Thursday, 5 March 2020
The Tuneless Children
Well, as DW and Whovians is over for another year - the later proving beyond any doubt the existence of a sane and loving god - here's another music video.The song is basically "Hey, you want to fuck in the branches of the tree where they executed criminals? You know it's least weird shit that's happened up there."
Monday, 10 February 2020
Ben Chatham's 2020 Diary
Sunday 5th January
Got wasted last night with current boytoy. Woke up in the afternoon with a blinding hangover. Decided it's not to go to "work" for another two weeks because I can't be arsed.
What happened to my beard? I don't like her having a life of her own.
Dad's back with his French hooker, so he's got more perseverance than me. I'd have ditched my wife for some foreign totty right away. Actually, I did, that's why I'm divorced. Anyway, dad took a lot of time and care to write me a letter rather than text or phone, so screw him. I hate my parents. Come to think of it, I hate everyone.
Finally realized I was out of booze and chocolate so, despite my incredible blood alcohol level I decided to drive into town and get more raw fuel for my addictions.
Saw something disgusting there - a woman! A fat woman! Wearing leggings! And she was exercising of her own free will! And she didn't once try to sleep with me or beg me for an autograph! Honestly, when did Cambridge stop being identical to Brideshead Revisited and not pander to my every sordid whim.
For some reason found an old book I can pass off as a gift to boytoy. I'm so pleased with myself I decided I deserved more food and alcohol so I went to a wine bar and told my coworkers to divide up the work now they've sacked my beard and my old boytoy. And as I'm not working, they need to do everything for me as well.
Tonight, I'll get even MORE drunk with my boytoy and go on about how I hate my friends, my parents, my co-workers, the town I live on, modern society, complete strangers, and indeed everything and he'll just agree with me.
OH GOD BLESS ME, EVERY ONE!
Monday 6 January
Oh woe is me! I am wracked with melancholic pathos!
I have a mild sniffle! Maybe if I didn't get completely rat-arsed every single night, ate properly and did some exercise I might actually have some kind of immune system! You see what happens when you leave your exclusive apartment? Disease-riddled proles expose you to basic bacteria!
Well, I'm never going shopping again and am demanding Kyle and Luigi do all the shopping from now on. I don't care if they get sick. Of what consequence are they to me? They are nothing!
This is all the fault of heterosexuals breeding! Those things, what are they called, oh yes, children! How I hate them! And their parents! I hate everyone even more than I did yesterday when all my malaise was simply hangovers!
Oh this awful cold means that my plans for lying around for the next month getting drunk and stuffing my face with chocolate are UTTERLY UNCHANGED! Except now I've got an excuse to do absolutely no work, avoid my relatives, listen to the same sodding album and read books about more interesting people than me AND blackmail my boyfriend into fulfilling my every sordid whim.
PITY ME! PITY THE CHATHAM!
Sunday 12th January
Oh alas, it's taken me a week to recover from my mild sniffle! I have been bed-ridden, unable to do anything except lie there and whine about how unfair my life is, so thankfully this virus hasn't hampered my plans to do absolutely bugger all.
I didn't seek any medical help, of course, just lay there on the couch and demanded my boytoy hand-feed and bring me tribute in the form of caviar and grapes and orange juice and cups of tea. I didn't eat or drink any of it, of course. I require absinthe and brandy and bagels to survive, and as soon as I can be arsed I will emerge into that germ-infested plague pit of Cambridge to get rat-arsed at the Mermaid Wine Bar.
Oh I know the bar is overpriced, the service is terrible and it only employs criminally insane sex offenders who molest you while you wait, but I've been barred from every other drinking den because I'm so utterly horrible.
Good. I like to be exclusive.
I've been lying on the couch in my own filth watching Italian films because I can't be arsed to change the DVDs. I think I will go to Italy for summer to perve at some jailbait Italians on the beach, and the fascists love me because of my Aryan good looks. Oh, how I wish Hitler had won the war.
But I'm outraged that the new Doctor isn't replying to my texts! How dare she! How very dare she! I mean, does she think she has some kind of life without me? I've heard there's been an unusual case with spies all across the world being murdered, so it's a good thing I've never done a day's work in my life or I might have been targeted.
I sent to her
h3y d0ct0R
i am f33lng R32L sik. got a c0ld frm sum chAv!
Cure me, b1t<h!
y0Vrs,
83njamn 53bastyan j@mes s38astyan <h@@+hm
And what did I get in reply?
Humanity is over.
You have three minutes to prepare.
And then my mobile gave me a subpar electric shock to my nipple and I emptied loose bowel water all over the floor. Thankfully that's not the first time that's happened, so Julian was on standby with the mop and the bucket and the bleach.
Oh I remember the good old days when I'd text
d0ctoR!
iM b0rrr3d!
and he'd text
Oh Ben you're awesome you're amazing you're the best please come and travel with me through time and space but mainly rural England in the ethnographic present you're so much better than all my other companions like Rose the one with the fat arse who cruelly saw you as a way to stop being a chav or Martha Jones who just won't sleep with me no matter how many times I date rape or or that ginger tart Donna Ignoble who we all laugh at for being a moron and not like you you're awesome come let us take in a lecture on gothic architecture and murder hamsters!
I blame River Song. I bet she screens my calls so she can keep the Doctor all to herself.
Well, fine. I don't want to be friends with the Doctor. She's a woman!
Ugh.
Oh, I'm so exhausted after a week of doing nothing. I think I'll just listen to music everyone else in the house hates so they're miserable and I can feel better than everyone else in the whole world.
Oh dear, my anus has started bleeding again.
LIFE IS GOOD!
Wednesday 15th January
Oh god, I've actually got off the couch and gone into work. I'm not actually doing anything, of course, and I'm getting highly-trained field agents to feed me because I'm more important than anyone else in the whole world. Everyone knows that medicine is for chavs and my gargantuan appetite will see me through.
Apparently someone's using telepathy to assassinate far-right political figures. Huh! Psychic attacks? Ridiculous! What next? Aliens? Time travel? Time-traveling aliens? How utterly far fetched. I've decided that this is clearly a false alarm and thus I can justify not doing a damn thing at work today.
True, the mysterious deaths continue directly because of my inaction but so what? I have books to read on the couch and it's a rainy day. Why should I put effort into helping other people when I'm not happy? Come to think of it, why should I help other people when I am happy? Of what consequence are others?
Oh, dark skies make me miserable. They're part of a long list, I can tell you.
I remember being happy once, but it was 1973 and I'd accidentally ejaculated into a tin of baked beans. Ah, we won't see the like of those days again.
Monday 20th January
Compared to my normal day of lying around, moaning about how unfair life is while I'm pampered hand and foot by unwilling but conventionally-attractive servants, this was arse-destroyingly tedious.
That field agent I've ordered to peel grapes and massage olive oil into my perineum actually had the temerity to say she signed up fight aliens, save lives and experience front-line events and just because I used my supreme executive power to be entirely office-based tea lady because she is a broodmare with ovaries shouldn't impede her career path. I told her to do her job and I wasn't in the mood for that kind of discussion.
You know the type of discussion I'm talking about, where women have rights and other people exist independent of my desires and convenience.
Ugh. Worse than climate change worryworts.
Mother rang me up today to whine about her own problems for nearby an hour. Another woman complaining that just because her husband is on a sex holiday in France and has spawned a litter of illegitimate children and an antibiotic-resistant strain of the clap that somehow her opinions matter. It's a good thing I couldn't be bothered to hang up and instead took some LSD... sorry, FGM... and listened to it all believing I was an ingrown pubic hair in the groin of Sir Michael Foot.
Oh, and my illegitimate bastard half-brother who everyone likes and has sex with and is good at fighting aliens, lateral thinking, maintaining long-term relationships with others and not becoming addicted to everything from absinthe to oven cleaner? Apparently father wants him to join Operation: Delta because he'd be an asset to the team, hugely-qualified in the field and not spend a month refusing to get off the couch and do a hard day's work for once in his life.
How dreary.
You know, I could use my access to all this evil alien bollocks to my own ends. Like this case I'm refusing to work on about a weird boy - how weird? He wears sandals and believe girls can have orgasms - called Nate who telepathically drives people to kill themselves. All the others have managed to capture him, take him to the lab and we're getting that brain-fried convicted drug-dealer Shaky Jake to conduct tests to see if tinfoil hats will protect them, but apparently hanging around me leaves people so depressed and suicidal already Nate's powers don't effect them.
Anyway, I could totally use him to make my brother drive off a cliff.
But that would require moving, so I'll let him live.
Oh how low I feel. I feel stressed. I feel harassed. Woe is me.
I feel bored with my life today.
A disintegrating family, an HR dispute and a psychic assassin on the loose? What a dull routine. I'm wasting my young life away - well, as I can't remember more than a few weeks since I started drinking absinthe, I ASSUME I'm still young. What year is it? 2006? 2007? Oh, one day I might wake up and find myself old and that must never, ever happen. I'll recast myself first?
Living in my expensive Cambridge apartment drinking exclusive Columbrian coffee, finest French absinthe, with an unpaid Italian waiter working day and night doing all the chores while the government and my obscenely-wealthy Nazi-gold-owning family pay all my bills and a loving boyfriend sacrifices every possibly part of his own existence just to make me feel better...
DAMMIT MY LIFE SUCKS! GIVE ME BOOZE, I FEEL!
Saturday 25th January
Have noticed my diary entry one month ago is curiously incomplete...
Tuesday 24th December, 2019
Decided to spend Christmas in a Cornish castle that's been turned into a luxury hotel so I don't have to spend any time with my family or normal human beings. That includes my current sex toy, Adam. Sorry, Craig. No, wait, what am I thinking of? Julian! It'll cost enough to feed and cloth the population of Somalia for a month but I'm worth it, aren't I? Aren't I?
Damn right I am. I'm Ben f{_}cking Chatham and none of you chavs forget it.
Unfortunately, due to my complete lack of preparation the only road to Cragmore Castle was flooded so I had to abandon my faithful Chathamobile on a damp verge and walk the rest of the way while Julian whined how unfair it was to expose him to muddy water. Muddy water, daylight and being fed after midnight are huge no-nos to him, but he's got a mouth like a hoover so I tolerate his ungentlemanly plebian whining.
On the way we heard screams of human suffering from a dark spinney, so we wisely continued onwards and ignored their desperate pleas for salvation. This seemed to offend the screamer, who turned out to be a living skeleton in a cloak. As an experienced time traveler, alien fighter and expert in the super-and-sub-natural I immediately deduced this being was a chav in a rubber mask.
Julian whined that it was clearly the grim reaper, just because it faded away to ectoplasm waving a scythe and speaking in block capitals.
As someone with a degree would say, this was seriously unfunny.
We ran into the incredibly-spooky and haunted looking castle where the receptionist offered us a book to sign in. The last residents had been in 2013, six years ago and though this proved beyond doubt how exclusive the hotel was no one could afford to stay there, I decided to pick a fight. Possibly as a result of this, the receptionist gave us separate rooms and threw a live lobster at me.
"Come on Julian," I shouted. "We’ll sleep in my room, emphasising together!"
"Why did you just say 'emphasising together'?" the receptionist asked.
"Pah, you wouldn't understand, harridan. Different social strata!"
Thus we made our way to the lushly-furnished Victorian bedroom with a waiting bottle of red wine where I started screaming at the lack of modern decor in an ancient castle and that it must be someone else's fault I didn't realize it.
Julian got ratted on red wine and passed out, as he often does when basking in my glory for more than a few minutes at a time. It's amazing how often people drink themselves unconscious when forced to be in my presence.
I then heard a sobbing noise coming from a pitch dark corner of the bedroom, which turned out to be the ghostly figure of a man from a photo on the bedside cabinet who slit his throat and then vanished into thin air.
As an expert in unusual situations and impossible scenarios, I immediately deduced this was down to the owner of the local amusement park with some glow-in-the-dark paint and an ordinary hurricane lantern. Julian's panicked screams of "What the hell's wrong with you, you moron? This place is obviously haunted!" was quite chav-like. "This place is horrible and I'm special!" he lied, flouncing off.
Special? Compared to I, Ben Sebastian James Sebastian Cabbage? Sorry, Chatham!
Anyway, I decided to use my extremely expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera, which definitely wasn't a casio calculator with some pokemon stickers on it. I remember distinctly the day I was issued my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera by Paul Farraday and Corrine Shaw (who I've both slept with, obviously) and how they said "Look, just go in the corner and play with this, you peroxide retard! Grown-ups are talking!"
Yet eerily my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera did not work!!! So I decided to run down the stairs in poor lighting with a gut full of red whine and no motor functions. Amazingly, this time someone actually pushed me down the stairs instead of me passing out in my own body waste.
Luckily, I only grazed my lip. And received two compound fractures. And there's been blood in my urine ever since.
Of course, Julian was beside himself with horror that my beauty was tarnished. He claimed that Adam Willis (who taught me how to "give both barrels" in an act that, while highly-dehydrating, sets me above the commoners) was present. How dare he recommend I spend Christmas in a haunted Cornish castle with ghosts and zombies and sour-faced receptionists who disagree with me!
How dare he?
HOW VERY DARE HE?!?!
My retribution was put on hold when we found popular Pirates of the Caribbean actor Kevin McNally lying dead in reception with his head split open by a meat clever. Julian was sickened, as was I - there was no sign of Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp. My hopes that Keira Knightly had also been brutally murdered by the ghosts was sadly dashed as I realized something awful.
Something gut-twistingly horrific that will haunt me to my dying day.
It transpired I'd left my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera upstairs and everyone knows how important my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera is. Running the gauntlet of homicidal spirits and certain death or leaving my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera behind?
I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL FIRST, BILLIE PIPER!
Julian insisted he help me save my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera. Well, he said "I'm not staying down here alone. I'm young attractive and far too rich to neglect. Plus, I can use your unnaturally-smoothe chest as a human shield and sacrifice your worthless life to save my own."
"You make me laugh at the worst of times," I said.
Which is a lie. I never laugh. Happiness is immature.
Anyway, I went upstairs to collect my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera because it cost a lot of money and I'm too cheap to buy another one. I know that might contradict my earlier statement that "one spends and god sends" but who are you? My supervisor? No you're not! BUGGER OFF!
So I went into the room and was taken roughly from behind by some ghastly chav named Craig 'Nob-Gobbler' Harris who would have burgled the entire castle if some meat-clever-weilding woman hadn't gone on a killing spree. I was unconvinced by the story, but why expect some thick lowlife to come up with anything better? Especially if he's got the same name as my unspeakably ghastly nephew so Julian and I decided to call him chavboy and use him as a replacement for Kyle in this narrative. We also threatened him with blackmail and demanded he pray elucidate to us any other strange or unnatural things he hath witnessed.
He didn't have a bloody clue what we were asking. To be honest, we didn't either.
So we decided to head to the basement and blame everything on aliens. That's usually the explanation for any and all Scooby Doo bollocks, apart from the times I'm suffering absinthe-fueled hallucinations. I noticed that when I force-fed Craig some Fox's glacier mints he claimed he was "floating on pink clouds above a purple sea with cascading colours all around him" so maybe I'm actually just taking tabs of LSD instead of breath-mints.
We went downstairs and got the skinhead criminal to open the door to the secret high-tech laboratory with the weird inhuman beings with guns and it all unfolded with such tedious inevitability...
...and that's where it ends.
This is by no means the first diary entry to end abruptly, as though my life is a piss-poor series of plot synopsis some drunken author can barely finish. Oh, woe. Oh, fate. Oh, pathos. Oh... ooh, a tin of baked beans!
Today is looking up...
Sunday 26th January
It's been six days of non-stop drinking so I'm spicing things up a bit with being unconscious.
My awful half-brother is staying at my place because, um, apparently there's nowhere else in Cambridge to put him up and despite my access to stinking huge fortunes I can't be arsed to rent him a hotel room. Or maybe I was too drunk to remember.
I'm convinced my sub-par twin is going to seduce my boytoy. And, be fair, the bastard's got a history of that. And my boy-toys are almost guaranteed to drop me for literally anyone with a functional nervous system and a knowledge of foreplay, as though their pleasure mattered in some way!
Should I perhaps come out and say "Julian, that bastard is going to try to shag you before the end of the week?" and confront things in a healthy, adult manner?
Bollocks I will! There's drinking to be done!
On the plus side, James Bastard Bartlett's working with O: D so my cunning plan to drink myself into a stupor and refuse to go to work means that I will be avoiding him even more than is possible.
I went to the Mermaid and ordered Kyle and Corrine and sit there listening to me explain why I was the greatest of all the Doctor's companions. Admittedly I could only remember Rose (who wanted to sex me) and Martha (who didn't) but who cares about the others? I'm the only one who matters! And that was proven when Kyle and Corrine threw their empty drink glasses in my face and stormed out.
Julian's upset because he's noticed that if I was "not quite 25" in 2005 then I can hardly be "on the cusp of 24" some fifteen years later. He considers this me lying to him! And he's wondering if I've constantly had sex with women all my life, how can I say I was a virgin before I met him?
The ungrateful flounchy sh|t's getting above himself. I bet this minor tension in our relationship will get my evil not-twin down the front of Julian's Y-fronts before you can say... um... something really quick to say. Wow, this absinthe-drip I've installed has really, um, shrunk the number of big words I can say.
Anyway, that psychic kid assassin the team has been working day or night to contain almost murdered Shakey Jake. Big deal, like that matches to my stress. The child has been locked in a lead-lined padded cell and left to starve to death, just in case this turns out to be another revival of The Tomorrow People on ITV.
Life is so stressful.
Chiara told me they're tempted to leave me to drink myself to death just to see if that improves my work ethic.
What a nice girl. Such a pity she has ovaries.
Saturday 8th February
It's taken thirteen days but I finally remembered I am keeping a diary, and even longer to be sober enough to regain the motor skills to write in it.
The most amazing thing happened today. I drank some coffee. I drank it at a wine bar that stocks that coffee just for me. Oh, the wait staff do like to joke that it's actually raw fish pulp they take turns urinating in, but it's nice, it's exclusive and I recognize the taste of Columbian Blue Ridge anywhere.
Just as I was on the prowl for expensive consumer goods to buy affection and loyalty for my current sex-slave, I saw Spartha Jones and nearly fainted! A woman! A BLACK WOMAN! In Cambridge! What vile degenerate poison has entered MY CITY?!?!
If only she'd just been glimpsed, but she saw me keel over in a faint and came striding across the road on some vague pretence she was a doctor and had a duty to help others. Yeah, right. As if. I believe that as much as her diagnosis that me gargling raw fish and human urine every morning could be responsible for my fainting spells. She hasn't changed... the LUCKY BITCH! While I have to repeatedly recast myself as younger and less-respected soap operas to maintain my youth and beauty, she's got the same old humourless face and depressing voice.
Well, she's always looking humourless and sounding depressed whenever she's around me, anyway.
I demanded to know what the foul brood-mare was doing in MY Cambridge and she explained she and her husband Mickey Smith-Jones are recruiting a university professor to try and cure the deadly coronavirus that threatens all life-kind. I demanded more details. And when she provided them, I demanded to know why I should care about the fate of human beings. She responded by asking why the hell she should be discussing her work with a piss-drinking drunkard who'd passed out in his own faeces. How typical of her!
How vulgar, she is. Black. Educated. Heterosexual... DISGUSTING!
Eventually she kicked me repeatedly in the ribs and said if she ever saw me again, she and her husband would force a Sontaran fragmentation grenade up my arse and detonate it. I responded by sobbing and begging for the gentle tears of the Lord Bowie's mercy before throwing up. Revolted, Spartha ran off but I was pleased to get away from the awful girl.
Stumbling into the Blue Angel, I demanded an expensive gin to calm my nerves. Unfortunately, the jazz club frequented by musicians and customers and other human beings was not the silent graveyard of self-pitying alcoholism I craved. I demanded the three-piece soft jazz ensemble to be thrown out and called all the uni lecturers illegitimate inbred scum.
I spent the rest of the day face down in a dumpster with a cymbal lodged in my anus.
Good times.
Anyway, I intend to phone Paul and Corinne to warn them not to discuss our cases with Spartha Jones! Well, actually, I already have done but they said there's no such person as Spartha Jones and anyway they'd have to be dead for three weeks of terminal brain damage before they listened to a word I said and have now blocked my phone number.
Only a lower-class chav would not be pleased at this outcome as it proves beyond doubt the supremacy of Operation: Delta in these matters. Whatever they are,
I now await someone to come home and help me remove the cymbal from my anus.
Fortunately, there's no rush.
Friday 14th February
It’s Valentines Day! Bloody hell, I don't know what was in that oven cleaner but it did the trick! It knocked me out for a full seven days and has left me feeling this strange, unnatural feeling that - after much research and study - is what the humans call... happiness.
Either that or it's wind.
Anyway, my boytoy provided me with an expensive watch to help me "remember the bloody time you drunken wanker" and also a delightful Valentine's Day card of me, beautiful me, oh I am so pretty. It was a picture when I made Julian punt me down the Cam (a euphemism for a spit-roast with the Exhalted Creeth[1] and Magnus Greel[2]) taken last August before my rectum prolapsed. Oh, I am so beautiful in Summer.
I gave the boytoy some roses and some secondhand books I got from a mad Irishman and his barely-hominid milk-fed gimp assistant. He was delighted. Well, he said the words "How delightful" then sneered and threw them into the fire with all the other trinkets I throw at him while screaming "DOES MY HALF-BROTHER GIVE YOU THAT, YOU OPEN-LEGGED SLUT?[3] WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE JUST DIE IN A DITCH IF THEY DON'T WANT MY LOVE![4] I HAVE A DEGREE!!![5]"
For a change, and to really break out of the old routine, I decided to go on a drinking binge and then hurl insults at everyone else because they are inferior chav scum and all chavs must die [6]. True, it's a pity I've been barred from the drinking dens of this exquisite town and the police are under standing orders to break my fingers if I show the slightest sign of resistance, but I bask in the joy of togetherness with...
Oh, bollocks, where's he got to?
I forgot to take my boytoy with me. He's probably at the flat doing unspeakable things with my half-brother[7] with some polish salami and the works of Christopher Isherwood! Just like all my other boyfriends and girlfriends![6] Apart from the ones I fed to giant agitated mutated water voles![8]
Oh well, this oven cleaner is really doing the trick. I'm as high as a kite. High as Boris Johnson's cholesterol levels. High as a really high thing that goes extra high because it's so happy to be high! Oh, all the pain I've been through![9] All the knives in my back![9] Yet what is this strange fear something bad could still happen? Oh, the black dog that has long haunted me threatens to bite again![10]
I suppose I could seek help. I mean, it is Mental Health Week, and the world's full of highly-trained psychiatric professionals that could help me cope with my awkward family history, bizarre relationship crisis and unusually-stressful career path.
No, I think I'll stay as a miserable bastard![6] HA! HA! HA!
That stomach-churningly awful Negress turned up again today[11]. Apparently that psychic tomorrow person kid is killing more people and it is a race against time to stop the death toll rising and she needed information about the university and its staff.
"No, it's staff," I said.
"What?"
"It apostrophe ess. It's. It's staff."
"No, that would be 'it is staff' and I want 'its staff."
You know how I abhor having my grammar or punctuation corrected[12]. It is my English, not that harridan the Queen![13] So I voided my bowels and screaming "I WILL TELL YOU NOTHING OF VALUE AND WILL INSTRUCT MY TEAM TO INVESTIGATE YOU AND HOW YOU ACQUIRED THIS INFORMATION ON AN OPERATION: DELTA CASE!"
"Your staff have been telling everyone at the Mermaid Wine Bar in return for either free drinks or sexual favors. In between complaining about what a dick you are."
"YOUR BREATH SMELLS EVEN WORSE THAN USUAL!"
"I'm not the one who needs breath mints all the time."
"THESE FOX GLACIER MINTS ARE HARDCORE HALLUCINAGENS![14] I DON'T NEED YOU, DARKIE! I DON'T NEED ANYONE! ESPECIALLY THE DOCTOR! EVER SINCE HIS DICK FELL OFF, HE WON'T RESPOND TO MY TEXTS!"
I went on further, but Martha had wandered off some time ago and the police had come over and broken my ribs. They threw me into a dumpster in the back alleyway behind to the most expensive restaurant in Cambridge, the Cafe Le Rivieux, where I am barred for life and meals are complimentary if the customer can prove they've stabbed me in the bladder at least four times.
As they emptied their uneaten slop over me, I thought the French do know their cuisine... well, unless they're called Giselle...[7] and they all are... they come round here, stealing our men... and our women... and our bloody sheepdogs...
Darkness comes with the familiar anal leakage.
Got wasted last night with current boytoy. Woke up in the afternoon with a blinding hangover. Decided it's not to go to "work" for another two weeks because I can't be arsed.
What happened to my beard? I don't like her having a life of her own.
Dad's back with his French hooker, so he's got more perseverance than me. I'd have ditched my wife for some foreign totty right away. Actually, I did, that's why I'm divorced. Anyway, dad took a lot of time and care to write me a letter rather than text or phone, so screw him. I hate my parents. Come to think of it, I hate everyone.
Finally realized I was out of booze and chocolate so, despite my incredible blood alcohol level I decided to drive into town and get more raw fuel for my addictions.
Saw something disgusting there - a woman! A fat woman! Wearing leggings! And she was exercising of her own free will! And she didn't once try to sleep with me or beg me for an autograph! Honestly, when did Cambridge stop being identical to Brideshead Revisited and not pander to my every sordid whim.
For some reason found an old book I can pass off as a gift to boytoy. I'm so pleased with myself I decided I deserved more food and alcohol so I went to a wine bar and told my coworkers to divide up the work now they've sacked my beard and my old boytoy. And as I'm not working, they need to do everything for me as well.
Tonight, I'll get even MORE drunk with my boytoy and go on about how I hate my friends, my parents, my co-workers, the town I live on, modern society, complete strangers, and indeed everything and he'll just agree with me.
OH GOD BLESS ME, EVERY ONE!
Monday 6 January
Oh woe is me! I am wracked with melancholic pathos!
I have a mild sniffle! Maybe if I didn't get completely rat-arsed every single night, ate properly and did some exercise I might actually have some kind of immune system! You see what happens when you leave your exclusive apartment? Disease-riddled proles expose you to basic bacteria!
Well, I'm never going shopping again and am demanding Kyle and Luigi do all the shopping from now on. I don't care if they get sick. Of what consequence are they to me? They are nothing!
This is all the fault of heterosexuals breeding! Those things, what are they called, oh yes, children! How I hate them! And their parents! I hate everyone even more than I did yesterday when all my malaise was simply hangovers!
Oh this awful cold means that my plans for lying around for the next month getting drunk and stuffing my face with chocolate are UTTERLY UNCHANGED! Except now I've got an excuse to do absolutely no work, avoid my relatives, listen to the same sodding album and read books about more interesting people than me AND blackmail my boyfriend into fulfilling my every sordid whim.
PITY ME! PITY THE CHATHAM!
Sunday 12th January
Oh alas, it's taken me a week to recover from my mild sniffle! I have been bed-ridden, unable to do anything except lie there and whine about how unfair my life is, so thankfully this virus hasn't hampered my plans to do absolutely bugger all.
I didn't seek any medical help, of course, just lay there on the couch and demanded my boytoy hand-feed and bring me tribute in the form of caviar and grapes and orange juice and cups of tea. I didn't eat or drink any of it, of course. I require absinthe and brandy and bagels to survive, and as soon as I can be arsed I will emerge into that germ-infested plague pit of Cambridge to get rat-arsed at the Mermaid Wine Bar.
Oh I know the bar is overpriced, the service is terrible and it only employs criminally insane sex offenders who molest you while you wait, but I've been barred from every other drinking den because I'm so utterly horrible.
Good. I like to be exclusive.
I've been lying on the couch in my own filth watching Italian films because I can't be arsed to change the DVDs. I think I will go to Italy for summer to perve at some jailbait Italians on the beach, and the fascists love me because of my Aryan good looks. Oh, how I wish Hitler had won the war.
But I'm outraged that the new Doctor isn't replying to my texts! How dare she! How very dare she! I mean, does she think she has some kind of life without me? I've heard there's been an unusual case with spies all across the world being murdered, so it's a good thing I've never done a day's work in my life or I might have been targeted.
I sent to her
h3y d0ct0R
i am f33lng R32L sik. got a c0ld frm sum chAv!
Cure me, b1t<h!
y0Vrs,
83njamn 53bastyan j@mes s38astyan <h@@+hm
And what did I get in reply?
Humanity is over.
You have three minutes to prepare.
And then my mobile gave me a subpar electric shock to my nipple and I emptied loose bowel water all over the floor. Thankfully that's not the first time that's happened, so Julian was on standby with the mop and the bucket and the bleach.
Oh I remember the good old days when I'd text
d0ctoR!
iM b0rrr3d!
and he'd text
Oh Ben you're awesome you're amazing you're the best please come and travel with me through time and space but mainly rural England in the ethnographic present you're so much better than all my other companions like Rose the one with the fat arse who cruelly saw you as a way to stop being a chav or Martha Jones who just won't sleep with me no matter how many times I date rape or or that ginger tart Donna Ignoble who we all laugh at for being a moron and not like you you're awesome come let us take in a lecture on gothic architecture and murder hamsters!
I blame River Song. I bet she screens my calls so she can keep the Doctor all to herself.
Well, fine. I don't want to be friends with the Doctor. She's a woman!
Ugh.
Oh, I'm so exhausted after a week of doing nothing. I think I'll just listen to music everyone else in the house hates so they're miserable and I can feel better than everyone else in the whole world.
Oh dear, my anus has started bleeding again.
LIFE IS GOOD!
Wednesday 15th January
Oh god, I've actually got off the couch and gone into work. I'm not actually doing anything, of course, and I'm getting highly-trained field agents to feed me because I'm more important than anyone else in the whole world. Everyone knows that medicine is for chavs and my gargantuan appetite will see me through.
Apparently someone's using telepathy to assassinate far-right political figures. Huh! Psychic attacks? Ridiculous! What next? Aliens? Time travel? Time-traveling aliens? How utterly far fetched. I've decided that this is clearly a false alarm and thus I can justify not doing a damn thing at work today.
True, the mysterious deaths continue directly because of my inaction but so what? I have books to read on the couch and it's a rainy day. Why should I put effort into helping other people when I'm not happy? Come to think of it, why should I help other people when I am happy? Of what consequence are others?
Oh, dark skies make me miserable. They're part of a long list, I can tell you.
I remember being happy once, but it was 1973 and I'd accidentally ejaculated into a tin of baked beans. Ah, we won't see the like of those days again.
Monday 20th January
Compared to my normal day of lying around, moaning about how unfair life is while I'm pampered hand and foot by unwilling but conventionally-attractive servants, this was arse-destroyingly tedious.
That field agent I've ordered to peel grapes and massage olive oil into my perineum actually had the temerity to say she signed up fight aliens, save lives and experience front-line events and just because I used my supreme executive power to be entirely office-based tea lady because she is a broodmare with ovaries shouldn't impede her career path. I told her to do her job and I wasn't in the mood for that kind of discussion.
You know the type of discussion I'm talking about, where women have rights and other people exist independent of my desires and convenience.
Ugh. Worse than climate change worryworts.
Mother rang me up today to whine about her own problems for nearby an hour. Another woman complaining that just because her husband is on a sex holiday in France and has spawned a litter of illegitimate children and an antibiotic-resistant strain of the clap that somehow her opinions matter. It's a good thing I couldn't be bothered to hang up and instead took some LSD... sorry, FGM... and listened to it all believing I was an ingrown pubic hair in the groin of Sir Michael Foot.
Oh, and my illegitimate bastard half-brother who everyone likes and has sex with and is good at fighting aliens, lateral thinking, maintaining long-term relationships with others and not becoming addicted to everything from absinthe to oven cleaner? Apparently father wants him to join Operation: Delta because he'd be an asset to the team, hugely-qualified in the field and not spend a month refusing to get off the couch and do a hard day's work for once in his life.
How dreary.
You know, I could use my access to all this evil alien bollocks to my own ends. Like this case I'm refusing to work on about a weird boy - how weird? He wears sandals and believe girls can have orgasms - called Nate who telepathically drives people to kill themselves. All the others have managed to capture him, take him to the lab and we're getting that brain-fried convicted drug-dealer Shaky Jake to conduct tests to see if tinfoil hats will protect them, but apparently hanging around me leaves people so depressed and suicidal already Nate's powers don't effect them.
Anyway, I could totally use him to make my brother drive off a cliff.
But that would require moving, so I'll let him live.
Oh how low I feel. I feel stressed. I feel harassed. Woe is me.
I feel bored with my life today.
A disintegrating family, an HR dispute and a psychic assassin on the loose? What a dull routine. I'm wasting my young life away - well, as I can't remember more than a few weeks since I started drinking absinthe, I ASSUME I'm still young. What year is it? 2006? 2007? Oh, one day I might wake up and find myself old and that must never, ever happen. I'll recast myself first?
Living in my expensive Cambridge apartment drinking exclusive Columbrian coffee, finest French absinthe, with an unpaid Italian waiter working day and night doing all the chores while the government and my obscenely-wealthy Nazi-gold-owning family pay all my bills and a loving boyfriend sacrifices every possibly part of his own existence just to make me feel better...
DAMMIT MY LIFE SUCKS! GIVE ME BOOZE, I FEEL!
Saturday 25th January
Have noticed my diary entry one month ago is curiously incomplete...
Tuesday 24th December, 2019
Decided to spend Christmas in a Cornish castle that's been turned into a luxury hotel so I don't have to spend any time with my family or normal human beings. That includes my current sex toy, Adam. Sorry, Craig. No, wait, what am I thinking of? Julian! It'll cost enough to feed and cloth the population of Somalia for a month but I'm worth it, aren't I? Aren't I?
Damn right I am. I'm Ben f{_}cking Chatham and none of you chavs forget it.
Unfortunately, due to my complete lack of preparation the only road to Cragmore Castle was flooded so I had to abandon my faithful Chathamobile on a damp verge and walk the rest of the way while Julian whined how unfair it was to expose him to muddy water. Muddy water, daylight and being fed after midnight are huge no-nos to him, but he's got a mouth like a hoover so I tolerate his ungentlemanly plebian whining.
On the way we heard screams of human suffering from a dark spinney, so we wisely continued onwards and ignored their desperate pleas for salvation. This seemed to offend the screamer, who turned out to be a living skeleton in a cloak. As an experienced time traveler, alien fighter and expert in the super-and-sub-natural I immediately deduced this being was a chav in a rubber mask.
Julian whined that it was clearly the grim reaper, just because it faded away to ectoplasm waving a scythe and speaking in block capitals.
As someone with a degree would say, this was seriously unfunny.
We ran into the incredibly-spooky and haunted looking castle where the receptionist offered us a book to sign in. The last residents had been in 2013, six years ago and though this proved beyond doubt how exclusive the hotel was no one could afford to stay there, I decided to pick a fight. Possibly as a result of this, the receptionist gave us separate rooms and threw a live lobster at me.
"Come on Julian," I shouted. "We’ll sleep in my room, emphasising together!"
"Why did you just say 'emphasising together'?" the receptionist asked.
"Pah, you wouldn't understand, harridan. Different social strata!"
Thus we made our way to the lushly-furnished Victorian bedroom with a waiting bottle of red wine where I started screaming at the lack of modern decor in an ancient castle and that it must be someone else's fault I didn't realize it.
Julian got ratted on red wine and passed out, as he often does when basking in my glory for more than a few minutes at a time. It's amazing how often people drink themselves unconscious when forced to be in my presence.
I then heard a sobbing noise coming from a pitch dark corner of the bedroom, which turned out to be the ghostly figure of a man from a photo on the bedside cabinet who slit his throat and then vanished into thin air.
As an expert in unusual situations and impossible scenarios, I immediately deduced this was down to the owner of the local amusement park with some glow-in-the-dark paint and an ordinary hurricane lantern. Julian's panicked screams of "What the hell's wrong with you, you moron? This place is obviously haunted!" was quite chav-like. "This place is horrible and I'm special!" he lied, flouncing off.
Special? Compared to I, Ben Sebastian James Sebastian Cabbage? Sorry, Chatham!
Anyway, I decided to use my extremely expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera, which definitely wasn't a casio calculator with some pokemon stickers on it. I remember distinctly the day I was issued my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera by Paul Farraday and Corrine Shaw (who I've both slept with, obviously) and how they said "Look, just go in the corner and play with this, you peroxide retard! Grown-ups are talking!"
Yet eerily my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera did not work!!! So I decided to run down the stairs in poor lighting with a gut full of red whine and no motor functions. Amazingly, this time someone actually pushed me down the stairs instead of me passing out in my own body waste.
Luckily, I only grazed my lip. And received two compound fractures. And there's been blood in my urine ever since.
Of course, Julian was beside himself with horror that my beauty was tarnished. He claimed that Adam Willis (who taught me how to "give both barrels" in an act that, while highly-dehydrating, sets me above the commoners) was present. How dare he recommend I spend Christmas in a haunted Cornish castle with ghosts and zombies and sour-faced receptionists who disagree with me!
How dare he?
HOW VERY DARE HE?!?!
My retribution was put on hold when we found popular Pirates of the Caribbean actor Kevin McNally lying dead in reception with his head split open by a meat clever. Julian was sickened, as was I - there was no sign of Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp. My hopes that Keira Knightly had also been brutally murdered by the ghosts was sadly dashed as I realized something awful.
Something gut-twistingly horrific that will haunt me to my dying day.
It transpired I'd left my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera upstairs and everyone knows how important my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera is. Running the gauntlet of homicidal spirits and certain death or leaving my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera behind?
I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL FIRST, BILLIE PIPER!
Julian insisted he help me save my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera. Well, he said "I'm not staying down here alone. I'm young attractive and far too rich to neglect. Plus, I can use your unnaturally-smoothe chest as a human shield and sacrifice your worthless life to save my own."
"You make me laugh at the worst of times," I said.
Which is a lie. I never laugh. Happiness is immature.
Anyway, I went upstairs to collect my expensive top range android smartphone with untra-mega-pixel camera because it cost a lot of money and I'm too cheap to buy another one. I know that might contradict my earlier statement that "one spends and god sends" but who are you? My supervisor? No you're not! BUGGER OFF!
So I went into the room and was taken roughly from behind by some ghastly chav named Craig 'Nob-Gobbler' Harris who would have burgled the entire castle if some meat-clever-weilding woman hadn't gone on a killing spree. I was unconvinced by the story, but why expect some thick lowlife to come up with anything better? Especially if he's got the same name as my unspeakably ghastly nephew so Julian and I decided to call him chavboy and use him as a replacement for Kyle in this narrative. We also threatened him with blackmail and demanded he pray elucidate to us any other strange or unnatural things he hath witnessed.
He didn't have a bloody clue what we were asking. To be honest, we didn't either.
So we decided to head to the basement and blame everything on aliens. That's usually the explanation for any and all Scooby Doo bollocks, apart from the times I'm suffering absinthe-fueled hallucinations. I noticed that when I force-fed Craig some Fox's glacier mints he claimed he was "floating on pink clouds above a purple sea with cascading colours all around him" so maybe I'm actually just taking tabs of LSD instead of breath-mints.
We went downstairs and got the skinhead criminal to open the door to the secret high-tech laboratory with the weird inhuman beings with guns and it all unfolded with such tedious inevitability...
...and that's where it ends.
This is by no means the first diary entry to end abruptly, as though my life is a piss-poor series of plot synopsis some drunken author can barely finish. Oh, woe. Oh, fate. Oh, pathos. Oh... ooh, a tin of baked beans!
Today is looking up...
Sunday 26th January
It's been six days of non-stop drinking so I'm spicing things up a bit with being unconscious.
My awful half-brother is staying at my place because, um, apparently there's nowhere else in Cambridge to put him up and despite my access to stinking huge fortunes I can't be arsed to rent him a hotel room. Or maybe I was too drunk to remember.
I'm convinced my sub-par twin is going to seduce my boytoy. And, be fair, the bastard's got a history of that. And my boy-toys are almost guaranteed to drop me for literally anyone with a functional nervous system and a knowledge of foreplay, as though their pleasure mattered in some way!
Should I perhaps come out and say "Julian, that bastard is going to try to shag you before the end of the week?" and confront things in a healthy, adult manner?
Bollocks I will! There's drinking to be done!
On the plus side, James Bastard Bartlett's working with O: D so my cunning plan to drink myself into a stupor and refuse to go to work means that I will be avoiding him even more than is possible.
I went to the Mermaid and ordered Kyle and Corrine and sit there listening to me explain why I was the greatest of all the Doctor's companions. Admittedly I could only remember Rose (who wanted to sex me) and Martha (who didn't) but who cares about the others? I'm the only one who matters! And that was proven when Kyle and Corrine threw their empty drink glasses in my face and stormed out.
Julian's upset because he's noticed that if I was "not quite 25" in 2005 then I can hardly be "on the cusp of 24" some fifteen years later. He considers this me lying to him! And he's wondering if I've constantly had sex with women all my life, how can I say I was a virgin before I met him?
The ungrateful flounchy sh|t's getting above himself. I bet this minor tension in our relationship will get my evil not-twin down the front of Julian's Y-fronts before you can say... um... something really quick to say. Wow, this absinthe-drip I've installed has really, um, shrunk the number of big words I can say.
Anyway, that psychic kid assassin the team has been working day or night to contain almost murdered Shakey Jake. Big deal, like that matches to my stress. The child has been locked in a lead-lined padded cell and left to starve to death, just in case this turns out to be another revival of The Tomorrow People on ITV.
Life is so stressful.
Chiara told me they're tempted to leave me to drink myself to death just to see if that improves my work ethic.
What a nice girl. Such a pity she has ovaries.
Saturday 8th February
It's taken thirteen days but I finally remembered I am keeping a diary, and even longer to be sober enough to regain the motor skills to write in it.
The most amazing thing happened today. I drank some coffee. I drank it at a wine bar that stocks that coffee just for me. Oh, the wait staff do like to joke that it's actually raw fish pulp they take turns urinating in, but it's nice, it's exclusive and I recognize the taste of Columbian Blue Ridge anywhere.
Just as I was on the prowl for expensive consumer goods to buy affection and loyalty for my current sex-slave, I saw Spartha Jones and nearly fainted! A woman! A BLACK WOMAN! In Cambridge! What vile degenerate poison has entered MY CITY?!?!
If only she'd just been glimpsed, but she saw me keel over in a faint and came striding across the road on some vague pretence she was a doctor and had a duty to help others. Yeah, right. As if. I believe that as much as her diagnosis that me gargling raw fish and human urine every morning could be responsible for my fainting spells. She hasn't changed... the LUCKY BITCH! While I have to repeatedly recast myself as younger and less-respected soap operas to maintain my youth and beauty, she's got the same old humourless face and depressing voice.
Well, she's always looking humourless and sounding depressed whenever she's around me, anyway.
I demanded to know what the foul brood-mare was doing in MY Cambridge and she explained she and her husband Mickey Smith-Jones are recruiting a university professor to try and cure the deadly coronavirus that threatens all life-kind. I demanded more details. And when she provided them, I demanded to know why I should care about the fate of human beings. She responded by asking why the hell she should be discussing her work with a piss-drinking drunkard who'd passed out in his own faeces. How typical of her!
How vulgar, she is. Black. Educated. Heterosexual... DISGUSTING!
Eventually she kicked me repeatedly in the ribs and said if she ever saw me again, she and her husband would force a Sontaran fragmentation grenade up my arse and detonate it. I responded by sobbing and begging for the gentle tears of the Lord Bowie's mercy before throwing up. Revolted, Spartha ran off but I was pleased to get away from the awful girl.
Stumbling into the Blue Angel, I demanded an expensive gin to calm my nerves. Unfortunately, the jazz club frequented by musicians and customers and other human beings was not the silent graveyard of self-pitying alcoholism I craved. I demanded the three-piece soft jazz ensemble to be thrown out and called all the uni lecturers illegitimate inbred scum.
I spent the rest of the day face down in a dumpster with a cymbal lodged in my anus.
Good times.
Anyway, I intend to phone Paul and Corinne to warn them not to discuss our cases with Spartha Jones! Well, actually, I already have done but they said there's no such person as Spartha Jones and anyway they'd have to be dead for three weeks of terminal brain damage before they listened to a word I said and have now blocked my phone number.
Only a lower-class chav would not be pleased at this outcome as it proves beyond doubt the supremacy of Operation: Delta in these matters. Whatever they are,
I now await someone to come home and help me remove the cymbal from my anus.
Fortunately, there's no rush.
Friday 14th February
It’s Valentines Day! Bloody hell, I don't know what was in that oven cleaner but it did the trick! It knocked me out for a full seven days and has left me feeling this strange, unnatural feeling that - after much research and study - is what the humans call... happiness.
Either that or it's wind.
Anyway, my boytoy provided me with an expensive watch to help me "remember the bloody time you drunken wanker" and also a delightful Valentine's Day card of me, beautiful me, oh I am so pretty. It was a picture when I made Julian punt me down the Cam (a euphemism for a spit-roast with the Exhalted Creeth[1] and Magnus Greel[2]) taken last August before my rectum prolapsed. Oh, I am so beautiful in Summer.
I gave the boytoy some roses and some secondhand books I got from a mad Irishman and his barely-hominid milk-fed gimp assistant. He was delighted. Well, he said the words "How delightful" then sneered and threw them into the fire with all the other trinkets I throw at him while screaming "DOES MY HALF-BROTHER GIVE YOU THAT, YOU OPEN-LEGGED SLUT?[3] WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE JUST DIE IN A DITCH IF THEY DON'T WANT MY LOVE![4] I HAVE A DEGREE!!![5]"
For a change, and to really break out of the old routine, I decided to go on a drinking binge and then hurl insults at everyone else because they are inferior chav scum and all chavs must die [6]. True, it's a pity I've been barred from the drinking dens of this exquisite town and the police are under standing orders to break my fingers if I show the slightest sign of resistance, but I bask in the joy of togetherness with...
Oh, bollocks, where's he got to?
I forgot to take my boytoy with me. He's probably at the flat doing unspeakable things with my half-brother[7] with some polish salami and the works of Christopher Isherwood! Just like all my other boyfriends and girlfriends![6] Apart from the ones I fed to giant agitated mutated water voles![8]
Oh well, this oven cleaner is really doing the trick. I'm as high as a kite. High as Boris Johnson's cholesterol levels. High as a really high thing that goes extra high because it's so happy to be high! Oh, all the pain I've been through![9] All the knives in my back![9] Yet what is this strange fear something bad could still happen? Oh, the black dog that has long haunted me threatens to bite again![10]
I suppose I could seek help. I mean, it is Mental Health Week, and the world's full of highly-trained psychiatric professionals that could help me cope with my awkward family history, bizarre relationship crisis and unusually-stressful career path.
No, I think I'll stay as a miserable bastard![6] HA! HA! HA!
That stomach-churningly awful Negress turned up again today[11]. Apparently that psychic tomorrow person kid is killing more people and it is a race against time to stop the death toll rising and she needed information about the university and its staff.
"No, it's staff," I said.
"What?"
"It apostrophe ess. It's. It's staff."
"No, that would be 'it is staff' and I want 'its staff."
You know how I abhor having my grammar or punctuation corrected[12]. It is my English, not that harridan the Queen![13] So I voided my bowels and screaming "I WILL TELL YOU NOTHING OF VALUE AND WILL INSTRUCT MY TEAM TO INVESTIGATE YOU AND HOW YOU ACQUIRED THIS INFORMATION ON AN OPERATION: DELTA CASE!"
"Your staff have been telling everyone at the Mermaid Wine Bar in return for either free drinks or sexual favors. In between complaining about what a dick you are."
"YOUR BREATH SMELLS EVEN WORSE THAN USUAL!"
"I'm not the one who needs breath mints all the time."
"THESE FOX GLACIER MINTS ARE HARDCORE HALLUCINAGENS![14] I DON'T NEED YOU, DARKIE! I DON'T NEED ANYONE! ESPECIALLY THE DOCTOR! EVER SINCE HIS DICK FELL OFF, HE WON'T RESPOND TO MY TEXTS!"
I went on further, but Martha had wandered off some time ago and the police had come over and broken my ribs. They threw me into a dumpster in the back alleyway behind to the most expensive restaurant in Cambridge, the Cafe Le Rivieux, where I am barred for life and meals are complimentary if the customer can prove they've stabbed me in the bladder at least four times.
As they emptied their uneaten slop over me, I thought the French do know their cuisine... well, unless they're called Giselle...[7] and they all are... they come round here, stealing our men... and our women... and our bloody sheepdogs...
Darkness comes with the familiar anal leakage.
Saturday, 1 February 2020
Spara's S12 reviews...
And now for something completely different.
Skyfall part 1
To prepare for this episode I’ve just had a cup of tea, a chocolate liqueur and been to the toilet to urinate. Better than usual for Chibnall but still shallow fare. Took a long time to get anywhere, basically a James Bond parody. Why on Earth is Chibnall insisting on keeping UNIT and Torchwood gone. UNIT in particular would enhance this story. Personally, I thought the umpteen expensive locations and guest stars did not enhance the episode and just poured money away needlessly. And the Master was best portrayed by Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley. Subsequent portrayals have spoiled the character in the interests of appearing ‘modern’. This new portrayal is a million miles away from Delgado. True, the same can be said for the Doctor. The definitive portrayals of the Doctor were Doctors 1-4. Subsequent portrayals have all in their way diminished the character although there were positive elements to the 5th, 12th and War Doctors. 6/10.
Skyfall part 2
Disappointing compared to part 1. A self-indulgent mess and very slow in places. Aliens not fully realised. Very disappointing that we didn’t get to see what they really look like. Perhaps they will return. How on Earth was that any way believable. A place could not continue flying with its front blown off nor could it be flown via a phone app by a non-pilot. The Master just being able to 'destroy Gallifrey' on a whim detracts from the power of the Time Lords. It weakens them. Big mistake. This episode was Jodie's strongest performance. She was less annoying than in some previous episodes but still not good. She over enthuses and as a result comes across as both stagey and CBBCish. She needs to tone it down. And why should it be 'a new low' for the Master to be a Nazi? That is very anti-German. 3/10
Orphan 55
Excellent eco-thriller. Excellent to see Doctor Who focusing on the climate emergency. Climate change denial is as daft as claiming the world is flat. The classic Pertwee era often featured the Doctor setting the world to rights. Would you rather she was some vacuous person with no opinions? I’d say that the Dregs were a better monster than next week. Hope they return. Not very often Nu Who is as good as this. We need more episodes like this. 9/10.
Nikolas Tesla's Night of Terror
Mediocre, dull, over-fast paced and rather boring. The scorpions were completely wasted. May be the most incompetent aliens ever since all they did is kept running into each other. 4/10
Fugitive of the Judoon
Not bad that one. Kept the attention , raised questions and the Judoon were excellent. I thought that they were much more scary in this episode but the Doctor telling them off spoiled it and made them seem thick as a brick at that point. As a piece of drama the episode was good. But playing around with multiple incarnations of the Doctor in order to serve some political agenda is just not on. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. This man seems hell bent on wrecking the show. Inventing an unknown past Doctor made sense when Eccleston refused to do the 2013 special but now it is completely silly. That said, Ruth Clayton was arguably a better Doctor than Jodie’s depiction. Her costume was better. 7/10.
Praxeus
Generally awful rubbish; flitting around locations trying to be modern with awful acting from Whittaker and a generally awful plot. I didn’t like the constant flitting between multiple locations. It felt forced. Also why was the new Doctor not in it? They introduced her last week only to have her vanish this week. I’m not convinced that the writer made these the two husbands fully convincing. Why would a top astronaut stay in a marriage to husband who was clearly not fully committed and (until the end) seemed unreliable? I’ve never really understood the concept of being in love. I’ve read a fair number of books on the subject. However the best aspect was it raising awareness of the plastic pollution issue. Clearly plastic pollution is out of control and it’s good to see Doctor Who addressing this, even if it was only tangential to the plot. There is a classic episode of ‘Doomwatch’ called ‘The Plastic Eaters’ which deals with the possible dangers of plastic eating viruses.. 3/10.
Can You Hear Me?
Utter drivel from start to finish. More confusing, badly plotted, worthy issue led fare - boring. 2/10.
The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Better but still average. It benefited from the lack of a social/political issue. 5/10.
Ascension of the Cybermen
That one wasn’t bad. Some good action scenes and the Cybermen were depicted well. Ultimately very thin on ideas but not bad. Personally I think the Master spoiled the episode. The actor is annoying & comical and it detracted from the Cybermen as the main threat. He’s no Roger Delgado. No gravitas. Comedic and cartoonish. The rest of the episode was tense in tone. And Brendan is another incarnation of the Doctor. 7/10.
The Timeless Children
Not bad for this era. Kept the attention but there are too many unanswered questions. For starters, who is Ruth? Where did the Doctor come from? The sub-plot of the Irish policeman from last year appears to be completely unanswered - and a waste of time. I can feel the frustration of casual viewers. So there are now umpteen incarnations of the Doctor, including children. Ho hum. Not impressed. Also the destruction of all the Tome (sic) Lords again was not good. It still wasn’t explained why they wiped the Doctor’s memories in that way. Also why have the Time Lords allowed the Doctor to go galavanting around the universe if he/she was the Timeless child ? Moreover why try to execute the Doctor several times with no sense that they saw him any different to a big-standard Time Lord? 7/10
I was hoping one or more companions will be killed off tonight. My money was on Graham - Bradley Walsh is a busy man and will have other projects. But it could have by (sic_ Ryan as they seem to be giving him less and less so do. They won’t kill off Yaz as it would upset the BBC suits. They could still have all exited the show. They are back on earth. Felt like an ending.
These viewing ratings are low and no excuses will alter this. Part of the reason for it however could be the switch from Saturday to Sunday. Doctor Who has always achieved the best ratings on Saturday evenings. However it is also due to the production and the scripts. The last time this happened (Seasons 23-26) it was because JNT was running the show as light entertainment with silly costumes, misguided companions such as Mel and risible stories such as ‘Delta and the Bannermen’. This time it’s because of confusing direction, dull scripts, an obsession with ‘worthy’ messaging, changing the Doctor’s gender and generally pushing the public too far in terms of what they expect from Doctor Who. I agree with those who are suggesting that the production team are trolling the audience. Every episode dealing with ethnic minority issues or some other worthy or progressive cause. Basically they are trying to troll conservatives with a small or large C and Brexit voters. What is surprising perhaps is that they seem to be failing to retain viewers on the other side of that - remainers, liberals etc in enough numbers to mitigate the loss of those the producers are setting out to alienate.
While Piers Wegner thinks the show is "a long way from being rested" I couldn’t care less what he thinks. He is clearly only interested in the money that Doctor Who brings in from overseas sales rather than any creative or quality criteria. He has absolutely no idea about the show and is simply a faceless BBC ‘suit’ whose interest is in the commercial side of things. Best ignored. The bottom line is I’d refer Mr Wenger to the abysmal ratings: If this show were a school, OFSTED would be all over it!
I don’t want Doctor Who to be cancelled. I want Chibnall to be fired along with the cast and a new team brought in to make a better show - like the classic era but with modern effects. Give Chris and the others their P45, increase the serious sci-fi elements and combine them with modern effects, slow down the frantic pace and allow more space for dialogue and character development and have the characters behave in a more adult and less emotional way. The last thing we need is more childish emotional guff and less sci fi in Doctor Who. In 1970 adding more sci fi and less childishness increased the ratings.
average: 53%
Series 11 was better as there were more historicals in it. The only really good episode in series 12 was the one about climate change.
Saturday, 18 January 2020
The B7 Xmas Special (ii)
Marooned is certainly not the greatest of episodes. Avon and his friends don't appear for the first fifteen minutes, which is an extended prologue for Rescue. Dorian pilots Scorpio, trying to chase down the Liberator which - thanks to a never-mentioned-again detector shield Scorpio possesses - is unaware it is being followed.
Dorian's bewildered why the Liberator keeps changing direction if it's not trying to elude him, and Slave works out they're following a series of coded signals. Just Soolin then rings up the ship for a bit of bitchy exposition, coming across as a more human long-suffering girlfriend than the stoic sharpshooter we saw on TV. Dorian's "meticulously-detailed plan" was to head the planet Califeron in the justifiable-hope Avon's gang would turn up then, somehow, invite them back to Xenon for some reason. Yeah, Soolin's not convinced the plan will work either.
"I have no interest in becoming a freedom fighter!" she huffs at the idea of allying themselves with Avon to get access to the teleport. And when Dorian hangs up on her she mutters, "I really could get quite annoyed with you, Dorian, and that won't end well... for you." Given she's not even wearing a gun for this scene, you'd be forgiven for thinking the worst Soolin could do would be to urinate into the cappuccino machine.
As she storms off, the cameraman idly wanders around the Xenon Base set as though the director's forgotten to say "cut" as we hear a disembodied voice say "soon" a lot, which is like the start of The Web and just about as interesting. Certainly anyone creeped out by this development will be more likely to wonder why Soolin can't hear the voice of legion under the floorboards, and by the end of the episode we're none the wiser.
Nor is there any clue why Dorian, having dozed off chasing the Liberator, is now infected with blue-green algae.
Slave awakes Dorian from his lava-lamp nightmare and back to normal. When the computer apologizes for disturbing him, Dorian dryly comments he "was already disturbed" which doesn't seem much like his angry insistence he's completely sane in the next episode. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.
Anyway, Slave reveals they've reached Delta 714 which has no planets on chart - Dorian knows better, saying "I know exactly where they're going, I just don't know why!" - but is a prohibited zone of unacceptable danger! You see, Scorpio has followed the Liberator to the edge of a glowing hell-mouth of space enzymes.
Slave and Dorian agree it's too dangerous to travel through the cloud, and are equally astonished when the Liberator does just that. They'll just have to take the long way round, adding four hours to their journey to the "charming little planet" of Terminal, and that's it for new material for a while.
Then we get the destruction of the Liberator sequence. Cutting to a shot of the rotting ship orbiting Terminal, repeating everything from "Maximum power!" to the final bang, before we catch a slightly-different view of the explosion in the closest to new material for a while.
If you're expecting to see Avon and co down on that planet, continue to be disappointed. In fact, it's the first Dorian scene from Rescue as he and Slave approach Terminal and detect the radiation from the explosion. Despite having seen the Liberator double-dip into space acid, Dorian seems surprised at the idea it might have exploded and bullies Slave to find out what happened as we get past that hastily-ended version. Dorian tells Slave to investigate the wreckage and ponders a plan to rescue any survivors of the ship.
Just then, a bit of the wreckage side-swipes Scorpio...
...which knocks Dorian over. Slave reveals they're in the radiation shadow of the explosion and his Yiddish accent goes all Olympian detachment as - somehow - Zen inexplicably takes over the computer and refers to the Liberator as DSV2 and says "Confirmed". Then he goes back to normal and this is never mentioned again.
Dorian's more concerned as the non-functional teleport suddenly functions and everyone's favorite Bitch in White (well, wearing black nowadays) vogues into existence...
Pulling out a gun from who-knows-where, Servalan demands to know what the hell's happening - she's as bewildered to her escape as Dorian is to her arrival, but he puts on the charming blue-collar worker act explaining they are on the salvage ship Scorpio heading for Terminal. To salvage "the valuable gear waiting to be stripped out" of Terminal, identical lines used better in Rescue. Certainly Servalan's unimpressed.
Servalan demands Dorian turn the ship around or she'll shoot him, but Dorian points out Servalan can't fly Scorpio without the help of his "quaint computer" who won't respond to her voice. Dorian offers to drop her off after he's salvaged Terminal, explaining " I'm working to a schedule, my associates won't be pleased if I'm late."
However, Dorian decided that a two-day delay to take Servalan to the nearest Federation is worth it to get this trigger-happy psycho-bitch off his hands and he tells Slave to change course. He then neatly denies having any idea his ship has a teleport, and changes the subject by asking Servalan who she is. He seems to know she's damn well lying when she claims to be Commissioner Sleer.
So, what sick and depraved sex games will they play to pass the next eighteen hours to Carthenis?
We never know, and maybe that's for the best as Dorian, Servalan, Slave, Soolin and Scorpio (what a lot of "S"s!) vanish from the episode never to return and we focus on the bleak surface of Terminal as snow starts to fall, symbolically calming down the libidos of anyone still watching at this point.
Downstairs - following the same down, down, down motif of Xenon Base earlier - Avon, Dayna, Vila and Tarrant are standing around while Orac bitches that he leaves these idiots alone for five minutes and this is what happens. There aren't any ships nearby since "this artificial monstrosity" Avon has recklessly marooned them all on is the only planet in the whole solar system, so Orac's not going to be able to carjack anything anytime soon. Worse, the radiation from the Liberator's explosion means Orac can't even send a distress call to lure in a ship.
Vila, who's in a bit of a mood, thinks the distress signal is a bad idea even though he says "Great idea! Let’s alert any bounty hunter, Space Rat or any other passing megalomaniac to our presence here! There’s still a price on our heads, remember?" but Avon thinks that'll improve the odds of someone coming to get them. "What could possibly go wrong?" the thief retorts.
Dayna and Tarrant agree that maybe they should focus on fixing the spaceship they have instead of trying to steal another one, but Avon reminds them that conducting repairs being attacked by Morlock-gorilla-grams isn't feasible. "We can't just wait to be rescued!" shouts Dayna, breaking the fourth wall a bit since we all will have to... wait... to see Rescue... no? Nothing?
Avon notes the underground complex they're in is huge and full of food and drink to keep them going for years, which they could probably enjoy if Vila got off his arse and opened the locked doors.
"Still giving the orders, eh? Why should I listen to you?" Vila demands.
"Presumably because you want to continue breathing," Avon retorts.
Tarrant ends up playing peacemaker - and being inevitable crap at it - as the blame game starts. Vila is angry Avon stupidly flew through the cloud, and talks about how he had to watch Zen die. Avon dismisses the heartbreaking "I have failed" stuff as corrupted circuitry. Vila notes Zen, unlike Avon, could say sorry and gets told:
"I am sorry Vila. I'm sorry I have to listen to your inane ramblings! I'm sorry you all disobeyed my orders by following me down here. And I'm sorry that my survival may now depend on you!"
Tarrant reminds everyone that if the gang had stayed on the ship, they'd probably all be dead now. Dayna wants to know why Avon was keeping Blake's survival a secret, and Tarrant is as convinced of his answer as Servalan was. Avon takes a moment to notice yet even more dialogue is being recycled, and it looks like Paul Darrow finds it more amusing than I do.
Again Tarrant tries to cut through the arguing and tries to be the boss. Given he was the one who outsmarted Servalan and Avon was the one who screwed up, it looks like he's actually got their support. Vila agrees to start unlocking doors, Dayna agrees to look for weapons and... hang on, where's Cally?
Turns out she's taking the news of Blake's death rather badly, and as the only other person who genuinely thought the Curly-Haired One still lived, Avon guesses she's in the medical office reading Blake's treatment notes. More repetition, we needed to hear Cally read out those lines. Even down to the ominous pause mentioning Blake.
Avon thankfully enters and reminds the audience this is all fake, Blake was never here and he's dead. Although Servalan might have lied, she has no reason to so he's probably gone for good. Cally admits she needs to see Blake again for some closure and so wants to try the hologram-dream machine thing. Avon, not unreasonably, notes this is a waste of time and they are needed in the real world.
Cally unleashes one final Auron saying - "If you are brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello" - which is so utterly trite Avon accuses her of making this shit up as no species is so weak and pathetic to use such language. Cally admits with a smirk she might be talking crap about all these Auron sayings, which feels very poignant given this is her last episode.
Avon agrees to let Cally talk to holo-Blake for some closure but tells her, "Don’t believe anything you see or hear in there. That isn’t Blake."
"I know," she replies quietly. "But it is all I have."
"I always thought you knew better than most how dangerous sentimentality can be," Avon says, walking out without looking at her again, in what will be their final scene together.
Shut up! I'm not crying! You're crying!
Ahem. Cally gets comfortable under that Freudian microphone and enters the dreamworld... she wakes up in the corridor outside the office, amazed at how realistic it all feels, and peers through the window to see... FILM! Entering Blake's bedroom, our hirsuit heroic hologram admits he's surprised to see her.
But just when events take a fascinating and intellectual turn, we cut back to the others in Servalan's lounge room. Vila wanders in with a Federation rifle and he's changed his clothes into the outfit he was wearing during Moloch. With some overdubbed stock footage, we recall Servalan nicked the teleport bracelet from Vila in that episode (said bracelet now in the medical office to prove Blake was there) and also his clothes since he was wearing a uniform.
But why?
"Perhaps she wanted to harvest Vila's DNA," shrugs Tarrant.
"What a revolting thought," says Dayna, who should be used to those. Is that her catchphrase now?
"Well now, we know Servalan had a penchant for cloning," Avon notes with a wicked grin.
"Why would she want to clone me?"
"Why would anyone want to clone you? One of you is one too many."
But as Vila tries to put the moves onto Dayna with predictably lame results, Avon reminds everyone that now Servalan is missing-presumed-dead her allies will no doubt come to investigate Terminal and not be happy to find our heroes there. So... isn't that what you wanted, so you could steal their ships?
Announcing that Tarrant was right and they need to try and fix the ship, Avon asks for the gun to defend himself from Links. A very tense moment passes which, until I remembered the last time Avon had a gun he threatened to ventilate Tarrant's internal organs, is utterly bewildering. In fact, maybe I'm wrong and it's just everyone unable to remember their lines for five minutes.
Avon heads up to the surface with Dayna to defend him - "my hero," Avon says when Vila refuses to leave the base, because this script seems compiled of old soundbites.
In the illusion world, fake Blake admits he can't tell what's real and isn't even sure if he spoke to Avon or not. Cally is unhelpful, pointing out that he isn't real anyway. Fake Blake apologizes for being part of the trap and also for deliberately hiding from the Liberator so they couldn't find him no matter how hard they looked. Servalan was lying and he's still alive - or is he just saying what Cally wants to hear?
"Maybe I’m more than just a computer program," fake Blake muses.
Again, we're dragged back to reality for Avon and Dayna to climb out into the snow where Avon finds the viewfinder thing that Servalan's Thal-mutoid stooges dropped in the previous episode, helpfully explaining the corpses have been dragged away by Links so there's no need to write in and complain. Dayna also helpfully adds the whole thing was told to them by Cally, so that's how they know this. Jeez. Thanks.
Just then, one of the Links - looking particularly crap against the white snow - funky-gibbon their way towards our heroes. Avon does not mow the bastards down, presumably to help pad out the episode or maybe because Darrow was finding it hard enough not to laugh at them. When Dayna asks why he's waiting for them to get so close, he replies, "I want to take a closer look at Man's supposed future."
Then, presumably out of genetic embarrassment, he shoots it and justifies this as scientific curiosity.
Dayna isn't convinced and so getting out the viewfinder, Avon easily spots Servalan tacky-plastic looking spaceship apparently dead ahead of them.
"How does it look?" asks Dayna.
"Unpromising," says Avon, echoing the thoughts of anyone who saw that laughable model.
Anyway, back underground we get some comfortingly-generic bitchy banter as Tarrant tries to bully Vila into opening doors. The door is a swing-open version instead of slide-open and a more cynical mind than mine might think they ran out of set and used the spaceship from Moloch. Except this one with bombs behind it.
Vila and Tarrant immediately crap themselves with terror. Apparently they've spent an hour trying to open that door but in the dreamworld, fake Blake's only just said his last line. Apparently fake Blake is so utterly convincing he even wants to rebel against Servalan's programming and tells Cally to get the hell out of here, unable to communicate in original dialogue (though more down to poor writing than any deeper meaning). He explains Servalan's ship is primed to blow and so is the base.
Cally agrees to leave but with no one to switch off the machine is trapped in the dreamworld. Plus she's not sure if Blake's in her head or if she's in his - deep, huh? Fake Blake urges her to wake up and their efforts to break free make everything go red and blue like you need 3D glasses to appreciate the effect...
Finally Cally's eyes open and...
Time for the first scene of Rescue. In fairness, this isn't recycled footage. The same scene is recorded with some glass shots and false perspective of varying quality, and some slightly-different line readings. Anyway, a Link chooses this precise moment to sneak into the spaceship.
...and it blows up.
Avon notes that the base is probably blowing up to and, as ever, he's right. Vila and Tarrant are already running to the ladder when an alarm goes off and the explosion. Tarrant wants to stay and rescue Cally when the roof comes down on him. Vila tries to drag Tarrant to the ladder, alternately considering ditching him when Cally arrives.
Using telepathy, Cally manages to wake up the unconscious oaf and get him climbing the ladder. "Haven't I done enough?" Vila grumbles when he's told to help, but chivalrously offers to let Cally go first. She remembers Orac's still in the lounge room and heads to get it while the others climb.
"I will be right behind you," she promises.
"You'd better be!" Vila says, following Tarrant up.
The explosions destroy the illusion equipment in the medical office - and the screen showing Blake symbolically explodes as the fake Blake dissolves into pixels. Cally manages to reach the living room and Orac just as the ceiling comes down on top of her, pinning her down.
Back to existing footage as Vila drags the unconscious Tarrant out of the hatch but this time we see Cally's hand twitching under the rubble as she telepathically links to the little thief. The everything blows up and Cally's face is engulfed in SFX as Avon and Dayna arrive to see everything that has yet to blow up, blow up.
Avon wants to know where Orac is, but Dayna is more interested in Cally and is stunned when the sobbing Vila points at the burning wreckage. Avon rounds on Vila for leaving her down there, "Well done, Vila, you've surpassed yourself! You had three choices who to save - and you chose Tarrant?!"
Avon heads down a blown-open air vent to find Orac and confirm if Cally is alive. Vila is left by the unconscious Tarrant, convinced Avon blames him for Cally's fate and sadly muttering, "She'll be alright. They'll find her. Won't they, Tarrant? Tell me she'll be alright..."
Yeah, spoiler alert, she ain't all right.
Avon climbs down into the "destroyed" base that looks rather undestroyed with a smoke machine superimposed over the set and lights turned down. Heading into the ruined living room (which does look trashed) he finds Orac who doesn't work properly. And then he slowly acknowledges the corpse in the room.
"I am sorry, Cally," says Avon quietly, then collects his computer and buggers off without another word leaving her alone and silent. I AM NOT CRYING, YOU ASSHOLES!
Anyway, another scene from Rescue, also extended. Tarrant wakes up by the fire and learns that the base exploded, Vila rescued him, Cally's dead and both Orac and the ship are "a bit dented."
"We're stuck on this miserable planet for the rest of our lives," Vila complains when what sounds like a Drashig climaxes off-screen. "Not that that's likely to be very long," he adds.
"First light tomorrow we'll make for the high ground to the south," declares Avon.
"Is it worth the effort?" wonders Tarrant, his gung-ho take charge attitude of twenty minutes ago well-and-truly gone. He's been in charge for less than that and they're worst off than ever before.
"Are you ready to lay down and die?" asks Avon pointedly.
Tarrant groans and rubs his head. "I think I already have."
"Liberator destroyed, Cally dead, no way off this armpit of a planet," Vila whines. "He may have the right idea."
"Well, you must please yourselves of course," Avon replies. "But tomorrow morning I head south, and I'm taking the gun with me."
"You talked me into it," Vila mutters as more demonic orgasms are heard.
Then we fade from one campfire to another.
The echo of Cally's death scream makes the man by the fire look up, haunted.
Is it Blake? Is it his clone? Whoever it is, he looks very, very stoned.
And the episode ends.
I think it's fair to say B7 lasted four decades without this episode, so it's not exactly revelatory. It's basically some missing scenes sewn together, and while there are a couple of good lines and a better farewell for Cally (Chappell makes the most of her last scenes with Darrow, Keating and Thomas and even Tuddenham gets a moment with her) it doesn't add much else. You can see why they weren't fussed about using Servalan's nifty escape - her knowing about Dorian and Scorpio before our heroes could have gone somewhere interesting - and outright contradict it in Sand. There's virtually no plot, no surprises bar the scene where we find Servalan keeps Vila's pants for a mysterious unexplained reason and when you think about it, they could have kept things on Terminal if they wanted an obscure underground base with a dodgy spaceship. Blowing it all up means Dorian has to turn up to give them all another set to milk for thirteen episodes before blowing them up as well.
Still, it's some new material with actors sadly lost to us now (or as good as, in Simon's case) but the fact is it wasn't considered worthy enough to broadcast at the time. Are we better off with this semi-extra episode?
As they say in Kaldor City, you tell me.
The B7 Xmas Special (i)
Although arguably Doctor Who's sister show, Blake's 7
has had nowhere near the same level of research into its production
history which in turn leads to surprising revelations that take even
hardcore fans by surprise - from the original idea of Dayna being raised
by dog-people to the unheralded cross-promotion with the Wimpy's food
chain with Avon and Scorpio. Often the case is unless it was
properly publicized by the BBC, the general public had no idea of its
existence and that includes the almost totally-forgotten Christmas
special.
Dubbed Marooned for clarity, the episode's origin came from mid-1980. Bill Cotton, Head of BBC Television, had been so impressed by the quality of Terminal that he wanted a further series commissioned. Although legend has it he rang up the BBC during the episode's broadcast to demand a last-minute announcement to the effect, it happened months earlier and was by no means as easy as it appeared. With no Liberator or Zen, Blake and Servalan killed off and the cast looking for work elsewhere, it seemed nigh-impossible to revive the show.
Obscure contractual clauses did offer an alternative. Blake's 7 had the option of a further hour-long Christmas special, as many BBC series had in case they were forced to end prematurely - the yuletide episode would act as an epilogue to provide closure for any plot-threads and act as proper farewell. This meant it would be possible for another episode post-Terminal featuring the main cast plus Gareth Thomas and Jacqueline Pearce who were also under contract. With Terry Nation unavailable and Chris Boucher working with Vere Lorrimer to try and structure a fourth season, Cotton had ended up commissioning an episode with no one to write it.
Hastily-drafted in to fill the gap were writers Norman Ashby and David Agnew who often acted as "damage control" in such circumstances, with a fast return on writing easily-recorded and produced scripts. They also had extensive experience on Doctor Who and other sci-fi credentials. Cotton gave them a list of elements to include, including an order to "revive" Blake, Servalan and Zen and provide conventional Christmas motifs to the episode suggesting a snow planet, the crew getting presents to play with, and even a cameo by Father Christmas.
Ashby, having little to no knowledge of Blake's 7, happily worked out a plot which was did not fit the series at all - clearly inspired by Star Trek, Blake and Servalan were alive and part of a military-based star crew on a team-building exercise. Agnew worked to synch the script more in line with events in Terminal. Here, the crew tried to cheer themselves up after the loss of the Liberator by opening presents found in Servalan's base and going to play with them in the snowy surface. After Tarrant accidentally destroyed the ship Servalan left behind, Santa Claus arrived complete with reindeer to rescue the crew.
Boucher found the ideas ridiculous though he admitted he liked Agnew's suggestion that, upon meeting Santa, Avon would shoot him and steal the reindeer. Boucher offered some input into the script to reduce the whimsy and suggested Santa be replaced by a character - dubbed "Noel" - who traveled in a freighter delivering supplies who would fulfill the idea. He then married this idea to a Doctor Who script he was reworking for B7, a sci-fi version of The Picture of Dorian Grey with the titular immortal now a serial killer kept alive with alien technology.
Boucher's script - initially entitled Recovery, then Rescue - kept the idea of the crew being saved from the snowy Terminal by a benefactor who gave them all gifts and took them home for a feast, but ran into trouble at learning Jan Chappell was not interested in returning to the show. She missed Sally Knyvette and had found the scripts in the last series disappointing, as well as wanting to spend more time with the family. Although contracted to return for the Christmas episode, she wanted her character killed off dramatically. As such, Rescue had to be restructured to introduce Cally's replacement and other scripts likewise rewritten.
Ashby and Agnew resumed work on Marooned, taking Boucher's notes for the character of Dorian and naming his ship Scorpio (Agnew mistakenly believed that was the star-sign for those born during Christmas) and the flight computer Slave (evoking the "sleigh" Santa used). Tying in closely with the written material, the pair expanded on the Dorian sequences and added a "Mrs. Claus" character which would ultimately turn into Soolin. They also came up with Servalan surviving the destruction of the Liberator by teleporting aboard Scorpio and added lines to hint Zen also endured within Slave.
With the Scorpio scenes set to be filmed as part of Rescue, the writers decided to add as much stock footage from previous episodes as possible - most specifically Terminal, Moloch and Underworld - which totaled up to ten minutes of run-time. However, only two Terminal-based sequences of Rescue (the destruction of Servalan's ship and the crew discussing their options around a campfire) were available and the writers had only vague ideas for the rest of the plot as it would follow character-based drama around characters they were unfamiliar with.
Although the studio sequences were planned out, the location shoot was still undecided even when the cast and crew arrived at Perton Hill to start shooting. The lack of "Christmas snow" delayed filming for another day, while Thomas was angry to learn that he wasn't actually required to film any scenes. Chappell, likewise dissatisfied with the sloppy production and the fact the script had not been changed to kill Cally off, left without filming her only requirement - a sequence where she climbed out of, and then back into, the underground complex set. Michael Keating had to improvise the explosive scene and won a bet with Steven Pacey so Tarrant would be unconscious and get no lines or heroic action. Similarly, the sequence where Avon and Dayna encounter the links and then find the base has exploded was worked out entirely between the actors on location. Lines were also added to the campfire scene that Cally had perished.
Agnew and Ashby had not progressed any further on the script, finding it hard to utilize the "Christmas present" idea - though traces remained in Vila's new outfit, Avon's "telescope" rangefinder and the "family argument" over how to spend the day. The writers were reluctant to do any further work without clarity over whether Chappell would actually be willing to film material, and believed her behavior was unacceptable. By this time, Boucher and Lorrimer were too busy to help but strongly advised Cotton fire "the AA" and hire another writer. Robert Holmes, working on two scripts for the new series, was put forward to take over but instead recommended his good friend Robin Bland who had done wonders with the Doctor Who story The Brain of Morbius.
Bland set to work, using the scripts of Terminal and Rescue, to work out a proper character arc for the main characters. Aware of Cotton's desire to resurrect Blake but the production team's certainty the character was dead, Bland compromised by re-using the illusionary Blake from the previous episode. He also tied in the script to Boucher's Weapon with the acknowledgement that there was a clone of Blake out there somewhere, suggesting a final sequence to show the clone alive and well. As this would be Cally's last episode, Bland decided to focus on her and give her as heroic a send-off as possible with her bravely sending Vila and Tarrant to safety while she braved the explosion. She would also be vindicated in her belief that Blake was alive with the clone "hearing" her dying telepathic cry in the closing scene.
Chappell was reluctant to return to the "shambles" but agreed to two days filming, one in studio and one at the Perton village hall with the illusionary Blake (as per Terminal's production). Due to this, Chappell did not work with Josette Simon on this last episode, which both actors regretted. For the redressed underground base post explosions, inserts were added of Chappell in burnt, bloody-makeup and an extra in a wig was let for Avon to find.
Although filming was completed just inside the deadline, work continued as Mary Ridge returned for the filming of Rescue and was dissatisfied with the already-recorded footage. Several scenes on Terminal were refilmed, with the destroyed ship replaced with stock footage and a new sequence of Dayna being threatened by a giant snake as the link scene was considered too poor. The remounted campfire scene was truncated, and the scene where Avon agrees to find if Cally survived was dropped. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Burridge and Glynis Barber were on the new Scorpio and Xenon sets with Jacqueline Pearce for her survival and dispatch to Carthensis (a planet named in Boucher's Star One), none of which would appear in Rescue.
Finally a new, Liberator-free title sequence was developed using a heads-up display of a flight computer over the previous animated material of pursuit ships. This version was only used on Marooned, being reworked to show the launch from an alien planet with model work that better showed off the graphics and a new logo - with a sniper-rifle's cross-hairs rather than the Federation insignia - being used from Rescue onwards.
Lorrimer and Cotton disliked Marooned's disjointed plot which mainly showed things exploding and acted little more than a prologue for Rescue.
The Christmas elements were barely noticeable and the long stretches of
silent inaction - particularly the establishing shots of Terminal and
Xenon Base's basement - were tedious. It was also felt the dialogue was
functional and repetitious with only Avon's scenes with Vila and Cally
having any spark. The last straw was discovering that the fourth series
of Blake's 7 was scheduled for the end of 1981 and while having Marooned at
the end would ensure it came out at Christmas, the plot would be
incoherent after the previous thirteen episodes set after it. Since Rescue was
clearly the better season opener, Marooned was ultimately not shown in
1981 at all. It would ultimately be screened after the repeat season the
next year for the Christmas 1982 lineup with little fanfare, following
the statement it would not resolve the cliffhanger of Blake. The reused scenes lead several reviewers to believe it was actually just a repeat of Rescue without any new material.
Marooned's unusual status meant it was not syndicated with the rest of the fourth season and thus never seen outside of Britain. Nor was it released on video - though there were plans for a fifth compilation special after The Beginning, Duel, Orac and The Aftermath for Scorpio Attack, an edit of Terminal, Marooned, Rescue, Power and Traitor that never came to fruition. Both DVD releases failed to include it and it was discovered by accident during the archive cataloguing of 2018 where its description of "Season 4 ep 1" meant it was only seen by chance.
And now, at last, it can be told...
Dubbed Marooned for clarity, the episode's origin came from mid-1980. Bill Cotton, Head of BBC Television, had been so impressed by the quality of Terminal that he wanted a further series commissioned. Although legend has it he rang up the BBC during the episode's broadcast to demand a last-minute announcement to the effect, it happened months earlier and was by no means as easy as it appeared. With no Liberator or Zen, Blake and Servalan killed off and the cast looking for work elsewhere, it seemed nigh-impossible to revive the show.
Obscure contractual clauses did offer an alternative. Blake's 7 had the option of a further hour-long Christmas special, as many BBC series had in case they were forced to end prematurely - the yuletide episode would act as an epilogue to provide closure for any plot-threads and act as proper farewell. This meant it would be possible for another episode post-Terminal featuring the main cast plus Gareth Thomas and Jacqueline Pearce who were also under contract. With Terry Nation unavailable and Chris Boucher working with Vere Lorrimer to try and structure a fourth season, Cotton had ended up commissioning an episode with no one to write it.
Hastily-drafted in to fill the gap were writers Norman Ashby and David Agnew who often acted as "damage control" in such circumstances, with a fast return on writing easily-recorded and produced scripts. They also had extensive experience on Doctor Who and other sci-fi credentials. Cotton gave them a list of elements to include, including an order to "revive" Blake, Servalan and Zen and provide conventional Christmas motifs to the episode suggesting a snow planet, the crew getting presents to play with, and even a cameo by Father Christmas.
Ashby, having little to no knowledge of Blake's 7, happily worked out a plot which was did not fit the series at all - clearly inspired by Star Trek, Blake and Servalan were alive and part of a military-based star crew on a team-building exercise. Agnew worked to synch the script more in line with events in Terminal. Here, the crew tried to cheer themselves up after the loss of the Liberator by opening presents found in Servalan's base and going to play with them in the snowy surface. After Tarrant accidentally destroyed the ship Servalan left behind, Santa Claus arrived complete with reindeer to rescue the crew.
Boucher found the ideas ridiculous though he admitted he liked Agnew's suggestion that, upon meeting Santa, Avon would shoot him and steal the reindeer. Boucher offered some input into the script to reduce the whimsy and suggested Santa be replaced by a character - dubbed "Noel" - who traveled in a freighter delivering supplies who would fulfill the idea. He then married this idea to a Doctor Who script he was reworking for B7, a sci-fi version of The Picture of Dorian Grey with the titular immortal now a serial killer kept alive with alien technology.
Boucher's script - initially entitled Recovery, then Rescue - kept the idea of the crew being saved from the snowy Terminal by a benefactor who gave them all gifts and took them home for a feast, but ran into trouble at learning Jan Chappell was not interested in returning to the show. She missed Sally Knyvette and had found the scripts in the last series disappointing, as well as wanting to spend more time with the family. Although contracted to return for the Christmas episode, she wanted her character killed off dramatically. As such, Rescue had to be restructured to introduce Cally's replacement and other scripts likewise rewritten.
Ashby and Agnew resumed work on Marooned, taking Boucher's notes for the character of Dorian and naming his ship Scorpio (Agnew mistakenly believed that was the star-sign for those born during Christmas) and the flight computer Slave (evoking the "sleigh" Santa used). Tying in closely with the written material, the pair expanded on the Dorian sequences and added a "Mrs. Claus" character which would ultimately turn into Soolin. They also came up with Servalan surviving the destruction of the Liberator by teleporting aboard Scorpio and added lines to hint Zen also endured within Slave.
With the Scorpio scenes set to be filmed as part of Rescue, the writers decided to add as much stock footage from previous episodes as possible - most specifically Terminal, Moloch and Underworld - which totaled up to ten minutes of run-time. However, only two Terminal-based sequences of Rescue (the destruction of Servalan's ship and the crew discussing their options around a campfire) were available and the writers had only vague ideas for the rest of the plot as it would follow character-based drama around characters they were unfamiliar with.
Although the studio sequences were planned out, the location shoot was still undecided even when the cast and crew arrived at Perton Hill to start shooting. The lack of "Christmas snow" delayed filming for another day, while Thomas was angry to learn that he wasn't actually required to film any scenes. Chappell, likewise dissatisfied with the sloppy production and the fact the script had not been changed to kill Cally off, left without filming her only requirement - a sequence where she climbed out of, and then back into, the underground complex set. Michael Keating had to improvise the explosive scene and won a bet with Steven Pacey so Tarrant would be unconscious and get no lines or heroic action. Similarly, the sequence where Avon and Dayna encounter the links and then find the base has exploded was worked out entirely between the actors on location. Lines were also added to the campfire scene that Cally had perished.
Agnew and Ashby had not progressed any further on the script, finding it hard to utilize the "Christmas present" idea - though traces remained in Vila's new outfit, Avon's "telescope" rangefinder and the "family argument" over how to spend the day. The writers were reluctant to do any further work without clarity over whether Chappell would actually be willing to film material, and believed her behavior was unacceptable. By this time, Boucher and Lorrimer were too busy to help but strongly advised Cotton fire "the AA" and hire another writer. Robert Holmes, working on two scripts for the new series, was put forward to take over but instead recommended his good friend Robin Bland who had done wonders with the Doctor Who story The Brain of Morbius.
Bland set to work, using the scripts of Terminal and Rescue, to work out a proper character arc for the main characters. Aware of Cotton's desire to resurrect Blake but the production team's certainty the character was dead, Bland compromised by re-using the illusionary Blake from the previous episode. He also tied in the script to Boucher's Weapon with the acknowledgement that there was a clone of Blake out there somewhere, suggesting a final sequence to show the clone alive and well. As this would be Cally's last episode, Bland decided to focus on her and give her as heroic a send-off as possible with her bravely sending Vila and Tarrant to safety while she braved the explosion. She would also be vindicated in her belief that Blake was alive with the clone "hearing" her dying telepathic cry in the closing scene.
Chappell was reluctant to return to the "shambles" but agreed to two days filming, one in studio and one at the Perton village hall with the illusionary Blake (as per Terminal's production). Due to this, Chappell did not work with Josette Simon on this last episode, which both actors regretted. For the redressed underground base post explosions, inserts were added of Chappell in burnt, bloody-makeup and an extra in a wig was let for Avon to find.
Although filming was completed just inside the deadline, work continued as Mary Ridge returned for the filming of Rescue and was dissatisfied with the already-recorded footage. Several scenes on Terminal were refilmed, with the destroyed ship replaced with stock footage and a new sequence of Dayna being threatened by a giant snake as the link scene was considered too poor. The remounted campfire scene was truncated, and the scene where Avon agrees to find if Cally survived was dropped. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Burridge and Glynis Barber were on the new Scorpio and Xenon sets with Jacqueline Pearce for her survival and dispatch to Carthensis (a planet named in Boucher's Star One), none of which would appear in Rescue.
Finally a new, Liberator-free title sequence was developed using a heads-up display of a flight computer over the previous animated material of pursuit ships. This version was only used on Marooned, being reworked to show the launch from an alien planet with model work that better showed off the graphics and a new logo - with a sniper-rifle's cross-hairs rather than the Federation insignia - being used from Rescue onwards.
Marooned's unusual status meant it was not syndicated with the rest of the fourth season and thus never seen outside of Britain. Nor was it released on video - though there were plans for a fifth compilation special after The Beginning, Duel, Orac and The Aftermath for Scorpio Attack, an edit of Terminal, Marooned, Rescue, Power and Traitor that never came to fruition. Both DVD releases failed to include it and it was discovered by accident during the archive cataloguing of 2018 where its description of "Season 4 ep 1" meant it was only seen by chance.
And now, at last, it can be told...
Thursday, 16 January 2020
Double Vision
The sixties ended with Doctor Who showing one of its longest stories as the Doctor finds a rogue Time Lord teaming up with a bespectacled megalomaniac and his drones to conquer the universe using mankind as unwilling fuel for their cosmic invasion climaxing with a tragic visit to the Doctor's own planet.
The twenty-twenties began with Doctor Who showing one of its longest stories as the Doctor finds a rogue Time Lord teaming up with a bespectacled megalomaniac and his drones to conquer the universe using mankind as unwilling fuel for their cosmic invasion climaxing with a tragic visit to the Doctor's own planet.
Quite.
The twenty-twenties began with Doctor Who showing one of its longest stories as the Doctor finds a rogue Time Lord teaming up with a bespectacled megalomaniac and his drones to conquer the universe using mankind as unwilling fuel for their cosmic invasion climaxing with a tragic visit to the Doctor's own planet.
Quite.
Monday, 13 January 2020
If Orphan 55 were a Target Novelisation ...
Shughie McPherson woke up that morning with a pounding headache and spent a full thirty minutes lying on his untidy bunk staring at a crack in his iPad while it tried and failed to connect with the local wifi. His twitter feed was a reminder of the thirty-seven years he'd muddled through with more hashtags than he'd had hot dinners, and more hot dinners than he'd been employed. He was married once but that hadn't lasted long as it had been for a reality TV show.
One day - or, to be more accurate, the first day - his wife had said to him, ‘Shughie, you’re a waste of semen!’ Then she’d taken the netflix subscription and gone back to the bachelorette mansion and the camera crew had followed her.
He had never tried to find her, but they were still facebook friends.
Of course, that was ages ago and his tweets were no more about recent events. About a week ago some of his Glasgow snapchat pals had said, ‘Shughie, we’re going to Soviet Russia to get a week's work at the nuclear reactors so we can be bit-part extras in the next series of Chernobyl! Why not come along?’
‘I’ve nae screen presence,’ he explained. ‘My youtube series 'SM Drinks Whatever's Under The Kitchen Sink And Tries Not To Die!' nae got a single subscriber! You’ll ha’ to do without me this time. Hashtag mope.'
‘We’re going in wee Jamie’s entourage,’ they replied. ‘It’ll give you background to draw upon as a background character, ya spineless goon!'
Eight of them got into the van, two in front and six mixing crystal meth in the back and by the time they reached Moscow nine hours later, Shughie had forgotten where they were going or why and was now insisting he was a Greek sponge fisherman called Spiros and that Neil Peart was the greatest drummer in human history.
He remembered waking up in this reactor the next morning. JR Ewing, a ship’s riveter from Clydeside whose mother was really in Dallas, was shaking his shoulders. ‘Shughie, rouse yoursel! We’re awa’ back to the SS Erewhon! We're gonna leave the Earth to its fiery demise and nae mistake, it's each survival ark for their selves!’
Shughie’s sleepy brain tried to make sense of the situation. ‘But I'm a sponge fisherman in Crete. I need none of this,' he said through his left nostril.
‘Och, this was nae funny the first three time!' shouted JR. He was already dressed in full radiation armor and had a pump action shotgun. He'd used metal polish instead of toothpaste and was screaming 'The end times are upon us! Climate change was real! It was nae just an excuse to shove corks up the arses of gurnsey studs!'
Jamie, the non-binary hipster who identified as a strip of turquoise wallpaper, came to the hatch of the reactor and yelled down, ‘Will you no come and get in the planetary shuttle, JR? It's heading for Proxima Centauri and waiting for nae one!‘
JR Ewing protested. ‘There’s wee Shughie here, still in bed.’
'Tch, he's nae a viable specimen for rebuilding humanity! Now if you don’t get yoursel into my colony ship double quick, you can stay here and die! Ah'm off!’
The two men scrambled up the ladder.
Shughie thought they’d both farted at him as he left. Or was that the atmosphere turning poisonous? He turned over and went back to sleep, dreaming of a much better ending to Game of Thrones.
When he woke up later the reactor was completely silent. Pangs of hunger drove him out of bed. Standing on the landing, he called out: ‘JR? Jamie? Third person whose name starts with J?’
No answer.
He went down the stairs into the hall and called again. Still no answer. He stumbled into the supply cupboard and found the words LET IT END scrawled in blood and feces on the wall and the deputy supervisor hanging from a light fitting.
However, there was a packet of Tim-Tams and as everyone knew, they were everlasting. It was only after he ate the last one he remembered that was actually just in an advert where a genie gave a wish of an everlasting Tim-Tam packet and not actually something in real life and he was probably going to starve to death.
So, with no food, no light, no electricity, rising radiation levels and dwindling oxygen supplies Shughie did the only logical thing and recorded a self-pitying reaction video until his camera battery failed. Then he found a sixpack of wicked-strength Leopard-issue vodka and spent the next four days unconscious in a pool of human waste.
After half an hour staring at the crack in the iPad and thinking about his life, Shughie McPherson got up and decided that everything he remembered was fake news and actually he was really great and popular and all his friends would come back and the world hadn't ended. Or, if it had, it was now a reality TV show and he could appear in it as a star and gain the adulation he'd neither worked for nor deserved.
He stretched and yawned, pulled on his trousers and shirt on top of his head, did a few chicken impressions and went down the ladder for a bracing cup of that glow-in-the-dark gloop dripping from the canister with that radiation logo on it. He dimly remembered someone saying this was unhealthy but screw them. He felt calmer, better rested and his teeth were now big they extended out of his jaw. He was also burping and farting pure oxygen, but his body probably knew what it was doing.
Scratching his throbbing elongated head and pulling out tufts of hair, and decided the time had come for action.
It was then he realized his genitals had dropped off during the night, so that was action off the menu for the foreseeable future.
He climbed out of the reactor core and into the shattered ruins of Russia. Not a building was still standing, no pane of glass was intact. The clouds had been ripped from a sky that burnt with a blistering ultraviolet purple. There were tumors growing on trees and dead birds lay everywhere.
Shughie's huge muscular arms got him to the surface and the refreshing lack of air and he went about looking for other survivors or ideally a TV camera crew. On the way he ate all the dead birds, which tasted better than KFC. Idly Shughie began to wish he was back in Glasgow, in the friendly district where he had always lived until Brexit had forced them to film Eastenders in Scotland and all the natives had been deported.
A sudden panic gripped him. Where was everyone? Were they all dead?
He started running and shouting. Street after street was deserted, front doors of houses gaping open, roasted corpses sizzling in the open air.
Shughie stopped dead, fell to his knees, clasped his hands together, and realized that if he was the only living thing left on Earth than that meant he was the best-dressed man in the world and the target demographic for every possible media outlet. He was famous. He was vital. He was important.
He was a snarling toothy nuclear-blooded mutant on an orphan planet.
Hashtag Feeling The Same Energy!
Chapter 1 - Unwanted Tranquility
It was a beautiful summer’s day. From a clear blue sky, the sun shone down on the perfect leisure resort in the perfect paradise planet. It was a place to dream of: the ideal holiday destination, a long-awaited haven for retirement and relaxation.
It was also the home of an unseen menace that threatened all life.
Soon, it was to be the scene of the Doctor’s most grotesque and terrifying adventure.
Yeah, that's official. It's canon now. It's written down.
***
Through the vortex, that mysterious region where time and space are one, sped an extraordinary police box that was not a police box at all. It was, in fact, a highly sophisticated space/time ship called the TARDIS, a name taken from its initials, Time and Relative Dimension in Space.
The TARDIS was dimensionally-transcendental and inside was an impossibly large control room, dominated by a many-sided central control console. In the centre of
the console was a giant rude-looking yellow crystal called the time rotor that thrust purposefully up and down when the TARDIS was in flight.
Right now, a strange ill-sorted group were trying to tidy up a giant suckered tentacle that been severed off a gigantic space-squid and left twitching in an evil-smelling goop on the control room floor.
Busy with a scrubbing broom was that mysterious traveller in space and time the Doctor herself, a blonde-haired young woman with an elfin face and eyes that twinkled with a whimsical intelligence. She wore a long lilac overcoat, a rainbow-striped T-shirt with suspenders holding up petrol-coloured culottes.
Helping her was a younger girl of about twenty in slacks and a blouse, trying not to inhale too much of the ichor dripping off the severed tentacle. Her name was Yasmin Khan and no one would have been surprised to learn she was, or rather had been, a probationary police officer. Especially as she never shut up about it.
Next to her was a cheerful-looking young man in a jacket and jeans. He too was a native of 2018 Sheffield and his name was Ryan Sinclair and no one would have been surprised to learn he had dyspraxia and was, or rather had been, estranged from his father. Especially as he never shut up about it.
The fourth member of the group appeared to be the eldest, a man of about sixty with short grey hair and a big smile that showed off his laughter lines. His name was Graham O'Brien and he called Ryan 'grandson', and no one would have been surprised to learn he was, or rather had been, a married to his chemotherapy nurse. Especially as he never shut up about it.
The odd company had been carried off through time and space in an extraordinary series of adventures. Ricocheting between Earth and a variety of alien planets they had encountered the Stenza, the Remnants of Desolation, racists in the Deep South, giant spiders chasing someone who wasn't Donald Trump, racists in the Punjab, creepy delivery bots in Space Amazon, mud-witches during the reign of King "Ducky" James, a sentient universe shaped like an unconvincing rubber frog and even Daleks. Who were also racist.
In many ways, their most recent adventure had been the most unsettling of all. Once again they had returned to Earth only to encounter a deadly danger with an invasion from another universe by glowing energy beings intending to turn humanity into organic harddrives for a nefarious reason never truly explained. They had also encountered a regenerated version of the Doctor's former friend and worst enemy, the Master, who had also dragged the Doctor to 1940s Paris under the jackboot heel of the Nazis because they hadn't met racists for at least five minutes.
Luckily, the Master looked like he'd had a lick of the tar brush about him so the Nazis, being racists, turned on him. And probably sent him to concentration camp. Or maybe not. Either way, the Master had tried to kill everyone and then left the Doctor a voicemail message explaining that everything she knew was a lie, her entire life had been based on a conspiracy, and that he'd also destroyed their home planet Gallifrey in a massive off-screen massacre that was too expensive to feel.
Somehow the fact that this terrifying adventure
Couldn't they just have a day off? Was that too much to ask?
Deciding the first thing to do was have a holiday, the Doctor resumed scrubbing the giant rubber tentacle off her floor. Typical, she'd just been about to suggest some fried calamari for supper and now this...
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