6th Doctor - Doctor Who & The Pirates

Serial 7C/H – Doctor Who and the Goodies (or The Lech That Lusted After A Sailor)
Doctor Who and the Goodies (or The Lech That Lusted After A Sailor)
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Giant Kittens

Serial 7C/H – Doctor Who and the Goodies (or The Lech That Lusted After A Sailor) -

The TARDIS materializes aboard the hold of the good ship Whatshername, where the Doctor and Evelyn immediately begin to steal all the precious silks, gold and jewelry they can find.

However, the ship comes under fire from the pirate vessel, SS Saucy Gibbon, lead by the psychotic frustrated pop star Bill Oddie and his Lancastrian pirates, armed to the teeth with lethal black puddings. Bill Oddie is a rather unlucky pirate, having lost both legs, hands, eyes and teeth in his life of crime, villainy and close-harmony singing.

Despite wearing two eye patches, wielding two hooks, standing on two peg-legs and more wooden teeth than George Washington, all the crew bar the Mate, Tim Brooke-Taylor, immediately lay down their weapons and surrender. The Doctor quite like the look of Tim and tells him to stop playing 'Land of Hope and Glory' while pledging loyalty to the ship, Captain Emmanuel Swan and Queen Anne. To the relief of all, Tim follows the Doctor's advice.

Evelyn (who has been mixing her medication) suddenly challenges Bill to a fight to the death in single combat and they attack each other with swords. However, since Bill is completely blind and can't hold a sword particularly well what with his not having any hands, is easily bested by the raddled old woman with the heart condition.

Bill has begun to fancy Evelyn and asks her to join his crew of Ecky Thump Grandmaster assassins and pirates. Evelyn promises to think about it and Bill, offended by her attitude, draws a pistol and shoots one of the extras through the heart, killing him dead.

Bill Oddie gives the men of the Sea Eagle the opportunity to join him and his crew; they can either plunder other ships and keep the wealth for themselves, or they can refuse his offer and he can kill them. The prisoners all decide to join up with Bill Oddie – and so does the Doctor, who's always fancied working with sailors.

Bill is now planning to find the mysterious One-Eye Garden and tells the pirates to loot the hold, and refuses to let the Doctor and Evelyn join their fun. The Doctor cunningly suggests the pirates load the TARDIS aboard the SS Saucy Gibbon, only for Evelyn to point out he's been so busy congratulating himself for his own cleverness he has forgotten to hide in the TARDIS and is now without his time machine.

Evelyn suggests they hide inside some empty barrels, the pirates will feel the weight, assume they’re full of rum, and load them aboard the Gibbon. Evelyn crams herself into one of the barrels, but the Doctor chooses badly and opens a barrel which is full of pepper. His sneezes give him away.

Bill prepares to quit the cargo vessel when the Doctor suddenly falls to his knees and begs to go with them. All his life he's dreamed of being a pirate, of sailing the seven seas, getting wasted on rum and collecting and interesting variety of venereal diseases! Bill is all the Doctor ever wanted to be – the clothes, the accent, the beard, but above all... the false limbs!

Flattered, Bill decides to let the Doctor join the Saucy Gibbon to be ship's cook and hedgehog. So chuffed is the Doctor that he forgets all about Evelyn (who has nailed herself into the barrel for reasons of verisimilitude) and leaves her aboard the ship with Tim, who has lashed himself to the mast for the fun of it.

The Doctor starts handing out cigars so they can enjoy their new careers in aggressive property relocation management, but accidentally sets fire to the Saucy Gibbon. You know, the way you do.

Bill has the ingenious idea of filling the Saucy Gibbon full of water to put out the flames, but this unfortunately ruins his ship, so the pirates are forced to abandon the Saucy Gibbon and take over the cargo ship. Unfortunately, they have now lost all their loot, so Bill Oddie gets the emergency treasure map out of his hat.

When pressed by the Doctor, Bill admits the trap doesn't show the location of treasure itself but rather the location of One-Eye Garden, who himself carries a treasure map – for actual treasure. Garden and Bill once served under the feared pirate Captain Jack Sparrow who stole the entire gross national product of Jamaica and then trained an army of squirrels to swallow a coin apiece, swim to a pre-determined location and then crap them out into a huge pile.

As Bill admits, Sparrow was a bit of fucking nutter somewhat.

Bill and Graeme Garden were given by Sparrow a map to check out the island where the treasure was stored in order to check it worked by the insanely trusting and optimistic Sparrow, before suddenly was eaten whole by a passing skarazan. Since that day, neither pirate has actually got round to actually collecting the treasure, but today is the day they actualize their potential!

Tim complains bitterly at Bill's lower-class stupidity and Bill tries to shoot him dead – instead killing his deputy, 'Lucky' Merryweather. Meanwhile, the mysterious Grey-Bags the cabin boy has freed Evelyn and constructed a raft out of the same barrel she was trapped inside. Grey-Bags plans to head to the nearest Ruby Islands and collect the treasure he knows to be there. Evelyn finds it odd that an ordinary sailor would know the location of buried treasure, but she finds a lot of things odd and so keeps quiet about it.

Grey-Bags' navigation skills are terrible and after three days rowing without food or water he and Evelyn end up back at the cargo ship. Aboard the ship, Tim is – for the nineteenth time – telling his crew to stop playing silly buggers and start acting like sailors. As a result, he is flogged, but I think Tim enjoys it rather.

Bill bitches loudly to everyone that they just don't GET being a pirate, the Doctor announces he does – it's Bill who doesn't truly appreciate what it means to roam freely out of nothing more than the spirit of adventure. In fact, you could say he is the very model of a Gallifreyan buccaneer.

This leads to a song that comprises all of episode three.

It's not a bad song, but the lyrics are rather muffled. It has a good beat though, and all the characters sing. That guitar solo with the severed goat's head radiating waves of evil was pretty nifty too. But if you think I've got nothing better to do than transcribe songs, you've got ANOTHER THING COMING, BUSTER!

... ahem.

Evelyn bursts onto the deck and announces she is the Evil Evelyn, the most tyrannical of all pirates – when she remembers where she left her ship. No one believes her, so they throw her overboard. She climbs back on deck, totally confused and bewildered. They throw her overboard again – and this time, with the Doctor for good measure.

Meanwhile, Grey-Bags reveals himself to be Graeme Garden! He may have two eyes, but nautical nicknames stick, no matter how ridiculous they be. He and Bill meet up, agree to take the treasure and take turns in whipping Tim when he tries to enter the plot.

The Doctor and Evelyn are washed up on the shore of Ruby Island, the former furious at his companion AGAIN ruining his chances with a bloodthirsty historical character. The Doctor manages to stay calm, even as Evelyn gets scared by an iguana and reveals she had, in fact, the treasure map and a telescope on her all the time. The moment when she starts complaining about her hip, however, is the last straw and the Doctor beats her unconscious with a coconut.

The pirates arrive, drop anchor, lower a boat and head for shore, led by Bill himself. The Doctor sneaks on board and releases Tim, telling the crew that HE has the treasure map and they should slavishly obey HIM, not Bill Oddie! However, the crew are so sick and tired of Tim's Land of Hope and Glory speeches they lock him up straight away without a second thought.

Bill and Graeme return and a ruthless chase sequence begins, spouting another song in the background. This one has violins.

The Doctor and Evelyn implausibly stumble across the TARDIS and escape as Tim, Bill and Greame end up marooned on Ruby Island with nothing but a heap of treasure, food and rum and also a ship to get them to civilization.

The TARDIS arrives in the flat of Evelyn's university student Sally, where, despite Sally's best efforts to explain she is in the middle of shagging a footballer, Evelyn makes a cup of tea and begins to ramble on about the adventure they just had. The Doctor understands Sally's annoyance, and suggests she and her boy continue their activities. He is happy to watch them and eat some popcorn.

It is only while reciting the story the Time Lord realizes the two pirates and the sailor actually got all the treasure and luxury and most likely an enduring fan base. Cursing loudly, he starts to swear loudly and leaves in the TARDIS.

The story ends on an annoying cliffhanger – in the Doctor's blind-rage, he has neglected to make sure Evelyn wasn't inside the TARDIS when the time machine dematerializes.


Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who and the Pilates (Famous Misprinted Edition)
Evelyn Smythe – Superstar
The Goodies' Treasury of Maps


Goofs -
The Doctor calls Dustbins and Cybermen robots.

That is just fucking out of line, that is!


Technobabble -
Graeme suspects that Bill is being effected by the 'narrative conceit factor with negative greetathongs'.


Links and References -
The Doctor at one points hopes that the mysterious UNIT dating will allow the Brigadier and troops to come in and save the day as per 'The Visit'. When this doesn't happen he starts swearing and kicking palm trees viciously.


Untelevised Misadventures -
At one point the Doctor found an alien race who believed that fresh mint-flavored toothpaste was, in fact, the first edition of War and Peace. He then blew them up on the flimsiest of excuses.


Groovy DVD Extras -
Every Goodie episode made. It's a better deal than the BBC give you.


Dialogue Disasters -

Doctor: It just slipped out.
Evelyn: What did?
Doctor: You know how to hurt a bloke, Evelyn.


Helen Goldwyn is getting too close to the truth:
"Just what is the point of this? You're doing the same voice for all the sailors, and the dialogue is totally over-the-top, as well as anachronistic - you're just rehashing a load of fictional pirate clichés, but for some reason, you've stuck yourself in the middle of them, with this Doctor... not that either of you have played a part in the story yet, and in fact, is there a story at all? Because I'm not seeing one!"

End of episode 2. Thank GOD it's over.


Dialogue Triumphs -

Bill Oddie: And this is how we'll conquer the world.
(The line doesn't LOOK much, but Oddie is only human being alive who can not only say it completely seriously, it also scare the crap out of me at the same time)


Doctor: 'If onlys' don't work. Even in time travel. Well, mostly. If only they didn't. Then, the wouldn't in the first place. So they don't. QUED. All right, now I'm going to stop this conversation because I've gone cross-eyed.


Viewer Quotes -

"So pathetic it shivered my timbers." – Johnny Depp (2004)

"And yet *another* version on the theme tune!"
- that creepy fan that doesn't talk about anything else (2003)

"An episode poll winner in my opinion. Not that that counts for much."
- Tom Baker (2003)

"The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn here show why they are the worst partnership that current Doctor Who has. The enthusiasm with which they enter into every aspect of this production is totally awful. This is a story that would have fallen flat if any of the actors were able to prop it up in the first place and what results is one of the most entertaining two hours I can recall as I and my neighbors tried desperately to fix the CD player. When I actually heard what was on it, I was devastated and required counseling."
- www.whingingpom.com.uk (2003)

"GOODY!"
- Ewen Campion-Clarke after the discovery of absinthe (2000)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I am a big fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. How dare they spit on the corpses on Pirates of Penzance?! WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?! There will be BLOOD for this! BLOOD!!"


Colin Baker Speaks!
"Who doesn't like The Goodies? Apart from the BBC, obviously."


Rumors & Facts -

Billed mostly as a "Big Finish stretching of the format" story, this eagerly-awaited story just turned out to be a half-arsed crossover with the Goodies hence label "CAUTION: THIS CD ONLY SLIGHTLY RESEMBLES ANYTHING REMOTELY RELATED TO DOCTOR WHO".

With the musical stylings of the Goodies with the entire Big Finish radiophonic workshop at their disposal (the latter consisting of two cymbals, a Yahama organ with no batteries and a kazoo), the idea of a musical Doctor Who story was on the card. But, anyone who was expecting a musical would be disappointed.

As long as they didn't listen to part three, anyways.

Realizing that not only was the character of Evelyn Smythe not working out but that senile Maggie Stables was wandering around Big Finish studios calling for her pet budgie Beryl and really being annoying. Thus, producer Gay Russell roped in Jacqueline Raynor ("author" of Evelyn's debut, The Maid-Marian Conspiracy) to come up with a story to write her out.

Raynor couldn't be arsed, what with her intense job for DWM watching all these episode of Doctor Who while reclining on a couch. She decided to just write a story with Evelyn in it, but have it told to by an unreliable narrator – so it was perfectly possible that Evelyn might have left or been kidnapped or just dropped dead at the end and there was no reason to have her in the next story. Also, having a narrator meant she could just use a synopsis instead of scripting all that boring capture-escape routine.

For example, originally that although Evelyn would be mentioned in the story, we would never see or hear her because the narrator was (very wisely) editing her out of the story. There was also the idea that Evelyn could be played with someone who DIDN'T remember the Boer War and thus could be recast as Helyn Goldwyn.

Russell would let her do this on the grounds that the story was a pirate story, with real pirates. And the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Eminem. He then remembered that this story would work best for Evelyn's swansong if she actually appeared in it – though that was debatable.

Around this time, Raynor got a free CD of Gilbert and Sullivan material in The Daily Bung, and decided to nick it as the music was accessible, identifiable, and most importantly out of copyright.

Nicking classical musicals was something Big Finish had been trying to do since day one, but the owners of Annie Get Your Gun refused to allow "Android, Get That Nun!" by Nicholas Briggs – the climax of said story would be the Fifth Doctor fatally injured by singing "Anything You Can Do" and regenerating into a handsome, bald, toothbrush-using maniac.

But the idea of teaching the cast to sing was too much like hard work and Big Finish decided simply to rope Barnaby Edward's favorite group, The Goodies, into Doctor Who and get them to sing and dance and generally provide all the plot, imagination and flair required.

Bill Oddie ultimately got the lion's chunk of the action after he beat to a pulp six production associates after Maggie Stables asked him if he could sing. The chaos that followed was so violent and bloody that Big Finish refused to hire Oddie ever again.

Of the Goodies, Bill Oddie is magnificent as Bill Oddie. As he switches between madness, sadism and stupidity - this is star casting at its best. He could very well have the best villain of 2003 award sewn up already.

It was incredibly fortunate that Bill Oddie was available to play himself and that the cast didn't have to double up. Thank God that Graeme Garden wasn't playing Bill Oddie, as he once did after a severe bout of concussion in the Goodies episode "2001 And A Bit".

Oddie's fantastic performance reestablished the credibility of pirates in fiction after years of dumbing down and annual "Talk Like A Pirate" Days. The Wiggles' Captain Feathersword was finally hung from the highest yardarm by three year olds who'd finally twigged what a useless wanker he was. Friendly pirates, I ask you...

The story's title went through a ludicrously long development stage. Work stopped for days as the cast and crew debates the merits of the title "The Goodies" or "Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Goodies" or "The Goodies In An Exciting Adventure With Some Doctor" or simply "Bill Oddie Can Go All Night And That's A Fact!"

The idea of a subtitle to the title was nicked from Gilbert's HMS Pinafore, and so the titles "Tim and the Land of Hope And Glory", "The Songs of Seal" (which was later abandoned because the band Seal was never involved in the story), "The Bitch of Tim", "The Donkey's Tail" and "The Shake of Booty".

Ultimately Doctor Who and the Goodies was made and sold and liked. The cast and crew congratulated themselves for a job well-done before the penny dropped and they realized they STILL hadn't got rid of Evelyn!

Now, I said I wouldn't transcribe the songs, and I didn't.

Someone even MORE pathetic than me, however, has!


"I'm Not Quite The Model Of A Gallifreyan Buccaneer"
by Dr. Who and The Goobies.


I not quite the model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer
I couldn't give a stuff on things a Gallifreyan holds dear
I don't understand matrix isotonic solarity
But I bet that it can be fixed by reversing the polarity

I'm mentioned in graffiti in the toilets of the Panopticon
Into the Time Ladies' showers I sent a rogue Monopticon
I've stolen the TARDIS to joy-ride throughout known history
And all the pretty boys and girls definitely get to ride for free!

{And all the pretty boys and girls definitely get to ride for free!
And all the pretty boys and girls definitely get to ride for free!
And all the pretty boys and girls definitely get to ride for free!}

Thanks to the TARDIS I can be understood for very nearly all the time
Though occasionally the circuits break and I can do naught but rhyme
In short in every matter that a Gallifreyan holds most dear
I sure as hell ain't the model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer!

{In short in every matter that a Gallifreyan holds most dear
He sure as hell ain't the model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer!}

I so totally flunked mythic history from Rassilon to Omigod
To impress the chicks, I say I'm the Other and they just blink and nod
I try to slip my friendships with companions into carnality
Who gives a flying fuck if it's cathartic in its spurious morality?!

{Who gives a flying fuck if it's cathartic in its spurious morality?!
Who gives a flying fuck if it's cathartic in its spurious morality?!
Who gives a flying fuck if it's cathartic in its spurious morality?!}

I have illegal narcotics deals, to shady Castellans I'm a savior!
I've thrown scalding tea into the faces of Thalia, Goth or Flavia!
In fact I even killed my way to the office of the president
Although I'm useless at the job, that fact is plainly evident

I know just how it feels to be frustrated and never having anyone
And all my young companions are definitely having all the fun
I've managed to deflower one or two, yet still I remain irate
There's only so much polite refusal that a Gallifreyan can take!

{There's only so much polite refusal that a Gallifreyan can ever take!
There's only so much polite refusal that a Gallifreyan can ever take!
There's only so much polite refusal that a Gallifreyan can ever take!}

I've cruised for chicks all over Earth and I even checked its moon
My trusty true type forty is stocked with Gallifrey macroons
But that's just not what the average Gallifreyan holds most dear
I wish I had the number of this Gallifreyan Buccaneer!

{But that's just not what the average Gallifreyan holds most dear
He wishes he had the number of this Gallifreyan Buccaneer!}

But, I've defeated evil robots such as Dustbins, Quirks and Cybermen
I've met identical dictators from Tobias Witherspoon to Magic Chin
I've flirted with helpless maidens from the devastating Viking pricks
Vanquished Nestles, Exxons, Mara, Protons, Monoids, cloned Adrics

I've vacationed on planets and accidentally triggered total war
Saved Earth, Manussa, Dullass, Skonnos and Tigella, oh what a bore!
My mental state has decayed to the slightest of a filigree
And so to the Time Lords all I say is, "Up yours, Gallifrey!"

{A sentiment we all agree. "Up yours, Gallifrey!"
A sentiment we all agree. "Up yours, Gallifrey!"
A sentiment we all agree. "Up yours! Up yours, Gallifrey!"}

I'm not content to just watch like all the rest
Now Zoe Heriot, she really WAS the best
However for obvious reasons, the least of which is diplomacy
To all the others girls I say that she was just in the top three!
I know in every matter that a Time Lord could give a toss
I'm not a Gallifreyan buccaneer, but personified chaos!

{We know in every matter that a Time Lord really should give a toss
He's just really not fit to measure up with good old Lavros!}

My audio adventures are now on CD for all to hear,
Including the well-written ones about the fogou and the Brigadier
I've battled mighty foes in every planetary vicinity!
And sexy, handsome Maxil shot me in Arc of Sinfinity!

{And sexy, handsome Maxil shot me in Arc of Sinfinity!
And sexy, handsome Maxil shot me in Arc of Sinfinity!
And sexy, handsome Maxil shot me in Arc of Sinfinity!}

I know in every matter that a Time Lord could give a toss
I'm Gallifreyan buccaneer, but personified CHAOS!!!