10th Doctor - The Satan Pit (iii)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who: Satanized for Your Protection
Doctor Who Versus The Hot Elf Chicks of DEATH!
Black Mail, White Christmas & Green Moulah
There’s Trouble In Paradise And This Is Purgatory, Mum!


Fluffs - David seemed unseasonable in this story.

"Good. Argue, filthy Hobbitses. Soon, the Precious will be mine!" Ianto laughs to himself at one point.

"I never hated you, Owen... Well, there was that one time... ah, forget it, I never hated you."

"Eyes of the Angel? The Well of Despair? The Constipated Duck?! There’s no Trouble in Paradise, I should say so. Ramalamadingdong! I’m not a mountain goat. Chesterton! Where are you, boy, heel? Blow Gabriel! BLOW!"

"Nothing but black. Black! Black like the evil pixies that stab my eyes with pins! Black!! Black as a shark’s eye - a doll’s eye and you never see the eyes of the demon until he comes a callin’, Mister policeman, Babylon! Mine is an evil laugh! HAHA!"

"I have a headache this big and it has Santa written all over it."

"Now that we’re alone, support strut number six, Captain Jack can finally tell you... how I feel - how I’ve ALWAYS felt!"

A truly disturbing sequence, all the more worrying as it was COMPLETELY unscripted in away way, shape or form -
Rose: You’re cute. Can I call you daddy?
Jefferson: Er, what?
Rose: So, Mr. Jefferson... is there a 'Mrs.' Jefferson?
Jefferson: Yeah. My wife.
Rose: Is she seeing anyone?


Goofs -
At the end of Silver Finish, the Doctor told Mickey to keep quiet that he was not the first to bang Rose, but she still claim she has her virginity in this story.
Just why is it implausible for Captain Jack to have found five people as psychological disturbed and sexually promiscuous as he is? Why does nobody attempt to record the Slitheen mud-wrestling for posterity? Why is Gwen’s corpse standing outside the base instead of being eaten by John Carpenter’s The Thing? Why is there a poster for the Blackpool Doctor Who exhibition at the centre of the planetoid?
If, as Tosh says, their organization doesn’t have a name, then why does she later mention the name on the company paperwork? And there is no way that the manhole cover is 30 light years in diameter like Tosh says. Was Tosh on crack that day or something?
At one point, Tom Baker can be spotted spray-painting on the back of the set his traditional welcome note to the latest Doctor: WELCOME TO HELL!
When Rose grabs a door handle to steady herself, she pulls down the entire section of wall revealing the film crew from Doctor Who Confidential making private narcotic deals. This is never referred to again bar the occasional off-screen shout of, "I gotta call my dealer, man!" during the air duct sequences.


Fashion Victims -
The Doctor’s retina-busting outfit of dayglo orange T-shirt, rainbow-striped tie, funky blue necromancer robe, and stripy pants stolen from a 1970s Parisian street artist.
Billie Piper and John Barrowman accidentally got their make-up duplicated, leading to them BOTH being boggle eyed with ridiculous amounts of eyeliner as they look for rum.


Technobbable -
"Only when all the races of life move out of the multi-dimensional sphere into the mystery that still lies beyond, of which even our highest minds have no smallest notion, will the absolute be reached, that state wherein relativity fades and there is no longer comparison and polarity."
Well, there’s 'polarity' involved. It makes about as much sense as reversing it...


Dialogue Disasters -

Santa’s possession speech to Ianto – further proof of the Gay Agenda?
"Don’t turn around. Don’t look at me. If you look at me, you will die. No, really, I mean it. Don’t look at me. One look, and you will die... No, REALLY. Don't look! Oh, now, stop that! No peeking! I mean it! I'm right behind you... One look, and you will... What, are you mad? Don’t pick up that mirror, Ianto! I mean it! One look... You’re not looking, are you? No, really, tell me you’re not looking! Okay. I’m going to touch you now. Hey, no! Stop that! I said, don’t look around, or you will die, Ianto! Now, sit still so I can touch you. I’m going to touch you now, Ianto. Here I come to touch you, Ianto. I’m right behind you, ready to touch you. I'm reaching out to you. WHOA, wha-?! I said I’m going to touch YOU now, Ianto, not 'Reach back here and touch ME!' Now, stop that! I mean it! Stop that imm... Um... Ah. Oh... All right, go ahead, then. Oh I can feel you, Ianto, I’m touching you... OHHHH IANTO!"


Rose: We’ve lost the TARDIS! Don’t you care?
Doctor: Don’t worry, this whole PLANET will probably turn out to be a TARDIS and I’ll just use that!!
Rose: I thought your TARDIS was the last one in the whole universe?
Doctor: Oh. Yeah. So it is. Shit.


Owen: I just don’t trust that "Doctor". I bet I’ve LOST more patients than he’s EVER treated! Ladies may vomit when I smile, but does Dr Owen Harper worry? You wish! Some day they will look up from the gutter as Owen Harper, King of the Weevils, sets fire to the cardboard boxes they call home! Until then, it’s just all the girls saying 'stop spraying me with that date rape pheromone spray', 'put on pants, you freak' and 'don’t fucking touch me you ugly fuck...' I hate my life.


Tosh: Is that what I think it is?
Doctor: What do you think it is?
Tosh: A whacking great reindeer with a light bulb for a nose?


Jack’s words to Rose as he removes his trousers:
"Brace yourselves. The sight of it sends some people mad."


Doctor: Tosh... Tell Rose... Tell her I... I’ve been wearing her M&S ultra sheer black tights under my trousers and - oh, Jings! She probably knows already...


Dialogue Triumphs -

Santa: I have always been here. From the very beginning. I was in the heart and mind of the first ameba that noticed its fellow was looking at it in a funny way – and it paid the price.
Doctor: Sorry, been a bit busy saving the universe for deep theological chats. But I’d rather spend a week with the Easter Bunny than listen to you bang on and on about how God owes you a living and why life is inherently worthless. Heard it all before and I wasn’t impressed the first time!


Santa: The virgin...
Owen: I think he’s talking about you, Rose.
Rose: Yeah, probably.
Doctor: She’s not a virgin...
Rose: Aren’t I?
Doctor: No, Rose, remember when we...
Owen: Virgin! Virgin! Virgin!
Doctor: She is NOT a virgin!
Owen: VIRGIN!! VIRGIN!!


Doctor: I bet you lot having all those orgies instead of doing proper work doesn’t feel like such a good idea, now, does it? Ha... there it is again. That itch at the back of your head. The desire for mindless sex rather than anything productive... 'Go down, go down, go down, go down, go down!'
Tosh: The urge to shag. Do you know where it comes from, that sensation? Genetic heritage. Ever since we were primates in the trees. It’s our body’s way of testing our sexual technique. Calculating whether or not we can satisfy the cuter-looking chimp on the next branch.
Doctor: No, that’s not it... that’s too kind. And it’s total bollocks. It’s not the urge to sleep around, it’s deeper than that. It’s the urge to... actually, can I say that on British television, Russell? I mean, it’s just going to be cut out by the censors, there’s not much point in us doing the rest of this speech, is there?


Santa: Mr Jefferson, tell me, sir. Did your wife ever forgive you?
Jefferson: I don’t know what you mean...
Santa: Let me tell you a secret; she never did.
Jefferson: For leaving the toilet seat up? GIVE ME STRENGTH!


Rose: Since when do humans need alien sex slaves?
Owen: But the Slitheen offered themselves. If you don’t give them soul-destroying bondage, they just pine away and die.
Rose: [to Jeanine] Seriously? You like being ordered about, whipped, and forced to indulge in lesbian animal threesomes?
Jeanine: It’s, like, all we crave for.
Rose: Why’s that, then?
Jeanine: We’ve nothing else, you know, in life.
Rose: Really?
Jeanine: NO, HUMAN SCUM, WE HATE YOU! AND WHEN OUR GOD RISES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH, YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!!
Rose: What?
Jeanine: Whoops. I meant to say, like, "Have a nice day!"


Doctor: Are you listening, Tosh? Hope so. Al Bowlly said I had a lovely voice. Now, there’s a nice man. Died in the Blitz – shot by an air raid warden through the head. Wouldn’t turn his lights out, you see? Everyone pretended he got hit by a bomb though, a long time ago and far away.
Tosh: I bet when he wrote "I’ve Got You Under My Skin", he was thinking of you.
Doctor: Really?! Oh, wait, was that a reference to me being a cocky Gallifreyan son of a bitch with an ego the size of Jupiter?
Tosh: Yes.
Doctor: Fair enough,


Rose: People back home, they think that space travel is gonna be all TARDISes and whizzing about and teleports and anti-gravity. But it’s not. It’s Captain fucking Jack, isn’t it?


Rose: What are you called? What’s your name?
Jeanine: I have no name.
Rose: Look, just who are you?
Jeanine: I am myself.
(This goes on for a bit.)


Ianto: The Slitheen sex-slaves are revolting!
Doctor: See what happens when you don’t try to co-exist with those around you?!
Ianto: Your overspeak will not work to confuse us, Doctor!


UnQuotable Quote -

Owen: Poor Gwen. She died as she lived. Showing cleavage.


Links and References -
Touchwood were mentioned in Big Finish’s "Project: Nightlight", "Project: Enigma", "Project: Lazarou", "Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass", "Cryptosporidium", "The Sequel", "The Cyb-Fest", "Nostalgia of the Dustbins", "A School For Glory!", "Son of A Bitch", "Nicotine", "The Girl Who Never Was A Virgin" and on TV in "The Michaelmas Evasion". It was a boring and pointless idea THEN and it’s a boring and pointless idea NOW.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The last time the Doctor fought Satan, he was working in a corporate office of zombie lackeys, wearing a sharp suit, his head was a ball of white fire and his voice sounded just like Vincent Price – a reference to Tom Baker’s movie scripts, "Doctor Who Versus Ironic Expectation".


Groovy DVD Extras -
A special modified version of the episode, digitally replacing the Slitheen with the Odd. So if you’re the kind of freak who thinks that this story works better with a bunch of bald, squid-faced parasites rather than an army of busty peroxide blondes in scantily-clad space armor as the monsters, go for it!


Vortext –
A Touchwood team member called James is in his bedroom, prancing up and down while wearing Tosh’s underwear as a Slitheen watches on. Suddenly, the lights dim and the computers begin to claim "Santa Claus is coming To Town!" and the Slitheen chants "He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake!" as the door to the bedroom locks and the booklet from the pre-credit sequence spontaneously combusts... then another woman, Suzie, enters to find James slumped in a swivel chair covered in strange symbols and breathing fire, so she trips over and breaks her neck. As you do.


The Spite of Sparacus –
"I was not surprised when Gwen was the first to die. Young women are generally the most inexperienced in any team and therefore more dispensable, plot-wise, than the major characters. They also do a better job of screaming pathetically. I thought this story was very good, proper sci-fi unlike last year, but it looked AMERICAN! It looked like a US-style series!! Compare The Santa Tip to the likes of The Robots With Breasts and it was altogether LESS English. All of the characters looked American. I hate Americans. And David Tennant, acting like a pillock – no wonder kids weren’t scared of it. Well, no kids actually came up to me, looked me straight in the eye and told me they were scared of it, so logically none of them found it scary. Clearly cyber kiddies demand more serious drama than the current series is providing! I think inculcating an interest in opera and literature in children is a positive thing. Mind you, I hate children as well. Once again I need to point out that I am not engaged in any 'joke' or trying to 'be funny'. The only tedious thing is that I need to keep pointing this out to the likes of yourself again and again and again. I hate YOU too."


Viewer Quotes -

"Wow! Look at that! We're so glad Satan is now on board - he really raises the bar for the show!" - Phil Collinson (2006)

"If I hear one more person mention the movie Event Horizon in relation to this story, I am going to eat my own face. And yours too, probably. That is all." - Hannibal Lector (2006)

"You think the TARDIS might be queasy coz its pregnant? I mean, they ripped off everything ELSE in Farscape, so why not this? As to who is the father? Well, Jack will bonk anything..."
- Andrew Beeblebrox (2006)

"I have no idea why the Doctor tried to save this particular group of humans. The only reason they were after Santa was because they thought they could find something they could use in a war. He should have left that bunch of shallow, warmongering racist human nymphomaniacs to the tender mercies of Old Nick. And the Doctor, deep down, really wants to murder Rose for her betrayal of him! If you disagree with me, YOU’RE DELUDED! ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE EXCEPT ME IS IN DENIAL!"
- Fiona Moore (2006)

"This did not deserve to be shown on TV! It’s too damn cinematic! I could smell the butter-soaked popcorn, a hotdog drowning under an avalanche of cindered fried onions, and hear the errant mobile phone chirp! It was like being in the cinema for forty five minutes... I FUCKING HATE CINEMAS! A distillation of talent and a passion to deliver entertainment not just for one Saturday night but also for decades to come? GET REAL! And those yellow IKEA stools – what were they thinking?"
- eyeofsauros.com.uk (2006)

"The Doctor clearly checks on the Slitheen, finds them NOT possessed by Santa, and leaves them to die. He may say that he hasn’t, and the script and finished program may agree with him, but he’s lying to look like a hero who saved the day and not the obsessive nutter that tried to kill them all! It’s not a privileged insight, I just watched the episode and based on that evidence there is only one valid way the line can be realistically interpreted. Anyone who says otherwise when watching was looking for the answers they were EXPECTING to find and WASN’T keeping an open mind. The 10th Doctor is a cruel racist Slitheen murderer and his crimes are there for everyone to see. In fact, he had THREE chances to save them and he didn’t, he let them DIE! They lost their little lives because of him! He is Doctor Slitheen Murderer and all the 'proof' I’m just paranoid is incidental! My theory PROVES he murdered the Slitheen, one in a long line of terrible acts committed by the wank monster we call Doctor Who. I don’t know what’s wrong with people. I just state the obvious, and they get upset! It's like they just want their received opinions CONFIRMED all the time! Some people just don't appear to like the suggestion that the Doctor is an obsessive, psychopathic Slitheen-murdering cat-hater, for some reason? The only reason you don’t see any lunatic or murderous behavior is that you HAVEN’T OPENED YOUR EYES! HOW MANY MORE TIMES HAVE I GOT TO SAY THIS?! There are children watching who are being mentally scarred by the Doctor’s Slitheen-murdering escapades and will turn into racist, homicidal killings! WE SHOULD SUE THE BBC FORTHWITH! And if they throw the case out, it proves British justice is well and truly fucked!"
- Alan Stephens (Federation Calendar 117)

"Were was the damn werewolf?!" - Confused Spoiler Monthly (2006)

"Why, Doctor? Why? Why, why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace, could it be for love? Illusions, Doctor, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose! And all of them as artificial as the universe itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it Doctor, you must know it by now. You can't win, it’s pointless to keep fighting! Why, Doctor, why? Why do you persist? And do Rose’s carpets match the drapes?" – Satan (2008)

"Mr. Jefferson is One Serious Mutha! I pity tha foo' who mess wit' da Jefferson! Seriously, anybody else notice right near the start of the episode he complains to Jack that he 'doesn't have much ammo'... he then goes on to blast down something like twenty Slitheen before finally running out of bullets. How much ammo does this guy like to have? He must be like a bleeding Sherman Tank when he’s prepped himself for a fight! If he had the spare ammo, he would have given each Slitheen another dozen bullets just to make sure they’re REALLY dead. Evidently, this is standard procedure. Well, there you go. Learn something new everyday." - Jared "No Nickname" Hansen (2006)

"Apparently, it was physically impossible for Ianto’s head to explode under pressure like that. This is Saturday night TV you retards! Dancing Morons, Gambling Chavs and Crippled TV stars of yesterday plus simplistic moralizing on Casualty and Doctor Who fighting Santa Claus... and you want PHYSICS too? Fuck off back to the open university coz at 3 in the morning no-one can you scream!" - Nigel Verkoff (2007)

"It was truly convoluted to the extent that it was simply cringefull to watch. Which IS a word, by the way. Doctor Who hasn’t been this shithouse since Season 16! Why are Davies and his pansies so devoted to the early Tom Baker years? Why not Colin Baker? It comes off a little too much like fan fiction rather than original drama. And if you want both, then I’m your man! How about 'The Vengeance of Vortron', about a team of archaeologists finding a giant severed head from beyond the dawn of time that will destroy the universe if it gets loose! WHAT AN ORIGINAL AND BRILLIANT IDEA!!!" - Ron Mallet (2006)


David Tennant Speaks!
"Jings, now THIS was a script that seemed to push the limits of what Doctor Who had done before. It was great to have a little ensemble cast that was there for the whole five weeks, it was a real little family for a while... pity about the characters they had to play, though. Despite what you may have come to think after my Evil Santa Trilogy of The Michaelmas Evasion, The Drunken Ginger Bride and The Santa Tip, I love Christmas. I go mad with extravagance at Christmas. I’ll be reclining on a bed of money, having champagne drip-fed to me by a harem of scantily clad witches. The only troubling thought will be all the kids getting Cybermen head voice-changers as presents. On Boxing Day, thousands of kids will be running up and down the streets talking like Nick Briggs. He’ll be everywhere. And that is not a good thing. And that thought about Nick Briggs is not a nice one to have in your head."


Billie Piper Speaks!
"This was my favorite story featuring Chris Evans as the Devil. I thought when he was finally in the show, he’d be the Face of Bond! Or Omigod. Or The Bastard. Or Q-Tip the Destroyer. Or K9. Or Fenric. Or Azal. Or the Mara. Or the Black Guardian. Or Noel Edmonds. Again."


John Barrowman Speaks!
"I didn’t mind this story, cause it gave me the money to buy a Porsche Boxter S and a Mercedes. But it was pretty shithouse in every other respect. I thought about cracking open a bottle of wine and playing it on the DVD, but at the end of the day, it’d just be wasting good wine. But I do like its slant on the supernatural. Yeah, I’ve seen a few ghosts, though I call them spirits, cause they’re not frightening to me. In fact, I’ve known a few ghosts in the biblical sense. Growing up, we have a poltergeist in our house in Scotland; it used to throw me around the place as a rough kind of foreplay. And there’s another ghost in our house in London, it’s a woman – she walks up and down stairs, checking the doors until she finds my bedroom and keeps me company on those long, lonely nights. But she really got turned off when I wore my sequined Elvis costume from Dancing on the Ice. I lead an interesting life."



Russell T Davies Speaks!
"People are always complaining to me how the story arc for Touchwood was rubbish, because everyone knew who they were from some long-forgotten Big Finish stories (which incidentally, is where I nicked the idea from). 'Why the big mystery about Touchwood when everyone knows what it is? Why keep it up after a crossover story explaining the whole premise to every single viewer?' and I know that the Touchwood references in the series weren’t as, how shall we say, subtle as they could have been. But fuck subtlety – this is MONEY we’re talking about! Doctor Who’s legacy meant it was accepted by everyone, but no one knows about Touchwood, an adult spin off from a kid show so kids aren’t allowed to watch. And when you have a premise THAT stupid, we need branding to get it noticed.

That’s what the Touchwood refs were and why they were pretty much us throwing bricks with TOUCHWOOD scrawled on them through the windows of every TV viewer. There wasn’t a mystery or a conspiracy, we were just screaming 'WATCH TOUCHWOOD ALREADY!' at the top of our voices. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of branding. I’m saying that quite proudly. I’d be very cynical about a program that’s JUST branding, all commerce, salability, dedemographics... and that’s what Touchwood is. A pale, empty shadow of a program and I’m trying to hype it up as the best drama in the world when it isn’t, because I’m a callous businessman. But at least I’m honest about it!"


Trivia -
There’s a statue of a Sycophant in one scene. Which is pretty trivial.


Rumors & Facts -

A common criticism leveled at the first season of the new Doctor Who series had concerned the fact it was a cheaply-made, badly-written, appallingly-acted, emotionally-stunted and unbelievable piece of escapist hokum dross that was about as appealing as shit on toast for breakfast after a hard night of drinking beforehand.

A slightly LESS common criticism was the show’s lack of alien environments, with all thirteen episodes taking place either on Earth or aboard a space station in Earth orbit. This had been intentional on the part of executive producer Russell T Davies; apart from the cost involved, he felt that every Doctor Who story needed a human connection to seem relevant to the viewer, as twenty six solid years of proving otherwise just wasn’t enough to convince him. He would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming in terror, having dreamt they had filmed a story that involved an alien peasant village full of people in togas talking about strangers from the distant mountain. No doubt there were profound psychological reasons for this, but tragically RTD was in the frame to make us ALL suffer with him.

Despite the fact the TARDIS had arrived on an alien world in Attack of the Grinch, Earth 2.0 and Silver Finish, no one actually noticed because they were so damn uninteresting they might as well have been set on contemporary Earth. This in turn fueled RTD’s soul-consuming paranoia that audiences would not buy into other planets as plausible settings. Yeah, cause they’d ALL been to other planets and would be able to tell right away that the scenes on their magic picture box were implausible. Yet, somehow, they bought the flying police box time machine and the shape-changing alien survivor of a gigantic history-rewriting war. An alien planet? No chance.

For the 2006 season, however, Davies was confident enough to attempt to consider discussing an adventure PARTLY set on another world and actually informing the public about it in advance. He then had a severe relapse and started foaming at the mouth and screaming that the Moxx of Balloon was sitting inside his head and eating him when he was sleeping – and it was due to this, frankly, amateur bit of spin-doctoring that the public got the impression The Santa Tip (or The Sin Factory as it was known at the time) would be the first story fully and completely set on a world as completely divorced from the Human Sphere as possible within the laws of BBC Wales physics.

When the truth was discovered that The Santa Tip (or The Doctor Falls, Rose Falls, We All Fall For RTD’s Bull as it was known soon after) was set entirely on Earth and featured absolutely no new or amazing things at all, and ultimately boiled down to a fight between a bunch of recurring characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, the Robo Santas and the Slitheen, they switched off in droves. Many more hired hit men to seek, locate and exterminate RTD himself.

So, basically, it was business as usual.

At the start of the new season, RTD decided it was high time they ripped off John Carpenter’s 1987 film 'Prince Of Darkness' into a plot about explorers becoming possessed by demonic forces, which he also wanted to serve as a challenge to the Doctor’s own belief systems and his dimensionally-transcendental arrogance. Davies was also responding to producer Phil Collinson’s observation that none of the Doctor’s enemies during the first season had been giant reindeers breathing fire, a lapse which kept Collinson himself awake at night worrying about it.

The writer assigned to this story line in February 2005 was Matthew Jones – but it soon became apparent that Jones himself was just a mass hallucination. There WAS no longtime fan who penned the 1996 Doctor Who: The New Adventures novel Sad Therapy for Virgin Publishing. Nor did he enjoy a busy career in television, earning writing credits on Coronation Street and Gloves In The 21st Century. RTD was traumatized at this, since that meant the script editor of Shameless, Queer As Folk and POW was just a figment of people’s imagination. And since "Jones" had created POW, it dropped out of existence as well leaving DVD blanks and 45 minutes of static being broadcast by the BBC.

Thus, it would have to be someone who actually existed in this plane of reality to pen the story, and it was RTD. A BAFTA-winning author, RTD felt no obligation to follow the story as originally envisioned by what was probably the result of some bad mushrooms, and the story was rapidly rewritten. Originally, the story was set on the alien volcanic planet of Hell, and introduced a new alien race of Zoidberg parodies called the Odd. However, RTD ultimately became concerned that the presence of the monsters was detracting from the humans, whose pioneer spirit he felt was at the heart of the tale. Thus he replaced them with the Slitheen, which would be cheaper to use and also boost sale of Character Options Slitheen sex toys for men and dubious adolescents.

RTD then decided that it was time to plug to the hell out of a new spin-off series Lorraine Heggessy had commissioned while plastered at the 2005 Christmas party: Captain Jack Will Fuck You Hard Tonight, renamed Touchwood, featuring John Barrowman’s portrayal as Captain Jack Sparrow staggering around Cardiff with five other oversexed nymphomaniacs shagging anything that is unable to get away from them fast enough. With Touchwood due to begin airing after the end of the season, it would be a sensible move for Doctor Who to officially acknowledge the thirteen weeks of sexual deviancy and gunfights as actually being anything other than a pornographic free-for-all.

Thus, The Santa Tip would feature the Doctor encountering the copulating conglomerate as a tie-in crossover. There was one problem that absolutely no-one except John Barrowman was actually cast for the characters, so Davies decided to have the entire Touchwood Team killed off and replaced by clones at the end of the story, thus canceling out any dodgy casting made in the parent series. Nevertheless, even the cop-out explanation of poor DNA re-composition doesn’t begin to explain Burn Gorman’s mouth.

Due to a misprint, the draft scripts of the story where entitled "Trouble Down’t Santa Pit" rather than "Eyes of The Angel In The Well of Dispair" which is a spectacular misprint, ladies and gentlemen, I think you will agree. Nevertheless, the idea of building on his curious Xmas Fetish (revealed in his earlier works) appealed to a twisted mind like RTD, and he decided the ugly red absolute source of all evil would be easily replaced with Santa Claus.

However, so much publicity and work had gone into the story already, and "Satan" was mentioned in several drafts. Thus, RTD cut his losses and added a scene where the Doctor says that Satan and Santa are, as the Doug Anthony Allstars correctly postulated, merely the same thing viewed from completely different precepts.

This "Santa/Satan Incredibly Strange Diabolists Who Stopped Worrying And Became Mixed-Up Touchwood Sex Offenders" story was intended to be made as the fourth recording block of the season, directed by Euros "The Predator" Lyn. However, with development still ongoing – particularly to the fact that David Tennant had slept with the entire female segment of the production team, main cast, guest cast and catering staff while never ONCE dropping out of character - it was decided to hold the scripts back, and so The Idiot Box and Feeble were assigned to Block Four instead. However, this had no effect whatsoever on the finished product whatsoever. This whole paragraph could be erased with no material difference. Why the hell did I go to the trouble of typing it up in the first place?

The Santa Tip now comprised the fifth production block, under the aegis of James Strong James Mighty James Rocks. After starting out in television as an actor, presenter, reporter, and blue-screen graphic Strong had moved into directing, with credits on Holby City, The Afternoon Play and Casualty, amongst others he earned by repeatedly kicking people in the bollocks until they surrendered.

He also began making short films, some of them lasting up to twelve seconds and his magnum opus "Karate-Ninja-MILF Extroardinaire of STEEL!" has quite deservedly sunk without trace after his landlord set every single copy alight and threw them into the Thames.

The Santa Tip would be filming in parallel with the year’s sixth and final recording block, which included only Love & Pizzas. Other stories wanted to be in it, but were simply ignored, their tears and howls for justice falling on ears that weren’t there, and even if they were there, would have been stone deaf and the owners probably didn’t speak English.

Nevertheless, this was a time-saving scheduling decision which also helped reduce the strain on David Tennant and Billie Piper, who were particularly strained, especially when they were left alone for long periods of time and often were found, flushed, disheveled and often wearing each other’s underwear. A similar situation had occurred the previous year between Piper and Christopher Eccleston with The Long Haul and Shell Shock (AKA The Bumpy Ride / The Doctor’s Bananas).

Production on The Santa Tip reached even giddier heights when, on February 28th, 2006, it was decided to start recording material from the actual script. Strong decided that the Arctic Circle could easily be created via the Wenvoe Quarry in Wenvoe, and some confetti scattered around the place to give the impression of the frozen tundra.

Although filming in quarries had been a staple of the original Doctor Who series, and indeed every single science fiction format ever ever ever, this was the first use of such a location in its 21st-century iteration. Nevertheless, RTD was firmly against filming in a quarry, terrified people might assume that a story set on Earth in a quarry might be compared to a story set on another planet in a quarry, which would therefore be completely ridiculous and the TV critics would come for them all as they slept and machine gun them to death.

Finally, RTD collapsed into an exhausted delirium and was dragged off set, allowing production to continue a lot smoother than it had before.

By March 3rd footage had been completed that had any relevance of any kind to the story and with only four days with which to finish the story, the entire cast and clew fled back to Newport. Unfortunately, they got completely lost in Clearwell Caves, near Coleford in Gloucestershire whereupon they were attacked from all sides by pale humanoid creatures waiting for them in the darkness.

Luckily, Neil Marshall was filling "The Descent" at the time, deciding to use a GENUINE unexplored cave system full of inhuman creatures in order to cut costs. In the middle of the brutal and terrifying fighting, it was possible for several survivors to make it to the surface – including MyAnna Buring, who was rewarded by getting the part of Helpless Victim 2 in the finished story.

With recording on Love & Pizzas having started and been uncharacteristically professional and competent, it was actually finished while The Santa Tip was still in production. March 31st marked Billie Piper’s final day of filming on Doctor Who, mainly because she couldn’t be arsed any more. However, if I give detailed info about the circumstances of her departure NOW, then the season finale entry’s doing to be a tad sparse, so you’ll just have to suffer in the meantime.

CGI and shit like that was still being worked up in the hours before the episode was screened on the BBC. Because The Santa Tip was made towards the end of the schedule, what little money BBC Wales allowed Doctor Who was typically starting to run low after all the court cases, drinking binges, and armed sieges. Fearing that the production would not be able to afford an elaborate CGI creation for the true form of Santa, and KNOWING the production would not be able to IMAGINE anything worthy of being created in the first place, Davies came up with a number of alternative suggestions which he offered to anyone listening.

- An Old Man (played by Frank Kelly)

- A Gigantic Eyeball

- A Gigantic Clawed Hand

- The Moxx of Balloon

- A race of future humans from the very end of time itself, which RTD had stolen wholesale from the BF Audio "Singular Angularity" and would ultimately use in the Season Three finale

- Sam From "Quantum Leap"

- A Creepy Little Girl, which RTD had stolen wholesale from the vampire detective drama "Angel"

- Jackie Tyler In Leather Dominatrix Outfit Sitting On A Toilet

- Tom Baker (as himself)

It was around this time that Sparacus "Flamingo" Jones arrived to suggest that the archaeologist character possessed by Santa could be played by Adam Rickett and called Ben Chatham. Sparacus pointed out that when the letters apeared all over his body there was a perfect opportunity for him to take his shirt off, and the cliffhanger could easily be changed to feature Adam Rickett rising out of the pit, clad only in a leopard skin posing pouch holding a cake singing "Happy Birthday, Mark Goacher!"

RTD responded by snapping his fingers and having two hired goons bludgeon the interloper unconscious, then sewed into a crude pterodactyl costume before having the shit beaten out of it by a hardcore feminist whose identity was concealed by a curious bondage outfit. When this incident was unfortunately witnessed by a tour group from Children in Need, RTD thought quickly and claimed they were witnessing a dramatic and tear-jerking climax to an upcoming Touchwood episode. Chris Chinballs was ordered to pen an episode involving a sequence where a Cyber-woman beats nine colours of snot out of a pterodactyl, and the rest is, sadly, well-documented history.

In the end, however, money was eventually reallocated to allow the computer-animated realisation of the Reindeer Beast, but was stolen by John Barrowman to, according to his expenses accounts, "buy some young cars to pull hot men". Instead, Paul Kasey put on a strange rubber reindeer outfit and growled a lot – which was given an outstanding reception by everyone who assumed it was actually a CGI effect.

Providing the voice of the Deathless Prince was Chris Evans, after he drank four gallons of WD40 to get "that lovely smooth voice" and stumbled around Cardiff in a daze looking for a motel. Phil Collinson used a Rose Tyler action figure on a stick to lure him into a recording booth to perform Santa’s dialogue.

Despite critical reaction falling mainly on the "What?! Is that IT?" side of the spectrum, The Santa Tip proved to a judicious choice of episode to broadcast around Satan's birthday, of 06/06/06.

The Santa Tip leaves us with a few troubling doubts that belie its happy ending: what if Santa ISN’T just made up to emotionally blackmail small children? What if evil really DOES exist? What if the Doctor is actually proved wrong for once, would he actually show any humility of any sort whatsoever, or just go in denial like the bastard he is? And was Santa lying when he said the Doctor would never get to fourth base with Rose?

Personally, I think this story is just another reactionary media stereotype perpetuating the negative slant against Lucifer. Is it HIS fault that God was so uptight that he exiled the fun loving angel from Paradise? Is it HIS fault that he dares to question things that the establishment don’t want questioned? Lucifer was the original punk, he’s a rebel, a radical, and let’s face it, by tempting Eve with that fruit, he set humanity free from enslavement! He gave us a real purpose, a direction, something to DO with our lives - the chance to think for ourselves, to want to better ourselves, to want to gain knowledge and make our own moral choices! He gave us individuality, setting us free from a religious dictatorship! He is the unsung hero of human existence, giving us desire and all those wonderful feelings! He’s the original revolutionary against intellectual repression - plus he could turn into a talking snake, that’s GOT to be worth admiring.

Now he is being demonized on Doctor Who and it’s just not on! My favorite TV show is responsible for setting back the movement by thirty years all because of Lew Grade in the Pertwee story I’m Dreamin’! That was bad enough but The Implausible Premise/The Constipated Duck has made the situation far worse than ever!

Meanwhile, David Tennant continued his baffling desire to sing in every episode, with his brilliant timing of shouting, "JINGS! ONLY POP MUSIC CAN SAVE US NOW!" during the pulse-quickening cliffhangers:

"Touchwood’s Noel Nemesis" by Jeanine the Slitheen

You’re mad! Yet glad! Just want to get your end away!
We’re slaves! Not paid! Put with you freaks all day!
Not good, Touchwood!
Not welcome in this neighborhood!

We’ve cracked! Get our own back!
Worshipping Santa Claus! Shouting out
"Damn it, what is wrong with you?
Something is wrong with you!"

You’re nuts! No buts! You’re totally sex obsessed!
Big mouth! Drop out! Owen, get off our chests!
You’re strange! Insane!
Only thinking with sex on your brain!

We help Santa Claus! Shouting out
"We’ve cracked! Get our own back!
Worshipping Santa Claus with some self-respect!
Damn it, what is wrong with you?
Something is wrong with you!"

Abused? Confused? For once in your lives refuse!
You’re scum! No tongues! Keep it in your pants or lose!
You’re stuck? Good luck!
No one will watch the series cause no one gives a fuck!

It’s crap, Russell, and something is wrong you!
Baby, something’s seriously wrong with you...