Wednesday, July 1, 2009

JS Doctor - Radio 2000

One Hundred And Fifty-Fourth Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Pirate Radio Post Offices


18D - Radio Y2K -

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

The aftermath of the Millennium Bug. World War III. Chaos. The breakdown of society. What would you give up to live a normal life? Your freedom? Your planet? HAH! Like you actually have a CHOICE, you pathetically deluded little person! In the years that follow mankind's greatest holocaust, a single leader emerges to rule the Earth with his iron fist. There is but a single voice which speaks out against him: that is the voice of Radio Y2K. Well, the voice of the disc jockeys who run Radio Y2K. And there's more than one voice, but they're not going to mention THAT in propaganda, are they?

Some people believe in Medina's rule. Some believe that it will take the disipline of a dictator to save the Earth from itself. Some HAVEN'T become mutated cannibalistic zombie psychopaths loitering the deadly wastelands. While others are willing to stop at nothing to silence the voice of freedom which eminates from the lone station, high in orbit above the Earth. If only to stop them playing their fucking Bowie song 24 hours a fucking DAY!

The Doctor and Chris arrive on board the pirate radio station Radio Y2K, which is also orbiting high above the earth. No, wait, it's the same as that lone station I was talking about earlier. Forget that. Anyway, little do the Doctor and Chris realize the station is targeted for destruction by an evil dictator. I mentioned him earlier, didn't I?

But that's only the beginning of their troubles. Furthermore, the time travelers find themselves involved in a revolt where the stakes are far greater than just who will live at Number 10. Especially since Number 10 is a bombed out ruin in a high radiation zone that even cockroaches avoid. In fact, given that, it's rather hard to believe the Doctor and Chris could find stakes that could be LOWER than who will live at Number 10. So, anyway, things are greater than that. Far greater indeed.

And there is a third party...waiting just outside the solar system...watching. And no seeing a damn thing because this is on audio! AUDIO! WHY DOES NO ONE EVER ACTUALLY REMEMBER IMPORTANT DETAILS LIKE THAT!!




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

Earth, Nevada, Year Zero. A group of rebel Federation soldiers prepare for their assault in a deserted desert warehouse near Las Vegas. The trouble is the Federation keeps getting distracted by all the pretty lights, casinos, pyramids, showgirls and especially the pesky digital radio station run by a bunch of pirate DJs so crap they need to operate outside the atmosphere rather than the usual five-mile limit.

But as the rebels bitch about the quality of the playlist, they are suddenly overrun by the evil Eurak Loyalists. Unsurprisingly, they all die as Jefferson Airplane plays inappropriately in the background.

Luckily, the Federation leader Ratchet (Chip Jamison) is able to give an important bit of data - a betamax video casette - to Tara, the last fertile woman left on Earth and vaguely relevant to saving the human race from extinction. Ratchet instructs her to her to escape to the orbiting space station used by Radio Y2K. But before Ratchet can explain WHY she should do this incredibly irrational thing, he gets shot through the head.

Meanwhile, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS into the outskirts of the solar system to pick up decades old transmissions of Earth. He claims this will prevent the signals reaching other civilizations and alerting aliens to the presence of life on Earth and causing them to invade.

"Plus, it allows me to tape all the episodes I missed the first time round," the Time Lord grins at Chris, and they settle down to watch fifty-nine episodes of The Banana Splits on the TARDIS scanner.

Back on Earth, Tara makes her way to dinosaur-and-ape-ridden Las Vegas and there she meets a mercenary called Parsifal and his lover, Big Ape (Chip Jamison). Parsifal has the last ever P-Mat device, a brilliant creation that transmats you anywhere while sending the contents of your bowels into the heart of the sun - the ultimate evolution of the lavatorial sciences.

Tara wants to use the P-Mat to travel to Radio Y2K, but when Parsifal and Big Ape ask here why in the name of sanity she would want to do such a thing, she admits she doesn't really know and was kind of hoping that THEY could give a motive for her doing such an important thing. After much soul-searching, discussion and argument, they decide that the spaced-out inhabitants of the space station would be the only freaks with a betamax cassette player with which to discover what the hell is on the tape.

Just then, the stone towers are knocked over and the animatronic triceratops are attacked by one-eyed blue-skinned cavemen using the corpses of giant bats as hang gliders. These are the mutated and deformed dancers of Las Vegas who fled underground to escape the A-bomb blitz but have violently devolved into hunter-gatherers who prize peacock feathers above everything else.

The beast-men slaughter the casino inhabitants in scenes so utterly identical to the Euraks versus Federation scenes at the start of the episode that, frankly, just between you and me, I wondered whether or not my CD was skipping. Big Ape bundles Tara into the P-Mat terminal but before he can tell her how to use it, he gets shot through the head. Again. As "Staying Alive" plays inappropriately in the background.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Chris irritably tune out the transmissions from Radio Y2K and go back to watching The Banana Splits.

Finally, Tara managed to activate the P-Mat engine and reappears on the space station, feeling much relieved and having once again escaped certain death in the face of insurmountable odds. As she congratulates herself on a job well done, a passing unknown assailant (Chip Jamison) blows her brains out with a semi-automatic handgun and she drops dead to the floor.

With its usual timing, the TARDIS chooses that moment to materialize next to the twitching corpse and the Doctor and Chris emerge to trip over the body and drench themselves in her hot blood. Disturbingly, Chris considers this to be a great start to the day - while the Doctor is certain any moment the occupants of this space station will arrive and leap to the conclusion they murdered the victim before trying to execute them.

At that moment, the occupants of this space station will arrive and leap to the conclusion they murdered the victim before trying to execute them.

"What did I tell you?" the Doctor asks Chris as David Bowie the Second (Chip Jamison) tries to throttle him for killing his one, non-inflatable girlfriend before he could get a shag out of her.

Luckily, Teophanous P Wildebeest is willing to allow the Doctor to explain himself if he can. But it quickly becomes apparent he is more interested in getting inside Chris's medieval underwear to listen, so the Doctor is locked in a broom cupboard while Wildebeest puts on some Barry White and does a contemptible Isaac Hayes impression. Chris is underwhelmed.

Meanwhile, in post-nuclear-apocalypse New America, specifically the famously dangerous area known as the "Threshold of Hell", half-robot ex-secret service agent and mythical cannibal Father Overlord Joseph Medina (Chip Jamison) sits on a radio tower playing a kazoo and blowing saliva bubbles. This is the reclusive figurehead of the Teragrammatron Council who never interacts with anyone outside the ruling council, but his kazoo is omnipresent throughout.

Medina gets an email from his spy (Chip Jamison) on Radio Y2K revealing that the Doctor and Chris are suspected by the crew of killing Tara. Without a second thought, Medina deletes the email as spam and goes back to his music.

Now, you're probably wondering how in the name of Mark Callahan (formerly of Gang-Gajang but now known as "Cal") did an ex-script editor for the Superiority Complex Audio Dramas become dictator for life for the entire planet Earth. I sure know I am. But it's never explained and just assumed that the Millennium Bug allows all sorts of apocalyptic shit to happen and we just have to accept it no matter what.

A few mentions are made that Medina got into power by appeasing the public then took over the Star Wars program to do his evil work, rounding up all
the intellectuals, trouble-makers, etc, and take over the world media in less than six months, and no one has tried to stop him. No, wait, that's what he did to the SCADs, he must have done something else that allowed him to conquer the entire world despite all the different nuclear armageddons happening.

Left alone in the broom cupboard the Doctor decides that Medina must be just a very generic and cliched dictator who probably gained his position after a terrible war, promising to restore order but like all those who have absolute power, it has corrupted him absolutely. "Ah, irony never gets old!" the Time Lord enthuses, before noticing he's been locked in a cupboard for two episodes and deciding to break out and find the REAL killer!

He manages to walk about three steps before another DJ called Alan Chaz Love Gina Rocket Man (Chip Jamison) appears with a gun, having gone nuts after thirty-six days straight on air and is prepared to execute the Doctor if no one else will. The Doctor defeats this deadly foe by throwing a tennis ball down the corridor and shouting, "Go on, boy! FETCH!"

Depressingly, this approach works perfectly and prevents Alan Chaz Love Gina Rocket Man from carrying out his threat, and the Doctor heads to the meeting room to contemplate what has happened so far. After a few seconds he decides the answer is "sod all". Thus, he decides he doesn't really care about who really killed Tara and notices that she was carrying a betamax video - and the Time Lord determines not only that it is "not of Earth" but probably has information which would topple the current dictator Medina.

STILL not remotely interested in the piffling little affairs of 21st century Earth and realizing he's missing some really good Banana Splits episodes, the Doctor decides it's time to cut the losses and go. Unfortunately, he pops into the gents before returning to the TARDIS and unintentionally transmats himself down to the Earth via the P-Mat device.

He reappears in the remains of the East End, where two primitive tribes are struggling to survive in the barren wasteland of London. The Doctor muses that these survivors are only four centimeters tall and he probably appears as a giant godlike being to them. Before he can do anything remotely interesting, the tribes band together to stone the Doctor to death before he steals their tiny women for his own sick purposes.

The Doctor jumps up and down on the mutants and kills them all, and hopes that when humanity slowly rebuilds itself it won't be so teeny-tiny and utterly annoying to repeat its mistake and piss him off.

The Doctor manages to get to the West End, which is mostly inhabited by genetic experiments bred to be enforcers but look like rather tame German Shepherds. The Doctor is cornered by one of the creatures, but is saved by a huge flying stone head called Andrea, who spouts lots of aggressive feminist sociology propaganda.

Fleeing the nasty doggy things, the Doctor climbs inside Andrea the huge flying stone head and heads to an island surrounded by storms and inhabited by slightly less dog-shaped nuclear holocaust survivors and a handy android army lead a luxurious but aimless existence.

Arriving at the Threshold of Hell, the Doctor is surrounded by Medina's forces of decadent apathetic effete psychic artificial intelligences and taken prisoner. He is taken to the Tabernacle and there confront Medina himself - and the Doctor is sore disappointed, since he was hoping if ever one of his former script editors conquered the Earth it would be Douglas Adams.

Medina then receives an email from a mysterious alien (Chip Jamison) who complains that the preparation of Earth's invasion is taking too long and should have got underway four episodes ago. Medina tells the alien to shut the hell up or he will personally come round there and run cheese wire through their spinal column like dental floss. The alien bursts into tears and hangs up.

The Doctor found the grating mechanical voice eerily familiar and demands to know what Medina is up to since he ALREADY rules the world. The dictator laughs and explains that his control is threatened not by the bunch of worthless tossers running Radio Y2K, but something SERIOUS!

"The Arctic Flowers are coming! The black marsh weeds are nigh!"

"Um... ok..."

"Millions of years ago, the Earth was so cold it could no longer support life - but then the black flowers began to grow, multiplying across the face of the planet until the entirety was covered with the obsidian blooms! And, slowly, the blackness of the flowers sucked in the heat of the sun, warming the world and life began to evolve again! The Arctic Flowers disappeared, but they will be back!"

"Why?" asks the Doctor, at a loss. "The Earth isn't exactly freezing at the moment..."

"Exactly! When the flowers return this time, they will spread across the Northern hemisphere, absorb the heat and use it to melt the polar ice caps! The planet will be drowned, millions will die! The planet will always protect itself and destroy its enemies - and its enemy this time is mankind! When humanity picks a fight with the Earth Goddess, the Earth Goddess will win!"

"Well, obviously," the Doctor humors him. "I guess that means you're pretty much screwed, aren't you?"

"Oh, no, Doctor. For there is something more powerful than Gaia, something that can defeat nature... THE TRODS!!!"

Yes, Joseph Medina is obsessed with Trods. Who'd have thunk it?

Medina reveals to the Doctor that he plans to surrender the Earth to the Trods to avoid the inevitable metal-soaked bloodshed that would occur if they were to try and take the planet by force (and they'd succeed, because they're Trods and you do NOT fuck with them, OK?).

The Doctor sighs, but admits that this is arguably the sanest and most logical plan Medina has had. I mean, compared to letting the rainforests be pulped in the firm belief he had all the herbal medicine he needed (which is all rainforests are good for) was stupid. Being surprised at the ecological disaster that followed was suicidal. Then waging a nuclear war against the rest of the Earth was complete insanity... almost as insane as explaining all his plans to the Doctor and then telling the Time Lord to see himself out with a promise to go to the nearest firing squad and be executed.

Unsurprisingly, the Doctor escapes and prepares to foil Medina's evil plans.

Just when things don't like they can possibly get any worse for our demented dictator, he gets an abusive email from the Trod Potentate who says that its synthetic feelings have really been hurt and they have decided to destroy all of the Earth in a neutron bomb conflict rather than waiting for a big bully to surrender the world to them peacefully!

Medina sighs and starts head-butting his desk repeatedly as the Trods attack, intending to purify the Earth with flames... and carpet bombs... Hordes of the robots of death swarm across the ruined planet in perfect formation, the various post-holocaust mutant cavemen proving no match for the armor-plated alien killing machines who blast all dead with their incineration rays. Soon, the screams of the dying block out the sound of Radio Y2K's classic rock and roll.

As Trodos cruisers mercilessly swoop over the rooftops of the buildings and fire missiles at the streets causing more panic, confusion, fire and death, the Doctor shakes his head and walks off insisting this is a complete waste of the weekend. He saved subjugated planets all the time! Isn't he allowed to just kick back and watch cartoons once in a while?

While milliards of flying Trods hurtle towards Earth like metal locusts, back at Radio Y2K, Chris is generally pointing out all the flaws in the logic of this pirate radio station. How exactly do White Rabbit, Staying Alive, Hound Dog and A Wonderful World manage to be anti-authority propaganda music? Why not something by the Sex Pistols?!

And if their satellite can communicate with the entire Earth, why can they not send images instead of just audio? Even Chris knows that both society and technology have changed since the 1980s! Seriously what were the odds that a bunch of sad-acts complaining about American consumerism will somehow change the entire world in five minutes?

Finally, the DJs realize that the Earth has been invaded by the Trods, just as they receive an email from the Super-Trod (Chip Jamison) saying simply: PREPARE TO MEET THY DOOM in an animated dripping-blood font. Then they notice that the main saucer has fired a whacking great neutron missile at the station and panic uselessly until Chris smacks some sense into them and calls them all poofters for being scared.

The Doctor reappears in the station thanks to reversing the polarity of the P-Mat's plumbing flow. The DJs suggest turning their transmitter into a deadly delta-wave generator to destroy all the swarming robots, but the Doctor points out he has a much better idea: letting the Trods blow up the radio station.

Oddly enough, this doesn't seem to help.

Nevertheless, our heroes escape into the TARDIS where the Doctor places the all-important betamax video into the console VCR, intending to broadcast it to the entire world. Chris points out that even if the Doctor's right and it in any way actually incriminates Medina in selling humanity out to the Trods, it's hardly going to matter now the robot bastards have full control of the Earth. The Doctor waspishly points out that the human race is very lucky he turned up today at ALL and they should be damned grateful for what they are given.

The Doctor clicks play... and discovers the cassette DOESN'T contain Medina's transmissions to the Trods, but is actually a perpetually looped compilation tape of episodes of The Banana Splits! As the familiar theme music plays across the Earth, all the Trods start spinning in circles on the spot, uncontrollably before exploding one by one.

On the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor, Chris and the DJs as the shrieking, exploding Trods engulf the atmosphere of the Earth in flame and the Trodos battle fleet dissolves into oblivion leaving nothing left. The Doctor muses on the biggest, baddest invasion force in history being wiped out by the theme music to The Banana Splits and deems it "Awesome".

True, there is the slight downer in that when every single Trod self-destructed, the unimaginable devastation has wiped out whole continents and ended countless lives, as well as triggering huge volcanoes which boil the planetary crust until it runs like cream and splits the Earth, while raging tidal waves drown the globe and anyone unlucky enough to survive.

But the Doctor is confident things will sort themselves out and sets the TARDIS to land on Earth next week when order has overcome chaos. Amazingly enough, it works and the TARDIS arrives in a beautiful meadow with sweet fresh air, butterflies and trees and flowers. And sheep (Chip Jamison).

The Doctor tells the Radio Y2K crew to get the hell out of his time machine and rebuild their stupid world on their own. The DJs appoint Dilbert Wilkins (Chip Jamison) their new ruler, to create a glorious future of life free from the Doomsday Mother Earth Gaia conspiracy theories.

As the Doctor is about to enter the TARDIS, he notices black flowers (Chip Jamison) beginning to emerge from the grass. Putting this down to some freaky coincidence, he leaves with Chris as quickly as possible.

The story's hopeful - and highly inaccurate - tag line reads "The Beginning".



Books/Other Related Material-
Dr. Who Versus Airheads of Trodos (Canada Only)
Doctor Who On The Brink Of The Edge of Destructive Disastrous Darkness
"I Have Seen The Future And It Doesn't Work!" by Lance Parkin


Links and References -
While reading a paperback of 'Alice Through The Looking Glass', the Doctor notes to Chris that "the exact same shit happened to me once!" This is a reference to "Fictional Hippopotamus", as if the world needed another one of THOSE.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Third Doctor once shared a luxury apartment with the Bastard, Lavros and the Cyber-Controller and often got into plenty of crazy and imaginative mishaps - like that time the TV broke and they had to call in the repairmen only to find the TV was fine and it was the aerial at fault... but it still cost them £4000 for a consultation fee.



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

Chris: That noise! What is it?

Doctor: Chip Jamison.

Chris: It sounds evil.

Doctor: There are many that think it is.

-------

Doctor: Just who are you working for? Who are your masters?

Super-Trod: FEW CREATURES CAUSE SUCH UNIVERSAL DREAD AS WE DO. OUR RAIDING PARTIES APPEAR THROUGHOUT TIME AND SPACE, RAMPAGING AND CONQUERING AND DESTROYING AND STERILIZING WITH NEUTRON FIRE...

Medina: Don't be so melodramatic! What could possibly be that bad?

Doctor: Oh no! You're conspiring with the most evil race I have ever encountered: THE TRODS!! (Long Pause) OK, your turn, scream MY name out. C'mon, there's a cookie in it for you...

-------

Andrea: How can you sit there so calm?

Doctor: Vallium. Helps me think better.

Andrea: You're working out a plan to escape?

Doctor: I know nothing about where we are, so planning to escape isn't such a good idea.

Andrea: How do we get out of here?

Doctor: I've often found escape possibilities occur when you least expect it.

Andrea: In other words, you're making it up as you go along?

Doctor: Much like the writer.

-------

Wilkins: DUDES! I've GOT to let you KNOW that there's a MISSILE heading STRAIGHT TOWARDS the STATION! It's SAFE to SAY that the Trods have AUTHORIZED this strike, CONSIDERING they are the only ones left with any MILITARY! You see HERE now, PEOPLE?! The LENGTHS to which TRODS is WILLING TO GO IN ORDER TO RID THEMSELVES OF A NUISANCE SUCH AS RADIO Y2K?!? We're going OFF the air in a few MINUTES, but we'll go out playing the BEST of classic ROCK AND ROLL! And WITH THAT, let's pick up a little with PANOPTICON-8 REMIX!!



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

Doctor: You can't do that!

Medina: "Can't"? Doctor, I'm the world leader!

Doctor: How the hell did you manage that?

Medina: Oh, it was easy! So, so easy! I could have pissed world domination in my sleep. Earth, hanging on the edge of darkness, needed a firm hand. I brought the stability needed. But how much longer can I hold it together? As time goes by, more and more people are becoming disenchanted with my vision, my dream. As I manage to root out another nest of vipers, twice as many spring up to challenge me - and as for that accursed Radio Y2K! They never play any Devo, and instead spread their filth, stirring up the rabble... I would shoot them out of the sky, but that would make them martyrs to all seventeen people aware of their existence! Their message and cause would just become more powerful and encourage those fence-sitters to topple over to the rebel sides! Why don't they understand? It's for their own good. I cannot let anyone or anything stand in the way of total domination...

Doctor: (Interrupts) Yeah, well, we don't need to hear the rest of that rhetoric...

Medina: OH, I AM SO SAD AND LONELY...

Doctor: Yes... yes, you are... are you going to finish that sandwich?

-------

Chris: Is it doth nature or nurture that maketh me talk this way?
Is it thou or is it thee that's saying doth the things I say?
Thou say thou art looking at thee but all thee see is thou!
And thee can only wonder at all the things thou doth now!
Get it right sometime! Get it right this time!

DJs: Someday in a post-apocalyptic world!
We just live in a post-apocalyptic world!
We just live in a post-apocalyptic world!
Post-apocalyptic world!

Chris: We hath seen Mother Nature; we hath seen thou lost and found!
Still hanging on thou apron strings thou spinneth us all around!
So high, so low, sometimes so twisted, thy cannot see!
I doth think I am looking at thou but all I see is thee!
Get it right sometime! Get it right this time!

DJs: Someday in a post-apocalyptic world!
We just live in a post-apocalyptic world!
We just live in a post-apocalyptic world!
Someday in a post-apocalyptic world!

Chris: Is there rhyme or reason that writeth the script this way?
We thinketh we art really acting, we art just acting for today!
Thou do not seem to know too much! Thou heads art underground!
Verily, the future stays looming regardless of what we hath found
Who doth care that solid gold can be extracted from the earth?
Thou shalt not with gaudy specks of dead stars count thou worth!

DJs: Someday in a post-apocalyptic world!
We just live in a post-apocalyptic world!
We can do all the post-apocalyptic things
We will live in a post-apocalyptic world!
POST-APOCALYPTIC WORLD!

-------

Doctor: I'm called the Doctor and this is my friend, Christine.

Wildebeest: "Doctor"? Hello, my fellow practitioner. I too am a doctor. A doctor of lurve. For a price! And what is wrong with that? Pure capitalism at its best!

Wilkins: SPOKEN like the TRUE MATERIALIST of the 80s!

Chris: I doth have a knife and are not too fearful to use it, buster.

--------

Super-Trod: THE TROD STRATAGEM NEARS COMPLETION. THE FLEET IS ALMOST READY TO ATTACK PLANET EARTH. ALL LIFE WILL BE INCINERATED! MY VESSEL WILL DESTROY THE SPACE STATION. THIS WILL BE OUR PARADISE!

Medina: You can't destroy the Earth! I'm ON it!

Super-Trod: YOU WILL NOT INTERVENE WITH THE INVASION!

Medina: But we had a deal!

Super-Trod: OH, HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I HEARD THAT REFRAIN?

Doctor: Ooh, smackdown!

-------

Funky Dan: Radio Y2K will continue to keep you abreast of the latest
developments while entertaining you with 24 hours of classic rock and roll, gratuitous use of catchphrases and self-justifying wank!

Super-Trod: PURGE THE AIRWAVES! EXTERMINATE RADIO Y2K!!!



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

"Man, those were-German Shepherds look terrifying." - The Dog Woman (2000)

"This story summed up the entirety of the Superiority Complex Audio Dramas: the more I heard, the more it irritated me." - Ewen Campion-Clarke (2007)

"All in all, Radio Y2K fails not because it's utterly and irredeemably crap, but because it's not utterly and irredeemably good." - Nigel Verkoff (2002)

"I have to say that the SCADs don't seem to be of particularly bad quality (from this small offering) and would be quite admirable for their dedication, if only they didn't have such monstrous egos. To whit, THEY SAY THERE WOULD BE NO BIG FINISH WITHOUT THEM!!! Jesus Christ, that is either incredible delusion, incredible ignorance, or a deadly combination of both!!" - Jared Hansen (2007)

"Like the ripple of the water sends a message to the shore, so I know for ever after I will miss you more and more! IT WON'T BE EASY! NO! IT WON'T BE EASY WITHOUT YOU! NO, NO! In the shelter of the moonlight, in the shadow of the sun, in the silence that's eternal, days are passing one by one! IT WON'T BE EASY! NO! IT WON'T BE EASY WITHOUT YOU! NO, NO! IT WON'T BE EASY!!!"
- Joseph Medina (2007)

"With more ups and downs than a manic depressive on a roller coaster, Radio Y2K is a deranged, badly plotted mess - but it has a certain kitsch appeal and thus is beyond reproach. The crew of Radio Y2K have very definite personalities, though I couldn't really tell them apart. Or their enemies. But I'm sure some of them steal the show, I just didn't notice since they were barely in the story and did absolutely fuck all throughout. Hearing everyone bicker and banter back and forth is what will have you coming back again and again and demanding what in the name of god's arse were they thinking when they released this bullshit! Even the stolen, copyrighted bumper music is utterly pointless and story wise, you have the interesting question of how a global dictatorship can be felled in thirty seconds after being told about it second-hand for an hour. At five episodes, none of it is used at ALL! Come to think of it, didn't Big Finish do this and much, much better?" - The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



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

"One of the nice things about an audio drama is that you don't have to get your hands, or feet, dirty, as it were. I'm very thankful that I wasn't the one who had to do all that sewer sloshing, even though it's supposed to be me. All hail the foley artists! I couldn't live without you! Otherwise it would be ME being forced to wander through the sewer system at knife point by Douglas Phillips to get 'authentic sound atmos'. The guy's a fucking lunatic.

Speaking of which, they nearly got rid of Chris in this story, which really upset poor Rachel. She killed three little scout girls selling cookies when she heard about it. She's her own worst critic, really. No one else can constantly take apart her performance apart from her without being found knifed to death moments later, which happened a lot at the beginning.

They didn't like the way she delivered her line, a stutter got in the way, and suddenly there's blood on the walls and more headless bodies to be buried. But she's got better over time, more confident that no one will be stupid enough to contradict her. I think it shows. And it works well with her character. The more sure Rachel became, the more confidence Chris projects as she becomes more accustomed to travelling around with the Doctor and mastering the arts of street-fighting and sadistic torture. They both seem to be developing together. Rather creepy, that.

But thing about Radio Y2K I loved was the idea of the Doctor wanting to see The Banana Splits was great! That was just so in character for him. I myself am convinced that the theme song has incredibly powerful relevance to him. I think that the children of Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of eight to enter a magical academy of wizards, and the novices are initiated by looking at the whole of the vortex.

You see, that's where it all started, when he was a child, when he saw eternity. Staring at the raw power of time and space, seeing its infinite complexity and majesty raging through his mind, just eight years old, that was when he first heard it... that's when it chose him... The theme to the Banana Splits!

Can't you hear it? Listen, it's there now. Right now. It's everywhere! Listen! Listen, listen! I thought it would stop, but it never does. Never ever stops. Inside my head. Tell me you can hear it, young man. Tell me.

La-la-lah, la-lala-lah, la-la-lah, lah-lala-lah..."



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

The Space Year 2000 would prove to be the most strenuous and tension-filled year that the Superiority Complex had ever suffered. They had merely twelve months in which to script, revise, rehearse, record, produce and distribute another four full-length stories which would write out Jeffrey Coburn's Doctor and write in his replacement Jym de Natale (once numerous and invasive tests were carried out to prove he wasn't David Segal in a convincing false moustache). This meant they actually had to get off their arses and make a minimum of nineteen episodes, a maximum of nineteen episode and, in truth, only nineteen episodes before the year was out!

Thinking quickly, Producer Douglas Phillips decided that the final story would be the first full appearance of the de Natale Doctor, which would add to the air of Colin Baker's Doctor which they were ripping off like no tomorrow. This meant that they only really had to concentrate on the first three stories with Jeff Coburn, which had to be completed as soon as possible. Coburn was determined to leave by the end of 2000, and would regularly scream apropos of nothing "THIS IS THE ONLY LIFE I'VE GOT!! WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?!?!" before making a break for it. His eyes were permanently fixed on the SCAD studio clock which he urged to move faster and take him towards freedom.

As you can imagine, producing stories under these conditions would be difficult at the best of times, but these were not the best of times. The Don't Quit Your Day-Job Players rock band had decided to crash at the studios and were now claiming squatter's rights - worse, their recording equipment was around forty years more advanced than the equipment available to the SCADs. Script Editor Thomas Himinez decided to try and use this to their advantage, and use the band as part of their stories.

Doctor Who Doesn't Quit His Day Job was commissioned right away and Phillips demanded the story end with companion Christine staying behind at the end of the story. There is no documentation as to why Phillips had requested this alternate ending or why it was eventually not used. Instead, I shall totally make up some crap off the top of my head and say that Phillips was overcome with lust for Rachel Sommers but was adamant that no girlfriend of his goes out to work. Unfortunately, Sommers was far from keen on the relationship and castrated Phillips with a pair of eyebrow tweezers and so she stayed on as a regular.

In any case it was decided that John S Drew - inhuman perpetrator of such heinous war crime as The Thyme Brokers, The Doomsday Single and Polymorph, and did not require such "foreign" things like food, sleep or paychecks. Drew immediately wanted to pen his most audacious story yet - a socially-relevant,
futuristic spy thriller focussing on media manipulation, peaceful rebellion and
environmental conservation.

It then struck him that wasting his genius on some badly-dubbed fan audios would be squandering his skills, so he decided not to bother. Instead, he mixed up some post-apocalyptic 1970s sci-fi exploitation flicks and had everyone shout ill-matched cliches very loudly. In fact, he decided to save time and write a visual story to get rid of all that tedious exposition. Not only would this mean hardly anyone could understand what was going on, they sure as hell wouldn't be able to complain without showing off their stunted human ignorance.

Unfortunately, it became clear that he only had enough "plot" for three episodes and the story needed five. Thinking quickly, Drew added some more totally superfluous sequences of gun battles in Nevada and Las Vegas, and making all the cliffhangers really long. However, even THIS would not be enough to give the story four really short episodes.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Thomas Himinez decided to use the last resort - the script for The Murgatroid Invasion, commissioned some time in 1981 to return in the time of the SCADs' greatest need! The script consisted entirely of the Doctor and his companion sitting in the TARDIS watching The Banana Splits, and could easily pad out whole episodes. It is rumored that it was tested in the David Segal era, and created a thirty-seven-episode story no one has managed to live long enough to listen to entirely.

Taking only the first page gave Radio Y2K over a hundred and seventy minutes more of material, leading to severe edits of the original script so the TARDIS scenes could still fit in. With this success, the script would be used again and again in following years until, tragically, there was no more left and soon everyone involved with The Murgatroid Invasion mysteriously vanished out of time and space into a hellish nowhere place that can best be described as Freemont.

However, time was running out and Phillips decided that they had to get Drew's unique "futuristic historical documentary" out of the way as soon as possible, in order to concentrate on the next two stories and finally complete the Coburn era before the increasingly-unstable actor found a workable escape route.

To this end it was decided to once more get Sheri Divine to direct the story, after her crippling work on The Curse of the Arabs which had already put the SCADs three years ahead of schedule. It mean the entire cast and crew voluntarily surrendering themselves to a fascist regime based on psychological horror and sadistic physiological torture, but Phillips was as ever ridiculously confident that it would all sort itself out with no real long term side effects.

Divine completed recording of the story some thirteen minutes later, along with three weeks of editing and post-production. This was a complete departure from the traditional "live" format the audios had used ever since Dave Segal worked out how to switch on the microphone, and also meant that Chip Jamison ended up playing 72% of the speaking characters. This was due to the fact the other cast members had all collapsed in a nervous heap and began singing the theme song to The Banana Splits for five hours and three minutes before having a little nap.

This, of course, meant that the final episode was impossible to complete without the song being a huge part of the narrative. Drew was more than capable of changing the entire plot to fit with this, using his massive tertiary brain lobes to good use. He also finally deduced that the One Called Joseph Medina was no longer present, so the exhaustive rewrites he'd automatically changed the birdlike alien Ovodian Warriors to the Trods - quite rightly knowing that Medina would have changed it anyway. And now it was all for nothing!

Furious at this slur to his very brood-unit, Drew took his revenge by changing the evil Milo Clancy, Dictator For Life In Perpetuity, into the insane, self-pitying and Trod-worshipping Joseph Medina. It is unclear whether or not this biting social satire actually resonated with the listeners, but then it is also unclear whether or not there WERE any listeners.

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