JS Doctor - The Warlords of Apshai (i)

One Hundred And Forty-Seventh Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Ludicrous Expectations & Crushing Disappointment



11D - The Warlords of Apeshit -

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

SOME DOCTORS...

SOME BASTARDS...

ONE... FINAL... BOARDGAME!!





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

Part I

(Opening credits - As Jon Pertwee does a cover of "I'm A Believer"; swirling diamond patterns of light change colour randomly; the face of the Jeff Coburn Doctor appears, shrugs helplessly, then vanishes again; the TARDIS hurtles straight towards us, stops, then backs off slowly, then an explosion forms the logo and credits...)

Deep in the dark and nasty regions of the universe where nobody goes, hangs the barren planet of Dead Parrot 5. And on the blasted, ancient surface of this dead world stands an ancient castle. Deep inside this dank and uninviting place are an archaeological expedition of cheaply-paid, second-rate treasure hunters and red-shirt-clad academics... and a wild-haired man with a cane (Jym de Natale) shouting advice to his lisping assistant, a redheaded girl called Chris.

Thankfully, the rest of expedition are spared from more speeches by the strange man that this castle holds the most important archaeological discovery since the fossilized Sylvester Stallone was dug up on Europa (frozen in the middle of recording "Rocky 2499: Lord of the Boxing Ring") when the frankly baffling sight of a 1970s Gremlin convertible arrives through the stormy atmosphere and reverse parks beside the swamp outside.

This curious transport belongs to Seth B. Darta (David Segal), a sinister and saturnine bearded man wearing ridiculously huge wraparound neo-futuristic sunglasses. Darta has single-handedly financed the entire operation, provided all supplies, equipment, and even provided each worker with a packed lunch.

The team leader takes Darta to the trapdoor in the castle cellar beyond which contains an artifact left behind by the Deadparrotonions who are known to most civilizations as "the Apeshit" because of their legendarily violent mood swings. The team leader suggests they get some film crews round to open the trapdoor so whatever horrors lurk within will be caught on camera by the rest of galaxy.

Darta laughs evilly and reveals that the rather weak-tasting peanut butter sandwiches in today's lunch actually contained cyanide, and all the expedition fall writhing to the ground in agony, then go limp - despite having shown absolutely no ill effects prior to this announcement.

However, the strange man and Chris did not eat the packed lunches owing to a peanut allergy, and the man rapidly claims his intuitive genius easily deduced that the food was poisoned since "Seth B. Darta" is an anagram of "The Bastard"!

The evil Time Lord is revealed and he evilly explains that the expedition were doomed because he was only using them as slave labor to do all the archaeological stuff. The strange man laughs and announces the Bastard has revealed he is so dumb he doesn't even know how to find the artifact and needed some clueless higher anthropoids to do it for him.

The Bastard is furious at this insult and demands to know who the fat, goatee-sporting git in frock coat is to address a Time Lord in such a manner.

"IT IS I, THE DOCTOR!!" booms the odd man at an incredibly loud volume. "We were just passing so I decided to force my companion Chris to do some menial work she is suited for, while I used my superior wits to discover exactly what the hell was going on here."

"Well, if you're so damn clever, why didn't you rescue the other workers?"

"To be honest, Bastard, they were a bunch of assholes who deserved to die."

With these conversational pleasantries out of the way, the Bastard pulls from his pocket his tissue compression doohickey and prepares to reduce the Future Doctor and Chris into personalized action figures, but the cunning time travelers simply run away and hide. The Bastard cannot find them due his sunglasses and ends up falling through the open trapdoor while hurling death threats at his ancient enemy...

Meanwhile, the Proper Doctor (Jeff Coburn) and Dara have landed on Earth in 23rd century, where Star Trek fans are becoming more and more powerful and renaming places after notable Star Trek characters. Since Zeff Cochrane never actually provided humanity with interstellar travel and allowed them to contact the Vulcans, the Trekkies have renamed New York's Central Park the Cochrane Memorial Park - but all this has done is confuse tourists.

The Proper Doctor explains he has piloted the TARDIS here so he can offer his services to up and coming pop group the Electrodes - a foursome named Fuzz, Muff, Snatch and Euphemism - and thus lead them to be bigger than the Beatles but after hearing their first concert realizes that this bunch of talentless atonal noise polluters are actually terrible.

Dara suggests he start up a boy band for her to date, and the Proper Doctor angrily points out that this would shatter established history and cause time and space to fall into chaos. Dara then asks how this is different from trying to steal the Electrodes from another recording company, and the Proper Doctor changes the subject, claiming he can sense a disturbance in the force.

Back on Dead Parrot 5, down the trapdoor, the Bastard broods over what looks like a bunch of Yamaha electric keyboards tied to a lightning globe with lots of tinsel and LEDs wired through it. The Bastard realizes the keyboards are laid out so badly it requires four talented musicians to play at once.

Thus, the Bastard decides to use the Electrodes to help with his nefarious plans! But as he taps out the first few notes of Beethoven's Fifth, there is a cheap negative effect and three figures materialize before the Bastard!

One is a sea lion in full Prydonian Time Lord robes (Chip Jamison), a medium-sized bearded man in a green and blue leisure suit with alligator shoes (Tom Himinez), and a moustached man in fishnet stockings, bodice and pink high heels holding a riding crop (Rachel Sommers).

The Bastard is stunned as he realizes he is looking at his previous incarnations! The transvestite is the Bastard's first enfleshment, back when he was a rabid Rocky Horror Picture Show enthusiast known as the Wank Lord, trying to pervert all of time and space. After he was captured by the Time Lords and forced to listen to Menudo, he regenerated into a form less decadent and incredibly stupid who looked just like Roger Delgado. Then, following a disastrous battle on the planet Meetmeinbedin 3 involving a mysterious blue dildo, the Bastard regenerated again... into a sea lion.

"So... you're my replacements, are you?" sneers the Wank Lord. "A Mod, a sea-lion and a total dork!"

The latest incarnation of the Bastard defends his choice of sunglasses, explaining he once rather rashly altered his biology to become a Time Cheetah, decided it was cactus and changed back, but now a horrible mutation has developed, leading to his eyes glowing yellow, fangs growing in his mouth, and his chest hair developing tiger stripes.

The earlier Bastards look to their future and conclude it is, in one word, lame. And considering they are destined to evolve into a sea lion, this is damming indictment of the overall competence of the latest incarnation.

The Bastard explains that the curious bit of modern art behind him is the Event Synthesizer, a bio-mechanical complex producing ordered vibrations to the cosmos, creating events in a logical, harmonious sequence to flow into the main time stream: regulating the pattern of harmony. Play a tune and watch the universe react to their manipulation!

"With this, we can literally change everything," the Proper Bastard explains. "We have the power to alter any event in the cosmos, from the tiniest detail - say, Rolf Harris putting that third leg down a millimeter to the left rather than the right - to one of galactic proportions - preventing Rolf Harris' cover version of Stairway to Heaven ever being released!"

"Couldn't we just ensure Rolf Harris was never born?" asks the Wank Lord.

"We can stop the torment before it even begins!" the Sea Lion Bastard realizes.

"Reshape Australian folk music as WE see fit?" the Old Bastard asks, arms folded and actually rather unimpressed at the small scale of his fellow incarnations.

"Not just Rolf Harris! This machine can do other things too!"

"You mean we can get rid of Kylie Minogue as well?!" asks the Old Bastard sarcastically.

However, the Proper Bastard explains he has no idea what tunes to play and asks his former incarnations if they have any ideas. Since if they DID have any ideas, their future self would remember it, the Wank Lord, the Old Bastard and the Sea Lion Bastard sigh, depressed.

Finally, the incarnations agree to start with "Chopsticks" and see what happens to time and space as hereto defined.

Back on Earth, the Proper Doctor and Dara watch as all the humans around them vanish and are instantly replaced by reptilian swingers, the Bilurians. The Doctor realizes that history has been rebuilt into a new pattern and the circumstances that kept the Bilurians from sexual dominance never happened.

The Proper Doctor wanders up to the nearest reptile man and asks them to help him restore history and wipe out the entire Bilurian civilization and allow damned dirty stinking apes to conquer the Earth. The Bilurians stare at him with their triple eyes and tell him if he fucks off they'll subscribe to his newsletter.

The duo return to the TARDIS to hear the Cloister Bell ringing to the tune of chopsticks. The Proper Doctor kicks the console repeatedly in fury: despite the structure of time itself being changed, he's stick stuck with his brain-dead companion who is using his jelly babies to fuel her eating disorder!

The Proper Bastard leaves the other Bastards to try and get the Event Synthesizer working with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". The Proper Bastard remembers the Future Doctor and Chris are still at large and he has to deal with them before his former selves discover their future self is an even bigger pratt than they already thought.

The Future Doctor and Chris are hiding by the bog as the Doctor congratulates himself on his brilliant jungle warfare skills and tells Chris to admire them as well. However, this is cut short as a familiar police box materializes in front of them - and a curly-haired freak in a long scarf (Dave Segal) emerges, followed by a depressed man in a leather waistcoat.

"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm the Doctor," says the Copycat incarnation, "and this is my companion Commander Mark Tryhard."

"I'm not his friend," Mark explains quickly.

"I know who are," sniffs the Future Doctor. "I'm your next incarnation but one! Don't you remember the last time we met? But of course, you don't even remember your wife's name..."

"I'm married?!" the Copycat Doctor exclaims in horror.

"See what I have to put up with?" Mark asks Chris.

The Future Doctor explains he is in the middle of frustrating the Bastard's latest cunning plan to conquer the universe and that he doesn't need derivative self-obsessed morons getting in the way with their endless TV quotes in lieu of proper dialogue.

At that moment the Proper Bastard arrives, wearing a raincoat and a huge metal hook and giggling insanely to himself. "I can hear you, Doctor - the drab air of this dead planet carries your scent to me! NOTHING AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME NOW, YOU LEAST OF ALL! I AM THE BASTARD AND YOU WILL..."

"You will shut the hell up!" Mark shouts and uses his cigarette-lighter-cum-laser-beam-gun to set fire to the evil Time Lord, who runs off screaming hysterically and waving his arms a lot.

Mark turns to the Future Doctor. "You're just as useless as MY Doctor, you n00b."

Outside the castle, the Proper Doctor's TARDIS materializes next to the Bastard's disguised time machine. He emerges, instructing Dara to wait for him in the TARDIS while he explores, has a quick fag and generally takes a break from his dispiriting companion.

As the Proper Doctor examines the 1970s Gremlin, a car alarm goes off, creating a violent assault on the Time Lord's senses, which turns his brain off and he falls twitching to the ground like an epileptic watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Proper Bastard arrives, spots the unconscious Doctor, checks no one is looking, and drags him into the castle.

Dara spots this on the scanner and, after blowing some gum bubbles, gets bored and decides to leave the TARDIS and use her amazing beauty and sexual attractiveness to save the entire universe as she has convinced herself she has done before over twenty seven times.

As she enters the castle, she stumbles across another police box. Emerging from it is a grey haired figure in a Starfleet uniform ("Vincent Savage" AKA David Segal in a wig) and a Napoleonic tailcoat and question mark cravat. He is accompanied by two incredibly nondescript humans called Mark Newman and Bill Sanderson who have absolutely no personalities whatsoever.

For once, Dara's self-absorption helps the plot as she instantly assumes that a strangely dressed man in a police box is the Doctor and doesn't let any piddling details about reality get in the way of her vacuous brain.

Unfortunately, her acceptance of the Oldest Doctor doesn't make much sense to him OR his companions, and her explanation that the Bastard is behind all this confuses them even more. Finally, Dara gets bored and starts flirting with Mark and Bill, suggesting they "have a spit roast". The two lads briefly are interested, until they realize she wanted them to cook a barbecue for her.

Meanwhile, the Proper Bastard strides into the cavern with the unconscious Proper Doctor and expects his former selves to be impressed. Since they have no idea who the guy in the magician outfit is, they aren't, and even once the Proper Bastard explains, the Wank Lord is confused at why they all have murderous intentions on an old shag.

"Don't you people know how to move on?" he tutts.

Rather embarrassed at taking the whole thing so personally, they allow the Wank Lord to strip the Proper Doctor to his underwear, give him a Zorro hat, mask and cape, and stuff him into a cage hanging from the ceiling. The Doctor recovers consciousness and is ordered to "dance, piggy!", a command almost as disturbing as the realization he is trapped with four Bastards!

"Are you all going to have an orgy or something? What is this? Time travel masturbation taken one step further?!" he exclaims.

Horrified at the thought, the Bastards hastily explain, yet again, the godlike powers given to them by the Event Synthesizer and how they have used it to tamper with their own pasts, allowing the Sea Lion Bastard to finally get retribution for what the Doctor did to him on Meetmeinbedin 3. The Doctor's protests that he warned the Bastard not to shove the blue dildo into that oddly-placed slot at the time, and it's his own fault: shoving dildos into random orifices is always bound to rebound back on you sooner or later! Haven't we all learned from that fatal mistake?!

The Old Bastard notes that this pissing about with cause and effect is probably going to attract the attention of the Time Lords... or maybe even someone vaguely competent, and thus they should use the Event Synthesizer to cause more continuity problems to keep the Higher Evolutionaries busy.

Meanwhile, the Sea Lion Bastard suggests they use the Event Synthesizer alter the Doctor's past until he turns into a bowl of petunias, and the evil Time Lords remember they still don't know how to use the device. Thus, they shall have to keep pressing keys at random and hoping it does something useful.

As the Proper Doctor watches on in horror, the four incarnations of the Bastard in unison start to play the keyboards, with their version of "Three Blind Mice" leading straight into the theme music..



Part II

(Opening credits - a tunnel in hyper space forms; the TARDIS hurtles down through oblivion, then in a fit of paranoia hurtles back the way it came, checks no one is following, then heads off once more; the Jeff Coburn Doctor coalesces, shakes his head, then dissolves again; the titles, credits and episode number hurtle towards us and then crash into a mess of blue letters that spell out total gibberish as they slide down the screen and out of sight...)

The Oldest Doctor, Mark and Bill stand beside the trapdoor as Dara announces with absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Bastard is up to no good at the bottom of the shaft. Mark and Bill listen to the strange breathing noises emerging from beneath the trapdoor and find themselves reminded of The Evil Dead for some reason which escapes them.

Dara brags that she often gets sexually assaulted by trees possessed by evil demons, and the nauseated TARDIS crew immediately decide to head down into the darkness rather than listen to her disgusting and clearly made up stories.

Meanwhile, the Bastards are put off their game as the Proper Doctor starts singing Yellow Submarine incredibly loudly and points out that they should just find one of the Apeshit and get them to play the Event Synthesizer for them.

The Proper Bastard retorts that the Apeshit are all extinct - and the Doctor finds this very hard to believe. "Yeah, sure they're extinct. The most advanced alien species ever, with the ability to alter reality to their whim, just died out one day. Even if they were stupid enough to let themselves get wiped out, you can use your fucking time machines to collect them, ever thought of that?"

The Sea Lion Bastard agrees and calls the Proper Bastard a complete retard and smacks him with a flipper, and soon a massive fight has started between the Proper Bastard, the Old Bastard and the Sea Lion Bastard. The Wank Lord watches on with voyeuristic intent for a few moments, then dives into the fray with a squeak of "Geronimo!!"

The Proper Doctor relaxes in his anti-gravity cell and shakes his head at what a useless band of morons he has to deal with, before singing "Nowhere Man", which annoys the dueling incarnations even more!

As they move through the slimy caverns, the group then bump into the Copycat Doctor, the other Mark, the Future Doctor and Chris, scaring the life out of each other and leading to Mark Tryhard using his laser cigarette lighter recklessly as he screams, "They're coming out of the walls! Game over, man! GAME OVER!!" until they all finally calm down.

The Oldest Doctor decides this is just getting stupid and storms off along with Bill, and stumble across the cavern where they see the Proper Doctor hanging in mid-air above what seems to be some animal-gay-sexscapades as their prisoner plays a harmonica.

Mark Tryhard enters, shakes his head in disgust and uses his laser cigarette lighter to shoot the console. The Proper Doctor is instantly released and falls onto the writhing bodies, knocking them all unconscious.

At first the Doctor is delighted to see his halfway-decent male companion once more, but then he sees his three other incarnations and their gaggle of fellow travelers and gets depressed. Especially at the schoolgirl jumping up and down and waving at him.

"Oh, it's YOU, Dara," the Proper Doctor sighs to himself. "I did wonder why I suddenly had a pain in my neck."

Finally the incredibly battered, bruised and bleeding Bastards get to their respective feet and stagger forward, hurling death threats in the vague direction of the small army of Doctors and companions.

"You can't stop us now, Doctor!" the Proper Bastard spits through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth.

The Proper Doctor's eyes bug in horror. "Oh my god! You survived the coup on Gallifrey!"

"What?! Of course I did! I've been talking you for the last fifteen minutes!"

"Oh yeah, so you have. My bad. Sorry. Let us away!"

Mark Tryhard kicks the nearest Bastard in the bollocks and they all run out as the Wank Lord winces and notes that one day, that's really going to hurt. "And not in a good way," he adds with a grimace.

The various TARDIS crews assemble in the cellar with the trapdoor where the Copycat Doctor vainly tries to take charge and causes even more chaos.

"Right, everyone who isn't me and doesn't understand temporal physics should stand in the corner to have everything explained to them in due course. Right, now, which incarnation is which? I'm number one."

Everyone stares at him.

"Oh, well if you're going to go by chronology instead of good looks, charm, heroism and well-turned trouser..."

"You're none of those things," Mark Tryhard grimaces, "so we won't."

"Well, I'm number ten."

"Get away!" says the Oldest Doctor. "You're number four - the scarf, the afro, the robot dog..."

"Nah, he's just a complete copycat," the Proper Doctor explains. "Doesn't have an original thought in his body."

"I am a Time Lord," the Copycat Doctor insists. "I walk in perversity!"

"See? He's quoting again! The arrogant little bastard thinks no one will notice!"

"You're a rip-off, sah, a rip-off and no mistake!"

The Oldest Doctor understandably has no idea what's going on, and the Copycat Doctor is so stupid he doesn't even recognize his previous incarnation, but thankfully the Future Doctor has lived through this business at least three times before and patiently explains the increasingly complicated tale of events to his bewildered previous selves and their even more bewildered companions.

Things get worse as Dara starts heckling Mark Tryhard for being dumped by Catwoman but this is very confusing as a) there are two people called Mark in the room at the time and b) Dara has stupidly not realized that she is seeing Mark Tryhard from a period before they actually met. Meanwhile the Oldest Doctor feels a crushing sense of nihilistic pointless as he realizes what a stupid wanker he is destined to regenerate into.

The Future Doctor orders Chris to start screaming. Soon everyone is too busy writhing in agony and clutching their bleeding eardrums to argue, and the Future Doctor summarizes the situation by explaining that four incarnations of the Bastard are trying to seize control of Apeshit technology and that the four Doctors must unite to stop them.

"How very convenient," sneers Bill, who is one of those companions who finds all this incredibly difficult to believe.

The Future Doctor admits he suspects that the Apeshit themselves are manipulating events, like leaving the Event Synthesizer at the bottom of a cave under a cellar of a castle on a far-flung planet that is borderline uninhabitable. "They're not even TRYING to stop us!" he protests.

Chris points out that the Future Doctor must know all the answers as he's lived through the adventure, but her companion insists he cannot interfere with events as he remembers them. Assuming he does remember them. This Doctor is a bit of braggart scumbag, so it's entirely possible he's just pretending to look cool.

However, all this fan pleasing characterization has given the Bastards enough time to recover and start tinkering with the Event Synthesizer, and soon a giant hologram of the Sea Lion Bastard like some incredibly fucked up Gilliamation is roaring at the assembled TARDIS crew: "VENGEANCE WANTS A PIECE OF YOUR ASS!"

Despite the horrific sight, absolutely nothing else whatsoever happens.

In the control room, the Sea Lion Bastard realizes his other selves are staring at him. "My god, the Doctor was right! The Apeshit are really manipulating this whole situation and using us like puppets!"

"So you wouldn't say, for example, you're a retarded sea mammal with absolutely no idea what the hell you're doing with the most powerful weapon in creation?" the Proper Bastard sniffs.

"Do you want me to kill myself?" the Sea Lion retorts. "I will, you know. Not being a sad little runt like you has GOT to be worth it."

"You wound me, man, you really do," the Proper Bastard sniffles.

Wracked by doubts, assailed by fear, the hirsute renegade slams his hands down on the nearest keyboard, playing some Bach theatrically before suddenly crashing into "Born to be Wild" as the other Bastards scream that he has no idea what the hell he's doing.

Meanwhile, the Doctors are taking turns insulting the Copycat incarnation until he suffers a complete nervous breakdown. Suddenly the cave walls start to close in on all sides like the garbage compactor scene in Star Wars.

In the control room, the Sea Lion snorts derisively as the Proper Bastard cheers he has finally found a way to destroy all his enemies in one fell swoop!


Part III

(Opening credits - the time vortex unfolds around the TARDIS which dissolves into an energy storm. The storm turns into a hatch which opens, the Jeff Coburn Doctor pokes his head through, sighs, then retreats inside and closes a hatch, allowing the titles to finish...)

Unfortunately, the Proper Bastard accidentally strikes a note of discord and thus the cavern stops shrinking and returns to normal. No sooner do all the different Doctor start bragging about how clever they were to achieve this incredible feat, they realize local gravity has intensified to such a degree everyone's trousers fall down.

The huge face of the Wank Lord appears before him and licks his lips, managing to be three hundred times as terrifying than a giant mutated ferocious sea lion, and when you're three hundred times as terrifying than a giant mutated ferocious sea lion, then that's just plain scary!

Indeed, even his other selves are disturbed by such naked lust, and the Proper Bastard causes a tuneless jangle which alters the pattern of reality itself, leaving the Doctors and Companions in the control room with the Event Synthesizer and all the Bastards stuck to the floor in the cavern outside.

In order to save face, both the Doctors and the Bastards agree to blame everything on the mysterious godlike Apeshit are in fact behind all this. Thus, they all start shouting abuse at the ceiling for five minutes straight in the hope this tedium will force the Apeshit to intervene directly.

And they do, instantly taking over Dara's brain and making her dance erotically as she tells everyone vital plot points. Between the interesting gasps and yelps she makes during this sensual display the following back story is revealed:

The Apeshit were originally part of the Pleasure Seeker Collective including the Eternals, the Gods of Ragnarok, the Sexual Toymaker and other annoyingly god-like aliens. However, the Apeshit were excommunicated because they took everything so damn seriously and wouldn't know a sense of humor if it stole their wives and raped their livestock.

The Apeshit hurled a load of spiteful abuse at their fellow immortals and took their minds off things by playing Game Wizards boardgames, heroes and elves searching monster-filled dungeons for the Fabulous Jade Idol held by the Evil Superhero. But soon it became painfully obvious that the games would not satisfy, and thus forced whole solar systems to play out the battles, evolving huge snakes bred specifically to die from magic sword cuts. Laws of physics were repealed to allow genuine magic to work on red fire-breathing dragons, whole planets were transmuted into treasure for hideous carnivorous giant worms to guard, societies shaped to allow a hobgoblin underclass...

But even this could satisfy the Apeshit, who constructed the Event Synthesizers and retconned themselves out of existence. Thus they took up residence outside time and space, with the whole universe one big board game for them to play out role-playing wizardry. But, after around six trillion years they've played out every possible strategy known and countless games have been played. They need someone else to play with, and thus used their mighty powers to trick four Bastards and four Doctors to fight on Dead Parrot 5 for the power of the Event Synthesizer, and the winner shall be allowed to ascend to Godhood and play endless games of Dungeons & Dragons with the universe and its people as tokens.

The Time Lords exchange looks as they realize they have no desire whatsoever to out-sit eternity with a bunch of D&D freaks and the Doctors and the Bastards offer each other their surrender, hoping the other will be stuck with it.

"You see, I've never REALLY wanted to control the entire universe," the Proper Bastard explains hastily.

"People give me too much credit," the Wank Lord agrees. "You see, the thing about the universe is that it is big, really big, you won't believe just how mind-bogglingly huge it is. You might think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to the whole universe..."

"A tenth of it would suit me," the Sea Lion Bastard adds.

"My humble ambitions are not as grandiose as the Doctor's!" the Old Bastard concluded triumphantly. "After all, with a checkered past like that, no wonder he hides his real name, hated and feared as it is on so many worlds..."

Most of the companions are confused on this point as the Proper Master explains, "After all, those grand gestures saving this world and that aren't out of the goodness are borne from a need for penance for ancient sins, aren't they?"

The Doctors stare blankly at their enemies for a few moments before the Copycat Doctor blinks and nods. "Oh, THAT! Well, there's a simple explanation: that was just a story I tell to pull chicks. It was a ploy to get into bed with you."

"WHAT?!?" exclaim the Bastards.

The Oldest Doctor smugly folds his arms. "And it worked, didn't it?"

"You... BASTARD!" screams the Wank Lord. "TO THINK I LOVED YOU!?"

The Proper Doctor turns to Dara. "And that is the real reason why we've been trying to kill each other ever since. That and the phone bills. And the doll collection unpleasantness. Is that fully clear and demystified now?"

The Bastard insist that they are not going to be screwed over like a Vietnamese whore THIS time, and that the Doctor should be the one to ascend to godhood. Finally, after many arguments, the two sides agree to fight it out, the winner being the poor wretch to lose - and thus giving the Bastard a hugely unfair advantage, thanks to all the practice he has had.

Since they have the tactical know-how of Commander Mark Tryhard and the pathetic geekiness of Mark Newman and Bill Sanderson, the Proper Doctor suggests the fight take the form of a suitable strategy board game.

"So we engage in a full scale Warlock: The Gathering campaign, AND figure out a way to stop not one but three and a half Bastards AND an ancient race of hardcore gamers from galactic legends of old while all the while the universe is being torn apart in the process?" exclaims the Copycat Doctor incredulously.

"Yeah, why not?" the Proper Doctor shrugs.

"It worked last time," the Future Doctor chips in. "Actually, forget I said that," he adds hastily.

"Why are you putting me in charge?" Mark Tryhard protests. "I might win this? Not that I particularly care about condemning you eternal tedium and misery, but I just like to be clear about these things."

"Ah, that's the cunning part," the Oldest Doctor explains. "With you calling the shots, it looks like we'll be playing to win, but instead we will ensure the commands given are from the most contemptibly stupid moron in the universe. You'll simply be relaying their instructions!"

"And who is this intellectual black hole?" Mark asks.

Everyone turns to look at Dara.

"Oh! My! God!" she exclaims. "You're putting me in charge! Oh, I feel SO hot right now, you wouldn't believe it!"


Part VI

(Opening Credits - the universe explodes and expands in all directions as the Jeff Coburn Doctor appears, looks around, shrugs and gives a thumbs up to the audience before the titles and credits appear...)

The game begins with a long, long, long, LONG sequence of the two teams unfolding the board and painstakingly placing counters on each square - a red Alien Monster tag, a blue Helpful Item tag, a special green Key To Chronos tag, and dozens of others. Finally ready they roll dice twice to chose the coordinates of the square and then face off.

The Bastards find themselves facing a Black Dustbin with a combat strength of 8 with the ability to remove any Assistants or Blasters in the zone. Tragically the Bastards have a Battle Beam and Deflector Beam and win by default.

The Doctors' turn leaves them facing a Klepton Parasite with a combat strength of 3 and instantly steals all the Keys of Chronos. Thanks to Dara's leadership the otherwise harmless Parasite actually goes and kills their assistants: Lyla, Space Marine, Sarah-Jane, Zoe, Vicki, Suzie and K9 leaving them alone and defenseless and miles behind the enemy, who already have two Keys!

It looks like the Doctors' bad start is dooming them... and so the whole team immediately start chanting "Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go!" over and over again as the Sea Lion Bastard repeatedly slaps the Proper Bastard around the head as the game continues:

The battles continue as Androids, Indivisible Enemies, Mutants, Carry-On Plants, Dustbins, Lavros, Giant Robots, Demons, Cyberbrats, Vampires, Astromancers, Cybermen, Spice Pirates, Kleptons and Space Rats fight up against Petrifaction Beams, Hypnoguns, Cosmic Vortexes, Microbots of all shapes and sizes...

The Bastards realize to their horror that no matter how they play, the suicidal insanity of Dara's strategy cannot be defeated. The evil Time Lords get a Key Probe and TARDIS meaning they have no excuse to miss picking up every Key from every square, and they also pick up a Cyber Repulsor and Power Gloves, meaning that no monsters can defeat them. It is only a matter of time before they win!

Meanwhile, the Doctors' team are barely alive and the only things they have managed to collect are jelly baby tokens and a Micron Glove, the most useless of all possible items on the board. What's more, Dara has developed a final brilliant strategy to lose the game: sneeze violently and send the tokens everywhere, causing the other side to win by default.

"She's like the antimatter opposite of Szun Tzu!" Mark Tryhard marvels.

Finally, the Bastards call on a toilet break and wonder how the hell they're going to get out of this. The Old Bastard points out even if they DO get the Doctor to win, they'll lose access to the Event Synthesizer without having done anything cool with it at all.

The Wank Lord suggests they use the Synthesizer to transform the Proper Bastard into a real Time Lord again with all the telepathy, regenerations, gills in the armpits and everything. They can also finally kick-start the Bastard's brain so he's no longer infected by the Cheetah Influence and capable of rational thought for short periods of time.

The Proper Bastard is excited at the thought and starts shouting "The cosmos has done it's worst but I survive! Do you hear me, Doctor? I SURVIVE! THE BASTARD SURVIVES!"

"Shut the fuck up you moron!" the Sea Lion Bastard retorts smacking him in the face. While the Wank Lord and the Sea Lion Bastard try to figure out the Event Synthesizer controls, while the Old and New Bastards work on the Ultimate Cunning Plan to secure final defeat!!

While everyone is distracted hurling abuse at the Copycat Doctor after he offers everyone a sodding jelly baby and starts his Napoleon-eye-patch anecdote, the two Bastards sneak past them and grab the Oldest Doctor's TARDIS.

The Oldest Doctor is furious when the Bastards threaten to use the Event Synthesizer to blow the TARDIS to smithereens. The other Doctor's aren't fussed, until they realize this means their respective TARDISes will cease to exist, and then get pretty pissed off as well.

The Proper Bastard laughs camply and says, "Allow us to take a dive or we blow this tacky BBC prop back to Lime Grove Studios!"

The Proper Doctor holds his head in hands. "Why couldn't he threaten to shoot Dara in the head? It'd be a win-win situation!"

"Thanks!" says Dara brightly, not understanding a word.

With a deep, booming voice, a bright light, an angelic choir and lots of other semi-religious clichés and iconography, the Warlords of Apeshit declare the Doctor the Winner of the Contest.

The Wank Lord strums "I Want Candy" on the nearest keyboard, and gives the others the thumbs up as the Doctors have a scissors-paper-rock contest to determine which unlucky incarnation gets to be the new Warlord of Apeshit.

"Shouldn't it be the oldest one?" Bill points out. "What with all the others having destinies and stuff?"

"I wish you were like this more often," Mark sighs.

"Like what?" asks Bill.

"Capable of thought," Mark Tryhard replies.

"Surely whichever Doctor takes up the post shall simply use his powers to make sure the other Doctors still exist," Chris points out, arms folded.

Finally, the Proper Doctor loses out and swears incredibly loudly at everyone else. The Oldest Doctor immediately grabs Bill and Mark and hurries them towards his TARDIS, telling the others, "Sorry, got an appointment to audition to be Merlin at two o'clock, don't want to be late!"

As the police box dematerializes the Future Doctor and Chris decide that they better be heading off. "Trust me," he says to the Proper Doctor, "it gets very boring and predictable after this. No returning monsters, no UNIT, no villains, just an endless series of visits to thirteenth century Europe and time paradoxes. I think I just insulted myself."

"And if you didn't, I will," offers Chris, only to get a clip round her ear.

"Oh piss off the pair of you," the Proper Doctor grumbles and the duo wander off smacking each other incredibly violently.

Meanwhile, the Wank Lord, the Old Bastard and the Sea Lion Bastard vanish back into their respective timelines. As they fade away, the Sea Lion Bastard can be heard bitching ungratefully that no one thought about using the Event Synthesizer on HIM, did they?

The Copycat Doctor and Mark Tryhard stride up to the remaining Bastard. "So," says the Copycat Doctor thoughtfully, "my old-matey-dokey-skip-catflap-young-fella-me-lad-cockney-rhyming-bollocks... you're the one that brutally murdered me and turned me into that rabbit-breeding Paul Daniels wannabe then?"

"Yeah," the Bastard sneers. "Wanna make something of it?"

"What if I do?" the Copycat Doctor demands stepping closer.

"So, what are you gonna do then? Use your scarf as a noose and snap my neck?"

"Actually... now you come to mention it..."

Mark Tryhard steps behind the Bastard and effortlessly snaps his neck. As the dead renegade crumples to the floor, Mark dusts his hands on his uniform. "After all I've been though, HE is the one that gets to kill you? That's not something you just FORGIVE, is it, Doctor?"

"Suppose not," the Copycat Doctor agrees, taking great pleasure in violently beating the corpse to a bloody pulp. "Oh well, the moment we reenter conterminous time our memories of this entire distressing incident will be mindwiped, kind of like Men in Black."

"So we won't have to live in the knowledge we're destined to meet that Hamilton bimbo?" asks Mark surprised. "Finally, things are looking up!"

As they head back to their TARDIS, a golden glow bathes the ruins of the Proper Bastard's corpse which then transmogrifies into a slighter-built form with a puckish face and spiky reddish hair. The Newborn Master sits up, runs a hand through his hair and grins a grin so icy it'd give a Martian frostbite.

Then he retreats to his 1970s Gremlin and dematerializes with a curious lack of pantomime evil giggling which so characterized the previous Bastard.

Left alone in the cavern with the Event Synthesizer, the Proper Doctor tries to think up some way to say goodbye to Dara that does not involve repeatedly kicking her in the head, and fails.

"I ascend to join the Apeshit!" he booms, eyes blazing with evil light. "I see the power connecting molecular circuits! Data being expanded! I see galaxies that feel like snowflakes on my back! I swim through the dreams of gods! I see the flow of power and knowledge that flows through each Event Synthesizer! I feel the flow of creation within my grasp and my reach extends everywhere!"

"Uh, Doctor, what the fucking hell are you talking about?

"I can hear the motion of the wind in the mountains talking to me! In the sleeping sun I walk alone at the limit of an endless ocean with the primitive man and the ghost of time on an island hidden in the summer for a million years! Betrayal and forgetfulness takes you over, burns you black, black against the ground! I hear the sound of the stranger's voices, I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes! Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land! Time to go medieval on this universe's spinal column! YEEEEEEEE-HAAA!"

The bit of abstract art made out of keyboards in the corner explodes in an unimpressive puff of smoke as the light fades from his eyes.

"Oh, what a let down. Like sex with Bill Clinton," the Doctor sighs. "Oh well, with any luck, the entire planet will pointlessly obliterate itself. We better get out of here."

"What did you do?"

"I used my powers to search throughout time and space, find every single member of the Apeshit and alter time and space so instead of obsessing over Dungeons and Dragons, they got meaningful sex instead. Thus, they've been erased from canon as we know it and thus this most fundamental part of existence is removed with no one noticing or anything actually changing. Clever, huh?"

Moments after they enter their TARDIS, the castle crumbles to dust and as the time machine spins off into the depths of the time vortex the planet Dead Parrot 5 explodes in a Matt Irvine drinking binge of firestorms.

The Doctor then whacks Dara over the head with a cricket bat. This has the unexpected side effect of removing any damaging knowledge she could have somehow picked up during the course of the adventure about the future of the Time Lords or the nature of existence. Plus, the Doctor really, REALLY wanted to hit her over the head.

Just then the scanner opens to reveal the pinched, jeering face of the regenerated Bastard who gleefully informs the Doctor in a nasal voice that his archenemy has freed himself from the Time Cheetah virus and has been able to impart upon himself a completely new regeneration cycle, ensuring that the Doctor will himself of this evil nemesis.

"I thought you were actually an evil master criminal and not some drooling psychopath whose one goal in life was to kill me?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry, forgot."

"Now piss off before I tell the whole universe about what an easy screw you are! Coz, if you forgot I just wiped out every last godlike alien in the entire universe without breaking sweat, so I don't fancy YOUR chances much..."

The New Bastard takes the point and quietly hangs up and runs off screaming, leaving the Doctor to concentrate on kicking Dara awake and shouting, "DAMN IT! TAKE A HINT AND LEAVE!!!"

(End credits - the Super Trod rolls up behind the scrolling words and starts to sing the lyrics to Mankind's 'Doctor Disco Who'.)