10th Doctor - The Sound of the Drums (iii)

Book(s)/Other Related -
Dr Who Versus The New Statesman!
Dr Who Versus The Bastard’s Wife (Canada Only)
Keith Moon & The Sound of Drums
Alan B’Stard’s "The Basics of Diabolical Plots"


Fluffs - David Tennant seemed monumentally screwed in this story.
"I like my particularly drunk talking badger... he’s a stripy bag of alcoholic fun!"
Sharon Osbourne notes that Alan B’Stard "could lick her box any time".
"Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace! Now, B’Stard, there’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says 'Fool me once, shame on... shame on YOU! Fool me? You can’t get fooled again. We’ll let our UNIT friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.


Goofs -
So we’re supposed to believe that a 5.56mm round from H&K G-36 assault rifle at the side window of a Vauxhall Corsa will NOT blow Martha’s brains out but merely cause some sparks as she drives away through a hail of sub-machine-gun-fire? That’s one myth needing busting right there. And why is Captain "Indestructible" Jack so terrified of getting shot? Had he absent-mindedly forgotten his invulnerability again?
The Bastard has a ridiculous amount of trouble putting his gas mask on, especially when he could just close his lungs to protect him from the poison. And surely throwing all those official cabinet papers at the speaker-phone-gas-pipes was asking for blockages and other nastiness?
The exterior of Martha’s flat doesn’t match the interior. Indeed, if I was a cynical person I’d assumed that the shot of her flat exploding was simply stock footage from an episode of "The Young Ones" with Tennant, Barrowman and Agyeman CGI’d into the foreground. Also, Martha’s car turns from a yellow Ford Escort with red flames up the side and a severed leg nailed to the bonnet to the aforementioned Vauxhall Corsa.
During the phone conversation between the Doctor and the Bastard, Captain Jack can be seen in the background juggling the laptop which he eventually drops, causing it to explode. But later scenes show the laptop is still in perfect working order.
President McCain says there’s an international agreement not to meet with aliens on sovereign territory, but on neutral ground. How does this tie in with The Ambassadors of Sex? Mind you, it IS McCain talking, so he’s probably so stupid as to make mistakes like that.
The Bastard orders the Toclafane to kill one in ten humans. As there are six billion humans and six billion Toclafane, only one in ten Toclafane would need to fire one shot to achieve this, but at the end we see them all continually shooting everyone to pieces? Were they just picking on Cardiff and leaving the rest of the world alone?


Fashion Victims -
The Bastard takes the piss out of the Doctor by wearing frilly shirts, velvet capes, question-mark pullovers and offering people jelly babies in lieu of casual conversation.


Technobbable –
"Thanks to the eccentric properties of low-level psionic energy, string can act as a conductive loop for a perception filter field, so when the psionic energy links up with your brain, triggering the effect – otherwise it would be essentially a closed loop and wouldn’t radiate any field energy at all."
"Um... come again?"
"...it only works if you wear it round your neck."
"Ah, gotcha. Technobbable 101, savvy?"


Dialogue Disasters -

Doctor: So. Prime Minister, huh?
Bastard: I know! Brilliant, isn’t it?
Doctor: How did you manage that?
Bastard: Simple. Just had to drive fast, not crash; made my money, made it last; hung tight, kicked back; prepared myself for your attack; bought low, sold high; took the pills, told the lies; faked my tan, wore a tie; new life cycle, I’ll never die!
Doctor: Eh?!
Bastard: Sorry, going too fast for you? I just FAKED IT, BABY! They don’t even know! I have made it, baby, cause everyone knows THAT’S THE WAY IT GOES!
Doctor: Riiight. You sure you’re over the regeneration trauma?
Bastard: Oh yes, Doctor. I’ve tuned in, dropped out, raised my voice but I never shout. THAT’S THE WAY TO GO!
Doctor: So, um, how did Lucie Miller Who May Or May Not Have A Middle Name get mixed up in this?
Bastard: What can I say? I found my true love on the couch; this is what it’s all about!
Doctor: But you’re a wanted terrorist from the 1970s UNIT era!
Bastard: Ah, but I changed my face, but keep my name, kept it though I play the game! Don’t you know they’re all the same? Don’t you know they’re all the same? And THAT’S THE WAY IT GOES!!
Doctor: Jings...

Lucie: We meet at last, Doctor!
Doctor: We’ve already met, Lucie. You halfwit.

Bastard: No. No. That wasn’t funny. You see, I’m not making myself very clear. Funny is like this. [smiles] Not funny is like this. [smiles] And right now, I’m not like this. [smiles] I’m like [frowns]! Now, can anyone tell the difference and maybe, for extra points, work out which I am now? Oh wait! YOU’RE ALL DEAD OF NERVE GAS! HOW STUPID OF ME TO FORGET! AHAHAHAHAHA!

Lucie: But if journos are asking questions then who else, eh? Tell me that! How much time have we got?
Bastard: Two more episodes. That’s when this season ends.

Bastard: Oh, look. It’s the girlie and the freak! Although I’m not sure which is which.
Lucie: Well, I’m OBVIOUSLY the girlie, and she’s OBVIOUSLY the freak.
Martha: You racist bitch!

Bastard: HERE COME THE DRUMS!
Jack: I’m not worried what the drumming might mean, but I’m terrified what happens when the drums STOP.
Martha: Why? What happens when the drumming stops?
Doctor: Usually? Guitar solo.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Toclafane 1: The Welsh don’t like us.
Toclafane 2: Silly Welsh. Dead Welsh.
Lucie: I LIKE where this conversation is going...

Martha: You never told me who he is?
Doctor: He’s a Time Lord.
Martha: And the rest of it? I mean, who’d call themselves "the Bastard"?
Doctor: It’s an incredibly accurate and appropriate name. That’s all you need to know.

Lucie on her husband, the Bastard:
"I am the Miller. And THIS is my sugar daddy!"

McCain: I’ll see you onboard the aircraft carrier Valium.
Bastard: Valium, huh? "He would valium be, ’gainst all disaster, let him in constancy, follow the Bastard!"
McCain: Yeah. Whatever.

Bastard: Just come on and say you love me one more time! What you’re waiting for? I just got paid, I won’t be lonely so take my hand, whatcha waiting for?
Lucie: God, yer so clingy!

Doctor: You don’t have to do this! It’s just some songs stuck in your head! I can help you! Just stop it!
Bastard: Oh, Doctor, don’t you see? I’m just a slave to it all! Get rich, stay kitsch, give me another hit! I’m just a slave to it all! Couture, some more! Fashion’s the only cure!
Doctor: Jings... you really HAVE got it bad.
Bastard: Ooh, don’t I just know it?

Ann Widdecombe’s manifesto five seconds before she is disintegrated by a passing Toclafane sphere -
"I think an evil renegade Time Lord is exactly what this country needs. He’s a very fine man, and handsome too. I really like his tough-on-single-hearted-anthropoid-scum campaign and his promises to transform the face of the British Empire before the end of the financial year. Indeed, his radical approach to population control will mean lots of new jobs, less overcrowding and more racial tolerance. It worked in Watchmen, it worked for Harriet Jones, and for nine in ten human beings, it will work for them. If you didn’t vote B’Stard, you must be feeling pretty stupid right about now. ARGHHH!!!"

Jack: The moral of this story is that if you’re going to get stuck at the end of the universe itself, always make sure you get stuck with an ex-time-agent who rules a clan of frightfully nice cannibals who can point you in the direction of an easily-flown abandoned TARDIS. How many times have we heard that before, eh?

Bastard: LASER Screwdriver. Who’d have sonic?
Lucie: Well, the Doctor would.
Bastard: Exactly! Do you see my point there, Lucie?!
Lucie: Not really, no.
Bastard: Oh well, can’t be helped. On with Armageddon!

Clive Jones: This is your fault! All of you! YOU VOTED FOR THAT BASTARD!

UnQuotable Quote -
Martha: But hold on. It can’t be!


Links and References –
Martha exasperatedly lists all the adventures she’d had with the Doctor, taking care to note the ones that are BBC Books and available for a shockingly low price from all good retailers such as "The Lust Dodo", "Wooden Tart", "Bling of the Bygones", "Forever Halloween", "Sex Building", "Waterworld", "Pirates of the Time Loops", "Teamaker", "Martha Jones Sings The Blues", "Snow White and the Seven Globes", "Made of Arnickleton", "Revenge of the Jundoon" and "The Wandering Hands".


Untelevised Misadventures -
Doctor: Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to ask – you remember San Francisco, 1999, when you got sucked into the engine of the 57 Chevy of Rassilon in my TARDIS?
Bastard: Yeah, what about it?
Doctor: Seriously, HOW the hell did you get out of that?
Bastard: It was tricky, I’ll admit. I survived as a glob of hair gel.
Doctor: What? That’s IT?
Bastard: Let me tell this in my own way, my own time and my own underwear, all right? The Time Lords needed the perfect warrior to fight in the Temporal Difference of Opinion, since YOU kept dodging the draft. After that stuff up with Moby, they ransacked your TARDIS and found me and then used their genetic doohickeys to grow me a fresh Time Lord body, looking just like Simon Pegg.
Doctor: Oh. Yeah, that does explain a lot.
Bastard: When the Dustbins took control of the Cruciform and Gallifrey burned, I decided it would be a good career move to get the hell out of there before the Moxx of Baloon noticed me. I saw him... I ran. I ran so far because I was so... embarrassed.
Doctor: Preaching to the choir, Bastard. Preaching to the choir.


Groovy DVD Extras -
The cliffhanger rescored with Michael Andrews’ and Gary Jules’ version of "Mad World" playing in the background.


The Spite of Sparacus -
"Of course, the only MAJOR disappointment of this ridiculous and dreadful story was learning that the Doctor and the Bastard were not brothers. This doesn’t ring true at all. Their relationship has been so intense and at times bitter as rivals/enemies that there must be more behind it than a mere adolescent lovers who shared an intense first love – until the whole phone call business causing the split. My take is that they decided to enjoy gay incest at the Time Lords equivalent of university, where they were the two most gifted students. However the relationship went wrong when the Bastard’s bondage fetish conflicted with the Doctor’s role-playing and caused rows. The Doctor should have used sex with the Bastard as casual thing, whereas for the Bastard it was love. Some of this could have been shown in R-rated flashbacks! Look at their behavior in the old series as well as this. It was at times intense and there was a bitterness coming from the Bastard in a way that suggests incest gone wrong. This was a missed opportunity to explain the Doctor/Bastard relationship in a convincing way and show a mature approach to sleeping with your own relatives."


Viewer Quotes -

"The Beat of the Drums story is a paradox akin to watching Little Britain – it’s rather entertaining while at the same time exceedingly boring. How can it be both at the same time? I dunno, I’m mad, aren’t I?" - Tom Baker (2007)

"I still don’t get why the Bastard killed his own Cabinet. Why? Is the story trying to suggest he’s, I dunno, a psycho or something?"
- I.M. Intellectuall-Subnormal (2009)

"The Beat of the Drums is basically an irrelevance and frankly could quite easily be erased from the series, as it adds very little, and what it DOES add to things is repeated again anyway! In fact, if you went from Dystopia to Lust of the Time Lords, I bet you wouldn’t even notice any difference. Except, you know, wondering how the fuck the TARDIS crew ended up prisoners of the Bastard and how the Bastard conquered the world or why Martha is free... but I don’t care. I like Season 19."
- Nala Nosirrom (2008)

"Overall, this series has been a massive improvement over the last, even though David Tennant is too young and can’t act, Freema Agyeman is a bouncing bogan and there isn’t a single science fiction writer involved in this series. The story arc wasn’t quite as knife-under-the-fingernails as last time. For the first time in the whole new series where I actually thought "I wish I’d written this." That must be a good sign that they can finally reach MY god-like writing standards, even though they can’t equal anything produced by America and why oh why must they make the Doctor approachable, caring, compassionate rather than the horny fuckwit portrayed in 1985? Why doesn’t anyone agree with me that this drivel is not the same program of my generation? WHY? WHY?!?!"
- Ron Mallet (yes, again)

"Another alien invasion with credible special effects and doomsday weapons. Another paralyzingly dull, boring and tedious episode not worth watching. Why should I care about what happens to the human race? Come to think of it, I don’t do that anyway, which is why I’m classed as mentally ill by those doctors who have NO idea how the world works! They say I’m paranoid and delusional, just because I know what they get up to in their little tree house during their little secret meetings."
- Mad Larry the Pirate King (2007)

"In a season that has already given us the Dustbins on Broadway, monsters in church and statues that kill... can you imagine anything more utterly surreal and quirky than the last five minutes of The Beat of the Drums? If so, you are a threat and must die, since this is my favourite RTD script by a square mile, finally being let off his leash and fulfilling every twisted whim at his leisure! I lapped up this Spooks version of Doctor Who with all the guns and hardware and assassinations and floating alien soccer balls... I WANT EVERY EPISODE TO BE LIKE THIS!! 10 OUT OF 10!!" – Jo Ford (2008)

"The Beat of the Drum had only a disappointing car chase and a weak gas explosion to mark out a distinct retread of last year’s glories. And I didn’t know you COULD have a weak gas explosion! I never once saw a gas explosion and thought, 'Lamest. Gas. Explosion. Ever!' But I do now."
- Dave Restal (2008)

"Ambitiously exhilarating! Does RTD have no lack of plots whirling around his brain! This is better than ANYTHING by Douglas Adams! A new section of previously unexplored mythology that will make ordinary people salivate for decades to come!"
- eyeofsaurus.com reviewing the thirteen seconds of flashback where they saw a glimpse of some Time Lords on a beach (2008)

"You call this the payoff to a 35 year conflict which I personally think was too long?! This story killed my enthusiasm for New Who, just like Alias of London, The Michaelmas Evasion, The Idiot Box, Love & Pizzas before it. But this fired the fatal shot and made me so dispirited and frustrated I refuse to watch another episode before my spleen bursts at such ratings whoring crap! Normally I just make snide attacks about... well... everything, but this story annoys me so and represents for me all that is wrong about modern mainstream Doctor Who, which is... well... everything. I prefer playing Jenga to watching RTD’s Doctor Who. Or the JNT’s Doctor Who. In fact, nothing after Season 17 is canon and gay people cannot make anything that isn’t full of domestic bitchiness. This is why Nicholas Briggs’ Dustbin Umpire audios are better to ANY Doctor Who ANYWHERE ANYTIME! You don’t get de-moralizing shit like the awesome Captain Jack Sparrow putting up with the brainless pretentious David Tennant wanker in Dusbtin Warzone, do you? OK, you DO get that in Dustbin Umpire III but never mind that now. Where was I? Oh yes, RTD, YOU HAVE CHEATED ME FOR THE LAST TIME! Until next week, anyway."
- Thomas Cookson depriving better people of oxygen (2007)

"This episode could only have been improved if Murray Gold had been tied up and thrown into a threshing machine before he composed the score! His ability to use the Welsh National Orchestra has gone right to his head and he seems to use giant drums, sweeping strings and trumpets BECAUSE HE CAN! Who’d have thought the Rogue Traders would be better than the incidental music?!" - Ian Levine (2009)


David Tennant Speaks!
"It was an inevitability that John Simm would play the Bastard sooner or later. Who’s he famous for? Sam Tyler – which is an anagram of Masterly. Actually that doesn’t really justify it, but it’s a neat bit of trivia you’ve got right there. But John just ate the part up; he really fulfills every inch of that mania, the energy, that need, that hunger, that madness behind his eyes... he was more like me than I am. He’s a bloody unhinged lunatic. I’m not like that. Am I?"

Freema Agyeman Speaks!
"Even though there’s a stunt lady, that was ME doing the driving and those thugs were using real bullets to blow up the car! I swear, this show is trying to kill me in the most gross and dangerous manner possible! WHY DO THEY HATE ME? WHY?!"

John Barrowman Speaks!
"My time on Doctor Who is somehow both wonderful and depressing at the same time. The depression mainly comes from the fact I’ll have to go back to Touchwood. They SAY the next series won’t be complete crap, but that’s what they said the first time..."

John Simm Speaks!
"I followed the script to the letter. All this outrageous evil, bonkers cackling, it’s all Russell’s fault. The Bastard’s a very tortured soul, with this song stuck in his head. We can all sympathize with that, can’t we? Life muzak, 24-7? It’d drive most people insane, wouldn’t it? Of course, my son, my little boy, is OBSESSED with Doctor Who. I wouldn’t have been able to show my face in the house again if I hadn’t taken this part. But it turns out it freaked him and his friends out when they saw what I actually DID to the Doctor. You just can’t please kids these days, can you? Oh to be in the 1970s once again."

Sheridan Smith Speaks!
"It’s nice being, what, the first ever non-CGI companion from Big Finish to appear on TV. And I love the idea of Lucie teaming up with the Bastard because he’s not as much of a stupid ponce as the Doctor, only to find out the Doctor’s done his regeneration thing and turned into Sex-On-A-Stick David Ten Inch. It really puts her into a compromising position, and once you’ve faked an orgasm on an airplane carrier watching the American President being killed by a laser beam from a floating football, you KNOW what a compromising position is. That’s why the Bastard makes the Doctor go all old at the end, so Lucie’s fickleness doesn’t make her side against him. Hell, for David Tennant? I know I would. Definitely."

Russell T Davies Speaks!
"Gosh it’s exciting to bring back the Bastard AGAIN, isn’t it? Twice in one season? Haven’t done that since, er, 2005. This story would be the biggest one yet, all the stakes are upped, and it was basically either this or bringing back the Valeyard. And I may be insane, but I’m not THAT insane. Or depraved. This story does explain WHY the Bastard is so barking mad in the first place and become the absolute antithesis of all that is good and normal in the universe – and it’s a lot better AND subtle than that bollocks from Big Finish that he is the Champion of Death from the Sandman comics."


Trivia -
Robert Lindsey’s character in GBH suffered a similar mental breakdown when he became trapped in a Doctor Who convention with the Rogue Traders music playing constantly in the background. Well, I ASSUME he suffered a mental breakdown. Unless his character NORMALLY asked Dustbins for condoms and shared spliffs with the Fourth and Fifth Doctors...

Rumors & Facts -

"My army! My army! I hear the sound of drums
Above the roar of battles! And, lo, my army comes!
No creed of man may stay it, nor war, nor nation’s law,
The pikes go through the firing-lines
As pitchforks go through straw!
Like pitchforks through the litter,
While empires stand in awe!"

So spoke Henry Lawson in a 1915 poetry slam. It has absolutely nothing at all to do in any way with a Doctor Who story made 92 years later, but you have to admit it’s an incredibly creepy coincidence, don’t you?

No doubt if the Bastard had been spouting biting anti-war poetry from Britain’s finest rather than a 21st century Aussie pop band, countless literary and bigoted English viewers would have loved this story and indeed, died from an overload of orgiastic pleasure in their brains at such high culture in such low art as a mere children’s TV show.

Alas – what am I saying "alas" for? I much prefer the version we got with the Rogue Traders! Hell, anything that pisses off the snobs of fandom has my approval a hundred and four per cent! In fact, I’d demand more lowest-common-denominator material if there wasn’t already an abundance available, just to make those public school posh twats cry even MORE as we string them up from lampposts!

...

Anyway. Russell T Davies had been quietly going mad after seeing the rushes for the first season of Touchwood and repeatedly found solace in the bottom of a bottle of adrenaline and soma while his iPod played the Rogue Traders album "Here Come The Drums" on a perpetual loop. This lead to, one morning, RTD waking up with a hangover of biblical proportions – and, terrifyingly, the pounding in his head was not only in perfect synch with the beeping of his alarm clock, but also the Elvis Costello samples of "Voodoo Child".

As RTD once again foreswore the demon drink, he reflected a moment like that would be enough to drive ANYONE insane, make them dress in black, grow a goatee and wander around shrinking people and trying to take over the universe.

It was then that the Welshman realized he had discovered the true origin of the Bastard and simply HAD to show it on screen now his perception of the evil Time Lord was forever crystallized by "Voodoo Child" and MUST be involved in the wrap-up to the season!

This was allowed to happen as, quite simply, no one else had a better explanation for why the Bastard acted like such a jerk. The only other theory was that the Bastard turned evil after a tragic love affair with Jenny Agutter after she turned out to be a Time Lord spy and made fun of his real name, Koshie. Admittedly, that would be enough to turn ANYONE to the dark side, but RTD refused to surrender and had already demanded clearance from the Rogue Traders to use the song in the program – which goes to show how Australian rock bands are a lot easier to deal with than the Terry Nation Estate.

Indeed, "Watching You’s" lyric ("Get your head numb to the beat of the drum") provided the story with its title: The Beat Of The Drums, a vast improvement on the original, Happy Hunting Legions of Toclafane which was – and let’s be fair here – beyond shithouse.

As in the preceding story, Dystopia, RTD wanted to both compare and contrast the Doctor and the Bastard and decided to give the latter a new companion after he’d ruthlessly slaughtered the old one, poor pitiful Chantho. For extra nastiness, RTD decided that the Bastard’s companion would end up being one of the Doctor’s cast-offs who had turned to the dark side. After briefly considering Turlough as the Bastard’s on-off boyfriend, RTD realized he could cause even MORE chaos and misery for Big Finish if he used one of their original companions and thus the character of Lucie Miller-nee-B’Stard was born.

As with 47, B’Stard’s female agent was originally intended to be the man himself but this had to be changed when Sheridan Smith had a hissy fit and demanded more material and was hastily provided some evil foreshadowing scenes. Jean Rook was named after journalist Jean Rook, and not as many assume a mostly-forgotten bit part character in the 1966 Patrick Troughton story The Feckless Ones. Quite why ANYONE would chose to use the name of an extra in a 40-year-old TV show that doesn’t even exist to be watched any more escapes me, and RTD himself finds this popular fan theory "rather daft".

The Beat of the Drums started the eighth and final block of Doctor Who’s recording schedule, leaving it perilously late when you think about it. The director assigned was Colin Teague, who had previously helmed Plot Device and Lesbians Bearing Telepathy for Touchwood, as well as Invasion Of The Banal for The Sarah Jane Misadventures. Teague began filming the story on February 7th two days after everyone began work – starting with material in Derek Jacobi’s laboratory at Upper Boat, which Graeme Garden had foolishly forgotten to use in Dystopia.

While the segments featuring the various international news anchors were completed at BBC Wales where said international news anchors were based, the now-traditional celebrity cameos were filmed by those desperate enough to think appearing in Doctor Who could boost their careers. As with The Parting of the Legs and Dustbin –vs- Cyberman! before it, The Beat of the Drums would feature famous figures stealing screentime from the alien horde and the main characters.

The famous figures thus declaring their support for Alan B’Stard included Sharon Osbourne; McFly; Ann Widdecombe; Michael Parkinson; Robert Mugabe; Roger Moore; Jack Nicholson; the Chaser Team; Bono; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Dave Sims; L. Frank Baum; and Nelson Mandela. Mandela and Nicholson also portrayed the Time Lords in the flashback to the heady youth of the juvenile Bastard. The Time Lord was dressed in the traditionally-unfashionable Gallifreyan robes which Doctor Who had been lumbered with since The Lethal Assassin in 1976, while the Bastard was luckily enough to wear the slightly-less-embarrassing outfit the Time Lords wore back in 1969’s The Wank Games, which of course was the very first appearance of the Bastard.

Don’t fucking argue with me, it WAS!!

The first major location for The Beat of the Drums was Hensol Castle in Hensol (as opposed to Hensol Castle in Aberdeen) which was cunningly redressed as the rebuilt Downing Street, as well as Jean Rook’s study, the Toclafane’s address to humanity, and the American university dorm room. Ironically, the finished product gives the baffling impression that these separate events all occurred in the some weird share house like The Young Ones, with investigative journalists co-sharing a room with Yankee college students and floating alien soccer balls of death.

The return of the Doctor, Martha and Jack from the far future was filmed on February 21st at The Friary in Cardiff. The day concluded with the Bastard’s election victory address, conducted inside the Millennium Centre to ensure none of the public would accidentally stumble across the recording and get the impression that ANOTHER alien had taken over the Houses of Parliament.

Excised from The Beat of the Drums, albeit for reasons of cost and the fact it was considered Crown Court evidence, was a more elaborate car chase sequence in which John Barrowman robbed an adult bookstore with Freema Agyeman as the getaway driver. Had David Tennant not stopped to supply autographs to adoring fangirls, then their hit-and-run campaign throughout Cardiff might never have been stopped!

The hideout to which the Doctor, Martha and Jack retreat was actually a British Rail warehouse in Cardiff; and all three were genuinely in hiding until the police found them on the 10th, and this marked the end of both David Tennant’s and John Barrowman’s work on the season and the start of the long term in prison awaiting trial. Luckily, as in America, paid-up equity members are exempt from prison sentences because if you went around locking up actors, they’d never make any TV shows, the public would have nothing to believe in, everyone would get depressed, no one would go to work and the whole economy would collapse!

Meanwhile, David Tennant was far more miffed to discover he wouldn’t be allowed to sing in every episode than a possible jail sentence. For, once again, in order to firmly establish once and for all the drug-crazed midget Jim Carey was the SAME Bastard who had shot down Chantho the previous week, it was decided to have him lip-synch to a similar Rogue Traders song as he carried out his nefarious scheme for total global domination and the conquest of the material universe.

Alas, RTD had completely forgotten his intention to include Voodoo Child in the broadcast of the story and when he was reminded only at a late stage by script editor Simon Winstone-Churchill, who had long obtained the appropriate clearances, they actually chose the WRONG BLOODY SONG!!

And why not?


"Peoples of the Earth, Please Attend Carefully" by Toc, La and Phane

Take me downtown, it’s where the people rock,
Three-hundred sixty five, the drums they never stop.
Take me downtown, cause the world’s about to end
See how the drumming drives me round the bed

Take me downtown, the Empire starts here
Everyone you know is shaking with fear
Take me downtown, as the TARDIS hums
Then get your head numb to the beat of the drums

CAUSE I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
AND NOW YOU SEE SO PARADOXICALLY!
I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
AND NOW YOU SEE SO PARADOXICALLY!

Take me downtown cause Lucie wants to mock
It gives a little edge to this electro-pop!
Take me downtown, let everybody see
Me conquer this planet – live - on the BBC!

Take me downtown, it’s time to end this fight
The Doctor’s going nowhere, so let’s party all night
Take me downtown, as the TARDIS hums
Then get your head numb to the beat of the drums

CAUSE I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
AND NOW YOU SEE SO PARADOXICALLY!
I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
AND NOW YOU SEE SO PARADOXICALLY!

Drumming knocks never stops!
Round and round the clocks!
Rogue Traders rock! Give it up!
Never, never stop!
Lucie stop! Get on top!
Deci-decimate them all!
I’m Lord Protectorate
Ruler of you all

CAUSE I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
I SEE YOU WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU
AND NOW YOU SEE... so paradoxically.