JS Doctor - Dark Dreams

One Hundred And Thirty-Ninth Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' D-I-V-O-R-C-E


3D - Dork Dreams -

CD Blurb
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Two alien lovers, locked in a bitter divorce after an unhappy love affair, take their titanic struggle to the new world order of modern Earth. Motuth and Ossup use fanatical RISK players on both sides of the shattered Iron Curtain, beginning a chain of events that might end in the extinction of the human race... unless the Doctor can be arsed to stop them.

The Doctor and his companions are lured into the crisis like chess pieces onto
the game board of the ping-pong table of death by a mysterious being who reaches out to the intrepid Time Lord's mind, misses, and stubs his toe. But once the Doctor discovers the danger, he wants to run for his life and only his reluctant and mistrusting recurring characters at UNIT can stop him.

The Doctor joins UNIT and together, they embark on an international search for the two heartbroken aliens bent on settlement and come up with fuck all. As they can't handle the truth, the Doctor and his companions experience horrors and personal demons that no one would dare anticipate. Because they're so dull and pathetic no one would waste the time needed to even think about it!

Friend is turned against friend, innocent lives subjected to cruel experimentation, and all the while, the threat of cosmic power left unchecked and out of control lurks in the shadows like a teenage boy who has somehow got locked into the girl's changing room after a big game...




Plot Summary
--------------

Two estranged aliens, Ossup and Motuth, are having a furious argument in an orbiting divorce court about the settlement, and which one of them shall be charged with custody of the slave planets. Ossup points that Motuth was the one that forced him to spare the lives of all the slaves and therefore they are her responsibility, but Motuth insists her valium addiction will make her neglectful and that the court should consider the best interests of the slave races.

The Space Magistrate admits that they have both scored direct hits, but is certain that deep down there is still the spark between them, even if they don't even have sex for sentimental reasons any more. In order to prove the marriage suffers irretrievable breakdown, he orders the couple to take another honeymoon on the planet Earth in one last attempt to make the relationship work.

By the time their ship reaches the solar system, the couple are furiously screaming at each other - Motuth can't read the star maps properly and Ossup is nagging her all the time. Their rants move on to Ossup's lovemaking techniques and soon the expression "you sexually-impotent drunken drug-pushing scumbag!!" is being flung around the flight deck with reckless abandon.

The aliens arrive on Earth and immediately decide to have separate hotel rooms... one in the United States and the other in Russia. Reports of a small crab-like creature wearing a monogrammed spacesuit checking into a motorway hotel room and demanding it be charged on Asteroid Express soon reach the Men In Black organization...

...but they're busy, so the United States government sends a condescending message to UNIT to investigate "if they can understand how to". This gives the commanding officer of UNIT, Colonel Charles Crichton to suffer a crippling anxiety attack. In order to reaffirm his reputation, he demands the Doctor be called in so they can all laugh at his uselessness.

UNIT use the strange and mystical talisman the Doctor left with them long ago to contact him in the time of England's greatest need, summoning him from the depths of the shadow dimension to restore the balance of eternity itself; an amazing near-magical device known only as...

...the Super Outer Space Telephone Thingie Spiff-a-rinno!!

However, when the Super Outer Space Telephone Thingie Spiff-a-rinno is used and the TARDIS arrives it is not the pathetic wastrel in a long scarf who emerges but a grinning loony dressed as a magician. UNIT consider the possibility that the Doctor has simply changed his face again like the last half a dozen times, but Crichton refuses to believe this on the grounds it would lose face to admit what a stupid fool he was to make so elementary a mistake.

The Doctor, Mark and Dara are flung into a small dark cell without food, water or electricity and the Time Lord's claims that this is all just some wacky UNIT initiation ceremony and really they're honored guests fall on deaf ears. Finally, even the Doctor concedes that UNIT is run by total morons and loses all faith in his private paramilitary killing force.

Meanwhile, Crichton realizes he has no idea what to do and thus they shall be forced to ask the magician in the cell for advice, whether he is their reincarnated scientific advisor or not. The realization that UNIT needs to ask passers-by for advice crushes his soul even further and he consumes another bottle of valium in no time at all.

Finally, the TARDIS crew are dragged out of the cell and told the situation. And promptly break up in hysterical laughter that leaves them all unconscious from oxygen starvation.

The Doctor, thinking Crichton's story is some brilliantly observed comedic routine, weakly congratulates him for creating a comic character so stupid he hasn't realized the patently obvious fact: that the two aliens who have arrived on either side of the Iron Curtain will automatically ally themselves with opposing sides of the Cold War to sort out their love life in a brutal fashion involving nuclear weaponry and mutually assured destruction.

Then he and the others break up in giggles once more.

It transpires that, typically, the Doctor is absolutely right - United States Colonel Cheeseburger has already located Motuth and fallen in love with her, buying her an expensive dinner and wooing her about his Vietnam anecdotes. Ossup meanwhile, has strutted around Russia in a posing pouch trying to find allies for himself, allies who are equal and opposite to Motuh and Cheeseburger, and soon Ossup has himself a bevy of Russian peasant tart!

Elsewhere, UNIT have decided to travel to North America to examine the UFO there - a logical and constructive strategy provided by a Samaritan who Crichton rang at a particularly low moment. Unfortunately, when they arrive, the spaceship has already been blown up by some redneck hillbillies, and Crichton bursts into tears and falls to his knees in despair.

The Doctor kicks Crichton in the stomach and tells him not be such a pathetic dweeb, and abandon the 'international' search in favor of asking any passers by if they've seen a crap in a spacesuit trying to hitch a lift in the immediate area. Colonel Cheeseburger points out that it is highly likely that the alien is on a plane to Majorca by now, but Crichton's spirit is so crushed he decides to trust the deranged magician instead of his American ally.

The Doctor, Dara and Mark, however, are sickened at the feebleness of UNIT and decide an organization with so little respect it isn't even allowed "electronic mail and fax" connections are beyond help. Leaving them to wander around getting nowhere, the TARDIS crew follow Cheeseburger to his "hot date" - and discover the burgeoning relationship between him and Motuth.

The Doctor cunningly deals with Motuth by running across the room and throwing her into a fish tank - where she is then picked by Dara to be turned into crumbed crab-sticks and eaten with lots of mayonnaise; a truly ignoble end.

Cheeseburger tries to defend his extra-terrestrial seduction techniques, but Mark shoots him through the head and steals his wallet.

The TARDIS crew rejoice at locating and defeating their enemies in under two minutes before they could carry out their plan to consummate their relationship in a bid to prove Motuth's marriage had reached a point of irretrievable breakdown, but then realize they have her husband to deal with!

In Russia, Ossup and his harem of hot bunny girls have taken over a Russian silo and turned it into a PlayCrab Mansion, which pisses off Sergeant Pelmeni of the KGB, who had been planning to the exact same thing. Pelmeni barges into UNIT HQ and demands the incompetent idiots within do something about it by forging an unholy alliance with the filthy Commie bastards.

Crichton has another panic attack and wets himself.

Just then, a wheezing groaning sound is heard as, amazingly, the TARDIS materializes - and a familiar irritating git in a scarf emerges! The previous Doctor knew that the United Nations would need someone as pathetic and monumentally pointless as him to make them feel good about themselves!

As the other Doctor, Mark and Dara watch on unimpressed, the Old Doctor leads UNIT to charge against the PlayCrab Mansion... and immediately most of the soldiers are slaughtered by hidden sub machine guns. The Old Doctor manages to break inside and gives a boring, moralistic and completely unoriginal speech to Ossup that does not dissuade him from his objectives at all.

In fact, Ossup is now so convinced of his righteousness, he fires a missile strike against the United States!

The magic-obsessed Time Lord folds his arms and dryly asks his former incarnation whether or not he wants someone who actually knows what they're doing to get involved with this mess.

However, the Old Doctor has read Ester Hicks' self-help book "The Secret!" and follows the three steps of Ask-Believe-Receive:

1) He ASKS the Universe to give him the god-like ability to fling the missiles into the heart of the sun and thus prevent nuclear war

2) He BELIEVES as if the Universe has given him the god-like ability to fling the missiles into the heart of the sun and thus prevent nuclear war

3) He RECEIVES the god-like ability to fling the missiles into the heart of the sun and thus prevent nuclear war by acting in a very open-minded manner

And... nothing happens. At all. Whatsoever.

"Dear GOD you are the most pathetic individual I have ever seen!" Crichton marvels, shaking his head and, re-energized with belief, immediately steals a helicopter, hot wires it and sends it hurtling into the path of the missiles so they explode early. Crichton himself escapes the inferno by back-flipping out of the helicopter, landing on the wing of a passing jet and then double-somersaults off the wing to land in front of the rest of the cast, in the splits.

He lights up a cigar and addresses his men with the immortal line:

"Let's go blow the fuck out of some Cybermen!"

The Old Doctor starts to moralize about justice mixed with compassion, and everyone wanders off in different directions, eventually leaving him all alone in the snow, still rambling to himself.


Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who & The Dreams of Dorks
Doctor Who Learns To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
The Plain Man's Guide to Divorce Law and XXX Alien Bondage Websites (page 39)


Links and References -
At the start of the story, the Doctor is kicking around waiting for the next inevitable 'surprise' appearance by the Bastard, despite his absolute no-holds-barred-no-beg-your-pardons dee-ee-dee certain DEATH in "A Polygon" (Serial 1D).


Untelevised Misadventures -
The David Segal Doctor tried and failed to impress some 17th century Russians by claiming he was a time-sculpting sorcerer from beyond the known world, and is now known in old Russian folklore as The Lying Wanker In The Scarf.



Dialogue Train Wrecks
---------------------

Crichton: Now wait just a minute... I've been on the line for almost ten minutes! I want InterSat and I mean now! Someone in charge, obviously! Then you tell them that Colonel Charles Crichton, the commanding officer of the UNIT Britain Section is waiting on this line and has been for ten, er, now fifteen minutes! Whoever you can spare! OF COURSE I'LL HOLD! OH GOD! WHY DOES NO ONE LOVE ME?!? I NEVER GET INVITED TO PARTIES!!

-------

Cheeseburger: Your people are centuries ahead of us! Why couldn't you use a computer simulation or something instead of marrying a tosser?

-------

Crichton: Bear in mind, UNIT is a SECRET organization!

Doctor: That wasn't funny the first time, you cretin.

-------

Dara: You killed that man?

Mark: Which one? I lose counter after I reach tripe digits.

Doctor: There's no time for such merriment, you two! Ossup and his cohorts have revived the dork dreams of Hugh Heffner! MYSTERY IS AFOOT!!

-------

Doctor: So what's your explanation for Colonel Cheeseburger dating a strange space-suited ammonia-breather?

Crichton: It's suddenly Rag Week!

Doctor: I despair. I really do.



Dialogue Gems
-------------

Old Doctor: "Occupied"? You make me sound like a rest room!

New Doctor: Well, why not? You're full of crap all the time.

--------

Motuth: Look around at this world we've made:
Equality our stock in trade!
Come and join the Brotherhood of Man!
Oh, what a nice, contented world!
Let the banners be unfurled,
Hold the Red Star proudly high in hand!

Doctor: You'll have to do more than quote Rush albums to justify such slaughter!

Ossup: We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx,
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls!
We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx,
All the gifts of life are held within our walls!

Doctor: You've not listening to a word I've said, have you?

-------

Cheeseburger: Nobody move! I have a gun right on her spine!

Dara: Well, I have a gun too everyone! And that gun is in my right hand!

Motuth: No sudden moves, Colonel, I have my laser tube aimed at you! And that gun is in my right hand AND it's loaded!

Pelmeni: And I'm sure you'll be interested to know I have a howitzer aimed at all three of you AND --

Mark: Fuck this for a game of soldiers.

(Mark throws a grenade into the crowd and walks off as it explodes)

-------

New Doctor: What are you doing here and now? This is against all the laws of time and you know it!

Old Doctor: Invisible to telescopic eye,
Infinity, The star that would not die;
All who dare to cross her course
Are swallowed by a fearsome force!

New Doctor: What? Oh not you too!

Old Doctor: Through the void to be destroyed?
Or is there something more?
Atomized at the core?
Or through the astral door, to SOAR!!!

-------

Peasant Girl: This is incredible! This is like those silent pornographic movies you showed us! Propaganda Pron from Stalin's time? The Martian Proletariat rising up against our Capitalist Oppressors and seducing them! Mind you, the production values were better in those ones. Even painting monkeys green is more creative than a crab in a spacesuit...

-------

Briggs: Sir, if you don't mind my asking, does this mean we're officially
recognizing this doctor as the genuine article?

Crichton: Good question, Lieutenant! I mean, SERIOUSLY good question. Ten out of ten. Never show signs of independent thought in my presence ever again. Now, while we lack concrete evidence to confirm his identity bar the fact he has two hearts, the TARDIS and the Doctor has a history of dropping dead and turning into completely different people, you have to admit this man has some kind of, it's such genius, it's unique! He must be the Doctor! Who else could he be?

Briggs: Some lunatic tramp who likes squatting in police boxes, just like the last three "Doctors" you brought in?

Crichton: SHUT THE FUCK UP, BRIGGS! Fetch the Doctor! We need him to join the search! Tell him we have nothing except for two more bodies to show for our efforts! Cajole him! Threaten him! Break radio silence! Or drag him here kicking and screaming if you have to! BUT GET HIM HERE!!!

Doctor: I'm right behind you, you moron.

(Crichton sobs and falls to his knees.)

Crichton: Spinning, whirling, still descending!
Like a spiral sea, Unending!
Sound and fury drowns my heart
Every nerve is torn apart....

(The Doctor kicks him repeatedly in the head)

Doctor: SHUT UP WITH THE DAMN RUSH SONGS!!



Listener Reviews
-----------------

"Dork Dreams has an unhappy couple of aliens coming to Earth just to finish their marriage that started back in the depths of space gives this Doctor Who story a very nice touch. The sort of touch you tell the policemen about. Not there was much action, or chat. In fact, I couldn't hear anything much, just some muffled Russian accents and then the theme music. Pity Mark couldn't have been in it more, a warrior like him kicking ass and getting all sweaty... he shoulda had a bigger part in this. A really big part. Big parts like that are needed to full grab my personal attention. Otherwise it's just not funny."
- Eddie Izzard (1999)


"I think Dork Dreams is the worst story of the season. It wasn't bad per se, just not particularly memorable. I can't remember anything about it. At all. In fact, I don't think I actually listened to it. Might need to listen to it again. Well, for a first time at any rate. I think it was just placed between two really memorable stories so it suffered a little by comparison, since everyone seems to deny its existence." - Dave Allen (1998)


"Dork Dreams? Nah, don't remember that one. Isn't that a Blake's 7 episode?"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (2006)


"A well woven, character-driven piece cunningly disguised as a padded, virtually plotless runaround, Dork Dreams still seems to fail due to that bugaboo known as lack of budget. There are simply too many characters verses not enough actors and a distinct lack of sound effects used, the accents are appalling, the characters un-engaging, the plot resolution an out of the blue dues ex machina, and a distinctly immoral ending as a teenage girl has sexual fantasies over a centuries-old alien and the UN and the KGB form an alliance based on mindlessly slaughtering mutual enemies. This obviously should have been one of those big-budget blockbusters where you don't mind if the characterization consists solely of "I had to do what I had to, to stop them before they stop us!" because of all the hot teenage girls in tight white bras holding huge guns! If you can manage to get past what it sounds like, and the worryingly pathetic story, and concentrate solely on those hot teen girls in tight white bras, you'll forget all about Dork Dreams. Which, in my book, is a good idea!"
- The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2005)



Jeffrey Coburn Speaks!
-------------------

"This was a very complex story that, for me, didn't quite gel in the end. The story was total crap, with lots of the plot holes not just existing, but being clearly pointed out to the listeners, defined in detail and then justified by people singing old Rush songs. Yes, Dork Dreams was screwed up in way bigger than we could have handled at the time. I don't think Stephen Moffat and a canister of laughing gas could handle it to be honest...

If only we had waited a while, I think we could have done better with this one. Maybe burned the script and pretending the whole thing was a bad mushroom trip. We all thought it was like some sub-sub-sub Star Trek fan fic. Now I watched Star Trek when I was a boy, but I never considered myself a science fiction "fan" as it were. I lack science fiction savvy the way Chip Jamison lacks acting skill, I freely admit that.

When I started playing the Doctor, I really had no idea what TARDISes were, or sonic screwdrivers, or Daleks, or anything like that. Honestly, I had never seen the show before. With a name like Doctor Who, I always thought it was some boring education program, so I always switched off mentally. I had seen it listed in the Radio Times, but then I often got Radio Times delivered to my house despite us being in America. There's probably some British guy getting all my mail.

Of course, since them I went out and watched as much of the show as I could. My library at home is practically overflowing with Doctor Who videos now. Mainly to scare off burglars. Works surprisingly well."




Rumours, Slander, and Libel
---------------------------

Riding high on successfully producing two stories for the Jeff Coburn Doctor without mass bloodshed or a prison sentence, SCAD Producer Douglas Phillips decided to go one further - a story made by a complete unknown, in the sense not a complete sad act who thought changing the title of Tom Baker story counted as a brilliant and undetectable.

Thus Phillips decided to take on Joseph Medina, a relief skipper on a herring trawler, who had submitted a story entitled Empty Earth, a tale of Nazi propaganda, Atlantis, UFO abductions, prehistoric monsters, Amazonian warrior babes flying winged horses and mysterious cities of gold.

Phillips rejected as he suspected it to be a thinly-veiled attack on the previous SCAD regime, but he did like the alliterative title and demanded Medina use another one for his submission.

Phillips also wanted to throw the new Doctor up against his previous self's old stomping ground - a pale, ill-thought out copy of Jon Pertwee's UNIT mob - simply because the first thing anyone does with a brand new incarnation full of unique promise and untapped potential is throw him up against the same recurring elements all the other ones have done. Otherwise, it's just not canon.

Unfortunately, despite David Segal psychotic belief that no one would be able to tell the difference between him, Tom Baker, Anthony Ainley or Princess Diana, he was unable to use his non-existent impersonation skills on Nicholas Courtney, and so instead pretended to be Charles Crichton, an ex-boyfriend of the Brigadier who was once mentioned to have taken over UNIT in a forgotten scene in The Four-And-A-Half Doctors, a character who was never seen or referred to again. While some would have assumed that the whole 'commanding UNIT' line was just to diffuse an awkward social situation since the Brigadier was clearly not committed to the relationship, Segal insanely believed that Crichton now totally ruled UNIT and the rest of the Western World with a velvet fist in an iron boxing glove!

Medina sat through all of Crichton's six seconds of screen time on television and saw a narrow-minded fool who hit the bottle after one conversation with the Second Doctor, and broke down into sobs after Sergeant Benton refused his advances, later seen wandering the sets of the Tomb of Rassilon without any trousers, hurling abuse at the Cybermen extras and swearing he'd "never sleep with THAT production assistant again!"

Medina decided that if someone as unstable and untalanted as Crichton could be placed in charge of a world alliance national killing force, then said organization would have to be useless in every important respect - its staff incompetent, its commanders unimaginative, its food appalling, its security non-existent and a ridiculous desire to remain top secret despite having their name printed everywhere.

To give this special UNIT story a traditional plot, Medina decided to copy an old Captain Planet And The Planeteers episode where two opposing factions of humanity would ally themselves to opposing factions of another race (a plot which, ironically, Captain Planet had stolen from Doctor Who in the first place). However, Phillips was firm that on no accounts would the SCADs be seen to take no sides in the matter and so while the Americans were portrayed as stupid, bullying sexually frustrated retards, the Russians were shown to be a race of identical badly-accented idiots, and all of them were dumb enough to take the word of a hydrogen-breathing alien crustacean that not only can it provide them with superior firepower but also that its enemy will automatically oppose their beliefs. Truly in war there are no winners, only losers - and pretty fucking stupid losers at that.

Script editor Raymond Dugong decided that the story was far too long to fit comfortably into a four parter and decided to extend the story to FIVE episodes, only to forget this after a night on the booze. Severely hungover and haunted by the sound of "Les Adventures Électroniques" in his ears, grabbed the script and tore out all the long, boring character-based scenes and destroyed them, bringing the length down to two and a half episodes. Then, realizing his mistake, Dugong destroyed all documentation to suggest that the script was anything other than the form it was now.

Unfortunately, that left the SCADs with a story of five episodes and barely enough material to fill three! Unfortunately, David Segal had bet everyone he wouldn't jam a dart in his temple and thus won the right to direct the story - the first one he had directed since Land of the Dead some seven years earlier.

Segal knew exactly how to pad out stories and mindlessly decided to bring back his own Doctor in such a way it would outshadow Mark, Dara, UNIT and the new Doctor, and no doubt make all the listeners remember how brilliant he was and protest in the streets until he was reinstated as the permanent Doctor.

However, since there was no script, absolutely no one would stick to it and so episode five was one long rant about how stupid Segal was for believing in "The Secret" despite the fact it wouldn't be released until the next century, before there was a brutal beating and everyone went home early.

I know. You'd NEVER guess.