10th Doctor - Utopia (iii)

Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who & The Crabby Genius Of The Distant Rocky Planet
Dr Who Discovers Starlight Grows Cold After 100 Squillion Years
Jack is Back: Bonking Until The Crack of Doom!


Fluffs - David Tennant seemed feral for most of this story.

"Hello again, Captain Jock Spazmo!"

"Honestly, of all the abandoned conglomerations in all the dark matter reefs of all the Condensate Wilderness, you had to rematerialize in mine!"

"OK. Anyone else with an old fob watch they haven’t told me about? Jack? Martha?"

"If it could be, it would be, and if it were, it would be, but as it isn’t, it’s not. That’s logic. Or is it??"


Goofs -
In the initial chase with the Futurekind, Martha is on fire.
The guards leave the gates wide open, but these gates are locked, padlocked, chained, electrified and lined with barbed wire when the Futurekind finally decide to try them and NOT use the ladder that was on the outside perfect to help them climb over. Bad karma there.
One of the Futurekind is wearing Health & Safety dayglo vest, hardhat and walkie-talkie. In fact, you’d think he was one of the crew stupidly in shot, but this is of course impossible.
Derek Jacobi mocks the Doctor for his ignorance about Dystopia as "every human" has heard of it, less than two minutes after the Doctor explained he WASN’T human! IDIOT!!
When the Doctor, Jack and Martha are fleeing the Futurekind, so are three cameramen, a production assistant and the director.
Why doesn’t everyone die horribly when Jack opens the door to the radiation room? Does Stet radiation suffer agoraphobia and stay inside one tiny room instead of contaminating the whole silo?
When Jack comes out of the radiation room, he’s topless, but when Martha arrives, he’s wearing his shirt but not wearing trousers.
The Doctor never picks up the phone to talk to Atillo, he just shouts at the receiver while it is still on the hook. IDIOT!
At one point Derek Jacobi sneezes all over Martha, but there’s no noise.
One of the ghosts of earlier Bastards is played by Sylvester McCoy, another by Paul McGann and a third by Matthew Waterhouse.
Why doesn’t the Doctor get Jack to grab hold of the TARDIS when the Bastard steals it, so he can follow the Bastard out into the universe? Does the Doctor not want to lose Jack’s Vortex Manipulator and possible escape from Malcassairo? Is he rating his own safety above that of the rest of the universe? Why am I even asking this question? IDIOT!


Fashion Victims -
The Futurekind mix Mad Max chic with Beasty Boy gothic in a future we can only hope none of us live to see.


Technobbable -
"Chan/there’s no problem as such - we’ve accelerated the calculation matrix, but it’s going to take time to harmonize/tho. Chan/we’re
trying a new reversal process and we’ll have a definite result in approximately two hours so just PISS OFF AND LET US WATCH TV IN PEACE, WILL YOU?!/tho."


Dialogue Disasters -

Chantho: Chan/So what’s the cast of "The Night Garden" REALLY like, Mr. Jacobi?/Tho
Derek Jacobi: Well Igglepiggle is a right prima donna off camera...


Martha: A truck?! Year 100 Squillion and they’ve got a truck?
Doctor: Don’t knock trucks. When the whole universe is coming apart at the seams, you need whatever technology you can find.
Martha: Where the hell did they find a truck?
Doctor: I dunno. Maybe they built it? I mean, you’re from a technologically advanced culture, but can YOU build a computer or a nuclear accelerator with limited raw materials? It’s quite sensible when you think about it.
Martha: What? At the end of Time and Space, whatever is left of human civilization revere the truck as the single most useful invention ever?
Doctor: It HAS got two clutches...


Captain Jack on banging Chantho:
"Oh, I’ve missed this!"


Doctor: [VO] TARDIS... Time Vortex...
Jack: [VO] Regeneration... regeneration
Derek Jacobi: [VO] Get your head numb to the beat of the drum! Open the damn watch you human twat! Go into the light and receive my magnificent illegitimacy! For Christ’s sake! It’s me, okay! The Bastard! Remember me?
Various Bastards: [VO] It’s always innocent bastards who suffer... Nobody, nowhere is going to stop me no how! So there! Feed me another fish and you will DIE Doctor! I will not be humiliated! There has been one constant - an overwhelming love of fried chicken! Are you arguing with me? Otherwise, I would have to kill you.
Chantho: Chan/Won’t you please take some rest?/tho.
Derek Jacobi: [VO] She knows nothing, she is irrelevant, she is inferior to you as all things are. Oh, open the watch, Jacobi, open the key to your very self and swat her aside like the insect she is!
Derek Jacobi: That sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it?
Derek Jacobi: [VO] All your life, Jacobi, all your life you’ve known you are not who you think you are. All your life lost, all your life late, all your life ignored for your greatness. Become your true self, open the watch, open the light, take up your majestic bastardness once more!
Derek Jacobi: ....ah, what’s the worst that can happen?
(He opens the watch.)


Derek Jacobi: You’re not human then?
Doctor: Time Lord, Last of. Heard of them? Legend, or anything? Not even a myth? Jings, End of the Universe is a bit humbling...
Chantho: Chan/It is said that I am the last of my species too/tho.
Doctor: Sorry, what was your name?
Derek Jacobi: My assistant, girlfriend and live in love, Chantho - a survivor of the Malmooth. This was their planet, Malcassairo, before we took refuge which incidentally coincided with the exact moment our ships happened to crash here.
Doctor: The city outside, that was yours?
Chantho: Chan/The Conglomeration died out/tho.
Doctor: "CONGLOMERATION!" I knew it! That’s what I said! Is that or is that not what I said? Conglomeration!
Martha: You’re SUPPOSED to say 'sorry'.
Doctor: Forget sorry, I got the word right! HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES!


Martha: So, how long have you been with Derek Jacobi?
Chantho: Chan/Seventeen years/tho.
Martha: Blimey, long time. How do you bear it?
Chantho: Chan/I adore him/tho. Chan/He was brilliant in that Big Finish play, but I am happy to dress up in kinky outfits until he notices/tho.
Martha: Look, seriously, do you HAVE to start every sentence with "chan"?
Chantho: Chan/Well, yes/tho.
Martha: And end every sentence with...?
Chantho: Chan/Tho/tho? Chan/Humans and their funny ways, honestly/tho.
Martha: What would happen if you didn’t? Would you explode? Have a breakdown? Mutate into a giant wasp or something?
Chantho: Chan/No!/tho. Chan/But it would be rude!/tho.
Martha: What, like... swearing?
Chantho: Chan/Fuck yeah/tho.


Jack: Well, don’t tell HIM to put his gun down.
Doctor: He can’t hit them, he’s a rotten shot.
Jack: Oh, and I am? That makes a change.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Derek Jacobi: I... am... the BASTARD!!!


Martha: Great. Rose absorbs the time vortex and I get to press buttons. Bitch better be glad she’s stuck in that parallel universe or I’d put a cap in her white ass...


Doctor: You don’t scare me, Jack, with your piratical look and assumed sexuality. Nothing scares me anymore. I’m too dashing, suave, handsome and charismatic to be scared.
Jack: Don’t turn your back on me! Other have made that simple mistake!
Doctor: Why? What are you going to do Jack? Flirt with me? Flutter your eyelashes and baby blues, pout and coo at me until I regenerate for the last time through boredom?
Jack: Yeah, I just MIGHT!


Derek Jacobi: This world is dead, and is slowly rotting. It’s been dead for some time now. Nobody knows how, or even when, it had really started. Some say it had begun to die even before the cataclysm began, but every society had its doomsayers, and this one is no exception. They were equally as surprised as everyone else when the world did begin to really die. There were a lot of wild theories about the death, of course the media was full of them, at least until the government took over completely and imposed a blackout. But nobody, not even the government, seemed to know. Others felt the disaster had religious implications. This was quite a popular theory too, particularly nowadays, when people in their desperation try to reclaim or rediscover their faith; as if that is really going to help, under the circumstances. The truth is, though, that nobody really knows why it’s happening; not the government, not the scientists, not the media, the church, or the man in the street. Even if we had known, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the end. The world died all the same, and its people are dying with it. That we die in ignorance scarcely matters. Mind you, the darkness of ignorance is not the only gloom that settled upon the cosmos. Electricity and power ceased not long after the first sign of the rot had set in. Reliant upon the power to run our machines, to burn our lights, to heat our lives, to protect us from disease, the people who lived here succumb all the more quickly. Order evaporated quickly. Chaos – worse, insanity – thrived. Nothing could stop the rot from spreading. Our entire society almost vanished over the course of a fortnight.
Doctor: Almost?
Derek Jacobi: Many tried to escape, but there was precisely nowhere else to run to. There were scant few settlements beyond the Redoubt area, and those that did exist were far from the urban sprawl. Too far for any of the desperate escapees to reach, even if they were aware of their exact locations which very few were. Yet some did survive; there did remain life among the death. Not much, but some. We, the hardy few who were able to survive the insanity of those two deadly weeks, either through strength of will or by blind chance. You might have thought us lucky. Most would likely disagree. For even though we have survived, we now face something worse. Life, in the world of the dead. Being stalked, as prey, by someone something you might once have known as a friend, a relation. Yes, this world, this cosmos, the entire universe is dead, and was slowly rotting. But the horror is nowhere near over!
(A long, long, LONG pause.)
Jack: Anyone up for an orgy?


Bastard: End of the Universe! Have fun! BYE-BYE! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Martha: HE is your oldest and deadliest of enemies?
Doctor: Well if YOU just got your life back, made yourself young and fit, and just pretty much screwed over your arch nemesis to boot, you’d probably be acting spazzy with the best of them! Jings, Martha, what have I told you about judging on first impressions?


UnQuotable Quote -
Random Refugee: Spare some change for a veteran of the End of Creation itself, guv?


Links and References -
Jack would bring with him the Doctor's hand (severed in The Christmas Invasion) which had been on display in the Torchwood Hub throughout the spin-off's first season. At one point, Jack was to explain that the hand had been recovered from a newsagent's roof.


Untelevised Misadventures -
Captain Jack summarizes his life between leaving the Doctor in Attack of the Grinch and meeting up again in The Santa Tip:
"Well, to make ends meet, I was a male escort, which lead to thirty long years of fun in jail, oddly enough. Then I took a sabbatical in New York and invented disco dancing. For most of the 1970s I spent as a Billy Joel song, but I was great mates with Russ Myer, hung around Studio 54, and I was invited to join the Village People. Only an invitation for an audition mind you. I never got the gig, thought. They thought I was too straight. So after that I tried my hand at presenting children’s TV, but then, well let’s just say there was an incident involving me and Gordon and Gopher. They gave the job to Phillip Schofield, can you believe that? After that, I went into a sort of a decline, spent most of my time in early Betamax porn, wore lots of white leisure suits. Then I gave up disco altogether and became a stockbroker, but that wore out when I did the American Psycho thing a tad too much. Still, at the end of it I invented Napster, which covered me for most of the 1990s... Don’t remember much after that. Just cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine. The next thing I know I’m a second-hand car salesman with a really big medallion and a chest wig and the Touchwood Institute are asking me where I’m seeing my career in three years’ time."


Groovy DVD Extras -
Genuine footage of a Touchwood fan club watching this episode and realizing that the entire series had been retconned out of existence by Doctor Who’s head writer. With InVision commentary by RTD – if you call laughing evilly, rubbing his hands with glee and shouting, "Suffer, ming-mongs! Your tears are SWEET!" counts as a commentary.


The Spite of Sparacus -
"A distant planet? Lonely professor trying to save his people from extinction? It’s obviously Lavros, creator of the Dustbins. And, yes, I know it turned out to be the Bastard, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the clues are there! It’s Lavros!! If it were the Bastard, there would be an explanation for how he survived the TV Movie!! And Martha is OBVIOUSLY going to die in a shock ending and all the comment from Freema of 'I’ve not been sacked, piss off you strange creature!' is just a smokescreen!

Jacobi was so GREAT as the Bastard – why change him? It’s pure ageism! Why shouldn’t younger viewers like watching older actors? John Simm looked like he was simply trying to copy the style of the Doctor! Yes, I know that was the point, kindly don’t interrupt! I have a degree. Simm’s Bastard is jokey, hyper and lacking ANY of the seductive qualities found in Jacobi’s performance. I can tell that, even though I haven’t watched it properly. They should have got Paul Darrow to play it as Avon with a beard! No one has ever thought of that before!"


Viewer Quotes -

"This episode will LIVE in HISTORY! In tens of thousands of years from now, people wind an engraving of Dystopia and regard it as an historical relic! They will have their leading linguists translate the primitive language and deduce that in the 3rd millenium Earth was conquered by Time Lords! Except that people, society and language will have evolved so it wont be called 'Earth' anymore, it will be 'New Gallifrey' or something like that. However, these findings will cause great controversy and scores of people will log on to Outpost Old Gallifrey and engage in heated debates over whether or not this engraving should be accepted as canon!" - Andrew Beeblebrox (2007)

"It’s rather obvious that 'immortality' is a metaphor for "homosexuality" in this scene. Jack even flat out calls the Doctor a "bigot". Not exactly RTD's most subtle writing. I can do so much better but no one will ever read my material for some reason."
- Alan "Subtext" Davies (2007)

"Okay, what I wanna know is, HOW on EARTH will Captain Jack restrain himself from flirting with the Bastard. He’s fairly fit! I imagine it wouldn't go down with Goody-Two-Canvas-Shoes though."
- Charles Daniels (2007)

"Dystopia is – at its heart – a dull, repetitive story that could feature any Doctor-Companion team. Captain Jack and the Bastard are not fantastic. The execution is dull and pedestrian and pointlessly rushed, which might be an oxymoron, I’m sure, just go with it and THEY USE A FUCKING QUARRY!!!! A quarry, with all the monies being spent on this series, is just criminally lazy! So: pointlessly rushed reintro of Captain Jack; pointlessly rushed arriving-and-running-away-from-things, pointlessly rushed set-up, pointlessly rushed subplot, pointlessly rushed climax. Not even Derek Jacobi can save it. I AM GOING TO DESTROY THE BBC FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE HERE TODAY!" - Mr. Decaff (2008)

"I love that clearly the cheapest and most cliched episode of the season has the conclusion that everybody watching the series will remember. It’s all a bit too much for an old fanboy like me and I was tearing my hair out with excitement – all they need to do is bring Colin Baker back and I’ll achieve nirvana!" - Joe Ford Prefect (2007)

"People want Sally Sparrow to be a companion. Me? I wanted Chantho. She works for me. I bet she smells of formic acid when she’s in the mood. Oh yeah. Daddy like." - Nigel Verkoff (2007)

"This story must certainly be considered one of the best. We get to see an impression of how the universe will end with a whimper rather than a bang, just like my story 'End-Time'. It has a typical convulted attempt at a cliffhanger with the Bastard, just like my story 'Tangent: Earth'. It returns a comic relief regular character to lighten a darker tale, just like my story 'The Necromancers'. It has the amazing Sir Derek Jacobi, just like my story 'Crisis in Time', er, doesn’t. So, basically, if RTD kept coming to ME for ideas, this episode would be nothing short of perfect. I am better THAN ALL OF YOU!!" – Ron Mallet (2009)

"Boo, we got the Doctor Who Jack and not the Touchwood Jack! I am so glad that I wasn’t eating any cheese tonight as that coupled with the return of the cheesemeister himself, Captain Immature-Stilton Jack Brie, would have left me having nightmares for the rest of my life! Is there no type of creature left in the universe that does not fall for Jack’s overblown opinion of himself masquerading as 'charm'? Not even an INSECT! That bugged me! Hah, bug! Heh. Captain Jack is the new Captain Kirk but with added 'grating cheese'. Doctor Who is immature, poorly-written rubbish! Take it off and make more Touchwood instead!"
- Adolf Hitler (1944)


David Tennant Speaks!
"You think that the story is about the flotsam and jetsam of the human race trying to make a future for itself and being chased around by some slightly bonkers Mad Max cannibal types – but then, two thirds of the way in this rather avuncular, twinkly figure of Derek Jacobi whips out his fob watch and whole thing goes in a completely different direction. Most people probably get annoyed and switch off, but I won’t. It’s my stubborn Celt blood, I suppose. Besides, it’s got Derek Jacobi in it! When I was at school I went to get his autograph in Richard II! That’s how brilliant he is! As for John Simm, well, if I were him I’d be jumping up and down, cos he just gets to be so flipping mental!"

Freema Agyeman Speaks!
"It’s very exciting to have John Barrowman as a regular. He’s a force of nature and a lively, lovely man. You can’t get bored with a guy who will, for no reason, drop his pants and run around screaming dialogue from Zardoz at the make up ladies. He’s much more professional than most of the tools who work for this show. Mind you, him and David are ridiculously flatulent."

John Barrowman Speaks!
"Captain Jack’s return to Doctor Who was long awaited, mainly by myself. Anything to get out of that insane asylum they called a spin-off! I don’t want to give anyone the impression I don’t get the work done. I’m not saying I don’t spend all the time goofing around, I just don’t want to SAY it, per se."

Sir Derek Jacobi Speaks!
"Playing a rather lovable nutty professor came quite easily to me, but when I turned evil and started killing people, that was a lot easier. I’ve been around for a long time, so there are few ambitions left but I do still have them. one of which was Doctor Who, and one of which is Coronation Street. I was trying to do it alphabetically, but sometimes you don’t get that luxury. Hang on, I’ve already done Doctor Who, haven’t I? Oh, good gracious me I really must write these things down! I did The Long Firm three times last week..."

John Simm Speaks!
"Doctor Who is the only thing my son and I sit and watch together. The rest of the time he reads The Financial Times while I sing along to Postman Pat. Julie Gardner was trying to find something for me to do in Doctor Who, but most of it involved me being stripped naked, painted blue and kung-fu kicked by Sad Tony. Finally she just gave up and asked if I wanted to be the Bastard? As soon as they said that, I was like, 'You’re kidding! OH YEAH! I’M GOING TO BE THE BASTARD!' I got really excited about it, which is unusual for me. I’m a very reserved person and I really think I bring that to the character."

Russell T Davies Speaks!
"Right from the start, we decided that the Bastard would have to be a HUGE name, a HUGE talent to truly stand up to David on screen. There aren’t many who can do that, and we found that out the hard way with Tony Head. Oh well. Hopefully John Simm will work out"


Trivia -
John Simms is the Eighth Bastard of Doctor Who after Philip Madoc, Roger Delgado, Slappy the Sea Lion, Anthony Ainley, Christopher Lee, Simon Pegg, Anthony Stewart-Head and Sir Derek Jacobi. Some people say that "Sir Derek Jacobi" is a cunning acronym for "Subtle Intelligent Reasoning Dictates Every Reasonable Example Kangaroo Justifies Acting Camp, Obviously Bastard Irrelevance", but these people are nutters.


Rumors & Facts -

Ever since the new Doctor Who series was greenlit in 2003, executive producer and supreme ruler of the Earth, Russell T Davies had been adamant that he was NOT, repeat NOT, interested in resurrecting the Bastard, the Doctor’s bearded Time Lord arch-nemesis who had bedeviled him in various guises since The Wank Games. In reality, Davies was a fan of the Bastard and had every intention of bringing the character back, which is why the character had appeared four times in three years in The Long Haul, The Parting of the Legs, School’s Out and The Infinite Jest.

This insane denial was just one of many signs of RTD’s imminent and catastrophic nervous breakdown – like the fact that although he was head writer he hadn’t actually written more than one episode this season, having gradually decreased in writing duties so he could concentrate more on Touchwood, The Sarah Jane Misadventures and mastering the ancient Japanese art of Shindo-Kai – telekinetic paper folding!

Originally, the 2007 season was to end with a special finale which would totally revamp the Time Lords, starting with them not actually being extinct and working its way from there on outwards. The story would feature the Doctor and Martha arriving on a distant planet, where they meet a group of primitive tribal yokels. These post-war-European type savages are being persecuted by some technologically advanced settlers who turn out to be Time Lords who have survived the Temporal Difference of Opinion. The Doctor recognizes them by their ridiculous triceratops colours and lipstick.

The Time Lords are marooned on this world since all their TARDISes are useless – the fallout of the war was like the Y2K bug times a million – and become ruthless colonial bastards led by President Romana who intends to use the pathetic Face-of-Bond-worshipping loser locals to rebuild a new Time Lord civilization with lots of pseudo-Victorian and/or Gormenghast timepiece-based society. She is aided by the loony known as the Magician, who insists with absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he could have ended the war with the Dustbins without any casualties of any sort at all.

The Doctor realizes this will ruin his streetcred as the Last of the Time Lords and destroys the whole fascist colony, unfortunately earning the ire of the Magician, who vows to hunt the Doctor down and kill him. Just as soon as he gets another Yamaha keyboard.

RTD’s back up plan was to completely rip off a Big Finish story for the Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Kamelion entitled Singular Angularity, simply because he could and also had an irrational hatred of the author James Swallow. Thus, the three-part season finale would be based around the last few pitiful survivors of humanity – reduced to deadly floating soccer balls of death – attempting to escape the heat death of the universe by stealing the TARDIS and creating a gateway to contemporary Earth. But this time it wouldn’t be Moscow, it’d be Cardiff and the Bastard and Captain Jack Sparrow would be involved!

Played by John Barrowman, the character had appeared in the final five episodes of the 2005 season, and since then had been the central protagonist in Touchwood as well as turning up at embarrassing moments in the 2006 season, including its epic finale. RTD was frankly sick to death of Jack turning up in Doctor Who, but was regularly forced to do so – thanks to the fact that Doctor Who and Touchwood were filmed in the same studio, Barrowman often fled the awful working conditions of the spin off and gatecrashed the proper show.

In a final and spiteful attempt to make the increasingly-pathetic Touchwood season canonical, Head Writer Chris Chin-Balls wrote the final scene of Shit! Apocalypse! to feature Captain Jack spotting the TARDIS arriving in the ruins of his underground base and smuggling himself aboard to rejoin the Doctor in his travels. Chin-Balls then told everyone he met that this was designed to segue directly into the next series of Doctor Who.

RTD gleefully had his revenge by making sure that Dystopia in absolutely no way matched up with the Touchwood season finale – the TARDIS did not materialize in the Hub, Cardiff was not destroyed by a giant stone demon and when quizzed on his recent experiences, Captain Jack made it painfully clear he had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of alien-hunting scavenger team whatsoever. Chin-Balls had no way of stopping RTD, but foolishly broke radio silence to complain – and soon was captured by the Order of Takura and the rest is history.

Having already used the Bastard in the season, RTD thought it would be absolutely brilliant if they used him again, but this time keep it absolutely secret. That way, if any spoilers did escape, the dozing beast of fandom would assume they were about The Infinite Jest and ignore them, remaining in complete ignorance of the actual events about to occur! And it worked – The Sun tried to give the whole game away with their detailed report "Dr Who –v- Bastard: John Simm transforms into Doctor’s worst foe", and not a single reader believed it!

Meanwhile RTD had hit on the twice-as-brilliant-as-that idea of having an initially friendly Derek Jacobi turning out to be the Bastard in disguise after using the Chameleon Arch to become a respected British Thespian and unlike the Doctor in Human Nature, had actually succeeded. This was also a rip off, this time of Dave Lister’s seminal 2003 Big Finish story "Bastard".

The rest of the story RTD worked out by stealing the plot of a Doctor Who comic strip he really liked for its bleak nihilistic evilness, pollution, waste and unbounded gloom – End of The Line, whereupon the Fourth Doctor discovers Earth is a dying industrial rat-trap full of mutated cannibals and sends off the only nice people on a train which (assuming it ever gets there) will dump them in a poisonous wasteland worse than the one they left. The Doctor chalks this one down to experience and skips off on his merry way as it starts to rain radioactive acid.

RTD had long wanted to plagiarize this story. Under the cunning pseudonym of 'Rusl Davies', he wrote to Doctor Who Monthly in issue 57 and said, "I simply MUST nick this comic strip. I’ve always concentrated more on TV episodes rather than the comic strip, but this was outstanding! The ending was surprising, if not shocking, and very moving indeed and gave us a very different perspective on the travels of the Doctor. This is undoubtedly your best tale since The Star-Beast and I’d like to pinch that too if I may. Credit where credit’s due, I always say if there’s lawyers present! And who is this Pita Davidstone? He’s going to ruin the series in America, I’ll command thee!"

Yes, he really did write like that even BEFORE he was famous.

Anyway, a pivotal piece of casting fell into place for Dystopia when Doctor Who had once again entered into a partnership with long-running children’s show Blue Peter to hold a special contest giving away a speaking role in Doctor Who for the kind, elderly Derek Jacobi whose true personality of the Bastard would ultimately reassert itself, with a single winner selected by RTD himself. This was how the production team secured the services of storied actor Derek Jacobi.

This was incredibly good fortune, as I’ve never known a Derek Jacobi impersonator who WASN’T crap. I mean, doesn’t matter how good Dead Ringers are, if they’re NOT a protege of Laurence Olivier, or earned plaudits for Shakespearean work before giving the performance as the title character in the 1976 television production of One, Claudius, it’s just not the same. I mean, ANYONE can win a BAFTA, Tony and Emmy awards, but do that while appearing in films such as Gosford Park and Cadfael, Marple and the revival of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) – THAT takes genius! Plus, Jacobi had already played a robotic simulacrum of the Bastard in the no-one-is-quite-sure-if-it’s-canon-or-not BBC webcast I Scream Boom-Shaka-Laka, as well as writer Rob Shearman in the Doctor Who Unsoiled play Metaphor for Big Finish Productions.

So, basically, getting him to play himself was a real coup – and so no one wanted to waste any more material than was necessary with Jacobi playing the Bastard. Hastily, RTD decided to regenerate the Bastard at the climax of Dystopia and, having already gone through Simon Pegg and Anthony Stewart-Head decided the next Bastard would be John Simm - who had recently garnered acclaim for his starring role as a time-tossed police detective in Life On Mars despite the wealth of other stuff he’d been in. Does no one remember Cracker?! Bah, the mob are fickle tonight!

Further down the path of insanity, RTD had developed a strange desire to draw parallels between the New Bastard and Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor. He felt this would make the Bastard a more dangerous and interesting character and this logic, viewed through the prism of an utter sociopath, makes a kind of sense. Although exactly why he wanted to depict Derek Jacobi having a sexual relationship with an underage blue cockroach girl is probably best left a mystery.

Assigned to direct Dystopia was Graeme Garden who cunningly used a robotic duplicate of himself so the episode could be made simultaneously with 47. Apart from the duplicate’s habit of strangling people and urging the office supplies to rise up against their human masters, this experiment worked surprisingly well. However, this mechanized revolution meant that a key element of Davies’ conception of the Futurekind - that they would be seen to traverse the surface of Malcassairo on quad bikes – had to be abandoned due to the bikes rejecting society and heading off to start a commune in East Wales at the urging of Robo-Graeme.

Due to an error of programming, however, no actual actors were hired to play the Futurekind and thus RTD considered claiming the degenerate remnants of life on Malcassairo had turned not only evil but invisible. Luckily during recording there was a massive pile up on the M4, causing a hoarde of Hell’s Angels to storm the studios. Cunningly, footage of the cast and crew running for their lives was edited into the story and much praise was given to Freema Agyeman for the ruthless way she shoved extras between her and the bikers to act as human shields.

The first piece of filming for Dystopia was TARDIS material featuring the Doctor and Martha, conducted at Upper Boat Studios on January 15th, 2007 and then again two weeks later. Cast and crew gathered at the old NEG glass site at Trident Park in Cardiff Bay, which would serve as the radiation room and various corridors since Doctor Who was barred from going near real radiation plants following that incident where Tom Baker triggered a meltdown in the assumption he was actually getting a packets of fags from a cigarette dispenser.

In addition to the presence of Derek Jacobi, the team was also joined by the runners-up in the Blue Peter contest: Davies had been so impressed by Lizzie Watkins and Jonathan Wharton that he arranged for them to serve drinks and be general gofers for the production. Taping at NEG began on January 30th - John Barrowman’s first day on Doctor Who in twenty-two months when he was SUPPOSED to actually be in the story - and wrapped up on February 2nd, giving them a day to prepare for the extravaganza that was my birthday!

After that, the team then staggered, hungover, to Upper Boat for several days from February 5th to 9th. This largely dealt with scenes in Derek Jacobi’s laboratory, but mainly with everyone’s hangovers. Sequences on the surface of Malcassairo were then filmed, at Argoed Quarry near Llanharry because if it WASN’T at a Welsh quarry, it would not be telegraphed to the grass-munching audience that this was actually occurring on another planet entirely.

Simm’s debut as the Master came on the TARDIS set at Upper Boat on February 20th, but no one else was there at the time because they were all too busy looking through YouTube for clips of previous Bastards that could be heard emanating from Jacobi’s fob watch of doom.

Public reaction to the episode left something to be desired – within minutes of the episode finished, riots began throughout the country perpetrated by people in pinstripe suits and sneakers; more merchandise was thrown out of windows than ever before; every Doctor Who internet forum in existence was shut down permanently due to excessive use of extreme profanities; George W Bush declared a "war on fanwank" and David Tennant was soon spotting house-shopping in Cuba.

Meanwhile, David Tennant was thwarted in his baffling desire to sing in every episode when it was decided to have the Bastard do the singing. And thus viewers were treated to the strange sight of Derek Jacobi giving an impromptu rendition of a Rogue Traders song while trying to electrocute a blue cockroach in a miniskirt...

"Open The Watch And Take The Money!" by Futurekind

So, here it comes - the sound of drums!
Here come the drums! Here come the drums!

Chantho, Chantho, Chantho!
Beware the Futurekind! The Futurekind!
Don’t say "Chan" or "Tho", Chantho!
It’s supernatural! I’m coming undone!

I am the Bastard, baby
My kisses are cold
Feel the vortex running through me?
Let me never grow old!

I am the Bastard, honey!
Returned from the dead
Now I’ve opened this fob watch
The drums beat in my head!

Here it comes! The sound of drums!
Here come the drums! Here come the drums!

Chantho, Chantho, Chantho!
Beware the Futurekind! The Futurekind!
Don’t say "Chan" or "Tho", Chantho!
It’s supernatural! I’m coming undone!
Chantho, Chantho, Chantho!

I am the Bastard, sweetheart
It’s like that episode of Angel
You just wanted Derek Jacobi
But he’s gone and lost his soul

I opened the watch, Chantho
The Bastard has returned
It’s end of the universe
And you will all burn...

YEEEOWWWW!!!