10th Doctor - Fear Her (ii)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who Visits The Deep Realms
Doctor Who Visits Planet 14 Minus 11 Plus 1
Dr Who - The Eyes that Saw Forever But Were Colorblind (Canada Only)

Fluffs - David seemed so scared out of his wits he developed an amphetamine habit in this story.

"In the Deep Realms is the loo of the Ionic Kookaburra!! Nothing and no one can stop the Ionic Kookaburra! The Ironic Kookaburra will expand to twice the size of Cardiff halved by St. Petersburg! But I am the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords, Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon and I’ve never once admitted defeat to an Ionic Kookaburra! What the BLOODY HELL IS AN IONIC KOOKABURRA?!? AND WHY DO WE CARE?!?!"

"Cursed right that I was ever born to set it spite! Joint is out of time!"

"Nicole Kidman! What are you doing here?"

"Sitting by your girl, she’s under the old oak tree!
Merrily, merrily, till her bush goes green!
Love those who prefer her love!
Who prefer how gay your life must be!"

Goofs -
The Doctor asks Rose if she is "ovulating" when the correct word would be "deducing". Surely the Doctor would know such things!
Whilst it’s clearly daytime in Dame Kelly Holmes Close, it’s clearly night in the Olympic Stadium. Stupid Martian power cuts!
When the Stadium disappears, Huw Edwards says that there were 80,000 spectators and 30,000 athletes. When it reappears and the crowd are watching the Doctor with the Olympic Flame, he says that there are 80,000 athletes and spectators. Did 30,000 stay vanished? Or did another 50, 000 athletes magically drop into existence to balance out the ratio? Or am I being incredibly picky and anal? Even if that is the case, why doesn’t anyone do a damn thing when everyone in the stadium disappears, then lets the Doctor get past security with THE most celebrated object associated with the Olympic Games? Did they just assume that Papua New Guinea’s team had eaten them all like last time? Or is it, as many fans assume, this display of insanely pathetic security measures is down to the fact Touchwood were in charge of protecting it all?
Why does Rose believe that the Doctor has never fought an attack by a colossal slug? Why would anyone in their right mind LIE about that?
In one scene, no one is wearing pants.
And why doesn’t the picture of the robot dog have anything to do with 2005’s repeated meme of the K9 Conspiracy?!
But all of this feels very pointless when the Doctor muses over all the plot holes and asks, "Jings! Since when did all the mysteries of the universe suddenly NEED explaining?"

Fashion Victims -
The Doctor wears a black turtleneck sweater, black sweat pants, black sports jacket and knackered beige trenchcoat with "CHICKENS WITHOUT HEADS TOUR 1978!!!" on the back.

Fashion Triumphs -
Rose’s long, elegant gauzy white gown, sashed with red, is victimized again and again until she is left wearing a white scrap that isn’t enough to cover up even her navel. Fan-TAST-ic!!

Technobbable -
"EVERY psychic powers adventure needs a crystal, otherwise how can the audience accept the dues ex machina!"

Dialogue Disasters -

A lot of the dialogue sounds like it comes from a second-rate children’s program which is eerily appropriate when you realize that Doctor Who IS a second-rate children’s program.

Rose: Aren’t you a fat, cunning, evil-smelling, fluffy, multiple rapist then?
Doctor: Thanks! I’m experimenting with back-combing! Oh, you meant the domestic cat... Right.

Rose: So go on, how many golds do we get at the Olympics?
Doctor: Where’s the fun in knowing?
Rose: I don’t like surprises.
Doctor: You liked the picnic we went on last week, THAT was a surprise.
Rose: To a point! Just for the record, picnics in zero gravity don’t work.
Doctor: It was a laugh, what with all the sandwiches floating about!
Rose: That boy threw up.
(long pause)
Doctor: It was a laugh, what with all the vomit floating about!

Kel: You just took a Martian axe from a Martian van and now you’re digging up a Martian road! I’m reporting you to the council! And it’s a MARTIAN council!!

Rose: Have you seen those drawings move?
Trish: I haven’t seen anything!
Doctor: Yes, you have. Out the corner of your eye.
Trish: No.
Doctor: And you dismissed it. Because what choice do you have, when you see something you can’t possibly explain? You dismiss it, right? And if anyone mentions it, you get angry. So it’s never spoken of ever again.
Trish: She’s a child!
Doctor: And you’re terrified of her. And there’s no one to turn to. Cos
who’s going to believe what you see out of the corner of your eye? No one. Except ME – cause I’ve got the whole of Sapphire & Steel on DVD! I had to deal with the folk without any faces just the other day, so I know whereof I speak!

Rose: That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have a black boyfriend! Doctor: I was into men, once.
Rose: ...what?

There are several small hints that Rose’s lines may have originally been written with another character in mind –
"NEVER mess with a Frenchwoman!"
"Oh non, Monsieur! Don’t be such a grouse! A peasant bunch they sound!"
"Mars sounds charmant, as it was once my dearest wish to attend university but, d’accord, ze peasants revolted and things kind of went downhill from thereon in..."
"C’est faux! How can a twelve-year-old girl be doing any of this?"
"Rose, you stay here while me and Arthur have a quick nose around..."
"Mais, Papa!"
"PAS DE MAIS! I’ve got edible ball bearings to enthuse about!"
"Mon dieu! Do not fear, Papa! I shall save you!"
"Maybe that is why Chloe feels so alone, pourquoi pas?"
"Bonjour, my name is Calonne – Fayette Calonne and zis is my adopted father. Call him Doctor, if you please."


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: 30th Olympiad! It’ll be exciting!
Rose: What? No Dustbins or Cybermen or monsters or anything?
Doctor: Ah, that’s not excitement, Rose. That sort of stuff happens to us all the time!

Doctor: I have had a simply brilliant idea! The best idea anyone has ever come up with!
Rose: I’ve got a better idea.
Doctor: No. You have a DIFFERENT idea, that’s all. I’M the Time Lord, God of All Wisdom, remember?
Rose: Sapristi! How often have I heard that before? It’s a cliché!

Trish: Are you completely insane?
Rose: No. Not *completely*.

The Doctor’s brilliantly observed words after carrying the beacon the rest of the way to the Olympic stadium -
"YIPPE KAI AYE, YOU MARTIAN BASTARDS!!"

UnQuotable Quote -

Cal: I wondered what else could be powered by love? How about fighter jets fuelled by love with irony-powered afterburners and armed with sarcasm-seeking missiles?

Links and References -
The Doctor mentions cats threatening him whilst dressed in nuns' wimples, totally apropos of nothing, and thus coming across as a raving nutter to everyone who hasn’t seen "Earth 2.0". The Ne ta’ nu also asks the Doctor humiliate himself in compliance with the Shadow Proclamation, as per "Ruse".

Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor idly mentions to Rose in passing that he was a dad once, but his daughter Fennar was killed by a revolutionary mob when they tried to flee Gallifrey when the Doctor was deposed as the God King of the Time Lords and all the nobility put to the sword. When pressed, however, he admits this entire story is bullshit he can only now get away with since there is no one to contradict him.

Groovy DVD Extras -
The infamous deleted scenes where the Doctor 'reappears' in Trish’s bedroom, which is the start of a sixteen hour long, incredibly sordid kinky sex session filmed in graphic close up and is a thematic sequel to RTD’s "Casanova Likes Doing It With Girls", even down to the cast and the novel use of the sonic screwdriver.

Vortex -
A Martian Crimewatch-style infomercial cranked up to ridiculous levels of self-important cheese and hysteria, presented by Chip Jamison as two police officers watch on, doubled over in laughter -
"An ordinary Martian street... OR IS IT? Crime Crackers! Can YOU help us? Mr. Frisky... Bundlefluff... WHERE are they?! Ran AWAY from the BIG BioSphere? Joined a GANG?!? The POLICE don’t seem to know! But YOU are Crime Crackers’ EYES and EARS! Can YOU help CRIME CRACKERS? Don’t wanna TALK to the COPS? THEN CALL NOW ON THIS EASY-TO-REMEMBER NUMBER! 0301 566-9155-76544891! We’re WAITING for YOUR call! You CAN make a DIFFERENCE! Crime CRACKERS! Cracking DOWN on CRIME!! And doing a HELL of a lot BETTER than FUCKING TOUCHWOOD when all’s SAID and DONE!!!"


The Spite of Sparacus –
"Being a tad CBBC-ish, this was another creepy child story like Shell Shock, full of Exorcist cliches, but it got worse as it went along. Making every episode culminate in a cheesy 'life affirming' ending is a form of dumbing down - nothing downbeat or Bob & Wendy Normal might switch to ITV. I hate Bob & Wendy Normal. They blank me in public. And the story was childish, and I hate children too. But not as Rose Chav Scum Tyler! Apparently, Matthew Graham was going to write a much less child-friendly episode, and I’d say based on no evidence whatsoever that Matthew's original script probably involved the TARDIS landing on the planet Zetar where the Zetarites boil Rose alive in a vat of oil slowly for most of the episode. And there wouldn’t have been those ugly new houses without gardens that typify the horrible new Prescott housing estates! Next week’s looks like a great one though! SQUEE!"

Viewer Quotes -

"Why aren’t we having an adventure?"
"Because this is one of those relationshippy episodes where somebody’s gran is dying that we use to pad out the middle of the series when we’ve run out of money for special effects."
"Oh, like that psychic girl with the crayons in series two?"
"Yup!"
"She was rubbish."
"Yeah. Sorry about that, but budgets only go so far."
"Wah! Sob! I bloody love my gran..."
"That’s the spirit."
- Doctor Who & The Scrotoids Grope Charlotte Church (2006)

"If you ever wanted to know why Billie Piper won best actress in the BAFTAs last year watch Filler again and soak in her performance. Soak in her nuances. Soak in her visible white thong when she steals the council axe from the council van? I about wore out my pause button trying to find that bit. Giggity-giggity-giggity!" - Nigel Verkoff (2006)

"I love Doctor Who and I always watch it and the thought of deliberately missing an episode just because I didn’t think much of the trailer sends me into a spasm during which I suffer violent flashbacks of the years 1990 - 2004 with the exception of 90 minutes of 1996. But I still didn’t watch Filler. What shit." - Doug Corleceser (2006)

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It was supposed to be like Doctor Who meets The Exorcist and instead it was sort of like a demented episode of Sesame Street wherein all the plot holes and leaps of logic could only be filled in by the largest joint in history. It was Funky Town! all over again, but with more direct plagiarism from the penultimate season one X-Files episode. And for PROPER, well-done X-Files plagiarism, the production team should really check out my story 'The Bellows Fletch Incident', where the Sixth Doctor and Peri meet a poltergeist that’s actually AN ALIEN! But as for Filler, well, I’ve seen porn better-made than this! Actually I’ve seen student films uploaded on YouTube of a higher quality. The only reason I must watch the rest of the season is for the morbid fascination value in finding out exactly to what depths the series can fall. I FUCKING HATE YOU, RTD, YOU SCUM-SUCKING POOFTER!"
- a traditionally even-handed Ron Mallet review (2007)

"Filler? Which one was that? Oh right. The one marking time until we got to the grand finale of Tennant’s first season. Right. It didn’t leave much of an impression, did it? What were we talking about again?"
- Dave Restal (2008)

"I think the more we complain about the racist undertones to that song, the more those damned Kookaburras will just sit back and laugh. The smug bastards. That’s the problem with those feathered scum. They never take anything bloody seriously. Not like in the old series. They wont be so smug when the Doctor triumphs." - Kookaburra Killer Weekly (2006)

"I only watched it for the trailer for next week. The plot seemed a bit naff from something a friend said, so I watched Infernal on DVD instead until the last bit with the trailer. God my viewing habits are interesting, aren’t they?" - Tom Payne (2006)

"YES! RESULT!!!!!!! I've been saying the 10th Doctor came back from the dead wrong and guess what? I was bloody right (does little dance while singing "yes, yes, yes, yes, Nyder’s best, Nyder’s best!"). Tell me how wonderful I am. The REAL Doctor died on the Game World. Hooray!!! DT isn’t canon! What do you mean, you want PROOF?! Reality is an uncertain concept! Don’t you see? Only for THIS moment have the generations of my fathers lived! I have been used, you have been used, MANKIND has been used - by BARBIE!! CHRIS BUTCHER IS GOD!!!" - Alan Stevens (2006)

"Bloody boring load of old wank!! Tennant is still trying too hard and I’m sick of Piper's permanently open mouth. Toilet humour makes me cover my eyes!! Edna Dore was woeful - her acting was too forced and I frikkin hate Shayne Ward. The reference spoiled the episode for me!! Enough with the gay/celebrity/pop culture references, RTD. You'd never catch Hartnell mentioning the Beatles!! Why does the TARDIS always land on Earth? I bloody hate cheapo episodes like this!! Funky Town sucks and so did this boring crap!! Will BBC News 24 really still use the same graphics six years from now? I don’t bloody think so!! Not enough action and too much emotional guff that I can't handle!! RTD should be removed from the space-time continuum!! I CRINGED!! I CRINGED THROUGHOUT!! DID I MENTION THAT I CRINGED THROUGHOUT!?"
- Gloriana Fenotalia Ammonia III (2006)

"There is a crisis in the lack of traditional female totty in the series! I mean, yes, there’s Rose, but she’s always there, I like a bit of variety. Anthropomorphic cats might do the trick for anime fans, and while Mme Du Pompadour’s very nice and her friend wasn’t bad either, we are constantly shown a universe where Jackie of all people is the best-looking babe on offer! One of Jack’s bimbos were worth checking out, but Filler leaves us back in the desert. Spare some thought for the heterosexual males among you!" - Jared "No Nickname" Hansem (2006)

"I, for one, am completely outraged by this blatant flaunting of the Dacelo novaeguineae and their deviant activities on prime time BBC television! I was stunned as we were presented with a blatantly overt subliminal Gay Agenda: 'Kookaburra Gay Your Life MUST Be!' We’re being told how to live our lives by a raging left-footer! Worse is yet to come though: 'Merry King Of The Bush' indeed, that’s just outright pornography as far as I’m concerned and I’m certain that the other ladies in the New Malden Knitting Society feel the same! That outrageous filth-monger Russel The Davies should be sacked and this tawdry muck should be removed from our screens forthwith!"
- Disgusted of West Hampshire (2006)

"To the Olympics 2012 committee, we wish for you to consider David Tennant as the official Lighter of the Olympic Flame. David portrays the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who, a program which has been part of our national consciousness for almost half a century and of which it can be said, captures the heart of being British more than an other piece of popular culture on television today. David, as the Doctor, was seen lighting the Flame in an episode called 'Filler' which featured the 2012 Olympics. We feel it would be entirely appropriate for him to be given this honour for real. Oh, and on the Planet Mars, if at all possible. Sincerely, The Undersigned." - Online DT Shipper Community (2006)

David Tennant Speaks!
"It was great to work with Nina Sosanya again. It was even greater to get into bed with her, though the lack of cameras was a bit off-putting at first. She may be an incredibly beautiful woman, but in my heart of hearts, she’ll always be that naive, pree-teen castrato with the false penis down her pants. Happy days. Filler was a brilliantly creepy and different script, so different, in fact, I’m fairly certain we were only using it as a last resort, because otherwise there’s the frightening thought that bollocks about Mars in 2012 looking like Brookside was seriously believed to be credible. Jings, now THAT is scary."

Billie Piper Speaks!
"People are saying that, since Doctor Who is so well remembered, everyone will be laughing at it in 2012 if David DOESN’T actually light the Olympic Flame. Serious, people are actually complaining about Olympic-themed retrospective TV specials that won’t even be made, let alone screened for another six years! GET LIVES, YOU FREAKS! Now, if you’ll just excuse me, I’m off to be Sally Lockhart, Female White Victorian Detective Extraordinaire!"

Russell T Davies Speaks!
"I always dread an episode that has a child in it, which is why this series includes far more children than ever seen before, with all the stories either focusing heavily on child characters, or having even brief appearance of children. Some uptight personality-bypassed anal retentive bastard might think this could prove counterproductive, as it might not only alienate adult viewers, but is could also alienate children. Why? Because such over-analyzing bastards haven’t MET real people and automatically assume children prefer stories about older young people than about children too close to themselves in age and background, because that’s something Eric Saward said twenty years ago as he tried not to choke on his own vomit! Well, you can call the presence of so many children a misguided marketing decision, and you might cattily suggest that Doctor will eventually wind up being shown at 4:30 PM on CBBC if the trend continues, BUT FUCK YOU! This is good therapy for ME, not you Kaldor City douche bags!"

Trivia –
This is the last time Rose gets back into the TARDIS, to start another adventure. Even those un-canonical badly-written tie-in books agree. Oh yeah, you’re crying NOW, aren’t you?

Rumors & Facts -

It is true that in light of the big event story lines surrounding it, Filler can’t help but seem dwarfed and mediocre because of its little quaintness. It is also true that if you hear enough people slate an episode, you start to agree with them. So, let’s all do that then!

This episode was cringe-worthy in my opinion. Absolute and utter rubbish. This even makes Mistrial of a Time Lord look absolutely awesome, it was SO bad. The only good point was the foreshadowing at the end. Everything else, however, sucked. Absolute disappointment and an utter load of rubbish. If you missed this episode, you’re very lucky to have - unless you’re like me and just incredibly embarrassed about admitting you liked it for fear of getting beaten up.

For the initial run of the new Doctor Who series, the production team were able to commissioning no more scripts than were necessary to make up the season. Unfortunately, executive producer Russell T Davies refused to tell anyone how long the season would or how many scripts would be required and, shock, this caused difficulties midway through production, when other obligations caused Paul Abbott to abandon the episode he had been working on. After foolishly rejecting my pitch, RTD was forced to write Funky Town! – and let’s face it, no one would have written crap like that out of choice, would they?

For the 2006 season, however, RTD and his team of force-bred clone lackeys had the latitude to develop more than the requisite number of scripts, counterbalancing the incredible lack of effort that went into each one. That way, they would have an episode ready to be inserted into the schedule should another writer run into difficulties; and they were all of the same sub-mediocre standard so as not to clash. A truckload of these scripts were simply to be held over until the third season, but Rob Shearman shredded them all and turned them into a rather fashionable off-the-peg jacket he wore during Druid ceremonies.

One writer approached to develop a reserve script was Matthew Graham, but he was far too busy creating Life on Mars and proving his damn bastard hardness via a Mary Sue known as Gene "Gene Genie" Hunt. Despite all the efforts of RTD and Julie Gardner, even going so far as to kidnap the main star of Life on Mars (John "HAHAHAHAH!" Simms), Grahams was far too clever and professional to waste his time on Doctor Who.

It reached the point where RTD was begging Graham to simply let them pretend he was writing for them, and get him to put his name on their idea entitled "Generic Heavy SF": the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Rose to a creepy underground bunker in a sterile grey landscape, with the grass, sky and trees drained of colour. It turns out that the villain is the Bastard, who has discovered that beauty (like gravity or radiation) was a quantifiable force and he was sucking all the beauty out of the world to create the Technicolour Dreamcoat of Rassilon, providing the origin story for the Sixth Doctor’s outfit.

Graham laughed in their faces and had them thrown out by his heavies.

In desperation, RTD turned to an old shag of his, Stephen "Butch" Fry who had been pencilled in to rewrite his adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young Bodies Of Vile Things as "Doctor Who Mocks The 1920s In An Exciting Adventure With The REAL King Arthur On An Alien Planet". By November, however, it had become clear that Fry’s script would be too expensive - especially late in the production schedule, coupled with the lawsuit he had against Stephen "Look, I’m The Straight One! There HAS To Be A Straight One! Just Accept It!" Moffat.

This occurred when the author barged into Fry’s bedroom, hideous drunk after receiving an award for his work on Shell Shock, and roared "WOMAN! BEHOLD MY TROPHY!", in the confused belief he was actually talking to his wife Sue. He then proceeded to pass out, burying his unconscious face into Fry’s armpit. What happened after this has traumatized both parties and Moffat has refused even to base an amusing Coupling episode on the incident in question.

Thus, DWMT1920IAEAWTRKA was postponed it until 2007, when it could be properly budgeted. Ultimately, however, it was dropped altogether because Fry was too busy on other projects to carry out the necessary rewrites and the sexual tension between him and Moffat had become quite frankly intolerable. They still keep in touch though.

RTD realized that, once again, the Curse of Episode 11 had been called down onto his Welsh head, and he would have to be forced to pen the episode in question unless another writer was found. In a desperate attempt to save the universe, Canadian Fan author James Bow offered his services on the grounds that penning twenty-eight out of the fifty-seven stories of his homemade series The Trenchcoat Doctor Who, he was perfectly qualified to write a story at first notice.

Bow’s creation of a tall, thin, emotionally damaged Doctor in a big coat with a disturbing relationship with a long-running female companion had been heavily plagiarized in the past – not only by RTD himself, but the Trenchcoat Doctor had even got used in the Eighth Doctor BF play "Cardiff", portrayed by a very, very, VERY hungover Paul McGann first thing on a Monday morning.

RTD had been searching desperately for ideas and decided that one of the abandoned endings for The Parting of the Legs could make a decent story: the Doctor and Rose becoming trapped in a picture. The production team had recently got stoned on some dodgy oregano and in a fit of paranoia convinced themselves that the eyes in pictures were following them to work each day; the only to prevent this was to make a Doctor Who story about it, ideally stealing stuff from that Sapphire & Steel episode with a similar basis. Bow’s episode would use the eerie nature of paintings or illustrations as a major part, which suited Bow fine as he had ripped off the very same Sapphire & Steel plot for his Trenchcoat Doctor & Ace story, Pitchers At An Exhibition for "Season 28".

Thus, the episode would be an intentionally versatile low-budget self-contained tale joined The Idiot Box as Block Four, directed by Euros Lyn, and thus Bow decided to save some time by copying the plot exactly and then randomly adding chunks from his Trenchcoat stories, even down to occasionally having Rose become an eighteen-century French girl with a penchant for bondage (though these sequences were considered frankly inferior to Moffat’s The Nun In The Lift-Shaft, which used the same material in a far wittier and erotic manner).

Bow initially called his story "Night’s Black Agents’ Silent Spearhead" and then "The Lost Glory Of Human Desires", "I Want Tomorrow To Be Caribbean Blue" and "Weeds in the Fields Hear Death’s Aria" before RTD rejected them as being too pretentious. Ultimately, it was decided to call the episode Filler, since that was essentially all the story was and thus very much the Doctor Who norm.

Despite RTD’s continuing bipolar attitude to allowing the new series to have stories located outside Cardiff, let alone off Earth, Bow decided to set his story on Mars whilst simultaneously fulfilling RTD’s desire to have in a normal, believable environment, drawing on the typical young fan’s desire to see the TARDIS materialize on their home street, Rose Tyler to emerge, smile that toothy smile, and instantly take their virginity on the spot.

Thus, the principal location for Filler was Page Drive, in the Tremorfa area of Cardiff, which posed as Martian BioSphere 3; many scenes in the Webber home were also filmed in a house on the same street, but no one is entirely sure which one. Cast and crew visited on Page Drive from January 24th to 27th and again on the 30th and 31st. On this occasion they actually did some work.

Due to the frigid temperatures belying the story’s summer setting, dialogue was introduced regarding the Ne ta’ nu draining heat from the area, but this was forgotten and quickly replaced by some Technobabble Gubbins saying that the life support systems were on the blink.

Filming attracted considerable media attention, as well as the usual bunch of sad anoraks, and the whole shoot was plagued by confused passers-by wondering why they hadn’t been told that Page Drive was going to be relocated the Planet Mars before: others were scared that the noxious atmosphere might cause them to mutate into freaks like in Total Recall, while many more feared that this WOULDN’T happen, depriving them of triple-breasted circus midget sex slaves! However, since the production schedule was so slapdash, these constant interruptions did not ruin filming and, occasionally, got it back on track.

Crisis struck when Bow himself visited filming with a soap box, which he promptly climbed on top of and started screaming that despite being the flagship of the BBC, Doctor Who was "merely a shadow of its former self" and that if he were to replace RTD he could "return the show to its former glory". He promised considerable American backing (in the form of a couple of DWIN losers trying to be positive about the show), a return to 25-minute episodes, more stories with less budget, and insisted that "the sky is no longer the limit"! Soon he was dancing naked outside the Cardiff Millennium Centre, insisting that with a slight redesign of Dustbins, Cybermen, Autons, the Bastard, the Valeyard, UNIT, Ice Cream Vendors, the Silly Lurians and the Monoids, fans and public alike would be flocking to see Doctor Who on a cable channel in North America. "CANADA! Not CARDIFF!" he would scream.

He was then taken away and humanely gassed and production on Filler continued apace, though this incident convinced Millingdales Ice Cream to withdraw their sponsorship of the show, including their subliminal advertising via product placement and tie-in websites. Furious, RTD immediately commissioned a special animated episode entitled "Millingdale Secret Recipe Ice Cream Is Pig Shit And There’s No Denying It!" before getting drunk and forgetting all about it.

Four days at the regular Doctor Who studio space of Unit Q2 in Newport then followed, from February 1st to 4th before everyone took a day off because it was my BIRTHDAY!!! Incredibly inebriated and convinced it was the best party of the millennium, the film crew struggled to complete various pick-up shots including Akira Kagemusha the legendary 17th Century Japanese Shadow Warrior, Albert Einstein and Alfred Hitchcock discussing existential philosophy over dinner at Ché Posh, an expensive French restaurant. What any of this has to do with the main plot of a possessed little girl and her crayons of doom is anyone’s guess, but it still was bitching cool to actually watch.

In the final analysis Filler’s ambitious themes about loneliness, showing the Ne ta’ nu, Chloe Webber, the Doctor and Rose as people struggling to cope with it are completely ignored because a bunch of emotionally-insecure fans shouted that it was written and acted like a program "just for the kids like many lower quality children's drama and as a result adult viewers completely lose interest". Despite the fact that eight and a half million people thought it was great and tuned in specially for the repeat on BBC3.

Ultimately, Matthew Graham returned and sued Doctor Who for basing an entire story on his most popular and terrifying of enemies: Test Card Girl. True, Test Card Girl did not use psychic crayons to erase her enemies from time and space, but she probably could have – no one’s been brave enough to find out. Anyway, the BBC totally surrendered the rights to their proposed spin-off series, Fear Chloe Webber, allowing Graham all the royalties and profits that were not his by right. The series lasted for three years, until Michael Grade stubbed his toe and decided to cancel something to get his own back.

Good Luck, Chloe Webber
Run Away, Chloe Webber
So Near And Yet So Far, Chloe Webber
Who’s Who, Chloe Webber?
Alas, Adios, Chloe Webber
Are You On Drugs, Chloe Webber?
Here’s To You, Chloe Webber
Curiouser and Curiouser, Chloe Webber
Think Fast, Chloe Webber
Piece of Cake, Chloe Webber!
What A Surprise, Chloe Webber
That’s Implausible, Chloe Webber
You’re A Bad Girl, Chloe Webber
Have You Been Drinking, Chloe Webber?
On A Wing And A Prayer, Chloe Webber
Get Out Of THAT One, Chloe Webber!
Come Into My Parlor, Chloe Webber
What’s For Dinner, Chloe Webber?
Expect the Unexpected, Chloe Webber
On With The Fray, Chloe Webber
Exchange Is Robbery, Chloe Webber
Fear Me, Chloe Webber
Chloe Webber Destroys The Earth!

Meanwhile, David Tennant continued his baffling desire to sing in every episode, following the otherwise normal-seeming sequence as the Doctor notes, "You’ve been drawing, though. I’m rubbish. Pictures of Matchstick Men are about my limit... ah...

When I travel through the skies
Glowing red eyes are surprisingly mellow!
As I once said when I re-grew my head
The future’s so bright it’s yellow!
I turned up this morning, realization dawning
See your face come peeping through that window.

Those pictures of matchstick men and you!
Those mirages of matchstick men and you!
Now I’m one of them because of you!

Given time for some reflection
It might have not been your intention, so
You’re going to stop abducting
If you want Rose to leave you alone!

Pictures of matchstick men? Ne ta’ nu!
Mirages of matchstick men? Ne ta’ nu!!
Now I’m one of them because of you!
You, in the sky! I feel so high!
You make me sigh, a LOT!
You, in the sky! I feel so high!
You make me sigh, a LOT!

Pictures of matchstick men and
Pictures of matchstick men, Ne ta’ nu!
Pictures of matchstick men ....