6th Doctor - ...ish

Serial 6Z/B – ...ick
...ick
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC Unauthorized Programme Guide O' YUCK!!

Serial 6Z/B - ...ick -

Peri is utterly, utterly furious. The Doctor has yet AGAIN taken them to a planet he insists isn't Earth, except it totally resembles that planet and he refuses to give it a name.

He explains he has piloted the TARDIS here because he wishes to observe the most exhaustively comprehensive dictionary of the English language in history – apparently learning a language is "a whole work-out for the mouth".

Peri takes this opportunity to complain about the fact every single 'alien' they encounter not only LOOKS humanoid, but also speaks perfect English! The Doctor rolls his eyes and retorts:

"Peri, haven't you realized it yet? Every species in the entire universe speaks English. It's only your backwards gene pool that can't get its act together and use a common lexicon, you ape-descended freaks! Now eat this kumquat and SHUT THE HELL UP!!"

Sil, meanwhile, has started selling dictionaries from the TARDIS library and he bumps into a Scrabble champion called Warren who has dropped in on the unnamed university, mainly in the hope he might meet someone of the opposite gender interested in sex.

When Peri arrives, she discovers that the locals have a truly pathetic barter system using words as currency. Sil then realizes that the cash he has received is, in fact, pages from a torn-out thesaurus and goes into a sulk. Thus, Warren thinks he's got a chance with Peri, until he learns she doesn't accept adverbs as payment.

The Doctor meets up with the compiler of the Lexicon, Osama, and offers her a leather-bound volume compiling all the obscure, original and preposterous insults people have called him over the years.

Osama promptly decides to scrap work on the Lexicon and read the Doctor's gift for the rest of her life. When Professor Cordless demands to know where the compiler is, the Doctor hastily claims she has committed suicide and offers a hastily-scribbled suicide note.

Unfortunately, it is riddled with errors, atrocious penmanship and has been signed 'The Doctor' out of sheer, muscular habit. Cordless nevertheless refuses to bring in the police as the story simply doesn't have the budget for it.

At this moment, a rejected Warren lurches into the room and demands a work station so he can look up rude words. However the list includes works, archaisms, idiomatic spellings, acronyms, compounds, back-formations, toponyms, doublespeak, argot, scientific terms, jargon, and foreign borrowings... in other words, he might as well get on the net and start looking up porn if he wants to get off. He does just that and leaves the library in a state one would not wish to find it, and prompting exclamations of the title of the story.

With the Lexicon's opening delayed, the Doctor, Peri and Sil decide to try and entertain the masses by recreating Monty Python sketches – the Doctor is Palin, Cleese is played by Peri, and Sil acts his little heart out as the dead parrot.

However, the Doctor finds Peri is substituting some of the dialogue for New Englandisms and soon a fist fight begins that ends with the gratuitous loss of clothing and the Doctor and Peri wrestling in custard.

By this time, the time travelers are swearing so loudly and violently at each other that they are actually providing NEW words for the Lexicon!

Peri goes into intense detail about how the Doctor annoys her, irritates her, rejects her sexual advances and lusts after her behind her back, using longer and more complicated words.

The Doctor lashes back, complaining about her whining, her dress sense, her continual complaints about 19th century England and the fact she never thanked him for saving her life from Spectrox Toxaemia!

Sil starts the delegates of the university gambling over which wrestler will triumph both physically and linguistically – until he remembers what they use for currency here.

The fight ends when Peri throttles the Doctor and holds him under the custard long enough for a disturbing cliffhanger.

By now, the gratuitous swearing, baiting and name-calling has created whole new languages and the delegates can no longer understand each other.

The custard-spattered Doctor curses Peri for shattering universal communication, while Sil congratulates her as he starts his profitable Transgalactic Babel-masters business to become rich and powerful.

Fuming, the Doctor grabs Sil and Peri and drags them back to the TARDIS. This is the last straw – he plans to take Sil back to his home planet of Thoros Beta and dump him there. Besides, he's confident nothing bad could happen to him on THAT eyesore of a planet...

Book(s)/Other Related -
Doctor Who – Eew!
Dr. Who & The Adjective of Noun Picture Book
DAL-LEK And Other Completely Useless Encyclopedias


Goofs -
This story shows Delphonese as farting and Terseron as eyebrow-waggling. HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THAT MISTAKE?!!?!?

Cordless is surprised by Warren ruining the furniture when he suggested Warren do it in the first place!


Technobabble -
A lot of words the Doctor calls Peri are so complicated I can barely sound them out and thus COULD be technobabble, but he's after her blood all right. That bitch is going down...


Links and References -
Peri distracts the crowd, adlibs during the dead parrot sketch and tortures the Doctor with the various skills she learned during her time as an MTV video jockey in Lanzarote (Mammaries of Fire).


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor explains that he once helped out Doctor Samuel Johnson by providing a constant supply of Oxford English Dictionaries. True, this causes a temporal tautology as no one ever actually WRITES the Dictionary, but the Doctor says, "Who cares? The original was already missing 'sausage', 'turnip', 'aadvark' and 'disphrasialogorreahic'!"


Groovy DVD Extras -
A special edition of Countdown where Tom Baker watches the infamous 1927 "...ick!" video clip and asks Molly to show it again.


Dialogue Disasters -

Sil: We have gone beyond definition. High definition! I wonder if there's a market for plasma-screen television here...?


Cordless: Are you responsible for this... ick?!?
Warren: Yeah. But no. But yeah... Maybe.
Cordless: Is that – strictly speaking – grammatically appropriate?
Warren: Would it astonish you to learn I don't give a shit?


Cordless: The letter of the law is a foreign alphabet here.
Doctor: Uh... that's a quote from a song, isn't it?


Dialogue Triumphs -

The Doctor on Warren's use of internet pornography:
"He'll amuse himself, I'm certain."


Warren: I've read the reviews, and I don't like what I hear.
Doctor: That doesn't actually make any sense.
Warren: Damn.


Peri: YOU'RE FUCKED, DOCTOR!!!
Sil: Language, Peri!
Peri: ENGLISH!
Doctor: Pah! AMERICAN, more like!!


Viewer Quotes -

"Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronnnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenethurnuk. I just wanted to share that with you."
- This bloke I know who ALWAYS beats me at scrabble (2003)

"Damn it! I wanted the Doctor Who story '...ick', NOT the 1988 Nineteen-Twenty-Seven album '...ick'. Did you even CHECK my list, you red-clad BASTARD??!"
- Dave Restal's 'Thank You' letter to Santa (Christmas 2002)

"I used to think Australians are all itinerant backpackers with a vocabulary consisting solely of 'no', 'worries' and 'mate'. And you know what? I was right! They're nothing more than filthy colonial offspring of convict scum!"
- Phillip Ruddock (2000)

"With wesonance from Rispers of Error, the story itself is bandard, stut the therbiage verein rivals the outpurgated exputs of pordsmiths Wip and Bane Jaker, and there's fenty of plun to be had in hearing Bolin Caker leading his rines with all rue delish. Despite some mat floments there is a tharm chat comes through on lepeated ristenings."
- Reverend Spooner (2003)

"The problem with Peri is that – on television, in the novels and especially the comics – the emphasis is on Nicola Bryant's breasts. Even the audios have these bouncy noises whenever she moves. Fandom loves them. There are internet mailing lists set up solely for the contemplation of Peri's cleavage – mostly set up by myself, but that's by the by. It's like they've never seen a pair of breasts in their life. Er, unlike me. I've seen thousands. In reality, not just on webpages and magazines. Honestly. Er, well, change of topic – has anyone ever seen that film of Peri mud-wrestling in custard?"
- Nigel Verkoff (1997)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I often use tongue-twisters. Medieval torture, that's my thing!"


Colin Baker Speaks!
"I love it when listeners have to look up words in a dictionary, mainly because I live in hope that one day, someone, somewhere will be listening to one of my stories, go to check the dictionary and see my face staring up at them. Apparently, there's a photo of me under 'Encephalic Donkey Gonad'. Or so Nicola claims."


Rumors & Facts -

Life-long fan of Doctor Who and backpacker, the alliterative Phillip Pascoe, vowed in 1999 to get a Sixth Doctor Big Finish story – mainly due to the scurrilous rumors that Colin Baker refused to work unless surrounded by his personal harem.

This and the photographic evidence that Nicola Bryant wore LESS recording audio stories than she did in the original TV series.

Pascoe's submission consisted of pages torn out of The Doctor Who Puzzled Book and the Find Your Fate novel Criticism in Space (featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri, Turlough and K9) – plus the third chapters of Love's Labours Lost, Hamlet, Moby Dick, La Vie mode d'emploi, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Devil's Dictionary, Judges, The Mask of Zorro, Mammaries of Fire and Britney Spears' Baby One More Time.

However, he sent it at just the right time – August 2000, during the precise moment that Gay Russell announced he would produce ANYTHING that hadn't already been offered to Tom Baker.

So taken aback at the instant submission, he accidentally allowed Nick Briggs to direct it. Fortunately, the sequence where John Smith, bald, toothbrush-wielding university lecturer steals the Doctor's remaining regenerations and the TARDIS was cut for timing reasons.

Initially known as (...ick), the episodes all had individual names – John, Paul, George and Ringo – and the story reunited the team of the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Sil for the first time since 1999's Whispers of Error

By curious coincidence, ...ick shares its name with an 1980s Australian rock album, ...ick. The band, 1927, makes finding the 1988 release rather difficult – especially as there is also an album called ...ick previously released by another Australian band, 1988, in 1927. By another curious coincidence, the lead singer of the more recent ...ick was called Phillip Pascoe and, oddly enough, the song is based, in fact, on a Doctor Who story almost identical to this one – revolving around a furious Peri wrestling in custard while Sil watches on.

If you can't be arsed to spend $50 on this Big Finish release, I suggest you seek out the original video clip in 1988. True, it will take far more time, effort and sanity for what is effectively a four-and-a-half minute snatch from this story, but it does involve full-colour shots of Nicola Bryant wrestling in custard.

There is really little else to say about ...ick is challenging, thought provoking and rewarding. And it has Peri wrestling in custard. What more do you want? Seriously!


"...ick" by 1927 (1988)

I'll grab your head
Hold you under the
The custard skin
And I'll be ready
When you twist
And try to drag me in

I thought 'ugly' meant Sil
But now you've really
Made me ill
This is the last time
You try to pretend this Earth
Isn't actually the
Planet of my birth

Tum-tum-ta-daaa!

Ick! Ick! Ick!
You really make me sick!
Don't try to resist me
And I swear, I'll do it quick!
I have had it up to here
I refuse to take any more
I'm gonna hold you under
Till you're at heaven's door!

This stupid university
Devoted to lots of words
Filled with scrabble-loving
Spectacle-wearing nerds
You just brought me here
To make me look really dumb
Now you're drowning in custard
And you're time has come!

Tum-tum-ta-daaa!

Ick! Ick! Ick!
You really make me sick!
Don't try to resist me
And I swear, I'll do it quick!
I have had it up to here
I refuse to take any more
I'm gonna hold you under
Till you're at heaven's DOOR!