Unseen 6th Doctor - The Ultimate Evil

Serial 6Z/3 - The Penultimate Evil
The Penultimate Evil
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Nudity



Serial 6Z/3 - The Penultimate Evil -

With the TARDIS totally cleaned out of Meep kitty litter and Cyberman pornography, the Doctor finally collapses in despair - he's got nothing to do, no one to do it with and his childhood hero is, in fact, a completely amoral bastard. At Peri's suggestion, he finally get his rocks off by mucking about with the deluxe model inflatable woman Magnus gave him.

Digging his heterosexuality out of a junk cupboard, the Doctor makes out with 'Rachel' and is surprised when she suggests he take a holiday. Sil and Peri are up for it, as long as it is nowhere near Earth in 19th century. Rachel programs the TARDIS to head for the relaxed, peaceful land of tranquility called Revulsion. The distinctly kinky and horny Revulsionites have not given a damn about their neighboring continent of Sheerdisgust – who broke off relations fifty years ago, deciding that, while, yes, if they were honest, everyone of them DID do it, but they don't want it waved in their faces all the time. The two races have had no contact for nigh on fifty years, the Sheerdisgustoids because they're waiting for the Revulsionites to make the first move, and the Revulsionites because they're too busy making moves on each other to care about the uncool squares over the hill.

The TARDIS lands on a topless beach in Revulsion, and the Doctor and Peri emerge – immediately whipping the sunbathers in a fury at their audacity to wear clothes and have platonic friendships. The Doctor flees back to the TARDIS and locks Peri out, leaving her at the mercy of the mob. The Doctor actually intends to materialize the TARDIS around Peri and save her at the last moment, but gets distracted by Rachel, who is performing a pole dance on the console. In the confusion, the police box takes off and lands in a nearby laboratory where two leather clad fetishists Ravlos and Kareelya (or Spankman and Bobbit as they prefer to be called). The Doctor emerges and is promptly tied up and a silver foil cap placed on his head. The Doctor is rather put out at this development, and frustrated he has no way of joining Spankman and Bobbit as they continue their naughty games.

Meanwhile, Peri has met up a young man called Abatan (or JD Massive as he likes to be known) who explains he is into pretty much everything, but he has been known to go a little to far – when a former lover covered themselves in chocolate sauce and invited him to eat it off, Abatan got a bit carried away and unintentionally committed cannibalism. Just the other day, a bit of a kinky game with his old girlfriend Mariana got a bit out of hand when he forgot the safety word and hurled over the very cliff that he and Peri now stand on.

So caught up is Abatan in his explanation, he picks up Peri and tries to throw her over the cliff until Peri struggles free and tells him to snap out of it. Abatan immediately apologizes and picks up Peri and tries to throw her over the cliff, but at the last moment stops, smacks his forehead and says, "Oh, sorry. Sorry. I remember now." He wanders off, gets bored, and decides to throw Peri over the cliff anyway, but trips and plummets to his death. Bored with this mediocre plot line, Peri decides to try and find the Doctor. After asking a polite local what crimes in Revulsion carry automatic death penalties, she heads for the Cupboard Under The Stairs, locked since the truce with the Sheerdisgustoids, and containing the most revolting, erotic devices on the planet. Peri believes that the Doctor has probably already accidentally stumbled across the Cupboard Under The Stairs and is probably already locked up under sentence of death.

The Doctor, however, has been released by Rachel and, in a psychotic rage wrecks the lab and beats the living shit out of Deputy Ruler Escoval, who instantly vows revenge against the badly-dressed time traveler. Escoval immediately begins a game of Simon Says.

Yes. Simon Says.

For some reason, the Doctor, Ravlos and Kareelya HAVE to do what he says and, in minutes have confessed to being agents of the Sheerdisgustoids, using extremely unimaginative weapons clearly ripping off the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Shop Intensifier Ray to turn the Revulsionites to insane, uncontrollable CELIBATE freaks! By simply getting the ruler of Revulsion to "have a go" in the game, Escoval also takes over supreme executive power over the entire country and plans a war to conquer Sheerdisgust and thus get some new groupies.

Peri arrives and she and the Doctor make an ingenious escape. Well, I assume that's what they do. Peri just shouts 'Now!' and they jump up in the air, disappear and reappear inside the TARDIS, which is now sitting inside a specially modified asteroid base orbiting Earth, er, the planet where all this crap is happening. Not thinking this is at all strange or worth investigating, the Doctor and Peri use the TARDIS to head for the island of Sheerdisgust and find a pleasant, nice village with lots of lovable middle-class eccentrics wandering around, being nice to each other. Three minutes after the Doctor and Peri step from the TARDIS, the village is a burnt out ruin where crowds of gnarled, hairy primitives grunt abuse at each other.

The Doctor admits this isn't exactly the effect he was hoping to have, but the Sheerdisgustoids are now in such disarray the Revulsionites will have absolutely no trouble conquering the country and enslaving the inhabitants. They leave in the TARDIS, only for the Doctor to realize they had materialized fifty years early and just caused the incident that sparked the "truce" in the first place! Swearing under his breath, the Doctor pilots the time machine into the future in order to do the same thing all over again.

This time the police box arrives in a plain smothered by mist where stunningly attractive naked people wander around with hurricane lanterns attacked to their foreheads. In time-honored fashion, the Doctor and Peri are captured, stripped naked, tortured and brought before the ruler of Sheerdisgust, a being known as... the Gerbil.

The Gerbil explains that the Sheerdisgustoids regained order by stapling hurricane lamps to each others' foreheads in such a way that, well, they are kept in a state of perpetual bliss that their Revulsionite neighbors can only strive for. Thus, the Doctor and Peri are allowed to leave in the TARDIS on the condition they head for Revulsion and tell them what losers they are.

However, the populace of Revulsion have finally realized they have given up all their rights and forged a never-ending dictatorship simply because Simon said. They promptly decide that they're sick of this game and concentrate once more on getting tans and experiencing multiple orgasms. Crushed, Escoval puts all his belongings in a handkerchief tied to a pole and wanders off into the sunset.

Upon learning this, a rather deflated Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS, where the Doctor spontaneously realizes the cupboard where he kept Rachel contains three items that can instantly solve the plot. When asked why the hell he didn't use them earlier – I mean, a LOT earlier, like when the Dustbins invaded Earth – to save the day, the Doctor punches Peri's lights out.

Attaching an ACME beam locator to the console, the Doctor instantly transports the TARDIS to the mysterious Bondian asteroid base though I have no idea why as there seemed to be no beams emerging from the asteroid or any reason to go there into the first place! Emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor spots an armored fridge-like termination droid lurching out of the shadows towards him. However, the Doctor possesses a Microgramme Circumscriber, and discovers that the robot is in fact made out of old cardboard boxes. Opening the fridge door, the Doctor discovers...

"Hello, Sil. What a nice surprise!"
"Shit. Usually works."

Sil, is in fact, rather pissed off that no one has paid him any attention since the very first scene and so stole the TARDIS at the earliest opportunity to create an asteroid base with which he could observe the collapse of civilization into war – and make an award-winning documentary along the lines of Michael Moore. He feels his been neglecting his inner world dominating megalomaniac for too long.

The Doctor, however, wields his final plot device... a crystal ball. With it, he claims to be able to see the future, and foretells a time when Sil packs in the whole situation and continues his travels with the Doctor. Sil finds this a little hard to believe, when the Doctor begins to bash the Thoros Betan repeatedly over the head with the crystal ball until he agrees. They leave, the Doctor boasting how accurate his foresight is and Sil groaning from concussion.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of a cliff, Abatan finds himself lying next to his girlfriend Mariana, both with lumps of shrapnel impaled in their skulls. The credits roll over shots of the couple making out.

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure On The Planet Of The Bondage Freaks
Doctor Who & A Bunch of Wankers (Canada Only)
Nigel Verkoff's Guide To Inflatable Ingrid and Other Polythene Pals

Goofs -
In the confrontation which with the alien robot, the Doctor's Microgramme Circumscriber fails spectacularly, so the Time Lord hastily adds an Ever-Ready battery to get it to start working.

The terrible breaking of the fourth wall in episode one:
Doctor: I know you! Jean Anderson, how are you?
Kareelya: I do not recall meeting you before, Doctor.
Doctor: Yes, you do! We were in The Brothers together! It's me, Colin Baker, remember!
Kareelya: Oh, yeah! How are you?

Technobabble -
Sil is rather intrigued by the concept of "Thought Balloons" which allow the user to make out with anyone they wish according to the early Oates-Rumpole Principal of "inversing the metaphor flow".

Links and References -
Rachel lying amidst Cyberman pornography eerily echoes both Messing With Magnus and Atari of the Cybermen.

Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor realizes he has been to Revulsion before, and takes care to ensure that he is not wearing any crushed velvet. There, he got on quite well with Spankman and Bobbit (the latter of whom is brilliant at "Suckoss", an ancient Revulsionite custom which the Doctor hopes to teach Peri one day. One day.)

Groovy DVD Extras -
Dude, there's this totally cool control on the DVD that, if you increase by seven points, makes everyone sound like chipmunks on helium! And if you use it on The Penultimate Evil, you can hear the real voices of all those distorted "sexy" groans in the background!

Dialogue Disasters -

Rachel: It is many days since you have had need of my services.
Doctor: It is indeed a long time, Rachel. It is indeed. Heterosexuality isn't really my forte, to be honest. If it wasn't for the TARDIS turning me on in such an unseemly fashion, I wouldn't be sticking my fingers in your orifice at this very moment.

Ravlos: You have been held grip by a force that allows any 'straightness' within us to override any sense of 'gayness' we might possess.
Doctor: What? Me?! Straight? Impossible!
Ravlos: I'm sorry, but it's true.
Doctor: Well, I must say I find that thought very unpleasant, to say the least. Somebody must have a very twisted sense of humor indeed to be getting up to that sort of thing. I'm totally bowled over!

Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: So, we want a holiday where peace is guaranteed. No strife, no murder, no mayhem, plus... But, of course – gay strip clubs.
Peri: Skies of blue, high sunshine level, good swimming.
Sil: And an indolent indigenous population that could easily be tricked into requiring arms supplies, please.
Peri: But not Singapore.
Doctor: Not Singapore?
Peri: Anywhere but.
Doctor: Right, there you have it, Rachel; what do you have in mind?
Rachel: There is only one planet in my memory guaranteeing peace, perverted pleasure and gullibility at the stated level. A planet known as... the Earth.
Sil: What a dull name.
Peri: But of course! I should have guessed by the description! WE NEVER GO ANYWHERE ELSE!!!
Doctor: We went somewhere else last week!
Peri: What? "Magnus"? I know Hawaii when I see it!

Kareelya: For a short while, you were turned into a demented creature, Doctor, whose only thought was to kill!
Doctor: Yeah, but I do that all the time – that's no indication of my sexuality, you know!

(The final scene in the Doctor's bedroom):
Doctor: Yes, you know, Rachel, I think we really could do with a holiday now.
Rachel: Now that IS a great idea. Anywhere in particular that you'd like to try?
Doctor: How about Singapore? If that doesn't annoy the crap out of Peri and Sil, I'll be fresh out of ideas...

Viewer Quotes -

"This is exactly what Michael Grade didn't want Doctor Who to be. It takes the violence quotient of Season 22 and takes it up to eleven, and gives a revolting insight into the Doctor (who, this adventure makes sickeningly clear, swings both ways). There's only so many times you can show everyone shagging each other before it gets boring – I don't know the exact number, and The Penultimate Evil doesn't actually reach that point, but boy it has a lot of fun trying!" - Nigel Verkoff (1997)

"Well, to be honest, the reason I don't like this is because it is the same as Vengeance on Vetnor. It is completely lacking in originality. The Doctor and Peri are again in similar roles to Vengeance on Vetnor, while the two continents of Sheerdisgust and Revulsion are very similar to the two main groups in Vengeance. Sil is again a rip off of Sil with similar attributes and values. Oh, wait a minute... This IS Vengeance on Vetnor! Sorry, wrong story. You can forget everything I just said." - Vincent Price (2003)

"Let me get this straight. The penultimate evil on this planet is using a game of Simon Says to take over the country. With a moral code like that, what the fuck is the ULTIMATE evil? Cheating in Monopoly? This sucks donkey balls!" - O. J. Simpson (1989)

"A world of topless beaches, bondage games, full-frontal public nudity, leather restraints and auto-erotic asphyxiation... GREAT MAKER, I FRICKEN LOVE DOCTOR WHO! IT FRICKEN ROCKS!!" - Londo Mollari (2258)

Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Doctor Who is always at its best when its stories actually contain a message for the viewers at home – and, in the case of The Penultimate Evil, it is: silver aluminum foil hats DO stop the aliens controlling your brains! At last, the truth is out!!"

Colin Baker Speaks!
"Yes, I remember getting strong sensations of déjà vu reading this script. The Penultimate Evil really does plunder aspects of both The Twin Double-D Dilemma and Vengeance on Vetnor – a complete coincidence as the author was out of his mind on happy pills, and makes you wonder just how the originals were written at all."

Rumors & Facts -
Wally Doo-Dally was a newcomer to Doctor Who and rather difficult to spot in a crowd unless you were specifically looking for his beanie-clad, bespectacled, red-and-white-striped form. An established listener of radio plays and sitcoms, Doo-Dally was also making a move into serious television viewing. He was inspired to write for Doctor Who after an all-night session of hallucinogenic mushrooms and rave music lead him to believe that the cast of Juliet Bravo were, in fact, plotting his downfall. Determined to escape the bloodthirsty ravages of Inspector Jean Darblay, Doo-Dally realized he needed the protection of a bisexual time traveler and his wacky friends.

Wally Doo-Dally's offered his services to the BBC, asking to write a story with his name in the credits, somehow believing that this would protect him from the evil Darblay. John Satan-Turner, in total denial about the last script he had commissioned from a newcomer (Lame Shit), agreed on the condition that Doo-Dally's script address the Doctor's growing crisis with his sexuality, give forceful roles to his companions Peri and Sil and also feature sequences where the Doctor enters a barely-explained psychopathic rage and attempts to kill people on more than one occasion. The BBC had made it quite clear that they wanted the new season to feature less blood-chilling violence and terror and to de-emphasize the Sixth Doctor's homosexuality, but JST was out to show that he was no one's bitch, even if the entire production crew and fan base insisted there were easier ways to get Doctor Who taken off television forever.

Wally Doo-Dally's original outline was entitled Saucy Encounter and featured the TARDIS landing in 1986 Dallas, where Peri immediately saves the life of suicidal millionaire playboy Bobby Malvenes only to discover this despair was caused when Malvenes assassinated the head of Global Oil, the late Grand Fairfax, only to leave the company to his stoned hippy son E.T., who sold the entire company off for some dope seeds. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Sil discovered that Joan Collins (to be revealed in episode two as the Rani in drag) has rid the local hospitals of overcrowding by shrinking the patients to size of ants and then selling them off at a profit.

While JST was holding press conferences dressed as a guppy and screaming that he knew exactly what he was doing, Doo-Dally finished the scripts which were now entitled Whoops, Where's My Volvox (or Volvox for short). At this time Eric Saward requested that the opening scenes to the story link up with the final sequences in Messing With Magnus by Phillip Martin, where the Time Lord Magnus offers the Doctor a "rubber dingy" as a peace offering while he and Ice Cream Vendors execute a bunch of transvestites.

Unfortunately, Doo-Dally had mixed up his morning vitamins with amphetamines and went from re-writing the first few scenes with the Doctor and Peri to re-writing the entire script, which now concerned an unscrupulous arms dealer manipulating consumer culture and a thinly-veiled rip off of Romeo and Juliet. However, no sooner had he finished did Doo-Dally realize that his main villain, the Dwarf Mordant, was nothing more than a carbon copy of the Doctor's companion Sil and promptly rewrote the entire script again, getting more and more surreal and erotic with every passing moment. An echo of the original remains in the sequence where Sil trades under the name of DwarfMordCorpCom.

Saward didn't even read the script when it arrived and, indeed, his only comment was to change the title: the story was now called The Ultimate Evil, but Saward thought that using this title meant that absolutely every other evil in every Doctor Who story ever was relegated as 'not the ultimate'. In order to solve this problem, Saward changed the story to The Penultimate Evil and left it to the fans to work out which of the various menaces the Doctor had faced fitted the description of 'ultimate'.

Fiona Cumming was chosen to direct the story, having suffered equally bewildering crap during the Peter Davison era, and she was pleased to receive a script which gave due care and attention to perverse sexual practices. Deep Roy, who played Mr. Sin in The Talents of Wong-Jing in 1977, was cast as the Dwarf Mordant – bizarrely, as the character was no longer needed. Thus, Roy can be spotted in almost every scene, sitting in the corner and sulking.

The story proved ludicrously cheap to make, being set on a topless beach in Acapulco and the local village. There were minimal special effects, with models being used to achieve the exterior shots of Sil's asteroid base, Ravlos' laboratory, the Gerbil, the inside of the TARDIS, the bottom of the cliff, and the gratuitous sex scenes between Rachel and the Doctor in the first episode.

The Penultimate Evil was novelized by Wally Doo-Dally in 1990, when he simply printed a version of the script in italics, before vanishing off the face of the Earth, his last agonized screams being swallowed up by the Juliet Bravo theme tune.