8th Doctor - Caerdroia (ii)

Book(s)/Other Related –
Doctor Who – After Life by Tony Attwood
Thod Wocor – After Wife by Lt. Loony Toad (Confusing Anagram Edition)
See? I Told You So! By Jean Paul Satre


Fluffs – Paul McGann seemed awake for most of this story
Richard Griffiths seemed to be pining for the fjords for this story
Edward Peel-Smith seemed as dull as corduroy during this story

"Now I have you in my power Doc'Tor. Ahh now I have a silly voice you fear me... TIME... LORD. You will suffer unimaginable pain and all sorts of horribleness. Mwa ha ha ha."
"What is he on, Doctor?"
"No idea, C'Rizz. Why?"
"I want some."


Goofs –
That cover, for starters.


Fashion Victims –
C'Rizz day-glo lemon Viking outfit.


Links and References -
The Doctor bitches at length that of how he wish he could have stayed an immortal sex-god on Gauda Prime ("The Twice-A-Night Kingdom") or just as a stoned ex-university student beating up C'Rizz for a laugh ("The Actual Mystery of Beer").


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Seventh Doctor's treatment of Ace in the original Season 27 could have lead to him gaining a new companion called Kate Tollinger (Julia Sawalha), and then regenerating into a fat, flatulent git with attention deficit disorder. This Eighth Doctor (Richard Griffiths) has been scooped from discontinuity during a story called "The Cross-Dressing", where he and Kate were discovering a primitive alien society held in the iron grip of High Priest Julian Clary.

The Seventh Doctor's treatment of Ace in the New Adventure novels could have lead to him trying to pass through one too many doors of perception in a smoke-filled room just before dawn. The stoned, wasted Doctor would have dubbed himself the Elfin Digger and got shot dead when he accidentally destroys a Motherfucker outpost. The Eighth Doctor (Edward Peel-Smith) eventually lost Ace in an art gallery and began an underage sexual relationship with a French prostitute called Fayette Cologne (Wynona Rider). He was time-scooped from the adventure "The Gods of Serious Foreplay", where he was force-feeding two FBI agents hallucinogenic mushrooms for fun and profit.


Groovy DVD Extras -
'Get C'Rizz', a shockingly realistic computer game where C'Rizz is trapped in a maze surrounded by hideous, face-hugging, acid-bleeding, chest-bursting spider monkeys from Uranus who kill him in bloody and quite unnecessarily-painful ways. You can either be C'Rizz and lead him to his death, or be the monsters that rip him apart (the version I sure as hell prefer).


{Note: I cannot be arsed to differentiate which Doctor says which particular dialogue. Go and listen to the stupid thing yourself, loser. I'm not here to make up for your woeful lack of perception!}


Dialogue Disasters -

Charley: I'm naked! Don't you care?
Doctor: I'm still me. I still care. Just not that much.
Charley: You're gay, aren't you?
Doctor: I am not gay! Just... complex.
Charley: What-EVER. Poof.


Kro'ka: I am not interested in your petty adventures, but unfortunately, the viewing public are; the weak, spineless dogs! THEY MAKE ME SICK!!
Doctor: Such a winning personality, he ought to run for his life.
C'Rizz: Why?
Doctor: BENGAL TIGER!!! ARGH!!!


Charley: Be careful.
Doctor: Aren't I always?
Charley: No, you're not – as the maternity service on Gallifrey will readily attest!


"All this corridors look the same to me."
- C'Rizz, the second before Charley breaks his knees.


Doctor: I'm allergic to computers. And haddock, for some reason.


Charley: You look like a Victorian rake off to the opera!
Doctor: I shall take that as a compliment.
Charley: And did you know that they're sending a satellite to photograph the other side of you?
Doctor: I shall take that as a cruel and unusual insult. Prepare to die, bitch-whore.


Doctor: Clearly I have the brains, that one got the brain damage, and what did you get?
Doctor: The Porsche.
Doctor: Damn it! I wanted the Porsche!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Charlotte Elspeth Pollard, I am neither young nor romantic. If you intend to seduce me... Ah, go on, then, do your worst. You're not dealing with an amateur here.


C'Rizz: Why are you laughing at my naked body, Doctor?
Doctor: I'm not laughing, I'm sneering! A distinction perhaps too subtle for you.
C'Rizz: Phew, that's all right, then.


Kro'ka: You are an arrogant fool, Doctor. This is another universe. It contains forces you've never dreamed of, pain you have never imagined, perverse sexual practices you could not conceive of, and accents you can never hope to master convincingly!


Doctor: When I play bondage games, I usually prefer role-playing. Would you like to see the pink room? I know I would. DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE THESE CLASSY WELSH BROTHELS!


Charley: Imagine it, Doctor! You could be die horribly and then turn into a skinhead northerner in a leather jacket with a habit of shouting 'Fantastic!' at in opportune moments as you lust over a blonde Earth girl with no musical talent whatsoever as you travel through the depths of time... and the reaches of space... and the outskirts of Cardiff.
Doctor: Your imagination seems to run to the hackneyed.
Charley: Don't blame me, blame RTD!
C'Rizz: Hey, that rhymes!
Charley: Shut it, C'Rizz! I'm trying to foreshadow here!


Kro'ka: You know, I admire you... You have courage and integrity, you fight evil fiercely but are capable of mercy. To save a universe you chose permanent exile from everything you knew at the cost of one of your sense. You are truly heroic. In fact, I think I'm falling in love with you.
Nicholas Briggs: You're still fired.


Doctor: Of course I'm not all right, I'm being mauled by a Bengal tiger! Why does such horrible things happen to me? What have I done to deserve so terrible a life? Oh, fate deals me blow after blow – and NOT like that, Charley! Why do animals attack me! Why not Fatty over there?
C'Rizz: Because they would need to build up escape velocity once they've killed him.
Doctor: You're cruising for a bruising, buster.


Doctor: I'm the most law-abiding person you could ever hope to meet. And if you believe that my little friends, I've got some magic beans in my pocket for you.


UnQuotable Quote -

C'Rizz: I may talk crap, but I always know what I'm talking crap about.


Viewer Quotes -

"It is a-MAZE-ing-ly good! This story possessing even some kind of point to it filled me with ecclesiastic joy! And the cows! Any scene with cows in it is alright by me, cuz cows are funny! Why? Oh, they just are. You can't go wrong with putting cows in a scene."
- Robbie Coltrane (2005)

"Upon listening to Cardiff, I decided to kick apart my CD player and strangle the milkman. I contacted Big Finish and demanded that, unless certain demands were met, I would stop buying their product and encourage both of my friends to do likewise. I made it clear that there needed to be more directors for stories; shorter stories as every Eighth Doctor audio in the past two years has been longer than my attention span; the companions be more interesting; no more story arcs; and much better covers too. Big Finish's reply was simply, 'Get fucked, wanker!' so I have decided to keep buying their CDs just to screw with their teeny little minds." – some guy (2004)

"Cardiff's cover is the worst I've seen in yonks! What do you mean, I've missed the point? Are you arguing with me? No? Good. Otherwise, I would have to beat you." – H.G. Nelson (2045)

"I can think of a million ways to get a better story than Cardiff. And Zig-Zag-Gay Ass. And Credo of the Moron. And The Actual Mystery of Beer, The Twice-A-Night Kingdom, Faith Dealer and The Lust. Hell, I'm better than all of you people! BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP ME! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!"
- the dying words of Pope Jean Paul II (2005)

"I really enjoyed the idea of the afterlife being Wales. No idea why. Some kind of mental condition, I suppose." – Andrew Beeblebrox (2000)

"C'Rizz is starting to behave more and more like a disgruntled designated driver at a really good party: like the bit where he was standing around nursing both a grudge and a tepid glass of lemonade while the Doctor was snorting cocaine through hundred dollar bills off a Charley's tits, Fatso was dancing on the furniture and Trenchcoat was bitching to the waitress about the time Fayette found all that internet porn in his laptop. I'm not quite sure what relevance that scene had with the rest of the plot, though." - DIY Sheep (2004)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I can't believe that alien masterminds still use mazes. Everyone knows the ball of thread thing by now! That's why I always strip naked my victims before throwing them into the maze, and make sure it's pitch dark. It's a bit rough on my pit bull, Squeaky, but it makes a change from the mutilated cattle the saucer people leave him."


Paul McGann Speaks!
"I was wide awake for this story – Corduroy, as I wittily dubbed it. Well, Conrad laughed. Crawler. Anyway, after my performance in Faith Dealer, the director Gay Russell had taken to prodding me in the groin with a sharp stick so that I could engage with the script. He also rescheduled the recording to after lunch so I wasn't always preoccupied on whether or not I'd paid the parking meter. And they fed me bowls of coffee at a time so I didn't sound hung over. But they still couldn't make me give a damn!"


India Fisher Speaks!
"I love surreal stories. I've screwed over reality, so why not screw over surreality as well?"


Conrad Westmaas Speaks!
"This is C'Rizz's sixth adventure. Everyone complains it feels like six life times and that it's six lifetimes too many. Still, C'Rizz poetry skills really get put to the test in Cardiff, with the Doctors all over the place, so it's up to C'Rizz to keep his wits about him and keep things together. Pity he's so unutterably shite at it, though."


Trivia -
Steve Foxx also did the sound design on this story – hence the intense use of screaming guitars, masculine grunts and the Double The Fist theme music whenever the Kro'ka is speaking.


Rumors & Facts –

The genesis of this story began when, unable to think of any Who elements he had not yet raped, pillaged and tortured, Gay Russell suggested they just nick any old Doctor Who annual and turn one of the board games within into a story.

The next step was to get someone with such a reputation for brilliant scripting and characterization that if the story was a success, Big Finish would be commended for good taste; but if the story flopped, no one could blame them for expecting better work.

Not realizing the machinations of the cynical and twisted minds behind this enterprise, Lloyd Rose (she's a girl. Seriously) was introduced to Gay Russell by Paul "Shagger" Carnall.

Initially she refused point blank the idea of sullying her brilliant work via associating with Big Finish. How Carnall convinced her is a mystery to this day.

Rose duly penned a proposal entitled Doctor Who and The Revenge of Charley Pollard. The story featured the Eighth Doctor and C'Rizz enrolling at 1970s Cambridge and setting up lots of cruel, Candid Camera-style pranks "for the common good". However, Charley catches up with them and screws everything over.

The Doctor tries to distort history to save his sorry arse, and as a side effect C'Rizz is fatally poisoned. After a fifteen minute staring competition with Charley, the Doctor shacks up with Alison Cheney in the Singapore Hilton and live happily and immorally ever after.

This, Gay Russell agreed, was a good story. A great story.

Unfortunately, thanks to a previous disastrous choice made by himself, the characters of the Eighth Doctor, Charley Pollard and C'Rizz were dead. They were definitely deceased. They were bleeding demised. They had passed on. They were no more. They had ceased to be. These were late main characters. Stiffs! Bereft of live! They rest in peace! They're pushing up the daisies! They have rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-DOCTOR/COMPANION-COMBO!!!

Thus, The Revenge of Charley Pollard was not a suitable story for Big Finish to pursue.

Instead, Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellory decided to make the next Eighth Doctor story (where he was originally to be alive and reclaiming his TARDIS) set in the Afterlife.

They also wanted this spooky divergent universe to be, well, spooky and divergent, populated by strange unfathomable beings. Not merely hideous blob creatures with eight arms, no concept of space or time and the ability to suck peoples' minds out through their ears, but something far weirder.

The Welsh.

As the new series of Doctor Who seemed condemned to be filmed in and around Cardiff until the crack of doom, Big Finish decided to brace listeners by making sure there was an inordinate amount of Welsh people in their plays from now on.

Thus, Rose was ordered to start a story from scratch showing the Eighth Doctor, Charley and C'Rizz facing off against the Kro'ka in the Afterlife in a story called 'Caerdroia' – a old Welsh word which, roughly translated means "Buy This Audio Adventure Or We Send Colin Baker Around To Break Your Legs – After All, It's Cheaper Than A Funeral". However, no one could pronounce said name, and after a few minutes of the story being dubbed 'Corduroy', the title was scrapped.

An early idea to reveal that the Kro'ka was merely Charlotte Church in disguise is, in fact, just another one of those 'Thank GOD It's Just A Rumor' moments. As are the claims that the original cover art showing C'Rizz prancing wildly while in the nude, pretending to be a teapot when Charley spikes his drink.

Russell wanted the story that would stretch Paul McGann and give him something to do, a feat no writer had managed since The Actual Mystery of Beer where McGann had leapt into the role of a violent alcoholic dole bludger with such gusto.

Rose initially thought McGann playing a dead man would be good enough for her. How many dead characters do you get outside of Angel and Buffy the Vampire. 76, actually, I counted, but that's beside the point.

The story, now entitled Cardiff, revolved around the Doctor not QUITE dying because this split continuity with the books and comics. Thus, there would be three Eighth Doctors – the comic one, like a stoned Marwood; and the book one, the slightly cranky for no apparent or even vaguely fathomable reason Lieutenant Bush.

Rose suggested the record the 'normal' Doctor's scenes before Paul went to the pub, the 'comic' Doctor's scenes on the way back from the pub, and the 'book' Doctor's scenes the morning after. Unfortunately, this would mean that, for the duration of Cardiff, Paul McGann would receive three pay-checks, and they couldn't have that, could they?

Instead, Russell decided they should waste next year's budget for Doctor Who Unsoiled stories and get two alternate versions of the Eighth Doctor. Richard Griffiths, John Satan-Turner's original choice for the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors was easy to locate and capture. Edward Peel-Smith, "the fan's Eighth Doctor", proved more difficult, as he didn't actually exist.

Luckily, David Troughton was passing and was quickly chloroformed and dragged into the recording studio for the recording of Cardiff, and recording was carried out in around fifteen minutes.

This was because the studio burnt down after Paul McGann's self-made 'Transit of Venus' Esclipe' device – a giant magnifying glass – suspiciously malfunctioned just at the moment the cheques were being written and managed to steal thirty pounds off Big Finish and the rest of the cast before anyone involved in knew what the hell was happening.

Russell decided to cut costs and, instead of nudging Clayton Hickman and getting him to cough up another photoshop cover, they would use some torn out Doctor Who annual pages instead.

This had the bizarre side effect of renaming Cardiff "The Terror Trail Computer Capture Escapes from Xenos And the Green Volcano Via The Secret Steps Where The Prisoners of the Prefusions Journey Through Time, The Centrovian Problem, the Plasmoid Jungle, Facing Monsters And Ropes" until JHE had the bright idea of scribbling 'Cardiff' over the top of the title.

Fans were up in arms at the terrible images – clearly cut-and-pasted (in the old fashioned way, too) from the covers of The Actual Mystery of Beer, The Doctor Who Technobabble Manual and The Mind Shagger. The fan retailer Tense Planet even went so far as to create their own cover for Cardiff:

It consisted of C'Rizz sitting on the Doctor's knee and stroking his hair in a very intimate manner. The Doctor wears a bright orange wig, and is sitting in a bath which is festooned in disco rope lighting and sitting in the middle of the South American jungle which is in fact inside a hollow planet. Blocking the trapdoor exit of the hollow world is an animated demon idol guarding the Castle of Doom wherein lies the King of Doom, the Royal Cabbage of Doom and the TARDIS dangling on strings. The strings are about to be severed by a hedge trimmer wielded by a haddock high on meteorite weed. Struggling to stop the weed are alien balls of fiery energy that spell out the words CHARLEY IS IN THE CENTRE OF A LABYRINTH AND THE WHOLE IDEA OF A LABYRINTH IS THAT YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO FIND THE CENTRE.

This cover has nothing to do with the events or characters of Cardiff but BY GOD it looks cool!

By some bizarre twist of fate, every released copy of Cardiff features the original cover but the altered back one.

With Cardiff completed, Lloyd Rose sold her Doctor Who And The Revenge of Charley plot to ITV, who remade it into the movie Sweet Revenge by find-and-replacing "Doctor Who" with "Patrick Vine". Paul McGann and Sophie Okendro appeared in it, but Fisher was too busy shagging the cast of Dead Ringers and Conrad Westmaas only has a face fit for radio.

And thus, the stage was set for the season finale – in the sense that this was merely a foretaste of the indescribably awful disappointment that was imminent...

Finally, this week's musical conclusion was "Wales and Wales", an ancient Welsh ballad that was ludicrously appropriate. So ludicrously appropriate, it has sparked more conspiracy theories than JFK's demise in 1963. Well, what's YOUR explanation for the police box on the grassy knoll? Come on, then startarse, YOU explain it!

"Wales & Wales"
By Paul McGann and the Timelords

I swore they were dead
Now here's a surprise
But they're back again
I hope someone can hear my cries.

All I can see
Is Wales and Wales
And Wales and Wales
And Wales and Wales...

Oh yeah!

If you think that I like
This pair of complete tossers
I've been lumbered with

Then you really are dumber
Than my agent who suggested
Big Finish was good show-bizz

Well, I'm getting out here
(Charley, not now dear)
And if all else fails
I'll move to Wales

All I can see is Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales...

Oh yeah!

At least I got out of
That stupid
Extreme lifestyle show

And the Kro'ka is screwed
Because ratings have
Dropped far too low

There's not one Doctor but three
Well, that's as may be
But this situation pales
You see, we're trapped in Wales

All I can see is Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales...

Oh yeah!

I swore they were dead
Now here's a surprise
But they're back again
I hope someone can hear my cries.

I can see Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales

Oh yeah!

The TARDIS I suspect is
In the top level of that brothel
In the red light district

I'll leave Charley and C'Rizz
In the care of the fat guy
And the trenchoat prick

Well, I'm getting out here
(Charley, not now dear)
And if all else fails
I'll move to Wales

All I can see is Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales and Wales...

I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales
I can see Wales and Wales