. You probably think I sound like some furtive idiot. But a furtive idiot that doesn’t give a crap about the scopes of other worlds or the story-telling magnitude of other dimensions. Like you lot. But I get far more sex than the average sci-fi fan. Pretty catholic tastes really. Well, when India Fisher’s not around. When she is, I am up for ANYTHING!"


Sheridan Smith Speaks!
"My silly dyslexia made me think this story was called The Scapegoat, but I’m not as bad as Eddie, who – in those brief moments when he was sober enough to talk – called it The Waistcoat. Which would have been REALLY stupid, almost as much as Lucie having to act. That’s great fun, playing someone who can’t act. Takes a hell of a lot of the weight off your own shoulders, you can just be a Northern loudmouth spouting one-liners you’d have to be dead and buried three days to find funny."


Eddie Hitler Speaks!
"I suppose I’ll get a lot of complaints from those cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but, seriously, why ARE the French such assholes? And I say that knowing I am, in fact, part French. Yes, part of me is French. Which part? Well, my asshole, of course! Hahaha! As they say in Brazil, 'Et donc a la fin de la journée'!"


Trivia -
Captain Jack Sparrow apparently has his own spin-off, but RTD denies any and all knowledge of it.


Rumors & Facts -

Paul McGann, something of a history buff and World War 2 aficionado after he discovered a time warp allowing him to travel back to the Blitz and make a fortune selling antiques, had always wanted to a story where the Eighth Doctor took on the Nazis, Indiana-Jones-style.

Only two pints of mild were needed to convince Executive Producer Eddie Hitler this was a monumentally fantastic idea.

After briefly considering setting the story in Occupied Hammersmith, it was decided to set the story in Paris where some vague notion of historical accuracy might be kept. A passionate Euroskeptic, Hitler was more than happy to do a story showing those "garlic-quaffing, frog-eating, bagette-making Nazi collaborators" in the worst possible light.

In fact, Hitler had been determined to do such a story since the very beginning – usually involving outright plagiarizing large chunks of Moulin Rouge with hastily-added scenes of the Doctor telling the French what utter bastards they were and how they should "fuck-ay-off-ay" out of it right here and right now.

But who would they get to pen this political parable of parasitic patriotic patter? The perfect preternatural position was patiently proffered to preferred professional playwrights promptly.

Alas, they were all busy so Pat "Godfather of British Comics" Mills was rehired after the abortion he had made of the previous season opener, Dead Cardiff – a boring yet surreal tale of a world of Bill Oddies trying to conquer the Welsh capitol.

Mills was originally hired in the belief he could make stories that would appeal to the RTD demographic – a logical enough belief since RTD spent a worrying about of time nicking ideas from Mills’ comic strips in the first place. Mills thus worked out everything RTD had nicked and put all these elements into one story, and creating a surreal and historically inaccurate WW2 story with Captain Jack Sparrow and a race of aliens who look like humans with weird animal heads.

Unfortunately, Hitler was suffering one of his regular bouts of Mr.-Sheen-induced amnesia, and had no idea who this "Captain Jack" fellow was or why he should be in the story. He simply assumed that Mills was getting his flirtatious time traveling twats mixed up, and was actually writing about "Johnny Jack", the creepy Harpo Marx impersonator in the finale ever story of Sapphire & Steel. Thus, Hitler completely rewrote the script and rehired Christopher Fairbank to play the part.

This was particularly awkward since the rest of the production team HAD just gone to all the trouble to hire John Barrowman. And that was a lot of trouble. It wasn’t that John wanted money, per se. He did want a leather gimp suit, electrodes on his nipples and a wild sheep.

Amazingly enough, he’s very professional most of the time.

Since they now had both Jacks, Hitler announced "Jack SHIT!" and went off to the "pube" with the "emergent see budgie", and single-handedly brought Big Finish to the brink of complete financial collapse. Well, the GFC may have had something to do with it, but Hitler insists that’s a journalistic invention, rather like the female orgasm.

The finished product was as distinctly wacky as Mills previous "endowment" to the series, and was received in as peculiar a manner as it was written. Even the DWM review runs for longer than an Arnold Rimmer salute, and never once threatens to get to the point.

I am so depressed.

No comments: