Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JS Doctor - The Hidden Menace

One Hundred And Fifty-Fifth Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Caverns Of Blood-Chilling GEO-HORROR!!!!!!


19D - The Phantom Bonus -

CD Blurb
---------------

A visit to some caves in a quiet English village turns into a nightmare for the Doctor and Christine when they discover a killer ISN'T hiding in the deep dark caves of Southbank. Nor is there an animal which doesn't even belong to this time.

Investigating further, they find out more than visitors to the caves are meant to know and realize that the town, and even the country, is in NO danger from any creature hungry and waiting for food! No visitors have suddenly begun to disappear, and there is a distinct lack of growls of a frightening, unearthly creature can be heard echoing off the cavern walls.

Why isn't there a door mysteriously opening and closing in a supposedly normal cave wall? Is everything as real as it seems? Sadly, yes. There's nothing else down there... deep, deep down in the rock. And even if there were, it wasn't buried and hidden throughout the centuries and no chance does it have a deadly bloodlust and a seemingly supernatural gift for navigating the pitch-black labyrinthine cave system.

The mysteriously kinky manager is no help. Does he know more than he's letting on? Is he the evil mastermind behind this entire conspiracy? Or is he as he appears as fetishistic pervert with no self control whatsoever?

As the memories of daylight fade to a forgotten dream, for the two time travelers one thing's for certain: they're in danger of dying from boredom - along with the whole population of Southbank! And if there actually, truly-ruly, honest-to-God IS a creature and it DOES escapes from the caves, will they be bothered enough to stop it?




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

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor is startled when the scanner opens to reveal the features of President Lockwood the Unwilling of the Supreme Council of Time Lords of Gallifrey. At first the Doctor assumes that the Time Lords have come crawling back for his help with some celestial emergency that threatens every known corner of creation... but it just turns out that Lockwood owes a fortune to GITS (Gallifreyan Income Tax Service) and is paying his way by making strange and dull infomercials sent to every Time Lord in the universe.

"The End of the Millennium is at hand! The Age of Prosperity has come crashing down around us... so why not visit Southbank Caves. Hidden in the beautiful countryside of the Midlands, Southbank Caves is an interesting and exciting day out for the whole family. Set out over twenty two thousand acres of land, the cave system contains a marvelous display of rock sculptures, giant prehistoric insects and passageways which you can explore deep inside. It's completely uncharted, since no one has ever got out alive. The visit includes fully-guided tours of the caves, access to the souvenir shop and the cafeteria, mortuary for ravaged corpses, as well of the Caves Museum which charts the history of the area since its opening to the public last century. Southbank Caves - the journey to end a lifetime in this darkening world. For more information or to schedule a group tour to be gruesomely slaughtered in as gratuitous manner as possible, call our guest relations office today."

The Doctor is immediately intrigued and sets course for the Midlands in the year 1999, already eager to see the mindlessly carnivorous insectoids grown to gigantic size by millions of years exposure to subterranean radiation. Chris, for her part, is not particularly enthused at the idea of facing certain death at the claws of horrific monsters who if they ever reach the surface will consume every living thing on Earth within a week... until the Doctor says she can kill as many as she likes with impunity and she immediately starts polishing her shotgun.

For once, the TARDIS actually arrives where they want it to be and the Doctor faints with surprise. He is soon kicked awake by Chris and together they join a group of tourists desperate to have their minds taken off the mounting natural disasters, doomsday cults and political catastrophes... by watching innocent spelunkers be kidnapped by giant grasshoppers and fed to their larvae!

The tour group enters the cave and watch as two men (Chip Jamison in stereo) searching the caves for a lost cat are suddenly attacked and killed by a giant green insect monster with hairy tendrils. The Doctor is unimpressed. Not only is the "monster" surprisingly cute, it's very obviously a fake. Worse, how do domestic cats get trapped in a cave system anyway?

The tour guide grabs the Doctor by the lapels and tells him not to dare ruin the magic for the children, which proves the distraction Chris needs to start hurling knives at the "monster"... which starts screaming and falls apart to reveal two illegal immigrants with sucking chest wounds, pretty much ruining the magic for the children forever.

Deeply insulted, the Doctor and Chris decide the quit all the immense, eerily beautiful chambers, impossibly narrow passages, steep cliffs, rushing rapids and waterfalls in the awesome realm of the unknown. They'll find their OWN unusual rock system where danger lurks everywhere!

Heading for the nearest ruins of a 13th century church - "Places Where Man Was Never Meant To Go Abbey" - the time travelers quickly look for an entrance to a giant underground cave system. However, there isn't one, which is a real pity as all the murals in the abbey show it was built over some terrible secret preferably involving bizarre creatures that will turn out to be a long lost group of explorers who are no longer quite human thanks to some cave-dwelling, highly-contagious flesh-mutating parasite. Failing that, they'll settle for some skeletal winged demons who were entombed by the Knights Templar.

Undaunted, the Doctor and Chris lay explosives and blow their way through the bottom of the church using high explosives. This leaves them trapped at the bottom of a tunnel with no way out and no one even knowing they're in this mess... but on the bright side, the Doctor notices an unusual rock structure that looks like a fanged skull - you don't see many of those around!

Chris notices bloody handprints on the stone walls and sees something lurking in the distance, something heading straight towards them...

At this point we cut to the office of Mr. Robert Caligari, hardcore vegan, part-time pig-kicker and sado-masochistic-sex-obsessed psychopath who took over Southbank Caves after murdering in broad daylight pretty much everyone who got in his way. But he has a charming smile, which is why the police never actually got round to arresting him and putting him into a mental asylum.

Caligari's smile is being put to the test by a hysteric-to-the-point-of-being-deranged man called Tim (Chip Jamison), who is demanding to know what happened to a friend of his who went into the caves and never returned. Caligari notes that it is ridiculous to believe that Tim has any friends, which rather takes makes the complaint redundant. Tim demands Caligari continue to look for his "friend" and then changes his mind and says that he is going into the caves to look for his friend himself.

He then screams something in Romanian and dives through the window of Caligari's office, giving a solidly surreal ending to the interview. To take his mind off things, Caligari takes a cricket bat and starts smashing up everything in the office while singing the words "Who You Lookin At?" over and over again.

The Doctor and Chris, meanwhile, are still wandering the tunnels looking for a gift shop or a race of subterranean robotic life that evolved from the regrouping of metallic molecules. Annoyingly, they find neither, but the Doctor insists they should investigate further.

The next passage collapses behind the duo, who begin to speculate that wandering into an unknown cave system with no way out might not be a good move. Just then, the Doctor conveniently finds a cave painting, which Chris interprets as signifying that there are two exits to the cave. The Doctor finds this logic dubious in the extreme, but goes along with it because he doesn't want his companion to stab him. Again.

Mistaking glowing rocks for daylight, Christine races ahead and slips over the edge of a deep hole, grabbing hold of the edge. The Doctor debates whether or not to help her, but notices a pale, humanoid creature drinking at a pool of water. It scampers off into the darkness when the Doctor calls to it.

Running towards him, the Doctor discovers the humanoid creature is, in fact, a rather inbred local working as a tour guide for Southbank Caves. The creature headbutts the Doctor and makes a strange echo-location noise which summons others of its hideous kind, but the Time Lord is able to run away before he can be captured... abandoning Chris in the meantime, which he insists is a completely coincidental fringe benefit.

The guide communicates with Caligari and tells him that the Doctor knows something. Caligari is puzzled and asks what the hell he's talking about. When the guide patiently explains that there is a tourist on the loose knowing forbidden information and answering to the name the Doctor, Caligari laughs orgasmically for forty-one seconds then hangs up.

After wandering a bit, screaming death threats, Chris eventually leaps down into the chasm to move on the plot. But this proves disastrous as she immediately runs into Tim, who just happened to be passing a huge pile of human bones and rotting flesh.

Tim explains he heard the sounds of some hideous monster in the cavern, but was scared away by Tim's annoying, high-pitched whining. Chris stares at him for a long moment, mutters "Yeah, right!" under her breath, then storms off into the caves for something more interesting.

Meanwhile, the Doctor decides that it is high time he got to the bottom of this business and thus surrenders to the tour guides on the condition they take him to their leader. When asked about why he ran away in the first place, the Doctor breaks the fourth wall completely and explains he was padding out the episode.

He is taken to the office of Caligari, who has stripped naked and is flogging himself with a cat o'nine tails dipped in lemon juice. Just for the hell of it. Awkward, the Doctor tries to break the silence by noting his pal Christine is lost in the myriad caverns and tunnels and could be at risk from the giant parasitic insectoids... IF THEY WERE REAL!

Caligari laughs companionably, grabs the Doctor by the scruff of the neck and forces him face down into a chemical toilet and flushes it repeatedly. He then excuses himself from the Doctor and hangs upside down from the ceiling like a bat and starts to snore very loudly.

At a loss, the Doctor shrugs and leaves, stealing Caligari's laptop as he goes.

Chris is still stalking around the caves, looking for any subterranean monsters for her to kill bloodily when the Doctor arrives and explains he has made a truly momentous discovery: caves are incredibly boring, so they should back in this geology spelunking field trip gig and sod off back to the TARDIS.

Just then, they see a strange goat-skull-headed creature watching them from the shadows. After a few minutes of standing there, looking at each other, the Doctor gets bored looking at this creature which is like nothing else on Earth (apart from goats, obviously) and decide to head to the gift shop.

When they get there, they discover the said creature has somehow got there first and slaughtered all the tour guides, stripped the warm flesh from their puny little bodies and is cooking them on an open-fire barbecue. The Doctor races to close the main gate to prevent the creature from getting out into the general populace... and also to make sure no one else gets the burgers.

"Come on!" the Time Lord defends himself. "We're completely different species, so it hardly counts as cannibalism, does it?"

Chris points out that Tim said the creature seemed to be vulnerable to his whining, but that hardly makes the monster unique. Nevertheless, when Chris does her Chip Jamison impression, it only excites the animal and it jumps the gate.

After finishing all the food, the Doctor collects a cricket bat and ventures out to try and stop the creature. However, when they track it to the warehouse district, it has vanished and the only person there is Tim, whinging. In fact, he's so annoying, the Doctor and Chris decide to take their chances within the caverns of unending torment rather than spend time with him.

Meanwhile, Caligari calls together his secretary and all the staff who haven't already been eaten by the ravaging hell beast from the blackest pits of hell, and tells them how he found an unusual section of the caverns and that he wanted to show them what he found. He goes on to reveal that he's put all their Christmas bonus money into one of those caves underground and they should rush there to collect it.

However, this doesn't actually encourage them to move. At all.

Sighing, Caligari decides that they are not suitable in their job motivation and kills them all with a desk fan covered in razor blades. Then he lights up a cigarette and stubs it out on his tongue, noting "I neetheth thath".

At that exact moment, the Doctor and Chris try to find the creature's lair and hoepfully trick it into killing Tim once and for all, while Chris continues to whistle "21st Century Digital Boy" to herself. The Doctor then wraps his head in newspaper, blinding himself and calming himself down. For some reason.

Finally, Tim arrives and his nasal moans are heard by the duo, who run away, only to bump into Caligari sexually assaulting the cave wall. He tells the Doctor that he was helping the girl guides for the promise of gold. Uncertain what the fuck the guy is talking about, the Doctor and Chris are able to surprise Caligari by ramming a stalactite up his arse and escape.

The Doctor and Chris escape the caves and hide in the café, idly discussing massive parts of the universal condition like religion, TV scheduling, capital punishment, and the fact there's still another episode to go. Caligari, meanwhile, has found and freed the rocky outcrop from his anus.

The TARDIS crew decide to go hunting - either for the creature or Tim, whichever they find first. They eventually find Caligari ramming human remains up his nose and claiming he was trapped in middle management for millions of years, and now intends to eat the caves. The Doctor protests that such a feat is impossible for a colon of his size and Caligari responds by shooting the Doctor, enough to hurt him but not enough to kill him.

At that moment, the creature arrives and removes its goat-like skull to reveal it was Tim all along! He was marooned in the caves as a small child and fed off raw toxic waste, which has given him superhuman strength, abilities and made him incredibly annoying. Ever since he has survived by brutally raping, killing and eating everyone he meets and there can be no escape...

Tim advances menacingly towards our heroes - then trips over Caligari, falls over and breaks his neck, dying instantly.

There is then an earthquake and the sky turns the colour of blood. Caligari is killed by the collapsing caves while licking Tim's corpse compulsively, and the Doctor and Chris make it out in time as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse gallop over the hills and, somewhere in the distance, a wild cat does woof!

Ignoring all these signals of a blinding and imminent end to all life on Earth and the very end of days itself, the Doctor and Chris steal some Coca Cola and wander back to the TARDIS as its Cloister Bell rings defeaningly.

Inside the time machine, the walls drip with tears of blood and screams of pain emerge from the console. The Doctor cries out and awakens to find himself still in the cavern. He sees Chris standing close by with a cake singing Happy Birthday... but this turns out to be a hallucination as well, and he really IS in the TARDIS with Chris and the Universe itself is ending.

The Doctor and Chris sing REM's "End of the World" and the credits roll.


Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who And The World of Loonies
Doctor Who Descends Into The Cave-Like Cavern of Cannibal Strangeness WIthIN
Dr Who Versus The CHUD Crawlers
Worst Case Scenario Handbook: So You're A Screaming Young Girl Sucked Into A Labyrinth of Horror By A Blood-Starved Ghoul From Hell?


Links and References -
The Doctor hasn't been THIS disappointed by a holiday since he, Romana and K9 visited the Argolis Leisure Centre (Serial 5N).


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor recently took Chris to an illegal boxing ring and had her fight a Rasta Warrior Robot in front of paying customers - most of which fled in nausea after they saw what Chris did to the most perfect killing machine ever devised with a broken beer bottle and a piece of liquorice.



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

Doctor: So. If you've finished with that dead pigeon, are you going to tell me your boring plans for controlling the universe?

Caligari: If you must know, I'm in it for purely self-motivated reasons!

Doctor: Which are?

Caligari: Gold!

Doctor: ...is that it? 'Gold'?!

Caligari: Not JUST gold!

Doctor: Well?

Caligari: Lots and lots of gold!

(The Doctor sighs.)

Doctor: Why do I even bother defeating these people?

-------

Doctor: My nose is beginning to itch. Now, which is it? Hairs down the back of my neck means I'm being followed, knee acting up is for rain... what does an itchy nose mean? Oh. No, that's not it. It means something funny is going on here. And I'm less than three episodes from an epic season finale...

-------

Doctor: Are you all right?

Chris: Verily!

Tim: I'm about as all right as one could be considering...

Doctor: Was I talking to you? A clue: fuck off! Now, Chris, I've got an idea to stop this creature! You have to be quick so it doesn't get too far away. Chris, you remember when you stabbed that Rasta Warrior Robot and the creature calmed down?

Chris: I...

Doctor: And then when you stopped it turned wild again? I think if you can stab the rotter in the kidneys, as hard as you can for as long as you can, we might just be able to... soothe the savage beast. To death.

Tim: THAT'S talking an AWFUL CHANCE! How can YOU be SURE something LIKE THAT will WORK?

Doctor: I have it on the highest authority! I once saw Daffy Duck do it to the Tasmanian Devil. Are you still here?

Chris: Yeah. Get thee some acting lessons, thou hammy bastard!

-------

Chris: Verily, it is mighty indeed!

Doctor: Yes, it IS big, isn't it?

Caligari: Why thank you. It's just what God gave me.

-------

Doctor: Some of the greatest mysteries exist on the planet Earth - but the darkest mysteries lie within it. Terror always lies beneath the surface, waiting for you to descend into reach. Beneath Heaven lies Earth. Beneath Earth lies Hell. Beneath Hell lies the Cave. And in the Cave... is Christine! And it doesn't matter if you don't believe in her, because SHE believes in YOU! Be afraid. Be very afraid!


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

Tim: When we get out, I'm going to get the police!

Chris: The police are already investigating, you retard! SHUT UP!

Tim: Carbon 19! They've FOUND that stuff IN THE rocks! CARBON 19! Not Carbon-2, Carbon-4, CARBON 19! They SAY rocks are OLD and SHIT, what does CARBON 19 have to say ABOUT that? CARBON 19!!!! You guys are morons! CARBON 19!! Why WON'T YOU listen?!

Chris: Because thou cannot act, thy shouty moron! SHUT UP!! WHY DO THEY KEEP GIVING THIS IDIOT ACTING JOBS?!

Tim: That definitely ISN'T a dog! This a day I'M definitely going to remember!

Chris: SHUT UP THOU STUPID MORON! SHUT UP!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOU?!!

--------

Guide: Deep in the endless tunnels of a subterranean cave, an ancient species lies. It waits patiently for the creatures of the surface to step out of the sun. To undertake a horrific voyage into the black pit of the unknown. Rumor has it that a vast treasure lies hidden deep within an abandoned mine that sits just atop the vast system of caves, and a group of brave adventurers are determined to claim the mythical prize for themselves, if it does in fact exist. But something far more sinister awaits the unsuspecting treasure hunters beneath the surface, and as their harrowing journey takes an unexpectedly terrifying turn, they soon discover that HUMANKIND IS NO LONGER AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN!

(Long pause.)

Chris: Bullshit.



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

"Well that was good fun! Gosh, Andrew Beeblebrox sure has written an entertaining adventure that was just the right length for its plot and kept me tuning in for more, hasn't he? Jolly good performances all round in fact and some excellent production! Alas, the evil Trods are searching my bedroom for me. I can hear them under the bed! They are very close now! It cannot be long before they find me, especially since I'm shouting at the top of my voice! And when they do... AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHJHHHHHHHHHH!" - Gareth Preston (2001)


"When I heard Andrew was writing for the SCADs, I thought the end result could be a little bit mad. Now I've heard the finished result, I can confidently say that it's not as mad as it sounds. In fact, it's actually fucking deranged."
- Dave Restal (2000)


"I bought this play after a strange man in a scarf and a chainsaw threatened to cut me into teeny tiny pieces if I didn't. And I hated it. I hated it so much. There aren't enough hours in the day to hate it. I have to get up early in the morning just to hate this. Keff McCulloch's arrangement of the theme tune. The lack of recording clarity. The unconvincing British accents. The unengaging, nasty and thriftless script with just the right amount of talent-free garbage balanced with the sheer lack of charisma by all involved. The cliffhangers always leave me wondering why I didn't choose the liberty of death over this. I cannot help thinking that surely the warm embrace of Thanatos was a better option. The very idea of a sequel to this is like being drenched in the blood of small children. It's amazing the play is as awful as it is, and don't get me started on the fact all the background material is lifted from commercially available Doctor Who music albums, and they've gone out of their way to find the instantly recognizable ones JUST to annoy me! This release has made me want to find the cast and crew and flog them! TO DEATH!" - Dylan Moran (2009)


"Not a patch on my stories with Big Finish. Up yours!" - Nigel Verkoff (2004)


"Who is that doing the voiceover of the add? It sounds like Sam West! No, it's
Michael Wade! What is a man of his calibre doing in crap like this?! If it's blackmail, why is he doing so little? Did he destroy the evidence! Oh, this is so exciting! Oh. Wait. Yeah. Back to the story. Sigh..."
- Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)


"Not a bad little story. Not a particularly GOOD little story, but a story none the less. There is just enough to sustain it over four episodes, though it wouldn't have hurt if it had been cut down to three. Apart from the stuff that was cut, that probably hurt. You know, I'm almost a sympathetic character in my insanity, wanting only to be free and only one more story before I've finished this fucking handbook! One more story then I'll be free of Chip Bleeding Jamison and his somewhat annoying (to say the least) almost-constant state of forced panic. The scenes between the Doctor and Christine during the tour show the relationship between them very well, proving how pointless the companion is. But she's not going to read this. Is she?"
- The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



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

"I must admit, by this time I was getting very worn out. Not only by playing the part of Doctor Who, but I had a teenage nymphomaniac as a mistress at the time. She was one of several, the only ones that kept me going that year. Four seasons is a long time, and nine years is goddamned eternity.

Unfortunately, this story was a big blur to me - I think the relief of doing something without John S Drew was too much for my brain to handle. I remember a lot of the cast commenting on how wonderful they thought the story was, even though they'd been damning it all the way to hell until that scruffy hermit came in and convinced them all it was brilliant. But for me it was just another work day, running around a studio full of people I despised until there was sufficient distraction for me to escape to a whipped cream orgy.

I think my character suffered for that. My performance was pretty weak. I mean, that bit where I'm asked what the weather's like and I reply, 'Look at me and kneel - I am so freaking handsome!'. That wasn't in the script. I don't even know why I said it. I think it was some kind of complete nervous breakdown.

It sure didn't help that when we finished the story, they decided from now on they were actually going to do some proper post-production work and we wouldn't have to spend all day with everyone all around you shouting their lines, lasers going off in the background, a cringe-making guilt-ridden hell. Everything you heard on your stereo is what we heard in the studio. Including the police raids.

But from now on, they were going to stop recording in the tradition of the old-style radio broadcasts and no longer would everything be live. I think this was an excitingly rational way to do it. I'd like to do more of this... and I only got one story left! The fuckers were taunting me, I tell ya! TAUNTING ME!!"



Rachel Sommers Speaks!
----------------------

"I liked The Hidden Bonus for one line that I had. 'It's a CAFTAN, asshole!' That was my favorite line in The Hidden Bonus."



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

This is the first and indeed only SCAD story penned by Andrew Beeblebrox, and perhaps this is a good thing. Beeblebrox had, with his flatmate Nigel Verkoff and Dave Restal, headed to England to oversee the production of Verkoff's Big Finish audio play, Fan & Phantasmagoria starring the Fifth Doctor and Turlough.

Unfortunately, Beeblebrox had somehow managed to get himself stuck in the overhead luggage compartment of the planet they were travelling in at the time. By the time he escaped, the plane had left England and headed straight to America. Not realizing he was in entirely the wrong continent, Beeblebrox politely asked directions to "the bunch of rabid Doctor Who fans producing rubbish audios of truly dubious quality". Soon, he found himself directed the derelict ruins that the Superiority Complex Audio Dramas were exiled to on fear of a punishment so hideous it was known only as 'Ronnie Barker'.

It quickly became obvious that he was at the wrong place, but since he needed the air fare home, Beeblebrox offered his services to Producer Douglas Phillips to produce a four-part audio in return for a one way ticket home. Phillips had no time for such 'filthy degenerate offspring of colonial scum', but Beeblebrox was shockingly persuasive and after a few minutes had complete editorial control for a story on the grounds that it would make a refreshing change from having to put up with John S. Drew as with the other three stories to be made that year.

Having had to put up with Verkoff's rewrites for the last six months, Beeblebrox was au fait with the problems of audio scripting... indeed, more conversant with the whole thing than the rest of the SCADs. Rather than trying to shoehorn himself as a Mary Sue into the established lineup, Beeblebrox decided to follow the advice of his favorite script editor Sherlock Holmes: "Talent borrows, genius steals, and Tom Baker ruins it anyway."

Beeblebrox decided therefore to completely plagiarize a very scary story he read one afternoon entitled The Fear of the Darkness Which Is Black And Hairy And Has Huge Teeth by Thomas "The Masochism Tango" Lehrer. The story told of two amateur potholers who foolishly break into a cave containing pure evil from beyond the dawn of time itself, suffer a nervous breakdown, then get saved by a passing ghost and told to take up fishing instead.

With the working title of Doctor Who and the Native American Vengeance Spirit (AKA Dr Who - OMFG, That Rock MOVED!!), the story involved the TARDIS landing in a cave and the Doctor and Chris rather stupidly ignoring the inhuman screams and rumbles around them as they try and cut their way through solid rock. They similarly ignore the bloody pictograms, the human remains and the strange breathing noises until screaming hysterically, running back into the TARDIS, taking off and never sleeping with the light off ever again.

Phillips and Himinez were more than happy to use this as a full story, but Beeblebrox was sure it needed something a bit more in the mainstream of Doctor Who. He decided to diversify his outright plagiarism to other Doctor Who stories, like The Protons, Doctor Who and the Silly Lurians, Return of the Cybermen, The Nose of Evil, and to an extent The Hound of the Baskervilles. He was desperate to avoid the cut and paste of the Segal years, and similarly didn't like the "live" recording format that the SCADs had used since its inception.

Until now, sound effects and music were played over the actors speaking in the studio - which saved a lot of time in post production and making the scenes comes alive, giving the actors something to act against. Beeblebrox suggested instead they just do all of it in post production and allow people to actually PROPERLY hear the dialogue for once, since the acting could hardly get any worse without the sounds of door closing and guns firing.

Phillips retorted that Beeblebrox would just have to lump it, but after a few minutes of conversation, the producer found himself agreeing to completely change things at the whim of the scruffy hermit with the bug eyes.

Beeblebrox wanted to make sure that Chris suffered from as LITTLE character development as possible during her first season, on the grounds that the only story to try that had originally been written for Ace and thus didn't count. Instead, he focussed on Chris's wardrobe in direct response to the criticism that companion Victoria Waterfield received in her second story (Room of the Cybermen) and keep her dressed very conservative... before realizing that the criticism had come from his flatemate, and he was actually criticizing the fact she was wearing TOO MUCH and obsessed how she was able to put on a bra with no training of any sort whatsoever. Thus, he decided not to give a damn and decided to have Chris wear silver spandex and no underwear.

"Something for the kids there," he observed before completely losing interest in the entire enterprise. Leaving Himinez to pick up the pieces, Beeblebrox started mucking about with the SCAD's crude ZX81 and tried to create a computer game based on The Hidden Bonus as the story was now named. It was a simple game, mainly because anything more complicated would have melted the hard drive, and involved forcing Tim deeper and deeper into Southbank Caves until he finally died of suffocation, starvation and being incredibly annoying.

By the time any of the production team were able to get his creation, Beeblebrox had created three more computer games - Time Warp, with the Jeff Coburn Doctor facing a dance off with the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show; Hunt the TARDIS, with the First Doctor forced to put on a tutu to distract an army of Dustbins for a full three minutes; and Doctor Whom, where Paul McGann took on the Dustbin Emperor for the simply reason both were characters whose very existence pissed Phillips off immensely.

Phillips decided that the time had come for a confrontation between the REAL power behind the Superiority Complex Audio Dramas and this ragged Australian backpacker who couldn't stop giggling at the sight of Dave Segal. And so Phillips ordered Supreme Commanding Emperor Richard Segal to come up from the Deep Realms and smote Beeblebrox around the ears and rent him asunder.

Segal and Beeblebrox spoke earnestly for six hours, and then Beeblebrox left the SCADs production office with their entire budget, a first class airfare back to Australia, and the entire cast had a whip round to get him a going away present while Dave Segal was forced to drop his trousers and turn in a circle five hundred and twenty-three times while waving his arms like wings. When pressed, Richard Segal refused to discuss why he agreed to these incredible terms and conditions, but that simply Beeblebrox had been EXTREMELY compelling.

Phillips wanted to scrap The Hidden Bonus, but time was on the wing, the frost is on the pumpkin, it was time for carrying the meat to the next station and I'm not just whistling dixie! The finale story of Jeffry Coburn was underway, as over eight years of procrastination, pretension, pusillanimity and incredibly poor performances came screaming to an end - and NOTHING would ever be the same again...

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