Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Fuck Me, Who Let Eric Saward Into The Building?

Irwin Allen lives.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are
Pointing and laughing.

Voyage Of The Damned

Honest? I don't know what the hell to make of that one. Imagine if Irwin Allen had written Earthshock and The Robots Of Death. How silly yet needlessly grim was that? If like me you were playing 'spot the victim' ten minutes in, then you probably didn't expect (a) so many people to end up killing themselves, and (b) the moral to be 'remember kids, fate is a complete c**t'. And has the Doctor ever been so helpless? That's about as Saward as it gets.

The gay subtext 'cyborgs have marriage rights too' was subtle this year wasn't it? And nobody seems to have noticed the junior officer still has a bullet in his gut either.

Tat Wood's 'Things That Don't Make Sense' starts here...

Buckingham Palace is still standing.

I was certain from the trailers, right up to where the physics went straight out the window, that those were missiles instead of meteors and the ship was being shot at. Obviously nobody's going to watch sn episode like this for its scientific integrity, but I feel nerdily compelled to point out: meteors are big chunks of rocks and ice. So how can they (a) burn, (b) leave stupid vapour trails in space, and (c) be 'magnetised' towards the hull of a ship and away from the whacking great planet in close proximity, without dragging the ship itself straight out of orbit (big planet, remember)? No, they don't say 'tractor beam'. And aren't meteorites comparatively rare, so where did these handy ones come from at exactly the right time? Did the Cybermen happen to ionise a nearby star, 'cos it's as daft as anything in The Wheel In Space. You're not going to convince me that a bankrupt travel agency can accurately pinpoint a cruise liner's time-jump to be in the right place and time for a meteor strike either, when just blowing the fucker up or sabotaging the engines and letting it drop would have been so much damn easier, since there's not going to be any 'witnesses' anyway after life on Earth gets wiped out by the impact, thus making the whole subplot with the Heavenly Hosts magnificently irrelevant. As if the mad rampaging robots announcing their intentions by going 'INFORMATION: KILL' the whole time wouldn't be suspicious enough, particularly to the important bloke on board with a mobile phone talking to his investor, who never thinks of phoning back home and letting them know what the FUCK'S GOING ON. Does NOBODY remember 9/11 anymore? And talking of which, how lax is basic security on board this vessel, that Bannakaffalatta can sneak his metal body capable of generating a massive EMP pulse on board without setting off any sensors or security alarms?

(Dr Science is also frothing at the mouth comparing the structural integrity of the ship after the meteor impact with, say, the structural integrity of the formerly flat piece of desert that's now the Grand Canyon, but we'll let that pass.)

By the way, even if you had some kind of magic magnet that attracts rock instead of metal, (NO, they DON'T call it a 'tractor beam'), and couldn't sell the patent for untold billions and save the company that way, then what's the point of installing the device into a crappy old ship that, like the Enterprise and the Liberator, is never intended to take off and land on a planet and would have been built in space, if not for the needlessly overcomplicated Columbo-style murder plot? And since it has all the aerodynamic properties of a giant brick, then how in the name of God can the Titanic possibly pull out of an atmospheric crash dive, the shockwave from which would utterly obliterate everything underneath? Because Buckingham Palace is still standing, and the Royals go 'hurrah' at an unexpected near-miss from an alien spacecraft instead of telling the Doctor to nyaff orrrrff.

Is Max Capricorn's presence on the ship supposed to be a secret or not? The script doesn't seem to be able to make its mind up. Max's whole plan depends on being pronounced dead at the scene of the disaster, but since the dramatic yet blatantly obvious plot twist is that he's responsible for all of this, none of the crew ever acknowledges that he's on board (surely, as loyal corporate staff, somebody's first thought after the impact should have been for the safety of the chief executive?), and he's purposely killing off survivors to remain undetected. And as a cyborg he's kept himself hidden away for years, so nobody would have seen him enter or leave the ship. He must be VERY clever too to have squirrelled all his assets away without the rest of the board ever noticing, particularly if he wanted to surreptitiously spend them later after faking his own death without arousing suspicion. Not even Trau Morgus managed that one. But then the board also apparently doesn't know or find it odd that the CEO who built the company from scratch is also 170 years old, so maybe they're just inept. Just how long has Max been running the place?

Incidentally, who else guessed the real twist that didn't happen was that Max's true identity was going to be Taren Capell and not Delegate Arcturus?

Exactly HOW much money was the Captain promised to commit planetary genocide for the sake of his family's financial future, and wouldn't it also occur to him that a boss that ruthless in securing his own wealth could welch on the deal and the Captain would be too dead to stop it? As has been pointed out already, the pound/credit excange rate means it takes about twenty years to pay off a hundred pound phone bill, so it couldn't have been that much anyway.

But perhaps the biggest logical whopper of all is this: Max intends to ride out the disaster in a survival chamber that can withstand a supernova. Not a nuclear holocaust, an exploding sun. The Doctor knows all about it and how it works, suggesting that such things are in common usage, especially if a bankrupt cruise company in a fucked-up economy has got one. So, er.... WHY IS GALLIFREY DESTROYED?? Why couldn't the oldest, most technically supreme civilization in the universe with an Eye Of Harmony at their disposal knock up a larger-scale model to protect their own planet, or at the very least use for a backup to ensure the survival of the race once the Time War started? Come to that, why didn't the Daleks explore the military potential of this technology in the scope of galactic conquest? If you can make a survival chamber out of this principle, couldn't you also make an utterly indestructable battle cruiser or two? Build an armed survival ship, blow up a few stars, and ride out the ensuing holocaust while everything around you burns. Madness.

PS: Buckingham Palace is still standing. Did I mention this already?

And since the TARDIS was in orbit and the shields were down when the Titanic pranged it, why wasn't the Doctor sucked out into space as well?

(end of pedantry)

'A bit superficial' seems to be the most appropriate phrase I can muster, I think. I'm not sure if I'll ever watch it again (at least not with a straight face); there was a lot to enjoy on the day and it's visually exciting and expensive, but it's overpadded, and the tone was just off, even leaving out the monumental silliness of the last fifteen minutes which is just gagging for a podcast (I'd also say "it never decents to Last Of The Time Lords' level" if it wasn't damning with such faint praise which this special doesn't deserve to be tarred with). Surely at any other time of year, we'd all cheer like idiots at its "I CAN DO ANYTHING" gut-punch about the futility of existence, when it looked like it was going to bring Kylie back from the dead as a typically Christmas cop-out, only to snatch her away again in the cruelest fashion possible (I wonder what the Fear Factor kids made of that). But so many people died pointllessly without adding to the plot; Dalek_Sex is likening it with the space bus from Delta & The Bannermen, which sounds like as apt a comparison as one could ever get. He also doesn't like the new theme remix. I told hm he should be glad it's not Keff's.

Dedicating a disaster movie to the memory of Verity Lambert is just one more example of how intrinsically wrong it all feels, though it's not actually inappropraiate in the way that immediately springs to the fan-mind. After all, Verity did give us the equally grim, chaotic and cruel Dalek Invasion Of Earth. But that one was about conflict and hope; the Daleks were a palpable on-screen force for the Doctor to proactively oppose and overcome, almost as his duty, while no matter how bleak things got after episode one, the serial continued to exude a self-belief that human endeavour could eventually carry the day. Neither of those are true for Voyage Of The Damned, which for the most part views more like the untransmitted invasion and razing of the planet before the Doctor and party arrived.

Yet at the end of the day all comparisons with the old series are irrelevant. Despite its source influences, this is a thoroughly modern piece of television for a thoroughly modern Doctor. The Poseidon Adventure was made in 1973. Can you really see Jon Pertwee doing his own stunts for this and bellowing NOW LISTEN TO ME at the whimpering ragtags? He'd be rubbing a damn sight more than the back of his neck, I can tell you.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Voyage Of The Damned: the original plan was for wee Jimmy Vee to be overdubbed by Mel Blanc. From beyond the gwaaaaaaaave. Bedebedebedebede.

No John, It Doesn't

Time-Flight, part four

Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the delay; the quantum accelerator has been rectified and your programme is now ready for boring. Please take your sofas and make sure your TV dinner tray is in an upright position ready for throwing at the screen.

Our flight time today will be a hundred and forty million years at the cruising height of absurdity. Weather today is sunny and clear with the nip of an impending ice age, so wrap up warm all you Silurians. We anticipate a smooth journey, although the show may experience some technobabble at high altitude. Sickness bags have been placed in the seat in front of you for your viewing comfort.

At this time, all mobile phones and electrical devices should be switched off before takeoff, as these will interfere with the vision mix and make the sky wobble. We would also like to remind passengers that this is a No Smirking flight, and First Officer Grimwade gets upset easily. Smoke-and-mirror detectors have been installed in the lavatories, and disabling the story on budget grounds is prohibited by snore.

All shrunken corpses and molecularly-disintegrated passengers should be placed in the overhead lockers or under the seat in front of you. Please be careful when opening overhead lockers, as baggage from the previous episodes may have shafted us during the flight.

Please take a few moments to locate the nearest emergency exit, which is Wish You Were Here on ITV. Should depression occur, oxygen masks will drop down from above your seats. Place your fingers over your nose and wince normally. Secure your own mask and resuscitate yourself first before attempting to breathe life into the script next to you.

Should the episode make a damp squib landing, you will find an emergency lifeless jacket under your seat, which is operated by pulling strings to try and get more money. If this doesn't work, seat cushions and other such padding can be used as an appropriate device; pull the cushion from the seat and place it firmly over your face until the discomfort stops.

In the event of an end-of-season gimmick, please assume the bracing position with your hands on your head. In this position, should a previously written-out character come back next year for no adequate reason, you will be ready to rock back and forwards saying "Oh God, no".

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask the crew members who will explain later. On behalf of the production team, we would like to wish you all a pissant plight. Thank you for flying Squittish Airways.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Time-Flight, part four: Judith Chalmers sued this episode for libel.

The World According To Gawp

Time-Flight, part three

The vacant stare. The wide-eyed gape. The deer-in-headlights realisation that screams 'I've fucked up' at the universe. Call it what you like, but it's that look of disbelieving horror that characterises Peter Davison's tenure as the 'vulnerable' Fifth Doctor. Odd then, how seldom you see it in Season Nineteen. It's probably what Davison means by his early performance being 'bland'; there's some great quality gimble-acting in episode one of Castrovalva, but that's down to regeneration trauma, and doesn't really count. (Davison had already made three stories before that one, which itself is telling enough.)

The turning point is of course, the end of Earthshock. Oh yes, it's easy enough to take charge with a winning smile when facing utter wimps like Terileptils or Urbankans, but the wobbly Mickey Mouse falsetto is never far away, and we know from hindisght it's all going to hell very soon. And then suddenly confronted with a heavyweight, all the boyish overconfidence is blown away and we're all cheering along with the next two seasons of hurried neurotic urgency, a Doctor completely out of his depth who could crack again at any moment. Just watch Davison's 'what have I done' face at the end of part four. We love it.

"The vacant stare. The wide-eyed gape. The deer-in-headlights realisation that screams 'I've fucked up' at the universe"

There's no stopping the gawp after that. Well, maybe a couple of things. It takes Peter Moffat in the gallery box to suck all emotion out of Davison's face for the best part of ninety minutes, even when he's deliberately written that way in The Five Doctors. (Moffat gags never grow old.) The creme-de-la-creme of gawps tragically wasn't even broadcast; it was trimmed off the halfway mark of Resurrection Of The Daleks. Go buy the el-cheapo DVD, skip to the deleted scenes and watch Davison, menaced by the pepperpots, literally about to shit himself - you won't regret it. And let's not forget Mark Strickson's growing disillusionment with looking over his shoulder, and deciding that nobody's going to out-froth his big moment in Frontios.

Who cares though? It's still Davison's show, and this era will always belong to that look. Even Terminus, a story so unrelentingly grey and miserable that they hired Blake 7's Mary Ridge to direct it, contains the barest trace of gravitas to inspire a brief mug at the camera. "What is this horrendous place," indeed. Hell, in Snakedance, our hero manages to reduce himself to a ranting, paranoid maniac. How deeply satisying is that? A lot more so than when they tried the same shtick after The Caves Of Androzani, anyway. In fact Androzani, given the depth of shit Robert Holmes gleefully dump everyone into, is startlingly consipicuous by the absence of a good gawp. Little did we know it would be us pulling that face the following Monday.

So in its own small way it's comforting that when (and again, you can join in at home kids), "The Master has finally defeated me!" at the end of Time-Flight part three, it's a payoff almost worth gnawing your own legs off at the most gallumphingly ponderous twenty-five minutes of television you'll ever watch.

Because aside from a quick infodump natter with the Xeraphin, the rest of it is totally superfluous. Professor Hayter sticks his hand into the Top Of The Pops light socket rather than suffer another minute of Grimwade's superlucent stream of compressed technoballs. Angela Clifford, the world's least-reassuring stewardess, scarpers off to the Master's TARDIS once her contractually-obliged minimum of added plot is up, and is never seen again. Tea with two sugars, love. The knackered old Type-40 rather laughably turns into a helicopter by having bits swapped round in the same fashion that toy robots don't. And the Master apparently 'defeats' the Doctor by... hmmm, laying a power cable. We rang the electricity board for comment, but they told us to sod off, having got thoroughly sick of that sketch quoted at them since 1981.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Time-Flight, part three: preliminary designs for the inner sanctum set were vetoed when Matthew Corbett turned out too expensive to hire as the Xeraphin operator.

Advance To Go. Destroy Adric. Collect £200.

Time-Flight, part two

(The scene: Velma of Traken and Daphne Jovanka have penetrated the inner sanctum. Kalid, caught in his own backfiring trap, is drenched in a torrent of Plasmaton snot. Doctor Freddy, with clueless comedy sidekicks in tow, prepares to unmask him.)

DOCTOR: And now let's see who the villain really is! (pulls off mask)

MASTER: Heh-heh-heh-heeeeeh.

DOCTOR: Oh Christ, not you again. Couldn't you have been Chancellor Goth?

MASTER: Yes Doctor, you're right. I wanted all the power in the sanctum for myself, so I set up those fake monster visions to scare your friends away. But how did you see through my brilliant disguise?

DOCTOR: Our first clue was Adric. You never realised that Matthew Waterhouse and the petulant little git in pyjamas were really one and the same character, and by making his vision try to act as a portent of doom instead of himself, despite just two lines of dialogue and an 'aaaargh' it totally humiliated itself over the course of six takes trying to get anything right. That's how we knew this Adric was a fake.

MASTER: Bah, Richard Todd could have arranged that. What was your other clue?

DOCTOR: Well that would be the general elaborate shitness of the entire scheme, it's got your handiwork all over it.

MASTER: You can't prove a thing, Doctor. A leering space-genie with gingivitis abducts Concorde using a time warp and some plasticene blobs? It's preposterous. No-one will ever believe you.

DOCTOR: Not so fast, Master. I think you'll find your dental pattern matches the marks on this chewed scenery, placing you at the scene of the crime. Take him away, Sheriff.

MASTER: Curses. But I might still get away with it in the last two epsiodes if not for these piddling scripts.

(The Master is led away in handcuffs)

ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR VOICED BY DON MESSICK: But Doctor, there's one thing I still don't understand. The Concorde crew and I don't know who the Master is, he wasn't expecting you to turn up, and all the other passengers were hypnotised. So what was all that with the Kalid disguise about?

DOCTOR: Oh, fuck only knows.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Time-Flight, part two: Matthew Waterhouse is set to make a comeback as the voice of Snorky in the new series remake of The Banana Splits.

Doctor Who And The Mincing Airmen

Time-Flight, part one

Peter Grimwade. Affectionately known as 'Grimmers' by the rest of the cast, or 'Grimmace' after they read his scripts. Why did Grimwade never direct his own utterly incomprehensible material, and show them all how to do it properly? Probably because once you've overseen that nauseating Alzarian's demise in living 24-bit BeebColour (TM), you know there's nowhere for your career to go but down. Sadly, the mines he planted around the keyboard failed to go off; arm's length wouldn't have saved the little sod's fingers then.

"I thought branded product placement was against the Corporation charter?"

The word that sums up the vast majority of Time-Flight is 'gay'. Well it is. Quite apart from Grimwade himself, the always-suspect Anthony Ainley and the Quentin Crisp Boys troupe as personified by Michael Cashman, there's the leotard Xeraphin body suits in episode three and the fact that millions of that-way viewers were still given the urge to offer Adric a great big paternal cuddle (gay icon that he is) despite him being reduced to mashed potato barely a week before. Not to mention the baffling question of what the hell possessed Grimwade that Concorde was in any way a plausible or workable hook around which to hang a time-travel story, or one that wouldn't date before the damn thing was even made, if it wasn't for the supposedly-upmarket yet trashy publicity and potential free flights (I thought branded product placement was against the Corporation charter?) to be gleaned from the most exemplary of John Nathan-Turner's camp-entertainment production decisions. That, and the strapping young men in uniforms.

That's assuming they could have pretended it was on a par with The Talons Of Weng Chiang, and chucked an entire season's finances at it to do it 'justice' like the end-of-term Phillip Hinchcliffe off his face on gin. It wasn't, and they didn't. If you thought the scenery looked fake in 1982 analogue fuzz-o-vision, you won't believe how blindingly obvious it is now on the remastered DVD that everyone's standing six inches away from a crap matte skyline, absolutely the worst bit of faked perspective since the Palitoy tank in Robot. There is not a single prop that doesn't wobble, including the TARDIS doors that need to be held shut from the inside while the prop is lying on its side. The digital restoration does this story absolutely no favours whatsoever.

"Derek Griffiths chimes in with a bouncy join-in-at-home song about words that end in -IT"

And neither does Roger Limb, who opts to score the accompanying rubbish in the same two-line, four/four time cheap-Casio fashion he was also doing for doing for dozens of BBC Schools programmes around the same time, as if to deliberately underscore the pitiful level of budget on show. Keep listening and you'll soon recognise his trademark synth-pipe instrument of choice that brings to mind one of those Melody Pop boiled sweets shaped like a whistle. Believe it or not, our Rog would set his sights even lower in the very next story with the screeching four-note nightmare that punctuates the whole of Arc Of Infinity.

And that's that for episode one. Twenty-odd minutes of twiddly Radiophonic tat, bottom-of-the-barrel CSO of characters floating about the studio, and disjointed film footage that feels like an entirely different serial put there for the rest of the programme to remark upon to the watching boys and girls. If that suddenly sounds at all familiar to the other thirty-somethings in the audience, it's because it's as near as dammit the format of Words And Pictures, which this whole enterprise feels exactly like. You almost expect Peter Davison to whip out a magic pencil with a light on the end as a replacement for the mangled sonic screwdriver, before Derek Griffiths chimes in with a bouncy join-in-at-home song about words that end in -IT.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Time-Flight, part one: 'centuries of galactic radiation' was the programme's educational remit for the week, informing viewers to sit six feet away from the TV.

A Big Fannish Production

Pudsey Cutaway: Time Crash

Well, it's no Five Doctors, that's for sure. There's only one scene spanning a whole seven minutes (instead of merely seeming that way when Peter Moffat sets up the camera and slopes off for a quick fag). Nobody is upstaged by Patrick Troughton, and Chris Donald's Pathetic Cybermen have thankfully been left by the wayside since the end of Season Two. And Davison doesn't give us his trademark cliffhanger-gawp like a goldfish doing Frank Drebin impressions during the freeze frame at the end of Police Squad, so it must be an android Dalek duplicate left over from The Chase and not the real thing.

I bet Julian Joolz is spitting blood though.

After this, I'm really, really looking forward to Voyage Of The Damned. It would be corny to say that Peter Davison's performance is so natural and so confident that it's like Davison never left the role, but he's had five years of practice over at Big Finish, so in that sense, he hasn't. But really, which other 'classic' regeneration could carried it off so perfectly? Tom Baker isn't going to play second-fiddle to anyone, and Sylvester McCoy doesn't really have the stature. And while the Big Finish Sixth Doctor is like a matured cheese, a might-have-been look at Colin Baker unencumbered by bad scripts, tinfoil sets, Pip & Jane dialogue and that bloody coat; if you've seen Colin at any conventions lately, you'll know there are some things you can't disguise on television. Even with that bloody coat.

Everyone's latching onto the immediate similarities to Blink, and the timey-wimey paradoxes that Steven Moffat absolutely loves. I can't think why though since to my mind, Time Crash is actually much closer to Moffat's other nostalgia-splurge, The Curse Of Fatal Death (itself sporting its own, much more laboured, temporal running gags); it's equally aware of how intrinsically ridiculous it all is in a 'loving' way, but Julia Sawartha doesn't have to tag along to spell out every punchline for the not-we this time. Which is all to the good, because really, an occasion like this shouldn't have to try to be fannish. Time Crash is smart enough to treat both the old and the new continuity with the same level of reverence, but also to present its past references in a form that the new kids can relate to. Nobody needs to know that 'the TARDIS shorting out the time differential' is word-perfect Peter Grimwade for the line to make sense, just as 'changing the desktop theme' doesn't jar with long-term fans as it tallies with what we know about how the interior TARDIS architecture works. It doesn't matter if the viewers don't know who Nyssa and Tegan are; since it's important to the Fifth Doctor as acknowledged by the Tenth, it's becomes important to them by extension anyway. The continuity doesn't need to draw any more attention to itself than that, and is entirely the same reason that the use of incidental music in Fatal Death was far and away the funniest thing about it.

"That this Doctor, more than any other, was a fan just like us, brings an extra poignant tear to the eye which even School Reunion didn't quite manage"

And the plot, if not the direction (thank God) is more The Edge Of Destruction than anything else. The 'end of the universe' piffle is a bit melodramatic though, don't you think? I mean, why would Time Lord engineers pass an unstable design flaw which ultimately makes it riskier to operate a TARDIS than detonating a star to create an Eye Of Harmony in the first place? Surely a time-ram scenario have been enough? If it was good enough for The Time Monster... (Oh. Sorry I spoke.) And if the Fifth Doctor remembered all the stuff the Tenth Doctor did and said when he eventually became the Tenth Doctor himself, then why was he surprised that the Master showed up again, rubbish beard and all? (Alright, put it down to Eighth Doctor selective amnesia and we'll leave it at that.) And people have a go at me for thinking that Blink was a load of Fortean bollocks.

And the reason why Adric isn't mentioned is simple; in a story celebrating the fond reminisence of old times, this would have been such a colossal downer for the (less-vindictive) sector of the audience at an age for whom Adric was the troubled 'lost boy', always being singled out and put open, as prepubescent ten-year-olds believe themselves to be. Like 1982 viewers such as... David Tennant. Because ultimately, that's the real point of all this. Time Crash isn't 'our' sketch at all; those aren't the Tenth Doctor's sentiments on display at the end, nor even Steven Moffat's or RTD's, but the simple hero-worship of the man himself whose formative Mondays and Tuesdays were spent with the big-brother figure who seeded the desire to be the Doctor himself one day. That this Doctor, more than any other, was a fan just like us, brings an extra poignant tear to the eye which even School Reunion didn't quite manage. There's no monsters, no CGI, just two Doctors at the height of their powers (even 20-odd years after the event) acting their hearts out. If Russell was thinking old-skool, couldn't he have dispensed with all the Season Three fartabouts with the Daleks and the Macra and given us more of this instead?

"You have to be Pudsey Bear with a cataract not to see where this is going with Season Four"

Oh, wait, I forgot. Time Crash is canon, which means you have to be Pudsey Bear with a cataract not to see where this is all going with Season Four. No Sean, I too would like to believe this isn't just your personal pipe-dream, as forty-eight is well within the limits of plausibility; Paul McGann is no older now than Tom was when he vacated the post, and his Doctor didn't make a virtue out of his comparative youth as David Tennant's fannying about the set is wont to. So the elapsed decade since the TV Movie really isn't going to make a lot of difference. And with Davros scheduled to make his own comeback for the Season Four climax, the opportunity to establish once and for all the history and prelude of the Time War between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors is so staggeringly obvious that one wonders what RTD would have to be thinking not to go down that particular route. Plus it would get the fans off his back for a bit, which is always a bonus in Russell's book. Bringing back past Doctors will always appease the fans more than past companions; crossing the Doctor's own timestream is almost inevitable, while popping a fellow traveller back in the TARDIS for no adequate reason other than coincidence is just contrived, and makes the universe feel narrow and closed instead of supposedly infinite (I'm pointing at you, Arc Of Infinity, while the Fifth Doctor is still in the building). We've already had a bellyful of this, and Season Four probably isn't even fully written yet.

Coincidence Department: in page five of The Ten Doctors, David Tennant offers Peter Davison the exact same emotional bond (within the confines of a few panels) about being 'his' Doctor, the one he most identifies with and wants to be again. Not a bad feat of prescience then considering this was drawn some six months ago, before Season Three even started airing. Or is there an untelevised temporal anomaly we should be aware of for Big Finish to wring another trilogy out of?

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Time Crash: BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

While We're On The Topic Of Multi-Doctor Crossovers This Evening...

Trawling through Google Images last night for decent pictures of Peter Davison's hat (ahem) revealed this. It's an elaborate ongoing webcomic entitled The Ten Doctors, and I hardly need tell anyone it's absolutely the fanwankiest thing ever made.

Everything is in here, and I do mean everything. How geeky is it? It references Big Finish McGann, Dimensions In Time and Season 6b. It attempts to link the prelude of the Time War to previous continuity and makes Terrance's Dicks' The Eight Doctors look positively restrained.

If you can get over outrageously self-indulgant it all is, then it's really rather good, even if the plot is basically a page-by-page link to the next continuity showpiece. The caricatures are spot-on, and the pencil art is brisk and fluid. And so far it's up to page 62 - you've got to admire the fan-patience in a project like this, if only to know who to run away from next time.

You'll Be Writing About Lighthouses Before I'm Done

The Time Warrior, part three

Irongron is a man with an axe to grind. It needs grinding from the number of times it's hit the ground and blunted. There it goes again; Hal's well-aimed shot provokes enough prolonged blank-faced cartoon 'buh' for the Doctor to skitter away, legs akimbo in a fashion not unlike Scooby and Shaggy pinwheeling on the spot the second before the monster's arms clasp on empty air. I'm also wondering how much the insurance cost to cover that torch fire, it might help to explain the number of cheap CSO'd photographs on display next in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs.

Down in the dungeons, Rubeish waits until the coast is clear before making himself a magnifying glass with which to spot the subtleties in the dialogue and performances. It'll need to be a lot bigger and stronger than that one, mate.

You can thank Terrance Dicks for the flowery Olde-Worlde descriptions which the fans appear to remember this episode for far more than the first naming of the Doctor's home planet. With the Doctor's escape Linx is getting agitated, since Long-Shanked Rascal is now only evens favourite to win at Chepstow, Courtly Rogue having failed the dope test. While over at Sir Edward's more civilised company, the Third Doctor describes his primary adversary as 'nasty, brutish and short'. Don't forget 'Chaplinesque', Jon. Gallifrey isn't really that big a deal, yet; The Deadly Assassin, wherin Robert Holmes would outrage the newly-formed Doctor Who Anal-retentive Society with his depiction of Time Lord society in complacent decline, is still three years away, but if anyone had properly paid attention to how the Time Lords had been dicking the Doctor about for the previous four seasons, it shouldn't have come as a major surprise after the Doctor describes his supposedly benevolent, all-powerful godlike race as a bunch of petty beaurocratic jobsworths.

"The Third Doctor describes his primary adversary as 'nasty, brutish and short'. Don't forget 'Chaplinesque', Jon"

Best line of the episode is Elisabeth Sladen, so totally overwhelmed by all the talk of time-travelling extra-terrestrials, responding with the simple off-the-cuff premeditated homicide of a cup of tea. But now it's half past three and teatime is over, so let the battle for Cloppa Castle commence! There's no oil, but plenty of Bygones and Hasbeens, particularly the one tossing smoke bombs over the parapet. A few bright flashes later and it's Time Lords five hundred, Sontarans nil, stink stopped play; the troglodytes scurrying off before you can shout 'who's the bastard in the black'. Irongron's pep talk cuts little ice and even Linx's motivational 'win or I'll kill you' fails to raise the team morale. No half-time oranges for these scurvy dogs.

With Sir Edward's respite duly earned, the plan now for the Doctor and party is to go on the offensive. Less offensive one hopes than Bloodaxe's Bladrick impressions and incessant toadying, which from Irongron's expression even he doesn't buy, since 'intelligence' has more than three syllables. But alas, no; for this plan calls for a bit of subterfuge, a lot of chutzpah and the brand of cheesy disguise that Dick Dastardly wouldn't touch with a ten-foot halberd. And since EEC regulations require TV monks to come equipped with North Country accents, they come to beg arrrrrrms from the good Captain Irongron; those would be the arms that have fallen into Xeron hands. Irongron is described by his pathetic guardsmen as a kindly and charitable man. Yes, and that charity is MENCAP, since the employment of acting of this calibre borders on positive discrimination of the handicapped. Oh, and never mind, Cadfael lovers; Derek Jacobi will be along to get his own back, even if takes another three and a half decades.

"Never mind, Cadfael lovers; Derek Jacobi will be along to get his own back, even if takes another three and a half decades"

Tying in the Polka beat with hypnotic conditioning predates the same Animaniacs jokes by about twenty years.

Linx takes his belligerent personal grudges with the Doctor very seriously, considering they've only met for about two minutes in episode two and Jon Pertwee's pomposity isn't normally that quick to evoke a homicidal response, not even in a race bred with all the cultural tolerance of a game of Stratego. The Sontaran response, naturally enough, is the red torch shone round Chloe Webber's banister in Fear Her; a prolonged dosage of which will kill anyone.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Time Warrior, part three: June Brown was paid in Woodbines.

I Swear I'll Bland Your Brain

The Time Warrior, part two

So much for Women's Lib. Her first episode reprise, and Sarah-Jane is hauled off by a hirsuite savage. If it were Peri, that lingua muscle protruding from Linx's face mask wouldn't be the last tongueing she'd ever get. I'm not so sure where people are coming from about her being unlikeable in her first story, the way she takes charge over the useless gentry later on and does very nicely with all the planning herself until being emasculated - a word I use deliberately - in typical companion fashion under Jon's protective wing. Other than a bit of token feminism in The Monster Of Peladon, it wouldn't be until the start of Planet Of The Spiders that she gets to be properly independent again as her career demands, and not simply in need in rescue. Maybe this initial 'unlikeability' stems from everyone remembering her most fondly with the Fourth Doctor as genuine mutual friends, instead of bucking the stereotype very blatantly (but honestly) of being the Third Doctor's ward/sidekick. One wonders though which magazines she bones up on for journalist research if she can sniff out a (supposedly) undercover organization like UNIT, but apparently isn't fussed about great big gaps in the latest goss about movie productions and big tourist attractions, since she has to try and figure it out for herself. Very badly.

"Fewer points of articulation than a six-inch David Tennant"

Linx meanwhile has sloped off for a quick fag in private and removes his helmet for a much-needed breather before Kevin Lindsay's dodgy heart gives out. Barry Letts was probably attacked by rabid koalas as a child. I can't think of any other reason why Digger Lindsay would go straight from being covered in suffocating latex like a Goldfinger statue gone horribly wrong, on to the affront to everyone's dignity that was Planet Of The Spiders (again). Did anyone think of checking for bore holes in Lennie Mayne's yacht? It's a miracle Dudley, his football rattle and wobbly synth have managed to last this long too.

I'll leave it to Damon to remark upon how Linx discerns the difference in genders from the skeletal structure instead of the more obvious external features (which would have absolutely killed the joke).

Everyone acts like big kids in this episode. David Daker gets increasingly frustrated during Sarah's interrogation that nobody is paying enough attention to his own overacting, so Linx tosses him a bone with the crappiest of 1970s robots that walks like it's pretending to be a Quark in the playground. Look at the thing, it's got fewer points of articulation than a six-inch David Tennant. It might just about have some use as a fighting machine if the opponent was a carrot. But Monty Python's Black Knight it isn't, so Irongron has Hal the archer pepper it with the BB gun he also got for Christmas. He'd have been better off keeping the receipt and taking it back to the shops to exchange for a Big Trak instead.

Bad special effect alert: the control box is pulled out of Irongron's hands in entirely the wrong direction from the momentum of the crossbow bolt shot into it. Woeful.

I'm not sure I've ever really bought the time-travel concept of history being altered via the introduction of higher technology, since somebody still has to discover the principles by which said technology actually works before they can duplicate it. However that's not what Jon Pertwee's outraged head thinks, so it's a pity his diplomacy head got left behind at UNIT HQ. No other Doctor would be so utterly pompous as to tell a Sontaran "I might consider helping you" in an I'm-better-than-you-are way; just give him what he wants and let him LEAVE! At least he's right that Sontran military intelligence on Gallifrey should never be put to the test. Not unless they fancy a bit of TARDIS hide-and-seek in fluent cockney, I should coco.

"The Doctor's diplomacy head got left behind at UNIT HQ"

In fact, aside from some spectacular gurning into his 1973 headphones - nothing on but Tony Blackburn - the Doctor achieves very little in these twenty five minutes; some pitiful debating, a half-hearted escape with the aid of Mister Magoo, and a trip over his own feet bringing a halt to the ill-judged castle game of British Bulldog. And uh-oh, Irongron's suddenly remembered what age he's supposed to be and so far his track record of hanging onto his weapon (fnar) isn't very impressive. Brace yourselves, this could go anywhere.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Time Warrior, part two: the Thorax is a small creature made up by Dr Seuss that speaks out against the dangers of changing history in rhyming couplets.

I'll Get You For This Terrance

The Time Warrior, part one

Ah, season eleven, we remember it well. (Sits back in comfortable chair with pipe and slippers.) Jon Pertwee's silly season. A year that brings full circle Barry Letts' Buddhist philosophy that all things happen for a reason; that reason being, 'we miss Roger and Katy and can't really be arsed much anymore'. A year characterised by such exemplary decision-making as 'let's take the threat of instant death away from the Daleks, the one thing that makes them scary', 'let's CSO an entire planet out of fake sets and faker acting talent', 'listen, you couldn't get better dinosaurs for this money', and 'tell Brian we'd love a send up of the miner's strike, only make it longer than his EEC one'. And even if you haven't caught The Monster Of Peladon before, Aliens Of London and World War Three will show you exactly why it'll be another thirty-one year gap before anybody wants to tackle contemporary politics again.

With so much in common with this less-than-illustrious company, you'd expect The Time Warrior would be utter rubbish. Well, it isn't. Robert Holmes does his damndest to instill his brand of genuine wit where a lesser writer would succumb to Terrance's indulgant lunacy (for which Bob would get his revenge later). It's down to Bob that The Time Warrior comes across as merely whimsical - the Middle Ages are menaced by a shoulder-padded turdgoblin in a giant golf ball - instead of a twelfth-century alien abduction written by Jose Chung. And since Bob himself claimed to know nothing about real history, what we get instead is Cloppa Castle, some five years ahead of its time; Dot Cotton as Queen Ethelbruda takes charge while wet King Woebegone lies quaking under the bed, terrified of the castle-coveting Beoswyne, dim sidekick Hench, their mighty army of six and enough medieval thees and thous to give Jon Pertwee's lisp a persecution complex before the end of episode one. It's not like The Visitation was any less conceptually dumb for being utterly humourless.

"Enough medieval thees and thous to give Jon Pertwee's lisp a persecution complex before the end of episode one"

Mike Thekivperson will need to give his all next year if he's to stand any chance of superceding Kevin Lindsay's definitive Duvvel from Hull; the one and only straight man in this entire comedy troupe, which makes the dead-on pastiche of the Apollo moon landings all the funnier as well as a precient foretelling of the mad rush for weapons and military bases in space. Pay strict attention to this scene as it's easily the least overegged ingredient in the entire olde-worlde pudding. There will be a test later.

Alan Bromly holds out at long as he can, but we're ten minutes into the episode and there's not going to be room for Jon Pertwee's nose or ego if we hang around any longer, so we cut grudgingly to the first research establishment of the new season (collect the set; free dioramas to cut out from packets of Coco Pops) where the Jack Klugman of the Doctors, bereft of any authority figures to argue with for a change, tinkers with his ridiculous Great Egg Race snowglobe alarm clock (orange sky model). Jon's very fond of Delta particles, they flutter very nicely when you turn it upside down and shake it about a bit.

Mind you, not even the boffins in this place know what their own point to themselves is; not because the work is so hush-hush - though with UNIT in charge, the TOP SECRET sign outside the premises might be a clue - but because... well, look at Professor Rubbish's best David Graham impression from the dismally unfunny The Pirate Planet DVD extra Weird Science. That's all you need to know. The Brig too is in characteristically fine form, not having grasped yet after four straight years that an alien presence that can manifest through solid concrete is unlikely to be deterred by a bunch of plywood cublicles. It's still Nick Courtney's best screetime of the entire season, since there's no traitors and even the Brig can do better than trip over the Ikea set in the space of thirty seconds.

"The Dads idly speculate on whether Elisabeth Sladen is also bigger on the inside"

Not that anyone's paying much attention, since all eyes are on everybody's favourite miniature busybody interloper, Sarah Jane Smith. From the moment she asserts her Women's Lib credentials (decaf, please) and stows unwittingly away in the TARDIS (because you never know, a missing eccentric scientist might be hiding in a malapropos police box), the nation's five-year-olds are bewitched in an unhealthily lifelong platonic crush while the Dads idly speculate on whether Elisabeth Sladen is also bigger on the inside. It takes about fifteen seconds after stepping out the TARDIS for Sarah Jane to ruin somebody's work and to get herself captured; she doesn't get hypnotised until episode two though, so on balance it's a tie between Sarah Jane and Jo Grant.

And so to that cliffhanger moment, when Linx raises his helmet to reveal the identically sculpted features underneath in all their Spud-Hates-U glory. The Sontaran race can replicate thousands of new warriors at a time; it depends on how much brown Play-Doh and Fuzzy Pumper Crazy Clones sets there are to hand.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Time Warrior, part one: the production team considered easing Elisabeth Sladen in with a story set in her native Liverpool, until they decided a medieval castle would be more believable.

No Mike, I've Blown Them Up

Revenge Of The Slitheen, part two

This Alice Troughton woman. Any relation to Pat? Is that how she got the gig as one of the few woman directors in the boys-only club that is Doctor Who (stop sniggering)? Though if that recap is any judge, she tutored under Lovett Bickford rather than Fiona Cumming. That was a long one for twenty-five minutes of programme, wasn't it? I'll wait a couple more weeks for the jury to pronounce on whether it was blatant padding or not, but I'd have been slightly narked if I copped all that at 5.30 last week on digital right after the first episode like I was some kind of lemming.

There is something glorious about the OTT antics in Sarah Jane Adventures, a quality that Doctor Who itself (don't even think of asking about Torchwood in this lifetime) doesn't quite seem to grasp. The same quality that makes the Slitheen far more at home in this show than they ever were in Aliens Of London / World War Three, that makes the headmaster's Kenneth Williams performance a delight when much the same New Earth larking on Tennant's part was an embarassment. The same quality that lets you accept turning off the sun without a second thought when you know it's the biggest load of cobblers the Whoniverse has ever seen. And it's hard to put your finger on exactly what that quality is. It's not the demeaning 'kid's programme' epithet in which anything automatically goes. It's more than the juxtaposition of the outrageous with the everyday, since we were sick of the suburbia angle by the end of Eccythump's fifth episode. Maybe it's the way that only the main characters are aware of the goings-on, that makes it an exclusive club to which the viewer is invited. Perhaps it's the audience connection to the script giving the cast things to do that the watching child fantasies about every day ("I blew up the headmaster!"), while Doctor Who remains resolutely out of reach. Maybe it's the Back To The Future music. I don't quite know.

Clyde shone this week, didn't he? Not so swaggeringly cocksure that you'd hate him, just the right amount of brains to earn his own self-gratulation with honours, nor so utterly useless that the Mickey alarm goes off. This is also fortunate not only for the makings of an appealing character the kids can really get behind (STOP SNIGGERING, I said), but because with the young-at-heart pseudo-Doctor and three companions in tow dashing about the set like headless chickens, Clyde is nothing like the morose psychic space-princess that would complete the unfortunate group dynamic of Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. So Clyde wins. Collective sighs of relief all round from a blog still trauamtised at the mere sight of a plastic bin - when they sign him on to write for Torchwood, then I'll worry.

"I am a child of the Slitheen!" Bastard offspring of Peter Cook's Superthunderstingcar sketch more like, with those arms continually waving about, looking for all the world like the loser in a game of kiss-chase while the hunt left him for dust. Get knotted, Klout. And I fully supported - nay, endorsed - Clyde's bloodthirsty pragmatism after they blew it at the end with the 'everyone feel sorry for the monster' hokum that I'd hoped Doctor Who had grown out of. They'd better not play the 'human' card with all the aliens in this series, making them seem so much like us in a plea for our sympathy. Maybe it's a reaction to the hardening of the Tenth Doctor's character, who wouldn't bat an eyelid about blowing them all to Slithereens after they pissed their chance for redemption away, but Christ; we got it two years ago, let's move on. If you want to feel sorry for the kid, try the one whose skin they stole in the first place as I pointed out last week.

Still, whatever. With SJA and oh alright, Torchwood, we now have Wholia catering to all tastes, whether you want old school creature features with razor-sharp dialogue, flashy setpieces with plenty of knowing winks or the fap material for your latest bishie three way fanfiction (probably be less embarassing than its source material). Old Who, New Who and Spoo Who. And if you don't believe that last one, you're not paying enough attention to the gushing fangirl love echoed in Sarah-Jane's heartfelt soliloquay to the longing absence of the Doctor.

Maybe if we all shout FREAK WEATHER CONDITIONS! in unison, we can bring him back.

Richard Scarry's Busytown Book Of Aliens has this to say about Revenge Of The Slitheen, part two: plans for the six-inch Clyde with chip sandwich accessory were dropped after they remembered what a flop the previous Chip Action Figure was.

Our Slitheen's A Wardrobe

She does not look fifty-eight. Really, she doesn't.

And I guess that's down to the essence of what makes this such a treat to watch. It's a programme perfectly in tune with its audience - childlike, without being childish; bright and breezy, oh-so-painfully modern (dayglo orange and now Speccy Magenta paint? bleurrrgh), and packed full of infectious charm. It's like a Silver Age Marvel comic compared with Torchwood's po-faced Crisis On Infinite Earths with all the fun surgically removed from it (and worse). What's wrong with fun? Somebody's got to take on the otherworldly extra-dimensional entities that keep the Chuckle Brothers employed, and long as Liz Sladen looks younger than him, there's hope for CBBC yet.

RTD has delegated the writing duties, but his watchful eye is all over Gareth Roberts' opener which builds upon the sterling work of the pilot, displaying all the style and strengths that made Russell a key player in children's drama in the first place (whatever Doctor Who scripting issues we may have with him now). From the opening narration to the cliffhanger, the episode is told in the direct, matter-of-fact, good old adventure yarn fashion that mirrors exactly how a young'un would relate the same story to us. Cruddy schoolfood, Beanoesque worldview of adults as mad, incompetent or hopelessly out of touch, and pantomime villains that revel in being big kids themselves. Bleepy bloopy whooshy tech things, security cameras with whirry motors, and to top it all off, the IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIVE Frankenstein lab with sparking generators that Helen Raynor's Daleks were too lazy to bother with. Bonus. I love it.

"Between Manimal and Bannerman Road, I don't know who's more apologetic for their childhood tastes"

The reason why Maria suddenly takes a back seat partway through the episode is simple; it's because her job as audience hook is over, and now it becomes Luke's role. You have to keep in mind the age group of this show; most schoolkids will start a new school no more than twice. But everyone goes through several years of puberty, and just as the Silver Age Spider-Man was the perfect metaphor for adolescence, so too is Luke's naivety and growing pains, for whom everything about himself and the outside world is unknown territory. In a sense then, Luke is the 'normal' one, magnified about a hundred times. What I suspect the series is doing is using Luke as a focal point to demonstrate a different aspect of growing up each week - in Bane, it was the sense of wonder at experiencing new things; in Revenge, it's that making mistakes and learning from them is a normal human function. It's not half a whopper though when he hands over the stabiliser equation just because he doesn't know any better yet and it's always the companion that cocks it up. Neil thinks of Luke as a mini-Doctor, but I think Luke is more like Hobbes to the Doctor's Calvin; the Doctor knows all about common sense, he just chooses to ignore it. And as for Clyde, you know as well as I do that TV sci-fi has never been 'cool'. Ever. So that's him stuffed.

Speaking of Archetypes: being a Whovian/furry/Asperger makes me a three-time loser in the stereotype 'fan virgin' stakes. So this needs explaining to me. Are all ex's really that spitefully shallow and bitchy? I thought Catherine Tate was supposed to be in another show? Way to twist the knife there with the single duvet. And while the furry in me should be celebrating the shout out to Manimal... it was Manimal. Three months of Letterman material from the arse-end of Glenn Larson. Between that and Bannerman Road, I don't know who's more apologetic for their childhood tastes; Gareth Roberts or myself.

"How do the Slitheen keep their human skins fresh, supple and durable enough to wear over and over again? After all, they can't pickle them"

Who else got fooled by the cliffhanger? The sneaky sods went and used the show's own message - celebrate diversity, be true to who you are, whatev - to pull a fast one when the equally excrutiatingly 'normal' fat kid, put down by classmates and aliens alike, reveals himself to be the new Japanese economy model. I commented on how Invasion Of The Bane, to its kudos, pulled no punches on the subject of death. And while you may not immediately realise as it's offscreen, the plot as written had the aliens murder a real schoolkid in order to use his skin - which only highlights the special uniqueness of the parent franchise since there aren't many shows of any stripe that can comfortably run that one past a parent in this Maddyfied media climate. I'm half-expecting a body to turn up whenever I see that garden being dug.

Somewhere out there, Roald Dahl is cracking open a celestial Taff End bitter.

With only half the runtime of the parent show to fill, part two will inevitably resort to the 'hero-pulls-vital-information-out-from-own-arse' syndrome which which the Tenth Doctor shows off with all the time. Well, why not? A prize snoop of Sarah Jane's calibre should know already about the Slitheen and their weaknesses, if she's done her homework following the School Reunion tip-off from Billie about "Slitheen in Daaaahnin' Street". Next week's trailer predicts the stakes will be raised a lot higher with more Slitheen than the present four still to accounted for; there would have to be, to build so many generators worldwide in the time given. You don't want to scrutinise the plot too closely though: what do these particular Slitheen want 'revenge' for, since they operate in families rather than as a race, and the clan from Eccythump's gap year were all eliminated? Why hide your alien tech in a set of bases all built to the same iconic design template, if you're not trying to draw attention to them? What were Health & Safety doing instead of investigating not just the food, but the number of mysterious staff disappearances from every completed site, once the Slitheen overseeing the construction work had moved on? And a question left unanswered from two years ago that springs to mind: how do the Slitheen keep their human skins fresh, supple and durable enough to wear over and over again? After all, they can't pickle them. Now I'm left wondering what Slitheen skin care ads must look like.

One final note of appreciation: Sarah Jane Adventures finishes at 5.30pm, making it the last CBBC programme of the day. So not only does it leave the kids with an exciting cliffhanger in their heads for the rest of the evening, but Murray's end theme is left intact and not gabbed over by braindead CBBC invertebrates, so it's win/win. If this is also Russell's idea, my respect for the man has just jumped threefold.

Richard Scarry's Busytown Book Of Aliens has this to say about Revenge Of The Slitheen, part one: the episode was written as a means to offload Andy Cunningham's leftover mashed potato, last seen on TV around 1999.

Rep With David Gooderson

Tucked well away behind the Amazon listings for Planet Of Evil and the Key To Time lurks a rather neglected-looking Destiny Of The Daleks, pencilled in for the 26th of November. Not the most anticipated of DVD releases - in fact it currently sports a measly two stars from two Amazon customer reviews - details of extra features are as yet unknown aside from it being a single-disc release, which suggests the cursory minimum beyond the standard making-of documentary that, at a guess, will probably focus on the replacement of both Micheal Wisher and John Leeson and the casting of Lalla Ward, as well as that comedy regeneration sequence. Twenty big ones says 'meh'.

In fact the only reason I'm bothering to mention it now is that Destiny completes the quintet that will make up the Davros Collection, also out on November 26th. Apparently not an Amazon exclusive (at least, they don't claim it to be, yet), further information is likewise still to be revealed. Amazon, however, have the collection listed as an eight-disc set, so either this is wrong or there are two discs still to be accounted for, as only Genesis Of The Daleks is a double-header while Destiny, Resurrection, Revelation and Remembrance amass just the one apiece. It's difficult to imagine what else might plug the Davros gap, but it would be a nice thing to hope for since even with the almighty Genesis as a booster, and with four out of the five freshly minted as el cheapo extras-lite re-release editions, an RRP of ninety-nine quid for this collection is, to say the least, pretty steep.

Finally, The Average Quest - Infinite, sorry - hits stores on November 5th for a more modest £12.99, though I can't imagine anyone interested would have missed either the compilation repeat or YouTube. Wonder why it doesn't include Shalka?

The Bit That Completely Sums Up The Time-Flight DVD In One Go Is...

...Matthew Waterhouse in the out-takes, looking utterly forlorn and miserable at the near-certainty of these being the last two lines (three if you include 'aaaaarrrgh') that he'll ever get.

And still requiring six takes.

Were they still calling him 'Matt Finish' by this point?

How The Simmch Pwned Season Three

Season Three Overview

Every fan on the blogs liked the Doctor a lot,
But the Simmch, who was due for a comeback, did not.
He hated the Doctor! Since the eighth classic season!
Though Terrence and Baz never wrote a good reason.
It could be that Ainley was camp just a mite,
Or Eric Roberts' talent played hooky that night.
But I think that the most likely upset of all,
Was when Roger Delgado's car had a great fall.

But whatever the reason for his deranged stance,
He lurked on Malcassairo, hating the fans.
And he scoured BTS with the sour Simmchy frown
That he practiced by turning his grin upside-down.
He scoffed at a thread on The Infinite Quest,
How it fit in the timeline. "Oh, surely you jest!
"Come the weekend, these losers once more will tune in,
"To watch their good Doctor disgrace me again."
Then he growled, with his head filled with echoes of drumming,
"I can't stand a thousand more posts this mind-numbing!"

For he knew that as soon as the end credits rolled,
There would be the mad rush to post FIRST COMMENT LOL.
And then, oh the raves! Oh, the RAVES! RAVES! RAVES! RAVES!
Like with Lazarus, Shakespeare, the rest of their faves!
They'd all said about Blink, it was clever and class,
Save for one who thought its head was shoved up its arse.
They'd loved the Judoon and gave Martha top score,
But not so with the Daleks, that really was poor.
Some claimed 42 was the best Chibnall's penned,
Though 'twas no more a challenge than Jack acting bent.
The Simmch could remember, recoiling in shock,
A poster who claimed he liked even Gridlock!

But all of their ravings and outpourings, well,
It was nothing to that which followed Paul Cornell!
For they squeed! And they squeed! And they SQUEED SQUEED SQUEED SQUEEEEEEEEEEED!
Till the Simmch was afraid that his eardrums would bleed!
And the Simmch spat in fury, "Those sad, shameless geeks!
"That Russell has spoiled them these past many weeks!
"For thirty-five years I've been thwarted, but now,
"I must get the fanboys to phear me! BUT HOW?"

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
A masterly, dastardly, awful idea!

"I know just what to do," the Simmch laughed in his throat,
"I shall gain a new face and a new suit to boot."
And he chuckled and clucked, "What a devious trick!
"I'll get myself elected, 'cause voters are thick!
"All I need is a meme..." he said, looking around,
"That makes Bad Wolf and Torchwood seem almost profound!"
But was that enough? No, the Simmch simply said,
"If they want a good closer, I'll write one instead!"
So he got Captain Jack, took a pen that was red,
And he drew a big X through the Face Of Boe's head.
He retconned Boe's story with one single whack,
To this ramshackle base he then stitched up poor Jack.

Then the Simmch said "Giddyap!" as his PC went ping,
And his L33T HAXXOR software got on with its thing.
All the folks were asleep when through IP and router,
The Simmch's PC raced on like a sharpshooter
Till it locked on a certain showrunner's computer.

"This is stop number one," the Simmch hacker hissed,
And he cracked all his knuckles, clenched into a fist.
The firewall looked foolproof, it budged not an inch,
But if Pixley could crack it, then so could the Simmch.
He got stuck only once, for a minute or two,
Then the 'Last Of The Time Lords' script came into view.
He opened the textfile, clicked on the first row,
"This cliffhanger", he grinned, "is the first thing to go!"

So he typed and he typed as he worked on his present,
Arranging the script into something less pleasant.
Characters! Dialogue! The old Face Of Boe!
Plot threads and action! It all had to go.    
He took the good science and threw it away,
Though Russell would likely do that anyway.
"That Martha Jones girl's been performing too good,
"So I'll write the bitch out and stick her in Torchwood.
"And if that doesn't drive the fans mad and irate,
"I'll fill Season Four up with Catherine Tate!"
And he lifted his hands and he rubbed them with glee,
As the Simmch saw the script was as bad as could be.

Then he glanced at his screen and found to his disdain,
That a fangirl had stumbled across his domain.
A reader brand new to the forums of Who,
Little Cindy-Lou Noob, with a post count of two.
She'd caught him at work, this young innocent tot,
Whose faith in the programme had not yet been shot.
"It's Russell T Davis! ZOMG!! HI!!!
"What is that you're writing? Can I see? Can I!?"

Now the Simmch hadn't bargained on this little tick,
He needed a fob-off, and needed it quick.
"And spoil the surprise? Why I simply can't say,
"But watch for the Radio Times on Tuesday.
"There's a big backstage feature that's simply perfect,
"And two different covers for you to collect."
And the fan was ecstatic, she thought it was grand,
And she scarpered before he could have her kickbanned.
And when Cindy-Lou Noob had departed, the knave
Went straight back to the script and he quickly hit 'SAVE'.

Then the last things he made to add fuel to the fire,
Was a VOTE SAXON website, the bald-faced old liar,
And a Darth Vader nod with a funeral pyre.
And the one unchanged portion he left of the script
Was Russell T's gay joke dredged up from the crypt.
Then he did the same thing to the twelve backup copies, 
Turning top-gear dramatics to scripted jalopies.

It was quarter past Weakest Link. Anne Robinson
Was being rude to K-9 when his Simmch work was done.
He logged off his PC and prepared with three cheers
For the fruits of his scheme spanning ten trillion years.
Ten thousand feet up in his flying Cloudbase,
The Simmch poised to piss on the whole human race.
"Pooh-pooh to the fans!" His voice sounded savage,
"They're finding out now that their last part is rubbish!
"It's 7.54! I know just how they'll go,
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or so,
"Then the fans on the forums will all post OH NOES!
"They'll be all so distraught it will drive them away,
"The Doctor's power then will be broken! HOORAY!"

And he did hear a sound rising down from below.
A low psychic field that started to grow...
But the sound wasn't angry! This sound started humming!
It was passing the word that the show had been stunning!
The rage on the blogs was being swamped by the tone
Of kids quoting dialogue over the phone!
Of ordinary people, and this was the rub,
Who were chatting away to their friends in the pub!
He hadn't stopped people from watching - they came!
Eight million viewers had come just the same!

And the Simmch started bashing his head on the wall,
And shouted, "How could they have sat through it all!"
The script had no meaning! The plot made no sense!
The science was dismal, the outcome was dense!
And he puzzled for hours in his Paradox Machine
Till he had an idea about what it could mean.
"Maybe fandom," he thought, "doesn't matter a bit,
"If the viewing public laps up any old shit."

And what happened then? On Outpost Gallifrey,
They watched his two hearts eat a bullet that day.
And though it was a cop-out, when time was wound back,
The fans could recall the two months that weren't cack.
And the minute his wife did the rotten sod in,
Then the Simmch - he himself! - was consigned to the bin.

Operation Infinite Justice

The Infinite Quest

Starts great, ends great, drags in the middle.

What do you mean, "is that it"? What do you expect with three-minute episodes? Who's going to remember the previous microscopic plot on a weekly basis anyway? I had a hard enough job in the time it took to load each one on dialup from YouTube. Imagine The Keys Of Marinus, remade by LittleKuriboh in the fashion of his Abridged Yu-Gi-Oh parody dub series. But without the gags. You might as well write a dissertation on the plot nuances of TV Action & Countdown. Or the Walls Sky Ray adverts.

John Kricfalusi would despair of this animation. Alright, he's a miserable sod who tugs one off to Bob Clampett and despises modern cartoons anyway (hear hear!), but John K's blog also whines on at great length how the industry has been ruined by crap executives treating the animators like shit, and making all the creative decisions when they have no knowledge or experience of the creative process. And on that basis, Gary Russell's credit as director is a bit of a puzzler; the man's a fine editor and Big Finish voice coach, but if he doesn't draw or storyboard or time scenes, what else is there in animation terms for him to actually do? Mayhap he should have traded Totally Doctor Who jobs with Clayton Hickman - more space in the Companion Academy broom cupboard, and less rubbish opening graphics for the show itself. Win / win.

"You might as well write a dissertation on the plot nuances of Walls Sky Ray adverts"

John K is quite right about one thing though; animation is a medium of caricature. This instantly makes David Tennant's voice the best thing in it, which you'll know already if you've heard any of the audiobooks where DT plays every single part himself. Anthony Stewart Head as baddie Baltazar naturally steals every scene he's in. Martha however is less successful, as Freema Agyeman doesn't really have the voice presence or persona to pull off an over-the-top cartoon performance when her on-screen body is all but immobile.

It's a bit 'Poundstretcher epic' this, isn't it? This is the main let-down with The Infinite Quest - there's a different animation team at the helm who have tried to up the bar within the limited Shockwave resources at their disposal, and there's some quite impressive stuff on show with flying ships and built-up models like Caw the robot bird and the Mantis Queen. But the main characters are still the same Cosgrove-Hall character style from Scream Of The Shalka and The Invasion, which doesn't translate at all to any kind of fluid, organic movement. Indeed Tennant is almost too good in this, he brings far more life to the role than his cut-out Blue Peter Theater figure with the same sonic screwdriver stock-poses can possibly match. It's weird not seeing him leaping about.

Are you still here? Look, Smith And Jones is on in ten minutes on BBC3, go watch that if you're after some vague semblance of Doctor Who plot. Oh alright then; thirteen episodes, thirteen soundbites. Will this do?

Episode 1: Defeating a supervillain with nought but a rusty spoon is about as Tennant as you could possibly get. Wombles for the win.

Episode 2: Oh that's good; they actually bothered to address the question, why not just destroy one of the data chips and go home!

Episode 3: The Pirates of Men's Pants. Why do all space pirates have that same crap accent? Oil, an emergency? Hah!

Episode 4: Some things never change in cartoons. Pirate captain spiels off an elaborate Hooded Claw plan to eliminate the Doctor in a blaze of burning oil, whereupon Martha obligingly shouts out, "That's murder!". Oh dear.

Episode 5: And now there's a wazzing great laser battle going on. Meanwhile Tennant remains stock-still on the bridge since his figure is incapable of falling over. You know that first Improbability Drive scene from H2G2, where the sea stays steady as a rock and the buildings wash up and down? It's like that.

Episode 6: A bug's life. The galaxy's most bored-looking arms dealer. At least Queenie Mantis is more animated than the Empress of Crapnoss was.

Episode 7: Nuuuuuhhh, sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub Starship Troopers. The bugs invaded this planet for their shit. No comment.

Epsisode 8: And now Tennant has to get into the pirate voice act three episodes late. Verdict: ninjas are better. Neeeeeeeeeext.

Episode 9: Awwwww, tell us what the other seventeen demolished planets were besides Skaro, you've got me all interested now! Sods.

Episode 10: Skill.

Episode 11: I could murder a krynoid right now. Do Alan and Gary know what 'dirty bird' actually means?

Episode 12: Shock! Tennant falls over! His hearts' desire is a decent season four with no Catherine Tate.

Episode 13: Whaaaaaaaaat? The Doctor circumvents months of elapsed time by training a robot bird to fly faster than the speed of light? Four To Dumbed Down, anyone?

Let's end with a really bad cartoon analogy. The Infinite Quest is the kind of wheeze the Bash Street Kids would pull during detention, where the first and last pages they hand in contain the lines they were supposed to write, and the rest in between is a pile of scribbles. Russell, Gary, Alan; go to the back of the class and write out one thousand times, "I must put Anthony Stewart Head in every episode. I must put Anthony Stewart Head in every episode. I must put..."

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Infinite Quest: Dennis Hopper was busy.

I'm A Salvation, Get Me Out Of Here

Laser screwdriver
Setting number 361:
Cadbury's Freddo.

Last Of The Time Lords

Old Time Lords never die, they turn into California Raisins.

So basically, Martha travels haflway across the world to find Professor Docherty, the one and only person who would betray her to the Master, who would then come down personally to capture her instead of having her killed on the spot, so that she could be there to witness the countdown she'd been told about a year in advance. I know this because the Robot Santas explained it to me. Chin-chin.

Look, even an Alistair Campbell-sized spin isn't going to put a brave face on this catastrophe. Be positive, the blog detractors shout; screw you, you can have the B-positive oozing from my SLASHED WRISTS.

Let's start on the home front, shall we? The Master has got himself elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, so naturally Britain is spared from the resulting carnage. There's loyalty, eh? Japan is destroyed; Africa has been razed to the ground; and yet this particular sodding street in Bexley of all places, with all the houses intact, with shopping trolleys and satellite dishes, is still standing right as rain. Is this a nod to the UK-centric nature of old Who, or a cheesy can't-be-arsed oversight on Colin Teague's part? Volcanic activity in Bedford? Ahhhhh, bollocks to that. At least in the 70s you could expect a bit of stock footage of the Blitz or a Saturn V rocket, and it was funny when Tom Baker got the Brig to admit that the rest were all foreigners.

"It's as if RTD had hard-wired his own head into a DVD of Kevin Costner's The Postman"

Last Of The Time Lords is supposed to be another 'human' episode - read, another piece of flag-waving jingoistic piffle celebrating the triumph of human spirit in the face of adversity and hardship and mwahmwahwahwahwahwah - only once again, RTD completely bungles it with the face-on admission that all the human endeavour in the world doesn't mean diddly without the presence of a wise and lordly supreme being to make us all look poxy and insignificant. It's also impossible to make yourself care about any of the actual pathos or 'people' touches in the episode - everyone's staring oblivion in the face and they're worrying about trivial things like Countdown, or that the future human race was four flavours of fucked right from the outset, and still are at the end - when (a) it's smothered or trivialised or just plain crapped on by incongruous music and shit every other second, and (b) it's SO TEDIOUSLY TALKY. Natternatternatternatternatternatter. It's as if RTD had hard-wired his own head into a DVD of Kevin Costner's The Postman, since that's EXACTLY what it was pretending to be; the timeslot was extended to fit in all the blarney and nothing at all of any significance whatsoever happened in the first half. I didn't even give a toss at the end, when Martha got the perfect send-off, to carry on her own life with newed purpose and passion at just being human.

Oh, and pathos or not, since the 'twist' is that the world domination squad this week were also humans, that's down the pan as well.

Speaking of which; correct me if I'm wrong, but out of six billion Toclafane, did Martha just happen to incapacitate the one with Oliver Twist inside? And their weakness turns out to be electricity? Is that what Cloudbase was set up for last week? I'm waiting for Martha to whip out a pair of x-ray specs to complement last year's red and blue lenses. Gordon Bennett.

Why wasn't Martha shunned or locked up or burnt at the stake like every other mad wandering prophet in the history of civilisation? How did she become this great shining beacon of hope, just by acting like a glorified Mormon? (KNOCK KNOCK) "Hello, can I interest you in Doctor?" Why did everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, believe in this mystical spiritual mumbo-jumbo figure that NONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE HEARD OF? What did she have on her that would prove she wasn't a complete fraud? We know the RTD's vision of humanity is a bunch of gullible saps, but Jesus Christ!

"Apostle? Pissed up the wall, more like"

Which reminds me, RTD obviously believes he's God. There's no other reason he could imagine he'd get away with tossing a monstrous Christ complex into a final episode not once, but TWICE in the space of six months - and if Jack's wasn't bad enough, Russell goes and nicks this one straight from the pages of Terry Pratchett, but forgets to take the joke out first. Millions of voices raised in Tinkerbell prayer while Martha Jones, amateur apostle, basks in the smug, self-satisfaction of a job well done. Feel the love. Feel the hope. Feel the blood pounding in your temples. It's the theological equivalent of Outpost Gallifrey arguing that if seven million viewers don't think shit stinks, it doesn't (like they have a hope in hell of getting away with that one this week.) And after that bollocks song-and-dance routine at the beginning, why wasn't 'You Sexy Thing' playing in the background here? I BELIEVE IN MIRACUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULS!!

Apostle? Pissed up the wall, more like.

And then just when you're about to HEAD A SPLODE from fanwank orgasm over the Claws Of Axos, Frontier In Space and the hope beyond hope that somehow they're going tie the ending in with the android Master in Scream Of The Shalka, thirty-five years of the programme's arch-Moriarty are brought to an abrupt end with a single bullet. In a better story, this sudden anticlimax could have been brilliant; it's exactly what you would expect from the Master when the last vestiges of hope and willpower were gone, to stick his middle finger up at the Doctor and claim symbolic victory with his very last breath. But here, in context with all the other shit stuck to the camera lens, it's one more bucket of ice-cold water on the nether regions. What, scoffs Eric Roberts, is the big deal about imprisonment in the TARDIS after the Eye Of Harmony? Maybe the Master was faking his death Romana style, and the funeral pyre is his TARDIS, since we never actually got to see it. It has to be more plausible than Flash Fucking Gordon.

Who the hell was Lucy Saxon? Why did she have such a personal interest in the Master's plans? Why did he treat her as an equal, much less marry her? What exactly was the 'sound of drums' supposed to be? How did the Doctor know about the countdown so early? How did the whole world manage to synchronise every clock on the planet to the exact same second? Has RTD never heard of time zones? What happened to the Toclafane that had manifested before the invasion and the paradox? Or the satellite network? Or Cloudbase? Or the two hundred million pissed-off Americans that would be baying for English blood after watching the British PM declare war on them by KILLING THEIR PRESIDENT LIVE ON GLOBAL TV? None of this was ever dwelled upon. NONE OF IT.

"The worst resolution since Chris Benoit's marriage"

Even when Russell does bother to explain anything, it's blithely tossed out with a nod and a wink to the camera as if it were never important to him in the first place. A cute throwaway joke; the joke being on us for having the gall to try taking it seriously. Was the only reason Jack came back to pervert the Face Of Bollocks' message into "give me a blowjob", since Jack did bugger all else over the entire story? Maybe it was to give us one less reason to tune into Torchwood season two, since we know for an absolute fact that Torchwood, Jack and Planet Earth will all carry on regardless no matter what alien jizzery gets tossed in their direction. Will it ever stop? The sound of bummers in my head?

Last Of The Time Lords has one redeeming feature. Just one, and it is this: if there is any semblence of poetic justice in the entire universe, season three will have brought down the curtain on the big-ass, brain-off, wham-bam Earthbound Armageddon climax. No more, at all, ever. There's simply nowhere left to go with this particular bigger-is-better dramatic blind-alley; not after you've stooped to scrawling FAST RETURN in black marker on every page of the script. And if you find it reads like a Nick Briggs Big Finish escapade on crack with the worst resolution since Chris Benoit's marriage, it's a probably a good sign to call it a day anyway.

Unforgivable.

Coming so hard at Christmas you won't know where you are: Arseship Titanic. Hopefully no invasions (like RTD's human race will remember by then). Eccythump will be onboard because Clive said so, Sylvester should be there according to one of Kate Orman's books, and Paul McGann's been present at other disaster sites like the R101, so it's not a great stretch to picture him on board the Titanic as well. Guest-starring Colin Baker as the iceberg.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Last Of The Time Lords: next season's big 'Sam Tyler' anagram conundrum will be MEL SATYR, when Bonnie Langford will makes her return to the series. Only her precisely-pitched screams in G-Sharp can disrupt the reborn Master's psychic resonance as he attempts to harness the power of a creature from ancient myth. A bleedin' 'nother one.

If seven million viewers simultaneously think "THAT WAS SHIT" at 7.55pm, can we ensure it never happened?

That was DREADFUL. AWFUL. UNIMAGINABLY BAD.

Russell goes and pulls the same Deus Ex Twattina shtick that he did at the end of season one, but doesn't bother to hide it since it's mind-bogglingly obvious from minute one that there's no other way to end the episode.

Thirty-five years of the Master on the other hand end with a single bullet.

And what the BLISTERING FUCK is it with Russell and Christ complexes???

Even The Infinite Quest was better than this.

*PAIN*

The Sound Of Doors Slamming

Ten percent falls dead.
Great Britain is disrupted.
Sod the daffodils.

The Sound Of Drums

Verses from the Book of Russellon:

1. Through the millennia, the Time Lords of Gallifrey, protected from all threats from lesser series by their great ratings, led a life of peace and ordered spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, calm and spam. But calm was off.

2. But this was to change. Suddenly, and terribly, the Time Lords faced the most dangerous crisis in their long history. For the annihilation of Gallifrey was nothing as to ten years as an airport departure lounge, followed by sixteen in the wilderness and Dimensions In Time.

3. The ancient texts telleth of the three founders of Time Lord society; Newmega, who raised it from the dark ages of football results and Juke Box Jury, Russellon, who brought it back from extinction to usher into the modern age, and the mysterious third force known as the Other. But Lost had already crawled up its own orifice to die, so nobody took much notice.

4. And Russellon did gaze upon the enormity of his inheritence, and spoke unto the heavens, saying, "Let there be CGI. Let there be monsters and aliens, let there be costumes and make up and prosthetics, and let there be great sums of money to bring forth this imagination into reality." And he saw that it was good.

5. And then Russellon said, "Let there be a great Time War that will rip the world of Gallifrey asunder. Let there be the pathos of a lone survivor left to wander the galaxy in solitude." And he saw that it was a bold and visionary masterstroke that would keepeth the bloggers and TV pundits in column-inches for decades to come.

6. And then once more he commanded, "Let there be suburbia. Let there be domestic strife and dysfunctional families, and let there be Cardiff." And the populace didst shrug, knowing that two out of three was not bad.

"And destiny called unto the Master, commanding him to come forth and inherit the world. But in his quest for power he came first, and inherited a very old joke"

7. So for the turn of two seasons, the final days of the Time Lords lay shrouded in mysteries and half-truths, while the Daleks commanded the lion's share of the Time War, for there was much extra moolah to be made in toys and playsets.

8. Then on the dawn of the third season, Russellon didst decide upon the revelation of a further survivor of the Time War to the surprise of absolutely no-one. And thus was Harold Saxon born unto the world, who in truth was later revealed to be Derek Jacobi a week early.

9. And Russellon knew he must expand upon the known histories of Gallifrey, and also concoct an origin story worthy of the character's many conflicts with the Doctor through the eons. And he didst look at Lungbarrow, and saw that it containeth many secrets, and was intricate and complex and beloved by all whose eyes fell upon it. And he didst toss it out the window, saying stuff that, the kids are more down with Harry Potter instead. For Russellon did not hold with such nonsense as off-screen continuity, save for the superhuman works of Corn-El from the planet Krypton.

10. And so the boy Master was enrolled in the Academy, where public school prefects would give junior freshmen their first lemon swirly in the Time Vortex, and was driven insane and would wreak revenge upon the cosmos for ever afterwards for the torments of the Gallifreyan biscuit game.

11. And the time came when the Daleks did make war with the planet of Gallifrey, and the Time Lords didst resurrect the Master, whom they made into their agent and promised new regenerations, as the plan had obviously worked out so well for Borusa in The Five Doctors. And indeed the Master didst look upon the Time War and naturally proclaimeth, sod that for a game of Time Soldiers.

12. And he didst do a bunk to the ends of the universe, where he lived out many years as the human Professor Yana, as it was prophecised by the Face Of Boe on his deathbed. For Boe was a canny one who had conspired to expire before the Doctor could exclaim, "This maketh no sense, why couldst thou not warn me properly instead of this cryptic YANA shit if you obviously had a hand in it, thou great brown nob." For in cocking it all up hath the Doctor truthfully made Gridlock look even more stupid than it already was.

13. And the Master made to flee from Utopia in the TARDIS, whereupon the Doctor didst lock the coordinates in place for ever, thus leaving Russellon with a handy loophole from which to never inscribe any offworld stories ever again. For the Master didst arrive back on present day Earth, where he lay low for eighteen months and didst plot and scheme and play Time Crisis II a lot.

14. Then finally the day cometh when destiny called unto the Master, commanding him to come forth and inherit the world. But in his quest for power he came first, and inherited a very old joke. For the Master was apt to sieze dominion over all with the aid of Newmega's stellar manipulator, but alas the power was weak and the only stars it would attract were Sharon Osborne and McFly, and Ann Widdecombe who wouldst ally herself with the forces of darkness once more.

"For the Master and the Doctor were likened unto two sides of the same coin, as it was with Cesar Romero opposite Adam West"

15: And the Master spoke unto the peoples of the world, and didst enlighten them to all the wonders of the universe, which was Russellon's way of apologising for humanity's persistant blind ignorance being a complete crock of shit.

16. And the Master's web of entrapment didst also reach out toward the Doctor, who had followed him from Utopia with Martha Jones and Captain Jack. And the Master did channel the spirit of Jonathan Pryce, and didst prat about and call him names a lot, for the two were likened unto two sides of the same coin, as it was with Cesar Romero opposite Adam West, as it also was with the great Shakespearian Darrow, for the DVD of Timelash lay just around the corner.

17. And the Doctor didst run away and hide, leaving it unto Jack to summon the forces of the Torch of Wood in the hope that insanity could be defeated by insanity. But no help was forthcoming, for Grytpype-Thynne had commanded them to seek out the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas, which leaveth Jack looking a bit useless. But forsooth, for the Master had also drawn the ire of the President of the United States, who threatened to mobilise the forces of UNIT, who had decades more experience than the Torch of Wood in not being much cop.

18. But the Master had foreseen the plot against him, and had placed the TARDIS within Captain Scarlet's Cloudbase, and didst cannibalise the ancient time vehicle into the Faction Paradox Machine, which explaineth why Russellon's writing taketh such glee in contradicting itself and making as little sense as possible. And the Doctor didst fall into the the trap, and was aged prematurely from the soul-sucking recollections of Season Eighteen.

19. And the Master then slew the President and ushered in the day of Armageddon, evoking his speech to all the peoples of the universe while his wife evoked Ian Chesterton dancing in The Chase. And Mark Gatiss didst get into a huff, uttering "You bastard, why could I not do that with the transmitter in The Idiot's Lantern."

20. And lo, for the skies were split open and the fury of the Troclafane didst descend upon the world to smite the ten percent. But such was the mercy of Russellon that nonesuch contained anyone of importance or John Paul Green. And thus was the scene set for fifty more minutes of loud noise, misplaced comedy and hollow spectacle which the fans lappeth up but for all the wrong reasons.

Here endeth the lesson, as foretold by the scribe to John Williams.

Next week: Nobody's been allowed to see it. Fuck would I know?

The Bumper Book Of Made Up Facts has this to say about The Sound Of Drums: John Simm threatened not to throw a tantrum on set if RTD didn't get what he wanted with the script.