Friday, January 1, 2010

9th Doctor - The Parting of the Ways (v)

Trivia: Is RTD A Lying Bastard? –

You know, few people have gone back and actually read what RTD wrote in his Doctor Who Magazine Production Notes column once they've seen the new series.

Of course, the television industry is a world of constant flux and ideas sometime only exist long enough to be annotated before being thrown back into the void from whence they came.

Yet, there are plenty of stories that he insisted would be made that never saw the light of day – adventures for the Ninth Doctor or Ninth Doctor and Rose that were ultimately never made.

Like for example, THE APOCALYPSE AGENDA featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose discovering that the overweight Fitz (Robbie Coltrane) has rewired the Third Doctor's DNA into a hideous monster that is about to threaten the world. Well, that's what Fitz says.

What ever happened to the warn-torn alien cityscapes of THE ANCIENTS OF N'TOTH? The submerged ziggurats of PYRAMIDS OF THE DEEP? The even-soggier-than-that BENEATH THE DEPTHS? The Snotaran extravaganza THE KNIGHTS OF TIM? The return of the Bygones in RIDING OUT THE STORM? The sequel to I, DUSTBIN – MACHINATIONS? TIME ENOUGH AT LAST, yet another fallout from the Temporal Difference of Opinion? The long-awaited Ninth Doctor and Cybermen face off THE CAST IRON WAR? The Sapphire And Steel cut-and-paste TIME FREEZES OVER? A TALE OF TWO PLANETS, a sci-fi sequel to THE PRESUMING ED featuring the return of Headhunter? The namby-pampy-eco-love wuss-a-rama turning Cardiff back to nature FALSE PARADISE?

And what about the solo Ninth Doctor stories? Just where is the Alien Versus Predator Versus Doctor Who epic THE HUNT? The bling-coated Rocky Horror/8041 Paradise Towers nightmare DEATH OF TAKE-CARE CITY? CASTUS SUPPLICIUM – one of countless proposed Ninth Doctor/Earth Reptile stories to piss off organized religion such as EYE FOR AN EYE, SHADOWS OF THE DEEP and the misspelled THE CAVES OF THE ANICENTS? The Sexual Toymaker Trilogy – RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, VOTING RIGHTS and CHECKMATE? CHILDREN OF THE STONES, a new age hippie-beatnik trip to Stonehenge?

On the other hand, all those words that he mentioned actually DID turn up in the finished episodes. So, I guess we'll just have to wait for further evidence.

In the meantime, don't trust RTD with YOUR children!


Rumors & Facts –

From the moment that the phrase 'K9 RULES!' was seen scrawled across the TARDIS during filming of Alias of London, fandom was up in arms. Who or what was K9? How did it effect the lives and adventures of the Ninth Doctor? And why the hell would you scrawl something like that on a police box anyway?

Theories detailing the identity of K9 began immediately. This being has been mistakenly believed to be –

The Ninth Doctor
The Tenth Doctor
Rose
Jackie
Mickey
Adam
Adam's Dog
Captain Jack
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
The Nestle Consciousness
Lynda
The Face of Bond
Borusa
Jo Grant/The Rani
The 57 Chevy of Rassilon
Rassilon
Fred Dinenage
Omigod
Alpha Sintauri
The Zoo-Keeper of Traken
Peri
Bertie Basset
The Wank Lord
A giant yellow jellybaby
Anne Robinson
George Formby
Adric
Bob Dylan
Sir Clive Sinclair
The Crazy Frog
Moby
The entire cast and crew of Little Britain
Paris Hilton
George Foreman
Craig Hinton
Johnny Vegas
Michael Grade
Yorkshire Electricity Board
Harriet Jones
Tony Blair
Star Trek fandom
Ozzy Osbourne
Carol Vorderman
Sakugarne the time-travelling pogo stick belonging to Quint, a reprogrammed Rock from the future, from the Megaman 2 game on Gameboy
My Auntie Marjorie

...and pretty much everyone agreed that no matter what character would be revealed to be K9 it would be played by Brian Blessed on crack.

Absolutely NO ONE, no one at ALL considered the possibility K9 was the same K9 that had appeared in Doctor Who in Seasons Fifteen to Eighteen and in various anniversary specials ever since.

I despair. I really do.

A lot of thought went into coming up with a four-episode plot to conclude the series. Unfortunately, none of it was by RTD who was certain that a story called The Brigadier, where the Doctor, Rose and Jack encounter the aging soldier having a dirty weekend in big posh country house.

Unfortunately, Nicholas Courtney's character had been used already in Alias of London and Funky Town, so that story had to be scrapped – as did its scarecrow-fetishist 'Pyramids of Cards on Acid' replacement, Whistledown. As there was no way for Cardiff to double as France, the Joan d'Arc story and star Audrey Tatou had to be dropped.

After considering a two parter about a group of politicians that were actually aliens and they revealed their true form when they either lied or told the truth, RTD gave up rooting around in his rubbish bin for ideas and finally started asking round.

Ideas included the Bastard possessing such luminaries as David Jason and someone who'd been on Big Brother's Little Brother for... some reason that presently escaped the originator of the idea.

Paul Carnall offered to retell his audio play Reasons to Care as Ninth Doctor and Rose story, much as Rob Shearman had changed D'You Believe This? to I, Dustbin. The character of Blackadder was apparently changed to a recurring character of a 1940s East End gangland villain played by Ray Winstone in a tutu.

And Shearman himself suggested they simply re-make a draft version of I, Dustbin entitled Cargo and would be set on a space station in which a lone Dustbin was picking off the crew members one by one.

Tom Stoppard, who was passing at the time, suggested a new story entitled The Parting of the Ways – in which Rose finally snaps and demands to be taken home. Unfortunately, she returns to 2006 and finds history has been changed and England is now a Muslim theocracy, where women have few rights. Rose is, of course, instantly arrested and sentenced to death for her immoral outfit. Rose escapes, meets up with the Doctor and together they decide to screw up the early days of the Christian Church. As you do.

Everyone considered this WAY too heavy a story, but RTD liked the name and promptly stole it after a slight adjustment.

It was then RTD found that a cryptic message had been left to him by his future self, scattering the words BIG BROTHER PASTICHE through time and space in an odd way to contact him.

RTD realized the significance of this and promptly based a story around an idea the tabloids had been constantly suggesting since 2004. In it, the Doctor, Rose and Jack arrive in the middle of a competition where aliens have gathered famous figures from across time for their own amusement - to lose in this game means a horrible death.

He then coupled this together with a story most Doctor Who fans had written before they could learn to walk. This story, entitled Adam Ant, featured the Doctor pulling out all the stops to prevent a Dustbin ship from cleaning and tidying a planet – only to discover that it was the teeniest, tiniest scout ship of a massive Dustbin Saucer fleet determined to wipe clean the universe.

Thus, RTD married the two ideas in a Las Vegas wedding-style with some product placement for Lego and Endemol under the title of "The Amazing New Adventures of Doctor Who: the Last of the Time Lords from The Journeys of Rose Tyler Being a Fantastical Tale of a Young Earth Wanderer and Interplanetary Explorer within The Environs of A Gentleman's TARDIS Part Ten: Act One - The Young Miss Tyler Proves Utterly Useless At 201st Century General Knowledge".

Other working titles include – "Guess Who'll Fall?", "The Evil of Television", "Reality TV of the Dustbins", "Big Brother in SPAAACEE!", "Bread and Circuses", "The Return of the Wanker", "Once Upon a Time" and "Unhappily Ever After", "Remembering To Strike Back At The Doctor", "Dustbin Difference of Opinion" and "Density".

THEN it became "Fractured Time", "Vacation Force", "Shatner's Bassoon", "Bob Ferret's Electric Moon Monkey Tennis", "The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance", "Doppelganger", "The Well of Hvergelmerglvirglmir", "Our Rob Or Ross", "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies". Finally it was a toss-up between "Shit-Loads Of Dustbins" and "Takeshi's Castle". Nigel Verkoff cut through the crap and mucked out with the captioning machine to create "The Parting of the Legs".

This was not the first time the BBC had used product placement in Doctor Who – in the first episode of the Ninth Doctor, Mickey's 'Indonesian cigarette manufacturer' T-shirt advertised tobacco so well I smoke three packs a day ever since I saw Ruse on the ABC. Damn it!

Oddly enough, however, the Fourth Doctor's insistence that this all a big surprise party was neither an adlib by Tom Baker or invented by RTD in a strange mood. It is actually a reference to the unmade Doctor Who Movie written Tom Baker and Douglas Adams in 1979, Doctor Who Versus Ironic Expectation. Pity about the lack of latext for the sex scene between the Fourth Doctor and Dustbin, otherwise we'd have been able to see the finished movie ourselves.

Production on The Parting of the Legs began around the middle of January 2005. I could be more specific about it, but heck, I'm not Andrew Pixley, you know! I mean, 4th of January or 17th of January... does it honestly matter? Will your life end if it isn't exactly accurate? Hmmm?!

While it would seem insane to recall Nigel Verkoff to play Adam Mitchell, this turned out to be a cunning ploy. When Verkoff showed up for work, both his legs were broken, an arm snapped and his body was hideously burnt until he resembles Lavros from the original viewing. In order to make the figure even slightly scary, it was decided to cast Norman Lovett to play Lavros II's voice. James Melody however, played the spectral Watcher. It easy to get the two mixed up.

As the main thrust of the first episode was to take the piss out of reality and/or quiz shows Big Brother, The Weakest Link and What Not To Wear, director Joe Ahearne came up with the brilliant idea of tricking the genuine programs into letting Doctor Who film there.

This would save any tedious re-casting or copying of sets. Indeed, Anne Robinson, Trinny Woodall, Susannah Constantine and Davina McCall all played Cybermen playing themselves while the Big Brother production company Endemol Entertainment were hoodwinked into designing a new version of their show's logo incorporating K9.

All Ahearne needed to do was cross his heart and hope to die that by appearing in Doctor Who the reputations of these other programs would not sink any lower than they already had.

It is telling that none of the authentic programs disputed this upon the broadcast of The Parting of the Legs.

Recording on the two episodes was largely confined to the studio, at that old warehouse in Newport which, upon completion of the story was cheerfully fire-bombed by the regular cast with homemade Molotov cocktails using the empty bottles left in the wake of Tom Baker.

Unfortunately, the insurance fire came too soon – scenes of the TARDIS returning to Rose's home in Cardiff had yet to be filmed and thus were shot on location at incredible expense that meant that Nigel Verkoff was not paid for his appearance in Doctor Who at all.

Work on The Parting of the Legs - and the season as a whole - concluded circa the middle of March whether the story was finished or not. There was an aura of exhaustion and relief that this interminable episodes was over.

Then they realized it would have do it all again next year!

The Parting of the Legs also brought Christopher Eccleston's brief but sexually frustrated tenure on Doctor Who to an end, much to the relief of his parents who were devout Northern Trekkies. The age of the Ninth Doctor, the "drama teaching scally pikey" incarnation, was over.

Christopher Eccleston's first role after leaving Doctor Who was reported to be a reunion with Ahearne on the romantic comedy Double Life but was in fact an apprenticeship at a fried chicken franchise named Happy Flappy Burgers.

Executive producer Russell T Davies had originally planned for the Doctor's regeneration at the end of The Parting Of The Legs to come as a shock to the audience, and before that had planned for the big shock ending be that the Doctor DIDN'T regenerate and that all the tabloids that said otherwise were unfit wasting of newsprint.

When Eccleston's departure was leaked to the press shortly after the broadcast of Ruse by a strange bald man answering to the name of Nicholas Briggs, there was a desperate attempt to recast the Ninth Doctor and simply say that Eccleston's mere presence had been journalistic fiction.

This did not work.

Indeed, no one, absolutely no one, was surprised that the final episode ended with the Doctor regenerating into a teeth-gritting lunatic with far too much gel in his hair.

They were surprised when that episode was screened at BAFTA four days before the BBC broadcast it, and were also pretty surprised when Head of Drama and Sheep, Jane Tranter, announced that there would not only be a second series and Christmas special but a third series and another Christmas special!

But, nevertheless, the actual regeneration was bloody predictable – with a shot Christopher Eccleston sneezing cutting to David Tennant hiccuping with lots of fiery CGI.

In retrospect, it was a good thing there was an advance screening as that particular week was a pretty bad time to be a Who fan waiting to see the final episode. The master tape was burned by the BBC out of sheer nostalgia, before every major newspaper in Britain combined their forces to give away the plot on billboards and released the episode onto the internet, which was promptly destroyed by Graham Norton as a huge meteorite hit the UK that Friday and the scheduled screening was put off by three months because God had returned to Earth to complain that no son of his would never have a Northern accent ala Christopher Eccleston in RTD's Second Coming.

Despite whatever RTD will tell you, the conclusion of The Parting of the Legs closed the book on the first new season of Doctor Who in sixteen years. Yes, it's true.

For more than two decades, the program had languished in increasing obscurity, viewed by the general public, the BBC and goblins as either a quaint relic of bygone times or as a cheaply-made embarrassment to the hardcore porn industry.

In the span of thirteen weeks, the new series had captured the hearts and minds – and, above all, the wallets - of the British audience, climbed to the upper echelons of ratings charts, reinvigorated Saturday night family viewing, redefined the boundaries of what British television could accomplish, single-handedly saved the NASA space program, unraveled the Human Genome, found Osama Bin Laden, ended poverty and hunger and disease, and got quite a few Who fans laid.

Doctor Who was back, and its future had perhaps never looked so much like Rose Tyler naked.


Season A Round-Up -

So, was the Christopher Eccleston era a break from the program's past? Of course it wasn't it is so firmly linked to the OLD series and Big Finish that not even that nutter who wrote TimeLink needed to rethink any continuity issues!

True, what with the 45-minute episodes and special effects that actually look even vaguely realistic, you could be mistaken for thinking this wasn't Doctor Who at all. Even portrayal of the Doctor, while deviating strongly from some eras of the program, is also not without precedent.

Eccleston's Doctor is desperate and a bit gay, with a sex life which he has to overcome, and, in this, is not a million miles from the frequently naughty, negligent and oversexed version played by William Hartnell – who also died after getting laid for the first time.

At the same time, however, the series cannot be said to be "like the original" in the sense of being a nostalgia trip simply for the sake of it. Well, apart from the gratuitous return of the Autons, Dustbins, Bastard, the Fourth Doctor and UNIT not to mention the rape and pillage of other continuities like Big Finish in The Presuming Ed, or The Curse of Fatal Death in Shell Shock, or the fanwankorama that is Death Day.

The producers of the new series are visibly not trying to pastiche Doctor Who as it was in earlier times; the destruction of Gallifrey, for instance, not only suggests that significant events have been occurring during the series' time off the air, and curiously enough lots of this would be too expensive to show on screen anyway.

If only there were some kind of pattern.

What this series does do is, like earlier seasons, take a versatile premise – a randy alien and his way-out-of-his-league companion(s) who can go anywhere in time and space and get mixed up in anything - and giving us a season of cliched science-fiction and/or fantasy series based on it.

Many of these stories focus on themes which are explicitly those of the present day, such as terrorism (which the Doctor gleefully commits), big business (which the Doctor freely supports), reality television and the rightness of the death penalty (both of which the Doctor loves to get front row seats at); however, Doctor Who has always dealt with the current issues of the time, from anxieties about scientific progress in the 1960s to Cold War revisionism in the late 1980s (both of which the Doctor strongly approved of, if only to see what happened when he pressed red buttons).

The most distinctive difference between the earlier and present series, however, has been the linking of all the stories within it in an "arc," both implicitly and explicitly. Earlier so-called "arcs" in Doctor Who have generally not been as comprehensive or thorough: "The Key to Chicken" season can easily be viewed as standalone stories, and, while it can be fun to trace the thematic links running through Season 18, what you see in "The Webber's Gate" doesn't make you go back and reevaluate "The Leisure Centre". If it does, get a life. Uniquely, this series is best viewed as a whole, rather than as standalone stories.

At least that's what the DVD people keep saying.

Whatever happens in the future, RTD and the whole acting and production team deserve to be commended for managing to pull off this difficult feat without getting lynched immediately.



BONUS! DOCTOR WHO AUDITIONS!

RTD was so knackered he cast the next person he saw as the Tenth Doctor. This turned out to be David Tennant, who had just popped in to see if he'd left his kilt behind.

This proved to be quite lucky for all those who sent the rumor mill into overdrive in the wake of Eccleston quitting. Practically everyone assumed that David Tennant would portray the Time Lord's tenth incarnation after being RTD's rent boy, stunt double for Mark Gatiss' ego and star of RTD's disturbing orgiastic extravaganza Casanova On Heat In Lanzarote.

In order to make it look like he knew what he was doing, RTD filmed several sequences for Alias of London, Shell Shock and Funky Town! where David Tennant's Doctor made the briefest of brief cameos in order to suggest that this had been the plan all along.


Extract from "Doctor Who – Casanova of TIMMMEEEEE!!" Episode 4:

(Setting: An empty room with one door. The Doctor [David Tennant] and Rose [Billie Piper] run in, followed by gunfire and the Doctor slams the door shut before the monsters can reach them. The monster look in through the window, giggle and wander off.)

Doctor: [sighs] Rat's bollocks.

Rose: What is it?

Doctor: This door only opens from the outside. And this whole building is about to explode in five minutes. I really should have waited before reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.

Rose: There must be another way out of here!

(There isn't.)

Doctor: Sonic screwdriver doesn't work either.

(Rose charges the door. And bounces off. Twice.)

Rose: Aren't you gonna try?

Doctor: Nah, I'm happy just watching you.

Rose: You're wondering if I'm regretting this, aren't you?

Doctor: (guiltily) Uh, yeah! Sure! That's what I'm wondering!

Rose: Really?

Doctor: No. Oh, I refuse to die a virgin!

(He snogs Rose.)

Doctor: You think you can stay hot till we reach the TARDIS?

Rose: How?

Doctor: I've seen the light.

Rose: You mean, bash the light fitting, crawl up into the ceiling and escape that way?

Doctor: No, I was thinking of getting God to save us – but that'll do. In a pinch. I suppose.

(They do this. The Doctor drools over Rose's arse the whole time.)

---------------------------
DOCTOR WHO
will return in
THE MICHAELMAS EVASION


No Dustbins were harmed during
the making of this program.

Adam will NOT be returning.
At any time, ever.
No.

Filmed on location in Cardiff,
Wales and on board the TARDIS.

The making of this show would
not have been possible without
the helpful co-operation of
the Dustbin Emperor.

Dedicated to the memory of the
Ninth Doctor.
Swan off in peace.
---------------------------

9th Doctor - The Parting of the Ways (iv)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who – The End of an Error
The Temporal Difference of Opinion 27-part miniseries on ITV
Doctor Who Parts Rose Tyler's Dimpled Knees (rated 15+)
Spatio-Temporal STDs – an information pamphlet all sexually active time travelers should have


Fluffs – Christopher Eccleston seemed bad wolfish in this story.

At one point he refers to Captain Jack as "Father Ted".

Some people say Jack refers to Rose as a 'stupid freaking bitch', but he actually says 'You stupid freaking game show contestant'. It's like a game of Chinese Bitches. Or something...


Goofs –
Lynda must be seriously arrogant to think that, out of 10,000 channels and 60 Big Brothers, that the Doctor must have been watching the Big Brother in which she is taking part.

At the end of one scene, Trin-E and Zu-Zana have activated the tools
on their arms to shag Captain Jack, and then the next scene they're in shows them back to normal, only to activate them again. Kinky.

Why is the station masking the Dustbin fleet from sonar? Sonar can't be used in space, as sound doesn't travel through it! Does anyone in stupid program know ANYTHING about science?!?

The interior of the Dustbin control room is actually the gents at BBC Wales with Dustbins poised at urinals. What's worse is that various non-cast-members regularly wander into the scene and use the facilities, leading to the moment when Rose starts choking and claiming her nostril hair has vaporized. "Warn us before you let one rip like that, ya massive, shrunken testicle!"

Where does the Dustbin casing inside the TARDIS go? Jack's bedroom?!

Rather than being guns from circa 200,000, the guns Jack and co are using are actually Heckler and Koch G36Ks, from the 20th century. (Thanks to Guns & Ammo Fetishist's Gazette for that one)

The Dustbin whose vision is impaired is never actually hit by a bullet. Unless this particular Dustbin was a paranoid hypochondriac, this doesn't really square.

If the dogs in Barcelona have no noses, then how do they smell? Huh! Answer me that one, then, smart arse!!


Fashion Victims –
Lavros II's thong. The skid marks were fucking genius, though!


Technobbable -
A Delta Wave is a wave of Van Halen energy, which can fry any living being's brain. It can be created by folding back and sequencing Game World's transmissions. The first known victim of a Delta Wave was Keith Richards. So now you know.


Dialogue Disasters -

Jack: I wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better off as a cucumber. As cucumbers went, I fricken' rocked.


Doctor: If I'm very clever, and I'm more than clever, I'm brilliant, I might just save the world. Or rip it apart. On reflection, my cleverness is in doubt slightly. Maybe you should do it, Rose.


The Doctor's standard farewell to female companions -
"Ladies, the pleasure was all mine... and in the end that's all that matters"


Mickey: Have you tried that new pizza place on Meatlow Road.
Jackie: What's it selling?
Mickey: Every day I wake up and I'm glad I'm not you.


Lavros II: Hail the Doctor. The Great Exterminator.
Doctor: At last, I get some of the recognition I deserve. I'm rather chuffed, to tell you the truth.


Anne Droid: Rose Ty-ler. You leave this life... with noth-ing.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Fan-TAST-ic!
Rose: I do not think that word means what you think it does.
Doctor: Fantastic? It means 'fantasic!'
Rose: But why do you say it all the time?
Doctor: Because it sounds a bit like a Gallifreyan word.
Rose: Really?
Doctor: Yeah. One that translates roughly as, 'absolutely super and fucking brilliant in every imaginable and conceivable way'. But that's a bit long. So I tend to say 'fantastic' instead.
Rose: And what's this Gallifreyan word, then?
Doctor: Ocjinoktihenaton.



Lavros II auditions for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown:
"I AM THE GOD OF ALL DUSTBINS!
And I bring yooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...
FIRE!!!
...du-du-du..
I BRING YOU TO BURN!"


Doctor: There's a time and a place. Stop flirting.
Jack: I was just having a threesome with two effeminate robots and a gun stuffed up my arse.
Doctor: For you, that's flirting.


Doctor: Don't be so thick. Like I was ever going to shoot.
(The gun goes off and three men fall dead)
Doctor: Oops.


Jack: Do these pants make me look like an out of bounds sort of guy?


Lynda: I don't believe in sex before marriage.
Doctor: And with that sentence you just lost the right to talk to me.


Dialogue Oddities -

(ORIGINAL SCRIPT)
The Doctor: The Human Race... Brain dead sheep. Fed on a diet of hardcore porn, Nazi sympathy and intellectual garbage. All creativity, imagination, stamped out of the demographic. The ratings war won.

(ON SCREEN)
Chris Eccleston: The Human Race... Brain dead sheep. Fed on a diet of... Mind you - have they still got that program where three people have to live with a bear? Oh, Bear With Me - I love that one! The celebrity edition where the bear got in the bath. Fantastic!


UnQuotable Quote –

Jack: Ladies, your ratings just went UP!!! Just the ratings, mind.


Links and References -
Hoooooo boy.
Lots. Lots and lots. Shitloads, in fact.
Here's the only one I can be bothered to record – in the Big Brother house is a painting of two Romana's two incarnations snogging.


Untelevised Misadventures -
Captain Jack rambles incoherently about a journey to Kyoto, Japan, 1336 – well, he THINKS it was Japan. Rural Japan looks identical to Welsh countryside, so they might have been in Cardiff. Again. Jack brags how he used his mighty samurai sword while Rose dressed as a Geisha Girl to pay the bills. Then the time travelers had to defend a small village from an attack by the evil Fibremen of Sprong.

Or it could have just been that yellow mellow he was smoking.


K9 Conspiracy –
Rose has an LSD flashback of the times she has encountered the name K9 – The Presuming Ed, I, Dustbin, Funky Town!, Alias of London and The Long Haul. She has another flashback to Funky Town! apropos of nothing.
Ultimately, it turns out to have been a coincidence the whole time.
Shit.


Subtext? WHAT Subtext? -

The presence of genuine logos and game presenters in The Parting of the Legs, however, raises the question of whether this is the Doctor Who promoting other programs.
On the one hand, Doctor Who can be said to have turned the tables on Endemol, Trinny and Susannah et al., by getting them to participate willingly in a story showing up their own programmes as demeaning and dehumanising agents of social control, in exchange for a modicum of publicity.
At the same time, however, they are, it must be said, gaining exposure from this: there is a school of thought, after all, which says that no publicity is bad publicity.
But, really... who cares?


Groovy DVD Extras –
An altered audio track of the regeneration scene, allowing you to hear the subliminal message from Nicholas Briggs in his best Dustbin voice: "THIS IS NOT CAN-NON! ON-LY NICH-O-LAS BRIGGS IS THE DOC-TOR!!"

Plus all the alternative endings, natch.


Psychotic Nostalgia –
"You know, I never really thought that 'Fan-TAS-tic!!' was a good catchphrase for the Ninth Doctor. I always thought that 'If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times... you can never get enough of Cardiff, and its environs, and well, pardon my enthusiasm, Wales in general! Let's go back and watch Tom Jones being born again! There's space in the room for several of us each, so we can go back as many times as we like! That's a fun ride! And man, is this a long catchphrase!! I'm going to have to write this one on my sleeve!' It'd look brilliant on T-shirts. Of course, there was always that other suggestion for a catchprase, 'Booga-booga-booga'."


Viewer Quotes -

"I think the snog was absolutely disgusting! The Doctor is 900 years old and Jack's about 40... I don't pay my licence fee to witness surrealist paedophilia! I don't pay it at all – and it's also very misleading of the BBC to suggest that it's only okay to kiss young women when they're possessed by a time vortex..."
- Col. Sir Arthur Strong (Mrs) (2005)


"I predicted that, in this story, Rose may leave, or be captured, or die, or get married off, or become a separate time travelling agent, or have her mind taken over, or all of these. Either way something happens to separate Rose and the Doctor. Bloody good guess, eh?"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke's Unnervingly Accurate Predictions (2004)


"Yes, in Blake's 7 I often had to pull various items out of my arse to save the day and I'm glad the tradition has been picked up by Captain Jack in the new Doctor Who. Still, considering how prolifically bisexual Captain Jack is, his bum is probably as capacious as the Fourth Doctor's coat pockets. I mean, is Captain Jack's rectum dimensionally transcendental? If it is, imagine how clever that would be for the script writers? If, for example, Captain Jack hanging naked off a cliff, he'll just pull out a copy of Everest In Easy Stages out of his sphincter. Genius. Absolute genius."
- Paul Darrow (2005)


"I thought the set for the Dustbin Saucer was genius. At last we can prove that the original 1960s sets weren't DODGY - that's actually the way the interior of Dustbin ships looks!!! It's so self-referential and postmodern my head is going to explode. Whoops, there it goes."
- Matt Irvine (2006)


"What complete and utter shite! I know exactly what happens in episodes 12 and 13 AND THIS AIN'T IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I should know, I wrote it with my good friend Eric, didn't I?"
- Ian Levine (2005)


"I thought that the line 'I'll wipe every fucking Dustbin from the sky' was, on the cheese scale, a vintage blue stilton. I've always thought of RTD's cheese more a soft Camembert as it has a white, downy rind and a rich buttery interior. It should be soft to the touch, and ooze thickly when cut into. I think RTD's writing oozes thickly. Don't you?"
– Wallace from "Wallace And Gromitt" (2007)


"SHURRUP, YA BIG CHINESE JOBBY!"
- Average Six Year Old Response To Nigel Verkoff (2005)


"Does RTD know "The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley? No? Pity. I was wondering what it was like. Do YOU know "The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley? No? Pity. I was wondering what it was like..."
- Odd guy in the pub answering to the name "Ballcock" (2005)


"Good heavens. I don't believe it. Russell T. Davies has made possibly the best, most exciting and most enjoyable episode of Doctor Who ever. I don't believe it. At all. It's lies!" – Flamingo Jones (2005)


"I heard this creepy voice during the regeneration scene. It told me to kill the American president. Then, another voice saying "Kiss the dirt, hippie scum wad! I'm gonna kick yer butt, you commie pinko!". Then, a regulation .45 to the back of my head and the next thing I knew I was swiftly and efficiently being exported to Cuba. You know, maybe it wasn't telling me to kill. It could just have been the recipe for a smashing lentil soup." – Robin Cook (2005)


"I refused to watch the rest of the series because I knew they would be crap... But when I heard there was to be a twelfth episode, my heart sank into my boots and for several seconds I lost the will to live. Damn you, RTD! And damn JST for inspiring you! My infallible expectations were rock bottom and I bet every overseas fan will hate it as well. At least because I (unlike the rest of the so-called Who fans) refuse to use the foul "inter-nation duper-sky-way" I was spoiler free for this story, but I was spoiled anyway because it was stomach-churningly awful. Tears of joy prickled these tired old eyes at the fan-orgy in the last few minutes of the episode. But I knew RTD couldn't convincingly end this 13-episode slog of audio-visual pig slop. We didn't get to see the huge CGI destruction of mankind that Star Trek, er, hasn't done either! The final episode is a study in the missed opportunity of not letting ME write the last episode! I groaned non-stop throughout the first five minutes, and why oh why didn't they scrap Rose from the start and replace her with Tegan?! Hmm? Answer me that! And the Doctor should have fried the fucker's brains! I hate Christopher Eccleston and will kill him now JUST so I can spit on his maggot-ridden corpse! JST lives! DEAR GOD, THIS IS INEFFABLE SHITE AND NO MISTAKE!" – a typically upbeat review by eyeofsauros.com.uk (2005


Billie Piper Speaks!
"I was really glad Russell T Davies ripped off every Buffy season finale he could for this. It means I've got all the reasons I need to get a musical episode next year. OK, that's enough. Officer, take him to jail and throw away the key."

(Don't worry, I was running that detention centre in no time)


Christopher Eccleston Speaks!
"A lot of factors were involved in my departure from Doctor Who. Yes, it is true I didn't want to be typecast. Yes, it is true that Tom Baker continually broke free from prison and accosted me in the street. Yes, it is true I developed an interesting number of skin diseases over the course of 2005. And it is true that my father was a devout Trekkie who believed that I had done the unthinkable in joining Doctor Who. It is also true that when I left the show I had recorded enough material for five years of my Doctor – just that half of it would never see the light of day.

But the reason, the REAL reason I left Doctor Who that I decided to stop and break away was... well, Billie.

Now, don't get me wrong, Billie is a beautiful, wonderful person and incredibly talented as an actor and singer. And she can do things with her tongue that quite defy description. But I suppose that the two of us, together, day in and day out, playing characters who ultimately shagged each other senseless... It was bound to have an effect.

When we discovered our union had produced a child, well, I had to put the career second."

"So, you left because you got Billie pregnant?"

"Sort of, yeah."

"So, why is SHE in the next series?"

"...Oh, fuck, I've got this back to front! Excuse me... Russell! Darling! It's Chris here. I've had second thoughts. There's been a terrible misunderstanding... No, don't hang up! Hello? Russell? Hello? ... Fantastic. Fan-bloody-tastic."


Jack Barrowman Speaks!
"Christopher Eccleston tastes of cinnamon. NORTHERN cinnamon."


Russell T Davies Speaks!
"It was the greatest of plans. To regenerate the Doctor, on-air, out of the blue, and leave kids reeling with shock. It was genuinely exciting, and all of us – actors, producers, agents, Controllers – embarked on the grand scheme. Ah well, it's never foolish to try. Maybe it WAS foolish to brag about it in every single Doctor Who Confidential episode and writes reams about it in my DWM column. Our plans came to naught. Oh, well. At least I still have the love of the Moxx of Baloon to keep me sane, unlike those poor, sad losers in The Bill and Coronation Street."

9th Doctor - The Parting of the Ways (iii)

-------------Transcriber's Note-------------
This, however, is not the ONLY end to this story. Due to various reasons, the ending of The Parting of the Legs was re-shot a total of twenty-seven times. Due to the time manipulation occurring in the main plot, Russell T Davies insists that all the alternate endings are absolutely canonical. Just not very good...
--------------------------------------------


"The Ending" By A Douglas Adams Impersonator

As the Dustbins close in on the Doctor, he realizes he'll never defuse the Delta Wave in time. The Dustbins open fire on the Doctor, but the possessed Rose arrives in the TARDIS and prevents the energy from killing the Doctor via convincing the death rays that they are really a small Yorkshire terrier called Bobby.

Rose then re-winds time to just before the Dustbins entered and the Doctor finishes wiring up his machine. Lavros II baits the Doctor to become the 'great exterminator', and the Doctor DOES pull the lever.

Except, it wasn't a Delta Wave but simply a neutron flow polarization reverser – the massive transmat grid built into the Game World switches on, picking up every organic life form and placing them one metre to the left.

The beams activate, the Doctor and Rose appear one metre to the left – and so do all the Dustbin mutants, which are ripped from their cases and expire in hideous gore.

Rose asks just why, if the Doctor wasn't building a Delta Wave, was he trying to escape in the TARDIS, and why he sent all the incidental characters to their death? And what about all the hundreds of people who have been encased in concrete or thrown out of tall buildings?

The Doctor says "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" By The Terry Nation Estate

Captain Jack and his team kill a Dustbin, hide inside it and penetrate the Dustbin saucer and, after countless escapes and recaptures, the Face of Bond overcomes his intense fear of cheese and uses a conveniently discarded high explosive to kill himself, and also defeat the Dustbins – all bar one ship that fly off, the occupants screaming "Next time, Doctor! NEXT TIME!"

The Doctor and Rose debate various love interests and leave in the TARDIS after replacing a vital piece of equipment which went missing.

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by Camille Coduri's Agent

Jackie decides she's much better for this adventure lark and uses her nail file to open the TARDIS console. The light consumes her and, filled with the energy of a God, travels forward to the Gamestation leaving Mickey and Rose looking like guppies at feeding time.

The possessed Jackie kicks the shit out of Dustbins and rips them apart as the TARDIS destroys every rival Doctor Who iconic image.

Jackie seduces the Doctor in a clear cut-and-paste from Ruse, and this time the Doctor accepts because a Tyler woman glowing bright orange after absorbing the entire vortex is a major turn-on.

One quickie later, the Doctor and Jackie leave in the TARDIS, abandoning Jack on the Game World. Unfortunately, both the Doctor and Jackie are dying from vortex poisoning. Oh, if only they'd used protection! If only!

However, for some bizarre reason the Doctor drops dead and Jackie regenerates into a flaxon-haired space babe with exactly the same face and body, much to the surprise of Mickey and Rose.

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by A Rabid Eccleston Fan Who Swears Blind He Can Get Chris To Come Back For Another Year

The Doctor ditches Jack and Rose on the Game World to die while he escapes in the TARDIS. Unfortunately, it lands back on the Dustbin Saucer. The Doctor shrugs and says, "OK, Plan A, then!"

On the Game World, Jack and Rose watch in mild surprise as the Dustbin Saucer is utterly destroyed in fantastic CGI manipulation.

Jack soliloquizes about "the Temporal Difference Of Opinion taking its last victims" in a surprising passionate and erudite manner – but it turns out he's simply reading this off the back of a Blue Oyster Cult record that just happened to be lying around.

Everyone laughs cheesily as the credits roll.

Once the credits are finished, everyone wanders off and thus completely misses the re-materialization of the TARDIS.

To Be Continued...

---

"The Ending" by A Completely Different Rabid Eccleston Fan Who Swears Blind He Can Get Chris To Come Back For Another Year

After the end of the televised version, the Tenth Doctor and Rose decide that this isn't really working out. Thus, they send the TARDIS back to 2012 Cardiff the day BEFORE the Ninth Doctor and Rose visited it in "I, Dustbin."

The Doctor throws a handy thermonuclear warhead out the TARDIS doors and they take off. The vault is destroyed along with the last Dustbin and Adam Mitchell, and the last seven episodes never happened.

The Doctor regresses back to his Ninth body in a puff of logic.

Everyone laughs cheesily and then the Dommervoy attack.

To Be Continued And/Or The End Depending On Your Point Of View

---

"The Ending" By Gay Russell

The Doctor realizes that he has absolutely no idea how to defeat the Dustbins and so flees in the TARDIS with Rose, leaving Jack and the others to their unpleasant fate.

The Doctor sets course for the Last Great Dispute in the Temporal Difference of Opinion and decides to take notes about how his previous self resolved the battle between the Dustbins and the Time Lords.

Unfortunately, the TARDIS is destroyed by friendly fire.

The whole series becomes un-canon and the adventures of the Eighth Doctor as played by Paul McGann continue in Big Finish.

Everyone laughs cheesily and tells RTD to bugger off.

The End.

---

"The Ending" By Andrew Beeblebrox While Snorting Anthrax.

The entire story turns out to be a big practical joke played by the Beadle-droid and everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" By Clayton Hickman

With her amazing vortex powers, Rose has stupidly brought the evil game show robots back to life and they immediately advance on the copulating time travelers, who hastily dress and run for it.

Rose drags the Doctor into the TARDIS and takes off as the Time Lord idly pats his pockets for a post-coital cigarette. Unfortunately, due to her terrible driving skills, the TARDIS instantly hurtles into a vortex of time distortion and the room begins to shake and alarms start going off in a suitably doom-laden manner.

The Doctor suddenly starts going on about how relationships grow, change and develop; how it's not Rose, it's him; how a chain of circumstances is fragmenting the law that holds the universe together... in short, Rose is dumped.

Yes, clearly the fact that Rose is infected with vortex energy means that she must be ejected from the TARDIS for the safety of the universe.

"There's no point going on, Rose. I've taught you all you need to know about cross-species sex antics - now you can do it yourself," the Doctor says cheerfully as the doors vibrate and bang apart.

But the unrelenting force doesn't drag Rose out of the TARDIS, but the Doctor that's sucked towards fatal death! Obviously, the Time Lord has got the vortex infection due to their sexual congress!

"Oh, fantastic!" the Doctor bitches as he vanishes from sight.

To Be Continued...

---

"The Ending" By Gareth Roberts

Rose is infected with vortex energy and that means she must be ejected from the TARDIS for the safety of the universe.

"There's no point going on, Rose. I've taught you all you need to know about cross-species sex antics - now you can do it yourself," the Doctor says cheerfully as the doors vibrate and bang apart.

But the unrelenting force doesn't drag Rose out of the TARDIS, but the Doctor that's sucked towards fatal death! Obviously, the Time Lord has got the vortex infection due to their sexual congress!

"Oh, fantastic!" the Doctor bitches as he vanishes from sight.

Rose flips the Doctor the bird as the doors shut. Suddenly, a spiky-haired Scotsman in a leather enters the console room and announces that he is the Doctor.

"Hello Rose, I'm the fourth Doctor. Let's see the fans try and sort out what's canon now!"

The Doctor quickly changes the topic of why he is completely different and decides to set course for Cardiff to see Rose's mother and refuses point blank the idea that they might not get on or the idea he might sleep with Rose.

This confirms in Rose's mind the idea that this 'Doctor' in fact a rather badly-made replicant on behalf of K9's Kennel Club. She ducks into the corridor and starts warming up the chainsaw...

To Be Continued Even More Than That...

---

"The Ending" By Mad Larry The Pirate Queen

As Lavros II chides the Doctor on his cowardice, a sinister gleam forms in the Doctor's eye as screaming psychotic guitar music plays.

"Are you a killer or a coward?" Lavros II demands.

The Doctor opens his leather jack to reveal he has a mass of nitro-9 strapped to his chest ala a suicide bomber.

"Guess!" the Doctor grins and...

Banggg!!!

To Be Continued...

---

"The Ending" by Clive "Hurt Me Baby" Finch

As the Dustbins advance on the Doctor he realizes that they are not, in fact, Distbun mutants but the hideous offspring of ape-like Morons and the Slyther, a 22nd century cyberpunk man-eating girl.

The are not Dustbins, but Slythorons – and gay ones at that.

So delighted at how things are going, the Slythorons start 'plunging' each other through the specially-designed holes in their rears, and these scenes will really push the limits of what we expect to see Dustbins do and say on British TV.

Upon learning this, the Doctor shags the Slythoron and they fuse together to form the Dogron - a single sex mutant who takes a fancy to one of the Dustbins which he calls 'Petal'.

The conclusion of The Parting of the Legs is the destruction of Petal, leaving only Petal's skeleton. Dogron scoops up a rib and runs away as Lavros II announces "and the Dogron's away with the bone".

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by Jerry Springer

As the Dustbins invade, the Doctor delves into his pocket and finds a stale K9 Kebab with which he destroys the invaders. Jack suddenly announces he is the Bastard's sister and Adam's boyfriend before shooting the Doctor. As he regenerates, the Time Lord becomes a thieving kleptomaniac who nick Rose's purse and shags her mum.

This is ultimately shown to be another episode hosted by Trisha Droid, being shown on a pub television set.

The Eighth Doctor watches it, sipping a pint, and tells C'Rizz on the stool next to him that, "He doesn't look a thing like me."

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by some chick in That's Life Fast Fictions Monthly

The Ninth Doctor reveals he is, in fact, really the Bastard and the other one is just a decoy. At that moment, the horrible Xerox race descend from the heavens – the entire Temporal Difference of Opinion was staged via a potato and some finger puppets.

Rose returns to reveal she is a Slitheen who looks identical to Billie Piper, employed by none other than Harriet Jones who is the Eighth Doctor in drag. One glass of Downing Street port wine and she regenerates into... Presuming Ed.

Everyone laughs like they're standing in a busy Amsterdam street.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by Sigourny Weaver

The Doctor activates the Delta Wave in slow motion with loud minor violin chords and Lavros II screams in horror.

And a Dustbin embryo bursting out of his chest!

To Be Continued...

---

"The Ending" By Flamingo Jones

The Doctor realizes that all he needs to do is reverse the polarity of the neutron flow to destroy the Dustbin fleet. Lavros II realizes this, fouls himself, and escapes in an escape pod.

Jack foreswears the demon drink, drugs and derogatory sexual acts and decides to become a missionary on Earth. Using the missionary position quite a lot, presumably.

Rose decides that this show sucks and demands to be returned home to Mum – her originally leaving was just a cry for help. The Doctor turfs her out, admits to Mickey that he is adopted and his real name is Ricky and leaves to get Adam Rickitts as a companion.

"Mum, I'd like a small port," says Rose.

"Greedy, Rose!" Jackie replies, "Most people would settle for just one sailor."

And everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" by Monty Python

As the Dustbins crowd around the Doctor, he begins... to SING!

The Dustbins run away very loudly and quickly.

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End (of Llamas, anyway)

---

"The Ending" by Mal Young

After leaving the Game World (and everyone on it dead), the Doctor discovers Rose is still infected with a deadly vortex STD and rabbits on about Barcelona for a few minutes until Rose drops dead.

The Doctor checks himself over and is amazingly relieved to discover he is still in perfect health.

He laughs cheesily.

The End.

---

"The Ending" By Mark Gatiss

As the Dustbins invade the Gamestation, the Doctor sends Jack and Rose into the TARDIS and tells them not – repeat NOT – hit the blue button until he is safely aboard.

As the original, confusion leads to the Doctor being abandoned on the space station as the TARDIS escapes the killing zone.

Rose decides to return home and sell her story to the newspaper and Jack decides to keep the TARDIS and search for what alcoholic mixture wiped two years of his memory and hopefully drink some more.

Mickey and Jackie are glad that the Doctor's dead meat and that Rose is back. After a few false starts, Jack finally works out how to make the TARDIS dematerialize.

Elsewhere, the badly-injured Doctor uses the station's transmat beams to place him on an escape pod just as the Delta Wave is unleashed. The escape pod narrowly escapes the affected area and with the parting shot of "Oh, yeah – I'm your daddy!" the Doctor regenerates using his oddly-buzzing sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS key.

The new Doctor is indescribably pissed off when he discovers that the escape pod's controls are wrecked and the sonic screwdriver battery is flat – he has been left marooned in deep space.

And he STILL hasn't got any sex!!

To Be Continued...

---

"The Ending" By Cameron J Mason From His Orbiting Space Station

The Doctor activates the Certain Death Wave and nothing happens - in all the wiring up he forgot to plug it in!

He plugs it in, only to realize that he left it switched on!

Everyone drops dead.

A tumbleweed goes by.

Rose arrives in the TARDIS, full of the Time Vortex, and smacks her forehead as she realizes she was just too late.

She then feels compelled to take her clothes off to a Doctor Who-ey version of The Stripper's Song that replaces the opening credits.

The End. Sort of.

---

"The Ending" By Me When I Was Completely Off My Face

After four minutes and forty five seconds of uninterrupted Slitheen farting, we cut to the Doctor and Jack piloting the police box to the Dustbin saucer. Sudden Jackie and Mickey appear out of nowhere and start swooping around the TARDIS singing Celine Dion songs and then vanish in a puff of smoke.

Emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jack encounter a giant glass Dustbin containing John Scott Martin butt naked. He reveals the Moxx of Baloon is, in fact, Joan Collins – the love child of Adam and Lynda. Jack suddenly shouts "23-06-801" at the top of his voice.

The JSM Dustbin is also Adam's dog metamorphosed after freakishly blending with the Face of Bond Junior and has allied itself with the Rwandans, the enemies of the Tudors.

Upon realizing that the Slitheen are to be the force BEHIND Lavros II, the Doctor and Jack spent 16 minutes and 5 seconds rolling around naked in a big vat of baked beans pleasuring each-other.

The Dustbin fleet returns to 2006 but find it already invaded by giant kittens. Lavros II falls foul of Hulk Hogan. With the battle joined, the Myrka rises from the sea and kills absolutely everybody involved.

Jackie and Mickey celebrate surviving with a shag before Jackie reveals to Mickey he's got Rose pregnant. As Mickey reels from that, Jackie and the Doctor make out on the TARDIS console.

Suddenly, Charles "Ruler of the Laxity of the Multiverses" Dickens arrives and orders the Doctor to regenerate before he allows Saturday Night Fever to be filmed inside the TARDIS.

But, the Doctor does not so much regenerate but grins, flicks the V sign at the camera and laughs insanely.

The TARDIS materializes on a railway station and, as the Doctor and Rose explore it becomes apparent they are trapped in a painting – which the Eighth Doctor has finished painting for Charley.

Elsewhere, Rose wakes up and finds Patrick Duffy in her shower.

Everyone laughs cheesily.

The End.

9th Doctor - The Parting of the Ways (ii)

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9th Doctor - The Parting of the Ways (i)

Serial 110 – The Parting of the Legs
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Misdirection

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides – Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial 110 – The Parting of the Legs -


"So, what are we going to do tonight, Doctor?"

"The same thing we do every night, Rose! Try to stop evil aliens taking over the universe!"

"But I'm sick of watching you play Space Invaders."

"Shut it, Rose."


{Previously on Doctor Who – The Long Haul}
Some time ago, the Doctor and Rose visited Tri-Solar Speedway Championship Racecourse, a space station orbiting Earth in the year 200,000, and learned that the Fourth Grand Prix Gymkhana was being used by the evil Moxx of Baloon and his flunky Time Lord the Bastard to manipulate the pathetic empire of Humanity.
Then, the Moxx of Baloon buggered off, as did the Bastard, and the Doctor and Rose departed, not giving a fig if history was back on track or not...
{And now on Doctor Who – The Parting of the Legs}


Now, 100 years later, the Doctor materializes with a flash of light in a suspiciously neat lavatory. Awakening from a dream that resembles Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History Time but with more dancing girls and Rose Tyler eating a banana very slowly, the Doctor awakes seriously dazed and confused.

He stumbles out of the toilet into a badly-decorated common room marked with primary colours, pop art and a recurring symbol – K9's BB.

An even worse-decorated woman called Lynda meets him and helps him up, unsure if he is disoriented from being transmatted into 'the House' or whether he's just another Northern drunk.

Lynda cheerfully explains to the Doctor that he's been chosen as a housemate. Two other housemates hurl racist and homophobic abuse at the dazed Time Lord. At first they assume that he is a wasted intruder, but it becomes clear he is a new housemate and clearly the Davina Droid has forgotten to tell them.

Suddenly, a deep electronic voice of the Davina Droid orders the Doctor into 'the Diary Room'.

As he starts to recover from the effect of the transmat, the Doctor realizes that he's somehow become a contestant on Big Brother and finally starts vomiting everywhere.

Yes, really.

Big Brother.

Honest.

As the Doctor says, "You have GOT to be fucking kidding."


ACT ONE – ON THE GAME WORLD

Parte The First

Rose awakens in a dark room, and at first believes that Mickey is finally about to have his naughty way with her – but the curly-haired man in the long multicoloured scarf is actually named Rasputin.

Rasputin helps her to her feet and guides her to the central dais. Rose is struggling to work out what's happened to her and Rasputin admits he has a thing for a concussed blondes, but there is a time and a place and it sure ain't this.

Standing behind podiums on the platforms are four other ditzy blondes and Rasputin is delighted to have found the fifth he needs.

The floor manager, technicians and director finish their preparations and activate the Anne Droid. Rose has just become a contestant on The Weakest Link.

No, seriously, I'm not making this up.

Meanwhile, Jack has awoken found himself stripped naked by two robots who plan to change his wardrobe and then his face with some cosmetic chainsaw surgery.

Jack has no problem with that whatsoever.

As the Doctor tries and fails to break out of the House, Lynda introduces herself as a sweet, sexy 201st century girl and thus perfect companion material for the next series.

The Doctor remembers his strange abduction from the TARDIS by a bright white light and realizes that Big Brother must seriously be gasping for contestants if they've kidnapped him and his cronies. He also finds himself idly calculating the possibility that he might die of some vortex-related sexually-transmitted disease in a very cheap piece of foreshadowing.

Up in the broadcast control suite, the Face of Bond watches on as the Doctor addresses the camera directly, warning whoever's in charge that he's going to get out of the House, find his friends, and find out what's really going on here. And shag Rose while he's at it.

"Hmmmmmmm," says the Face of Bond enigmatically.

Down in the Weakest Link studio, the first round begins, and the Anne Droid begins to bombard Rose and her fellow contestants with trivia questions on a variety of pop cultural topics.

What subtle satirical commentary!

Rose and the other blondes can answer very few of the questions, but they enjoy themselves in any case. By the time the first round is over, one of the blondes is voted the weakest link. Actually, it was a different blonde who got the most questions wrong, but the others just get confused.

Anne Droid skewers the weakest link, who instead of the Walk of Shame does the Vaporization of Shame. The robot then disposes the genuine weakest link for being annoying.

Rose, proving herself as being slightly more intelligent than the scenery, decides to play to win.

Rasputin cackles evilly.

In the Big Brother House, the Doctor is forced to join his fellow housemates on the sofa to wait for the next eviction notice – like he cares. As he's a new arrival, he has no chance of eviction whatsoever and when Crosbie gets evicted, he couldn't give a toss.

Admittedly, his attention is gripped when Crosbie steps into the exit chamber and is machine-gunned into white dust.

The Doctor shrugs – after all, housemates have freedom of choice. Lynda points out that they don't, as demonstrated by the Doctor's surreal kidnapping. As there are plenty of other Big Brother houses and other such lethal reality TV shows, the Doctor realizes that Rose is in equal danger. He refuses to let her die before she has sex with him.

The Doctor has a cunning plan – he will destroy a camera with the sonic screwdriver and thus get automatic eviction.

Lynda reminds him he will evicted to death and the Doctor starts swearing very, very loudly. As he is live on TV, this expedites his eviction immediately.

The Doctor is forced into the exit chamber, then realizes that as everyone else has been stupid enough to wait for death, no one has ever actually tried to escape. The door is in fact unlocked and so the Doctor and Lynda run for it.

"Fry my nuggets, that was a close one," the Doctor admits.

Strood remains where he is, now confident he has won this round of Big Brother and can soon land a record contract, exercise video and appearance on Gimme-Gimme-Gimme – The Next-Next-Next Generation.

Suddenly, Strood notices an all-white figure step from the shadows, look around, stamp its foot, check its invisible wrist-watch and hurries out of the house after the Doctor.

Back in the B plot thread, Rasputin votes off another blonde and explains over a jelly baby he ensured that he was up against a bunch of mindless airheads so he couldn't help but win.

Rose realizes Rasputin's jelly babies are 'K9-sponsored variety assortment' and has an LSD flashback to the other times that she's heard about K9, overlaid over the title sequence in true JST fashion.

The Doctor and Lynda realize that they are aboard Brand Hatch racetrack in the year 200100, a century after his last visit. The racing car/Gymkhana feel has been abandoned and the orbiting space satellite is now called the Game World, or – to give it its proper name – K9's Kennel Club.

The Doctor broods on the significance of this for a full three seconds before offering the single, unattached and clearly up-for-it Lynda a permanent place aboard the TARDIS.

Watching this with a rising sense of disbelief is the Face of Bond, who decides to complain to the Controller that the station security guards are bloody noticeable by their absence.

The Controller – a familiar-looking robot dog in a Ming the Merciless-style cloak – is wired directed into the computer systems and monitors everything that takes place on the Game World.

And he does it doggy style!


Parte The Second

Meanwhile, Jack has finally sobered up to find himself in bed with two robots who he has unintentionally killed with a compact laser gun stuck up his arse. Happens all the time where he comes from.

Dazed, the Captain puts on his new outfit of a giant raisin and wanders off in search of the Doctor or at least some booze. Using his incredible power of smell, he begins to search for the patchouli-oil scent of the Time Lord.

Lynda and the Doctor step out onto an observation deck, where the Doctor is mildly amused to learn that due to the intervention of one Adam Mitchell a century ago, the end of the Fourth Grand Prix Gymkhana caused Earth society to collapse and allowed the rise of reality TV.

Jack stumbles in, mumbling he's heard something incredibly heavy from two decapitated robots about the name 'K9' getting scattered throughout the universe.

The Doctor realizes that whatever is responsible no doubt has Rose in its evil clutches. He smells plot resolution and decides for no apparent reason to check out Floor 400. By way of explanation all he says is that he loves the smell of jelly babies in the morning.

As they head for the lift, Jack points out he saw a strange all-white figure watching them. The Doctor is rather skeptical, saying if he paid any attention to various spectral figures Jack claims are watching him all the time, there simply wouldn't be enough hours in the day.

In The Weakest Link, Rasputin and Rose are head to head and must answer five questions correctly if they are to win.

Rose loses. Quelle surprise.

The Doctor, Jack and Lynda arrive and as Anne Droid swerves to gun them down, Rose decides to run for it. Well, either that or save the Doctor (which do you think is more credible?)

Either way, she gets reduced to ash and incredibly sad music plays over slow motion shots of security teams arriving and beating up the trio of intruders with such violence even Rodney King winced.

"Damn it!" the Ninth Doctor screams. "I'LL NEVER GET LAID NOW!!"

Rasputin (really the Fourth Doctor) runs for it, arguing that in five regenerations' time he'll feel the Ninth Doctor's pain, so karma at least is satisfied.

Watching all this is the strangely-familiar-but-head-scratchingly-mysterious white figure, which mimes yawning with boredom as security guards close in around the Ninth Doctor, Jack and Lynda.

The trio are captured, have their belongings stolen, are stripped naked and attacked with high-pressure hoses, photographed, incriminated, put to work in a call centre and finally get sent to the tacky-looking penal colony Desperado, where only the worst TV offenders are sent.

This horrible fate seems to snap the Doctor from his dullard trance and one bad edit later the trio are free, armed, and storming up Floor 500. The Face of Bond sees the Ninth Doctor's face and starts to panic, but the Controller tells him to grow up and act like a severed head.

The Doctor, Jack and Lynda arrive on Floor 500, bursting through the doors armed to the teeth. "Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every mother-fucking last one of ya!" Jack says calmly.

The Doctor is horrified to learn that the Controller is K9 – one of a job lot of robot dogs he was given by a strange man called Bi-Al.

The Face of Bond explains that K9 customized Brands Hatch into K9's Kennel Club Space Hotel and soon dominated the airways with the likes of the severed heads of Keith Chegwin, Christopher Biggins and Buck's Fizz. After the first eighteen years, humanity grew tired of comedy sketches, game segments like In The Doghouse and guest stars like Bernie Clifton, Bob Carolgees and the Krankies.

Since then, K9 had been forced to tackle reality TV and game shows for over 10, 000 channels to keep humanity watching. It was then the little robot dog had a cunning plan.

In flagrant disregards to the Laws of Time and Plot Development, he decided to make the Face of Bond wait until the year Five Billion and the Earth was being destroyed. When the Doctor turned up, the Face of Bond released a swarm of nano-cameras to follow and record the Doctor's screwed-up adventures. All the K9 references were just station idents and cutting, fourth-wall-breaking in-jokes.

"Of course!" the Doctor exclaims. "That's why I've never been able to steer the TARDIS since Milliways!"

"Negative, Master. You are a shithouse driver," K9 replies.

The Face of Bond explains that after a while, K9 would simply re-start a time loop around the TARDIS, and so have the Eighth Doctor fighting the Temporal Difference of Opinion and start the whole chain of events again. "It's cheaper than repeats," the Face of Bond explains, before showing an isolation tank containing the Eighth Doctor playing a GameBoy and eating crisps.

However, even the mindless viewers of the 201st century have tired of these re-runs and so K9 came up with the idea of creating retro TV shows and then placing incredibly famous TV celebrities into them and watching them die horribly. The robots staffing the project are actually Cybermen in poor drag outfits.

Jack, bored, wanders into a cupboard and finds the TARDIS sitting there. He enters it and pauses upon catching sight of Rose's denim jacket draped over a nearby railing. Struggling for about five minutes to remember who the jacket belonged to, he shrugs and wanders off, scratching his arse.

The Doctor demands K9 reveal exactly how the hell he survived the destruction of Gallifrey in the Temporal Difference of Opinion and just why he is so interested in TV ratings.

Gamesworld then powers down momentarily then cut out as the energy from the solar flares reaches Earth, interfering with transmission and every TV screen in the cosmos is shown a test card while 'Green Onions' plays in the background.

For just a few moments, the station is not broadcasting - and K9 reveals he was saved at the last moment by an evil being who wired him up to the station, hiding, watching, waiting and guiding humanity behind the scenes for centuries.

However, as the being can easily be beaten by the Doctor, K9 has engineered the arrival of his former owner.

The solar flares end, and as the station begins transmitting again,
Jack stumbles out of the TARDIS, remembering that one of the robots he was having sex with earlier explained the disintegration beams are actually rather poor transmats and all the 'dead' contestants are being placed in a confinement centre. In Cardiff.

K9 confirms this and reveals that Rose, is, in fact, alive and well and tells the Doctor that he must strike a fatal blow against the enemy within Cardiff at once before the robot dog is transmatted away...

...and encounters his controllers. K9 triumphantly announces that the dipwad fell for his story hook, line and sinker! Their evil plans cannot be stopped now!

Back on the Game World, Jack mentions seeing that strange white being in the TARDIS, just standing there and watching the Doctor before disappearing the second Jack took his eyes off him.

"You've got one weird stalker, mate," he slurs at the Doctor.

Suspecting that it might be a red herring in the plot, the Doctor decides to ignore it and gets Jack and the Face of Bond to help him. Together, thy set the Game World's scanners down onto the surface of Cardiff and discover that it in fact is a mass of gigantic, Independence-Day-sized spacecraft forming the word 'K9'.

The Doctor is startled when the scanner switches on to show his old enemy, former roommate and ex-wife, The Bastard! He has in his clutches Rose Tyler and K9 and if the Doctor so much as thinks of trying to end this evil master plan, he'll reduce them both to action figures.

However, the Doctor stands up to him, and vows to rescue Rose, save the Earth, defeat the Bastard all within 45 minutes.

The Bastard points out that before the Doctor declares hostilities, he should be aware this twisted anniversary special contains the Doctor's oldest, deadliest and most merchandisable foes.

The DUSTBINS!

Three of the golden-plated cleaning machines glide into view, and the Doctor blows them a raspberry and promising to wipe out all three of the Dustbins under the Bastard's control.

"No, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rescue her. I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dustbin fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth, I'm gonna wipe every last fucking Dustbin out of the sky!" the Doctor screams in his best Absalom Daak, Dustbin Killer impression. "And then - just to finish off – I'm going to get Rose into bed EVEN IF IT KILLS ME."

"But you have no weapons! No defenses! No plan!"

"Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death?"

"Not as scary as the thought you actually believe this macho crap."

"Rose?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"You better not be ovulating tonight."

The laughing Bastard challenges the Doctor to do his worst and switches off. He turns to address the three Dustbins and tells them to prepare to enter the endgame.

He also tells this to the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the Dustbins in the corridor. The vacation on Earth will now begin...

"THE DOCTOR IS INITIATING HOSTILE ACTION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE! THE STRATAGEM MUST ADVANCE! BEGIN THE VACATION OF EARTH! THE DOCTOR WILL BE EXTERMINATED! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! AND I'LL REPEAT THAT... EXTERMINATE!!"

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Next Time...
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"LAUNCH AJAX MISSILES. DUSTBINS CLEAN AND TIDY!!!"
"We've got incoming Ajax missiles! This is it, ladies and gentlemen – we are in a ratings war! There's an army about to scrub clean every last inch of Brands Hatch!"
"Uh, Jack – defenses have gone off line."
"OK, time to start screaming in panic, I think."
"Well, I'm dead – or about to die at any moment with no chance to escape at all. Please leave a message and I will get back to you after I have regenerated." *beeeep*
"How did you survive the Temporal Difference of Opinion? Was it the Moxx of Balloon? I bet it was the Moxx of Balloon!"
"No, actually. It was me. The Dustbins survived through me."
"Well, shave my arse and call me Denise! YOU!!!"
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...the REST of The Parting of the Legs...
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