7th Doctor - Master

Serial 7Y - Bastard
An Extract from the EC Unauthorized Guide O' Anthropomorphic Personifications

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 7Y – Bastard -

Part One

The Doctor programs the TARDIS to search for his long-standing foe, the Bastard. The police box quickly materializes outside an old house on the outskirts of a town called Perfugium.

The Doctor is surprised to arrive on this unfashionably far-out planet, where the entire indigenous population exist on the only island of the planet Perfugium, called Perfugium Island, and the seaside town Perfugium Bay.

The Perfugiumians, while being a generally pleasant and generous race, aren't exactly what you'd call imaginative.

Heading for the Nostalgia Inn, the Doctor is welcomed by the friendly natives and soon is offering to help coach the local rugby team, the Perfugium Wombats, for the upcoming final and playing games of pool.

The Time Lord easily beats the town's crafty drunk and, as they reset the table, idly mentions that a serial killer is stalking Perfugium, slaughtering prostitutes.

This claim is met with howls of laughter – not only is the concept of a serial killer shockingly unlikely on this backwater, but there are no prostitutes on the whole planet.

The Doctor fumes; he had hoped that the Bastard would be around and generally causing mayhem, but no one knows of a bearded evil character by that name.

Indeed, he is thrown out of the pub for using bad language.

Heading for the local fish and chip shop, the Doctor frantically quizzes the owner for any unusual happenings, and learns that the Doctor's arrival is about the most strange and fascinating things to have happened in ten years.

The last thing to happen was when a sea lion was washed ashore, eyes glazed and humming a nursery rhyme about a being called Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass. The sea lion was amnesiac but has soon settled into Perfugium bay and has risen to the height of town magistrate due to his good looks, charm, common sense and style.

He is known by the name of Sane Eddie, and lives in the haunted house the TARDIS materialized outside. Scowling furiously, the Doctor retraces his steps, realizing he has walked several miles simply to get thrown out of an over-priced pub.

On the way back to his time machine, the Doctor stumbles across the corpse of what is clearly a night worker. Hastily avoiding the obstacle, the Time Lord hurries off, only to trip over another body.

Dead prostitutes litter the road ahead, and the Doctor has a sinister number the bodies are increasing in number whenever he takes his eyes off them. Troubled, he decides that perhaps it isn't a good idea to tempt fate about prostitute murderers, and makes his way up to the front door.

Pausing for a moment to adjust his clothes and assume a casual pose, the Doctor rings the doorbell.

At this moment, he is struck by lightening.

Why? Who knows? Twenty-five minutes are up and the char-grilled Time Lord slowly topples over...


Part Two

Two occupants of the house – Sane Eddie and his pal Richard – emerge cautiously and prod the frazzled figure, whose strange predilection with question marks arouses Eddie's... curiosity.

So saying, they drag the Doctor into the living room and take his trousers off. In response, the Doctor screams that he is Rasputin and is allergic to sea lions.

Eddie smacks some sense into him with a hammer and the Doctor hastily claims he's just Reg Winston, a harmless encyclopedia salesman, just passing through and nothing to do with the strange lightning bolts and multiplying prostitute corpses.

Eddie is troubled by the reference to a serial killer, and is quite startled to find the driveway containing an old police box and countless dead hookers.

The Doctor idly begins to quiz Eddie about his origins, suspecting that this innocent-seeming sea lion is really the Bastard under a cunning false personality, determined to kill him at any moment.

But Eddie has no idea what the Doctor is on about and offers him a cup of tea and some biscuits.

The Doctor accepts it, cautiously, and explains he once shared rooms with a psychotic serial killer known as the Bastard, who is probably the one behind the strange and inexplicable happenings in Perfugium.

The Doctor is now certain the Bastard is behind this, disguising himself as a hapless innocent caught in the mess to gain the trust and resources of Perfugium Bay, and has made up the story of the cursed house to explain any side effects of his strange and evil experiments.

The Doctor decides to leave, duck in the TARDIS and then re-enter the house by stealth. Unfortunately, he plans this out aloud and Eddie asks him what the fuck he's on about. The Doctor claims this is all just a slip of a tongue.

The Doctor glumly stays for dinner with Eddie, Richard and his 'bird' Meryl. As they begin the first course, the Doctor suddenly realizes that the wine has been poisoned and smashes it against the floor.

But it was just some really nice and expensive wine, nothing else.

Shamefaced, the Doctor is forced to dole into his wallet and pay for the wine – as well as explain the exact reasons that he believes that Eddie is some kind of "bastard".

The Doctor sighs, opens his mouth to explain...

...and suddenly point and screams that a copy of 'Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde' is flying around the room of its own accord. Everyone turns to look at this amazing spectacle – only to realize there's nothing there.

They turn back to find the Doctor has buggered off!

The trio are unsure of what to make of this, especially when, after a few moments, a police box re-materializes in mid-air, and lands heavily on Richard's head.

Eddie and Meryl prepare to flee, only to find all the doors and windows are blocked by thousands of rotting corpses – the house has been buried in ex-tarts...


Part Three


The Doctor emerges, grabs Eddie and tells Meryl to run for her life before the Bastard can have his wicked way with her.

Meryl, still upset that the TARDIS has just crushed her boyfriend's skull, hurls a knife into the Doctor's leg and he collapses, swearing loudly that Meryl is obviously under the hypnotic thrall of the evil Bastard!

He knows that his enemy is just toying with him – pretending to "attempt to restrain" Meryl as she continues to throw cutlery at his jugular. But the Doctor refuses to be fooled this time!

Eddie insists that if anyone is an insane megalomaniac running around causing trouble in innocent lives, it's the Doctor.

The Doctor snarls that maybe, just maybe, the Bastard really IS an amnesiac and reminds him of the time they shared a room at Prydon Academy. At first the relationship was going quite well, despite the Bastard's unnerving habit of collecting doll-size corpses and the Doctor's continual use of their lodgings for all-night strip scrabble sessions with his LSD-fueled groupies.

However, after a Halloween prank involving a gingham dress and a red wig, the two became ever more distant and strained. The final straw broke when one of them notched up a huge phone bill on RassilonCom and refused point blank to pay it.

They've been trying to kill each other ever since.

Eddie and Meryl point out that has the be the worst origin story for any super-villain ever, and even they have heard of the pathetic Jay-Walker who turned to the path of evil due to a faulty Magic 8-Ball.

Eddie demands that the Doctor get inside his police box and get the hell out of their lives damn quick. The Doctor demands a change of clothes before he leaves, and Eddie sadistically gives him the most unfashionable clothes in the house.

Before the Doctor can dispose of his old frazzled costume and enter the TARDIS, Meryl laughs evilly and rips off her face to reveal herself to be...

...wait for it...

...the BASTARD!


Part Four

The Bastard mocks the Doctor's pathetic attempts to locate him, revealing that he was marooned on Perfigium after their last encounter, and quickly located the eccentric town inventor Frank, with whom he constructed the Handy Dandy Body-Swapper, with which he downloaded his mind into a healthy native and left an amnesiac sea-lion to draw attention for the next decade.

Eddie is horrified! Not only has his whole life been a joke at the Doctor's expense, he has been shagging Meryl behind Richard's back and it was the Bastard all along!

The Bastard placates him somewhat, by saying that their affair was much better than the tangled web of deceit and lust he had once had with the Doctor.

He explains that their original feud began when the Doctor told the Bastard's parents that he'd failed Cosmic Science and become a humble pimp. Disowned and depressed, the Bastard spent months on the phone to the Samaritans, rebuilding his ego.

THIS is the reason the Bastard refused to pay the phone bill, and thus all the chaos he has committed is solely down to the Doctor's cruel actions!

The Doctor desperately explains it wasn't HIM who lied to the Bastard's parents – it was Drax the Irish prostitute, who they had humiliated by super-gluing every item of furniture to the ceiling while he was revising for his exams.

Both Time Lords laugh cheerfully at the thought, sobering as they realize it's all been an enormous mistake. However, they've been mortal enemies too long for their relationship to return to that distant point.

The Doctor decides that, as a favor, he will take the Bastard off Perfugium once they deal with the curious case of the dead hookers that are even now crushing the house in on itself and sinking the island into the ocean.

The Bastard admits he knew what it was all the time – the zany inventor Frank was trying to clone Pamela Anderson, but has simply created an ever-increasing amount of lifeless, scantily-clad women.

Perfugium has passed the Dead Slut Event Horizon and so the Time Lords leave Eddie to die with his planet.

Aboard the ship, the Bastard admits spending a decade in women's clothing has changed his outlook and he embraces his inner cross-dresser.

He decides that he shall take part in the Mutter's Spiral Drag-Act finals of 30906, and embrace the calling he has denied ever since that fateful night on Gallifrey.

The evil Time Lord no longer wishes to be known as the Bastard.

For now he is... Florentine de le Palme!

The Doctor stares at him for a long moment, coughs uneasily and opens the TARDIS doors. The Ba... uh, Florentine leaves out into the stage and the Doctor wishes him luck, before dematerializing immediately and vowing never to complain about motiveless villains ever, ever, EVER again.


Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who & The Dinner Party of Death!
The Index of Crazy Town Inventors
Beau Brummel's "Fashion Crimes Worthy of the Death Penalty"

Fluffs – Sylvester McCoy seemed a right bastard in this story.

The nylon suit gives Sylvester McCoy (and anyone else who touches it) violent electrical shocks, causing countless fluffs like:

"It's nice to know that everyone has a chaARRGGHGnce of re... redemption."

"Yes. I've still got the TARDIS key in my pock-GHAAGHHH! OUCH! AGH! OOFF! GNN! Here it is... Let's escape while we've still got a chance, eh? Fuck, my fingers are bleeding..."

"I have my companions to YOUCH! ...ease the loneliness. YOUR loneliness is what haARGH has led you to this... What is this stupid thing made of for crying out loOUIUUD?!? ...Is that bacon I can smell cooking? Oh, shit, it's me!"


Goofs -
No one ever actually bothers to explain WHY the Doctor is struck by lightening.

When the Doctor shakes Eddie's hand, the sea lion gets a shock that sends it hurtling off-set and striking the camera. The Doctor and the Bastard follow Eddie's motion with their eyes, and as far as I can make out he does a loop-de-loop for thirty seconds before ending up in the splits, judging from the surprised winces on the Time Lords' faces.

Eddie initially mistakes the unmasked Bastard for Andy Sirkis. "Ooh, is that you, Gollum? I think you're great, I've seen all your films! Can I have an autograph, please?"


Fashion Victims -
The Doctor's replacement costume consists of a lemon-coloured nylon suit with blue polka-dots over a white-and-purple striped shirt, red braces and a bright orange tie. The trousers are too short by twenty centimetres and the suit is statically charged (see Fluffs & Goofs).


Technobabble -
The Doctor deliriously mentions that "intense phased vintaric reaction" is making his suit crackle with live current.


Links and References -
Richard's karioke medley includes a poem about Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass.


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor has known "one or two" amnesic sea mammals living in coastal towns.


Groovy DVD Extras -
A special filter option for when the Doctor's new outfit starts interfering with the recording on the DVD.


Dialogue Disasters -

Meryl: Are you sure you don't want any coffee?
Doctor: No! Damn you, woman! No, no, no, no!! NO!!!
Meryl: Jeez. Overreact much?


Eddie: I hear these voices. In my head. Time for bed... is what they said?
Doctor: Nutter.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Do you believe in evil?
Richard: No. But I do believe in censorship.

The Doctor's heartwarming speech in episode three, which mentions pretty much every single Bastard story -
Doctor: All that we've done together, with each other, TO each other... Willy Wonka, the Beard of Evil, the Exxons, Inaquarry, Lew Grade, Trenchard and the She Devils, the Tom-Tit Monster, the Munsters, the Americans and Dustbins, Llanfairfachbiscuit, the blue dildo of Meetmeinbedin 3? What about the Zoo-Keeper of Traken, and Logopolis, Event One, the Xeraphin, Kamelion, Peri, the Rani, that time I helped you conquer Gallifrey? You MUST remember! What about those times where we teamed up for the common good? Bill Gates? The Moustache of Malice! The Toupee of Terror! Montley Crue! Doesn't that mean anything to you? You can honestly say that NONE of it matters now?
Eddie: What the fuck are you talking about?!!?


UnQuotable Quote -

Richard: Eddie! You complete and utter BASTARD!!!


Viewer Quotes -

"The first episode is the most boring thing I have ever put myself through and I've sat through the first two Lord of the Rings films. In fact, Eddie wasn't the only one mistakenly believing that the Bastard was actually Gollum. I suppose that makes the Doctor Gandalf and Richard Aragorn... OK! I ADMIT IT! I LOVE LOTR MORE THAN ANY DOCTOR WHO SHIT! TOLKIEN RULES! BWA-HA-HA!" - Some Elf I No Longer Talk To (2003)

"We apologize for the interruption of this program but the news we have to impart is of such magnitude it cannot wait... Sylvester McCoy has appeared in a Big Finish story where he doesn't stink! Astounding! Please enjoy the rest of your program..." - The Eye of Horus BF Reviews (2004)

"On the surface it is just the plot details that are old chestnuts of the haunted house, the murder mystery, the guests all having something to hide, a Time Lord spending years on a planet totally amnesiac... but then you go beneath the surface and realize that Lidster doesn't even HAVE a plot to speak of! The characters just exist to accuse each other of murdering prostitutes and then die! Sesame Street has more emotional development than this!" - Andrew Beeblebrox (2003)

"This is the seventh Doctor at his all time best, desperate, angry and scary. A dash of poignancy has been thrown into the melancholic, peaceful man who was hacked to pieces in the TV Movie. It is such a far cry from those pathetic performances McCoy has been given recently I cannot reconcile they are the same man who appears in Bastard. McCoy dominates the story without ever resorting to scene stealing or theatrics, he uses his voice to full effect providing some very disturbing scenes. This man can be damn sinister when he tries and his committed, thoughtful performance here proves that McCoy can be (and occasionally is) a bloody good Doctor. But Paul McGann is cute, so let's ditch the stupid Scot and get the Fit Doctor!!" - The Paul McGann Estrogen Brigade (2004)

"But it's hard to gripe too loudly at such an obviously-painstaking attempt to rethink a rather tarnished icon of the series, especially when it's acted with the skill that Sylvester McCoy and Mr. Slappy display here. For the first time one can truly believe these two characters were once married roomies. Bastard is a rather gripping suspense/psychological thriller, combining elements of both the earlier Big Finish audios and the New Adventures. This isn't so much about what the Bastard is, as about what he isn't. It does somehow feel a bit kinky to say that he was shagging Eddie throughout the first episode. Slappy gives a chilling performance which makes us truly thankful that Anthony Ainley has disassociated himself from Big Finish and, even better, is stone dead! What do you mean, show some respect? Have you SEEN King John Cutaway? Exactly! May his foulness rot in hell! Now, where's Charley when you need her?" - Nigel Verkoff (2005)

"The Bastard, probably one of the best and imaginative villains to grace Doctor Who is reduced to a sly black-clad, moustache-twirling cartoon, utterly lacking depth and motivation and in no way a credible foe for the Doctor. How can we be threatened by someone who would rather wear women's clothing than try and conquer the entire created universe?? We shoot them in the head as soon as look at them out here on Transylvania."
- Commander Riff-Raff (30906)

"A story like this really makes you count your blessings. God, that suit!!" - Colin Baker (2005)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"A dark and stormy night heralds the arrival of... a dark and stormy knight! HAHAH! Yeah, this story raised, like, so many issues that are relevant today. Is good a powerful force as evil? Why is it easier to destroy than create? And just what in the name of Cthulhu did they get that outfit??!"


Paul McGann Speaks!
"I wasn't IN Bastard, you moron!"
Sorry.


Sylvester McCoy Speaks!
"I enjoy the infinite variety of the way the stories are written. This one's a really intriguing one, very thoughtful. Mainly because we were making it up as we went along. Because Slappy was in the other studio with his trainer, it was quite a train to keep the momentum going between us – especially as he didn't know what to say and neither did I. Still, working without Phillip Oliver is strange. Working without Sophie Aldred is quite good for the nerves. Working without Bonnie Langford is like a shot of morphine into the jugular vein. Hah! I don't necessarily need a companion – just me, the hat and my sonic goat army! But that suit... I was drugged to the eyeballs with pain-killers for most of this story, which should explain my acting. If not most of the plot. It made more sense than Kappa and the Impresarios, though."


Trivia -
During a scene where the Doctor is admiring Eddie's library, he comes across – between "The Divided Self" by Dr Julia Steer "Man: Two Hearts in One Mind" by Professor Summerfield – a novelization of Whitnail and I with a photocover of Paul McGann staring out. The Doctor hastily replaces the book.


Rumors & Facts -

This was the fifteenth story of 2003 that Gay Russell hijacked with a sawn-off shotgun and demanded that he direct.

He justified this action as the fact that Big Finish was currently undergoing a directorial crisis – mainly because he openly threatened to kill any director that came in through the front door and had mined the back door with sonic grenades.

This attitude was ultimately attributed to the intense paranoia he had developed around Nicholas Briggs. Ever since Russell discovered that Briggs had managed to completely rewrite an Unsoiled script to make his Doctor semi-un-canonical during the time of Russell's toilet break, the uber-fan was desperately trying to ensure that Briggs was kept constantly on his toes and demanded continual and utterly insane rewrites to be done to every story in the hope that even if Briggs did manage to sneak into one draft, it would be changed fifteen times before, during and after recording.

Thus, when relatively new script-writer Dave Lister requested a big, loud action adventure story with hundreds of very short scenes with a young cast, Russell immediately offered him the chance to write a small, quiet character-based tale with long scenes and only one murder per episode.

Scowling, Lister was forced to add, yet again the sea-lion incarnation of the Bastard and the Seventh Doctor rather than his initial proposal of the Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Omigod.

The idea of the Seventh Doctor discovering the Bastard was an amnesiac, calling himself Koshie of the House of Oakdown being falsely blamed for a racehorse doping scandal, had already been offered to Cavan Scott, who had laughed it out of his inbox.

Lister's plot concerned the Doctor chancing upon the Bastard discovering the secret to eternal youth in a backwater town in Australia, and in seconds Russell changed it to the Doctor trying to work out the Bastard's identity in a backwater town on an alien planet that so resembled Victorian England several long scenes had to be added reinforcing that it wasn't.

Russell wasn't too keen, but unfortunately the only other option was Mark Michalowski's K-Mart, which featured the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Nyssa on an underground supermarket where the Bastard is the store detective on the lookout for shoplifters.

Compared to that, Lister's plot was comparatively award-winning.

It was then that disaster struck and Nick Briggs suggested that the Seventh Doctor should be accompanied by a new companion called 'Nik', a bald, toothbrush-wielding hack writer who proved to be better at the whole "save the universe" lark than the Doctor, who would within the space of their first episode together, put more and more of the responsibility on Nik's younger, more attractive shoulders.

Gay Russell responded to this by activating his personal death-ray cannon, which by accident nearly killed Sylvester McCoy.

This was hastily written into the script as the Seventh Doctor mysteriously being struck by lightning.

Sadly, McCoy was now highly charged and the outfit he wore for the TV Movie (which he adopts for the first time in this story) reacted violently, giving cast and crew such jolts that three sound engineers were dead before the second scene was finished recording. For the rest of the series, the Doctor wore a white cape with the outfit painted on it by Philip Madoc's pet iguana.

Russell still refuses to explain WHY he made McCoy turn up to record the audio story in costume.

By this time, everyone knew that not only would the story would not only be crap under Russell's increasingly insane demands, it would be dull to make as well.

Thus, Lister made the cunning move of creating the most boring episode one in Doctor Who ever, with the intention of making Russell fall asleep during recording and allow the cast and crew to get on with the real script which Lister would retrieve from a secret location.

However, the plan backfired, and Lister fell asleep also. With only the sleep-inducing first script available, the story was left up entirely to the leads, who actually had no idea what the story was supposed to be about in the first place!

It was at this point that three of the actors buggered off for their lunch break, leaving Sylvester McCoy and Slappy to improvise whole sequences where they discuss the nature of evil and whether or not the Perfugium Wombats have a chance at the Semi Finals this year.

The conversations about evil border on the melodramatic but do get their point across well; does an evil man have to have any motive to kill? Can a man be born evil? Is it a case of nature or nurture? And where the hell did Eddie get that awful suit??