JS Doctor - Apollyon

One Hundred And Thirty-Seventh Entry in the YOA Unauthorized Programme Guide Finite Imagination Appendix O' Battered Goldfish


1D - A Polygon -

CD Blurb
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DEGENERATION!

The Key To Big Daddy's House has returned to Gallifrey, but not before the Doctor loses his life in a hilarious industrial accident during a climactic battle with the Bastard.

While the Doctor tries to recover from his latest regeneration and his horrible annoying companions, the Bastard seizes upon the opportunity afforded by the Doctor's confusion by switching bodies with him -- the Doctor's mind in the Bastard's body and the Bastard's mind in the Doctor's... the Doctor's body, I mean, not the Doctor's mind, because then the Bastard's mind would be in the Doctor's mind and the Doctor's mind in the Bastard's body, so it would be the Bastard's mind still in the Bastard's body. I don't know what would happen to the Doctor's body, not having a mind and all. Probably become a late nite DJ or something. Er, anyway, I seem to have wandered a bit.

The Bastard returns to Gallifrey to bid on eBay to take over the High Council Presidency... or rather, the High Council AND the Presidency, god, I need my eyes tested... and retrieve that which he lost:

The Key To Big Daddy's House!

I'm always losing my keys. So I feel his pain.



Plot Summary
--------------

The Doctor, after having regenerated, discovers he is drowning in a blood-spatterd multicoloured scarf, and, worse, is at the mercy of the yammering Dara Hamilton going on and on about how hot she is and how she has to ring all her friends to tell her she's just seen an alien crime fighter shape shift after falling off a satellite dish.

The weakened Doctor cannot cope with her self-involved aura of bulimia and trendy lesbianism, and so is rushed to the George A. Dent Memorial hospital to recover from his trauma. His companions, Dara and the increasingly-bored Commander Mark Tryhard are taken along to help the Doctor pay for the private health care.

The Doctor's attending physician, Dr. House, has some sinister secret. In fact, he probably has more than one. Statistically speaking, it's likely everyone at the hospital has at least one sinister secret, and if anything it's rather cruel to single out House just for the fact he doesn't NEED those pain killers he sucks down like smarties, and his legs are in fact in perfect working order. Let us move on.

The sadistic hospital staff lock Mark and Dara in a holding room and run a sweepstake on how long it will take before Mark loses it and tries to kill the vacuous tart... but Mark instead uses Dara as a battering ram to knock down the door and escape.

The Doctor meanwhile has smothered another patient in the belief he was a Snotaran spy, and stolen his clothes. The deceased was David Copperfield and his magician outfit causes the Doctor to suddenly believe he is the reincarnation of Houdini and stalks the hospital, terrifying children by trying to pull coins out of their ears.

Finally, the Doctor bumps into Mark and Dara and starts screaming for someone, anyone to save him. Finally, the police arrive having finally noticed all the apocalyptic chaos at Jordrell Bank and arrest the trio on the spot.

Much to his amusement, the Doctor is dubbed clinically insane and handed back over to Dr. House while Mark and Dara are taken to prison for brutal sodomy and a death in custody respectively.

Although quite obviously deranged, the Doctor still recognizes Dr. House from somewhere and, after he reveals himself to be, in actuality, the Bastard, the Doctor finally realizes the truth: he is a prisoner of the Bastard!!

The Bastard explains that after he managed to snuff the previous Doctor, it occurred to him that he had an alien mind-transferring body-swapping device he got off a Draconian car boot sale which he never actually got round to testing.

Thus, he plugs himself and the Doctor into the device to try it out and it works - switching the Bastard's mind into the Doctor's body and the Doctor's mind into the Bastard's body.

The Doctor's confusion clears rapidly in his new body, and then realizes he can barely hear himself think over the beat of the drums in his head... which he finally realizes is in fact the result of sabotaging the Bastard's CD player centuries ago, and thus leaving the entire Rogue Traders discography perpetually looping in his brain.

The Bastard laughs in the irony that now he is finally free of the accursed drums he can think clearly for the first time in centuries, and already has a brilliant plan to use the Doctor's body as a Trojan Horse to sneak into Gallifrey, steal the Key To Big Daddy's House, and then do the whole plot of "Countdown to Armadillos" all over again!

Unfortunately, the Bastard realizes his stolen body is still tied to the mind transfer device and he can't move!

Finally, the Doctor gets sick of singing along with the music in his head and releases the Bastard on the condition he ends this horrible torture right away.

This proves to be a stupid move, as the Bastard knees him in the bollocks, throws him into the mind transfer device and sets it on timer. The Doctor is slightly worried what might happen to him if there is no one to swap bodies with and the Bastard gleefully suggests the process will result in a long, drawn-out and agonizing death!

The Doctor notes that although the Bastard is free of the endless drumming in his head, he still is stupid enough to leave his mortal enemy in an easily escapable death trap and generally assume that everything will go to plan.

The Bastard realizes that to pull off being the Doctor convincingly, he'll have to use the Doctor's TARDIS and also have to suffer the Doctor's companions as well to prove his identity - rightly assuming the Time Lords will never think of checking his DNA, biodata or anything sensible like that.

Thus, the Bastard is forced to try and rescue Mark and Dara from prison. Using his newfound machiavellian mastermind powers, he travels through time and space until the prison has been turned into yuppie apartments and discovers that there is a secret passage from cell 425 that leads out of the prison.

Thus, he travels back in time to 1992, disguises himself as Mark's heartbroken mother, and tells him to get transferred to cell 425, use the secret passage and escape. Mark has done his own research and explains the prison governor knows about the prison cell and has thus ensured cell 425 is occupied by Meathook the Horse-Raping Omnisexual of Olde London Town whom no one has survived spending a night with.

The Bastard suggests they send Dara into the cell to see what happens and sure enough the next day Meathook has hanged himself after only five hours of Dara twirling her air and telling him how hot, popular, fashionable and rich she is.

Mark and Dara escape through the secret passage into the waiting TARDIS with the Bastard, who then sets course for Gallifrey. As they set off, Dara asks why "the Doctor" didn't just land the TARDIS inside the prison and rescue them that way.

Mark and the Bastard take turns in smacking her down.

Meanwhile, the real Doctor is still in the hospital room, having been left there for three days after the brain transfer gizmo broke down. Still tied to the bench, the Doctor discovers that the entire hospital is in fact the Bastard's TARDIS!

Delighted, the Doctor takes off, accidentally letting all the staff and patients be sucked out into the time vortex where their screams of mortal torment echo throughout eternity.

"Whoops," the Doctor says awkwardly, and programs the TARDIS to follow the other TARDIS to Gallifrey to try and stop the Bastard from repeating his incredibly pointless master plan of fatal death.

The Bastard, Mark and Dara arrive on Gallifrey which now resembles a freakish mix of post-Vesuvius Pompeii and downtown New York with its ruined temples, shattered fountains, alcoholic drunks, overflowing rubbish and drive-by Shaboogan shootings.

The Bastard cheerfully explains that this is the result of that brilliant tactician the Bastard unleashing the unholy armies of space time armadillos to wipe out the heart of the Time Lord race.

In the ruins of the Panopticon, the surviving members of the High Council are generally acting like nothing has happened and ignoring the sound of gunfire and sirens.

When a strange man dressed as a magician followed by two ape-descendants from the planet Earth, they immediately peg him as the Doctor... and prepare to execute him for the crimes he unwittingly confessed to in a previous story.

The Bastard realizes his disguise has worked far too well and decides to cut the crap and uses his mighty psychic powers to hypnotize Acting-Cardinal Maxil... but it doesn't work!

Luckily the Doctor happened to keep some blackmail in the form of photographs and a betamax video marked with lots of XXXs and soon Maxil is under his thrall anyway and offers the Bastard the chance to replace the late Catflap as the new Lord President.

Since this will give him access to the Matrix and allow him to look up the location of the Key To Big Daddy's House, the Bastard agrees and decides that Mark and Dara have served him well and shall be rewarded by being sent back to their home times and places with their memories of this embarrassingly cack-handed adventure erased.

Mark dryly comments that having her mind wiped could only improve Dara's personality and is incredibly that the new incarnation of the Doctor is not such a self-obsessed cowardly egomaniac asshole as the previous one.

Now the new Lord President of Gallifrey, the Bastard generously invites Maxil to be promoted to Vice Chancellor, but Maxil points that this breaks protocol and since the Gallifreyan Mafiosi known as the Brotherhood of Kithriarchs have taken over the High Council will take a dim view on that and leave severed pig-bear heads in their beds...

The Bastard rolls up his sleeves and challenges the Brotherhood to "bring it on" and vows to go "Syd Vicious" on their collective pale backside if they try a damn thing.

Meanwhile, the Doctor materializes the Bastard's TARDIS on Gallifrey, and, after stealing everything the Bastard owns that isn't actually nailed down with gravity bolts, heads outside to confront the new Lord President and explain the whole ghastly situation.

The Bastard learns of the Doctor's arrival and orders "the Bastard" to be hunted down, captured and then have his cells disrupted until he is completely and utterly dead and no returns.

Showing how efficient the Bastard is, the very next scene has a mob of crack-crazed Gallifreyans dragging the protesting Doctor to the execution block as rotten vegetation is hurled at him.

But at that moment, the Brotherhood of Kithriarchs make their move and saves the Doctor with a daring raid that involves a lot of abseiling, balaclava-glad Time Assassins and Paddy Kingsland music.

The Gallifreyan Mob have rescued who they believe to be the Bastard so he can take down "the Doctor" and help the Brotherhood make the streets of the Capitol safe once more for decent folk to wander around without their heads getting bitten off by giant armadillos.

The Doctor agrees on the condition he gets a nifty sharp pinstripe zoot suit, slices of orange to suck and gets to talk like Marlon Brando in casual conversation.

The baffled Brotherhood agrees and the Doctor agrees to lead a bunch of rowdy extras to the Panopticon and shove an ice pick up the Lord President's spinal column and burn the presidential apartment.

"Look out Norman Tebbit!" the Doctor shouts and in less time than it takes to actually type it up the Gallifreyan People's Front Army has seized control of the state in a bloody revolution that wipes out more innocent lives than the Armadillo incursion one story previous.

The Bastard is caught by surprising downloading some nifty porn videos into his TARDIS data bank and, realizing he no longer has any time to piss about and links himself to the Matrix itself.

The Bastard realizes he is actually rubbish at researching thing and decides to just delete everything in front of him until he locates the data with the location of the Key To Big Daddy's House. Gigabytes of data are lost, including the favorites of the Ancient Bodacious Blonde Websites of Omigod and some cool Red Dwarf chatrooms.

Vice-Chancellor Maxil realizes he has been royally screwed over and quickly joins the revolt as the remnants of the High Council realize they have been duped yet again and en mass resign, steal their official stationary and flee the continent for tax exile on Paradise Island.

The Doctor now reveals to the mob the whole body swap issue and explains he intends to use the Matrix to swap bodies and so when he's finished they are to attack the one with the beard, OK?

The Doctor enters the Matrix to confront the Bastard, and immediately Mark convinces Maxil to initiate a core shutdown and data flush which will erase the minds of both renegade Time Lords so they can be sure neither of the irritating bastards gets out alive.

Inside the datascape, the Doctor and the Bastard realize the walls are closing in and their only chance to escape is to return back to their rightful bodies... and to make sure, the Doctor repays the Bastard by kneeing him in the bollocks and leaving him to die.

The Doctor awakes in his own body, much to the annoyance of Mark and the bewilderment of Dara, who needs the whole plot explained her in very simple worlds. By the time he's finished, the mobs of Time Lords have got burning torches, so irritated are they with Dara.

The Doctor, Mark and Dara flee in the TARDIS where the Doctor promises to one day maybe if he's not busy think about returning Mark and Dara home, but in the mean time, he has the sudden uncontrollable desire to become a magician for children's parties, and laughing insanely runs off into the depths of the time machine.

Back on Gallifrey, as the Time Lords actually try to sort out their own mess for the first time in recorded history, the Bastard's lifeless body lies abandoned in the gutter.

Then his eyes open!

The End... or IS IT?!?


Books/Other Related Material-
Doctor Who: Face / Off
Doctor Who IS the Bastard! (Canada Only)
David Segal - The "Pretending To Be Anthony Ainley Impersonating Jeff Coburn But Not Sounding Remotely Convincing" Years


Links and References -
Mark nostalgically reminisces about the good old days blowing the fuck out of Cylons with his Tricorder of Death.

Maxil is played by Jym de Natale.


Untelevised Misadventures -
For a laugh, the Doctor once sabotaged the chameleon circuit of the Bastard's Type 73 TARDIS, leaving it stuck in the form of an obsolete 1960s Metropolitan lobster off the Isle of Wright.



Dialogue Train Wrecks
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Bastard: Now, Doctor, I have your body!

Doctor: Ah, but I see you! Watching me! Watching you! I can see you!

Bastard: And now you see... just where you gotta be!

-------

Dara: Yeah, and I'm the Queen of England!

Mark: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WILL YOU SHUT UP!!

-------

Dara: Don't you recognize us?

Doctor: Well, of course I recognize you! What do you think I am? You're... Tasha. No?

Dara: Oh, Doctor! I'm not Tasha, I'm hot! Tasha's a slag!

Doctor: A rich stank... No, don't tell me... Melissa? Vicki?

Dara: Dara!

Doctor: No, that's not it...

Mark: Doctor!

Doctor: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are YOU Tasha?!

Mark: No, but I'm going to break both your arms unless you stop prancing about like a lunatic! We've got to get out of here!

Doctor: What are you in such a hurry for? That's the problem with you young people, rush, rush, rush. And crack cocaine. That's a problem with young people as well. And the fact everyone's turning bi.

Dara: Doctor, you're totally out of it!

Doctor: What makes you an expert in Time Lord physiology, hmm? Got an answer for that ASBO girl? Unless... You're one of them! Aren't you? You're both in on it! You're out to get me! Who sent you? It was Michael Grade, wasn't it!

Mark: I admit it. Dara is an alien spy.

Dara: What?!

Mark: Shall we strangle her?

Doctor: I'd be delighted! Lead on! Forward into the unknown darkness!

Dara: ARRRRGH!!


--------

Doctor: NO! What crime have I committed?! That never happens to David Copperfield! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!


Dialogue Gems
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Dara: It's bigger on the inside than it is on the out!

Bastard: Transcendental quantum physics, actually.

Dara: Transde... wha?

Bastard: It's far beyond your rudimentary comprehension. Just say, "it's bigger on the inside than it is on the out."

Dara: Are you saying I'm stupid just because I'm human?!

Bastard: No. I'm saying you're stupid because you're stupid. Period.

--------

Doctor: The Time Lords may KEEP time well, but they are a bunch of total wankers.

Maxil: If you had kept your place on Gallifrey, Doctor...

Doctor: ...things would have turned out differently. Yes, yes, but who's to say they would have turned out BETTER? You know, the Bastard did make one interesting point: you're all a complete of useless bloody tossers! I'm off to Vegas and you lot can look after yourselves from now on, you bunch of lavatory bowls...

--------

Doctor: Come to gloat, have you?

Bastard: Gloat? That would be beneath me. But not beneath you, you arrogant little git. You know, actually I find I rather pity you.

Doctor: Pity me? What are you, a girl?

Bastard: I pity that a man with your intelligence would so easily... so WILLINGLY... play directly into my hands. It was almost no challenge at all. You're a total loser, you know that?

Doctor: Hah, I've busted your ass from here to Milliways! You think you can beat me now? You give yourself too much credit.

Bastard: Quite the contrary my dear Doctor, all this time it seems I've given too much to YOU. I mean, God, you used to be cool!

Doctor: I'M STILL COOL!

Bastard: Yeah, right. From Gwondi to Arkonis to Jordrell to here... Each time I have anticipated you. I knew that, perhaps, given your penchant for sheer blind luck, you might be able to prevent me from obtaining the Black Abyss. So I had an alternative plan ready, waiting for you to walk right into, which you didn't hesitate to in the slightest to do. "Be prepared", that's the Boy Scout's special phrase.

Doctor: Like the fly to the spider...

Bastard: More like the complete and utter retard to the spider.

Doctor: Next you'll be saying you knew I'd follow you here!

Bastard: Er, I did.

Doctor: Prove it!

Bastard: Disprove it! Now you're on Gallifrey, you're occupying the attention of the Time Lords long enough so I can obtain what I want to and escape. So it seems that you will give me that which you stole from me: the Key To Big Daddy's House!

Doctor: A little difficult, wouldn't you say, since no President has ever found it? That information is only given to the Cha-

Bastard: To the Chancellor? Well, good thing you told me, otherwise the entire scheme would go tits up! Sayonara, sucker!

Doctor: ... FUCK!




Listener Reviews
-----------------

"You know, Jeffrey Coburn actually makes a rather good villain. He lowers his tone of voice when speaking as the Bastard to make himself sound more evil, but he just makes him sound sexy. Oh yeah. That voice... you could just BATHE in it, it's so dreamy!! It gives me the screaming thigh sweats just thinking about it!" - Tasmin Grieg (1993)


"A Polygon is a strange, interesting change. It's one of those stories that can't be used without creating a bit of confusion for the general public, who are luckily spared that torment. Anyone who says otherwise is a lying cheating bastard foreign git." - Nigel Verkoff (1995)


"This is definitely one of those We-Have-Four-Episodes-But-Only-One-Episode-Of-Plot-So-There's-More-Padding-Than-A-Mattress-Factory stories, meaning there's not a whole lot of depth here. But when David Segal is involved, you really shouldn't be looking for any, anyway. His unconvincing 'blocked nose' Anthony Ainley impression is in usual annoying form! Jeff Coburn rocks as the evil Time Lord Bastard, he rocks more than a Parkinson Disease Suffer sitting on a washing machine over the San Andreas Fault!"
- The Jeffrey Coburn Handbook (2000)



Jeffrey Coburn Speaks!
----------------------

"It was me and a couple other chaps who were up for the role. I figured I gave it my best shot, so I pretty much went about my own business, not really giving it much thought. When I got the phone call from the producer who said I was in, I had no idea what they were talking about. I assumed I must have won a free holiday and was very excited... until they explained the truth to me.

I know I'm following in the footsteps of some very great actors. And some truly awful ones. Just because I'm not making thousands of pounds an episode doesn't mean I don't appreciate the gravity of the part I'm playing. But I'd probably have a lot more fun doing it if I *WERE* making thousands of pounds an episode.

The Doctor's been around for over thirty years or so, and the public has a certain expectation of him and the actor portraying him, and I don't intend to disappoint on either score, because I know the public won't hear any of this and the professional actors don't care anyway.

Now, 'A Polygon' was a bit disappointing for me. Not because of the story, I thought the story was first rate... well, the bits that weren't soundbites from Tom Baker episodes, definitely. My problem was that this was supposed to be my debut episode, and yet I hardly got to play the Doctor at all. I was unconscious for most of episode one, then for the rest of the story I had to play the Bastard! That's what happens when you leave the production schedule within reach of David Segal. That guy just plain bugs me.

I decided that if I was going to play the Bastard, I could at least portray him as something a tad more sophisticated than a drooling psychopath whose only goal in life was to smash the Doctor. Now his plans were grandiose and the Doctor was an insignificant pest that just kept getting in the way. And when the Doctor's played by Segal, that is so much more easy to believe."



Peter Hinchman Speaks!
----------------------

"Jeff Coburn was definitely a different Doctor than David Segal was. David Segal was, well, er, what can I say? David's Doctor was a fuckwit. Mark Tryhard, for all his knowledge and experience and how strong a character he was, he was always secondary to this poor man's Tom Baker stunt double.

When the changeover occured, Jeff's Doctor was very, VERY differet. You didn't want to kill the bastard on sight, you know what I mean? And that secondary position that Mark had disappeared because Mark was such a strong character. The relationship between the Doctor and Mark changed with the regeneration because, just, they finally got David Segal out of the damn studio for five minutes.

But he was back. He always comes back..."



Sheri Devine Speaks!
--------------------

"What was Jeffrey Coburn like on his first day? Well, amiable. A little on the shy side, believe it or not. He wore clothes, for example. Classic signs of repressed behavior pattern there. I regularly turned up for recording stark naked. Odd how it made him so reticent and shy, with him screaming 'DEAR GOD, MY EYES!!' and 'Is she always this bad?'

A Polygon was a little difficult to do on account of the fact Dave Segal kept stabbing me during recording. But I believe in that the show MUST go on under all circumstances. So, in between scenes I would try and stitch up the wounds, passed out from blood loss, then came back when it was time to do the scenes again.

It was just a flesh wound. It wasn't like he managed to cut a blood vessel or anything."



Rumours, Slander, and Libel
---------------------------

Many believe this story was entitled "A Polygon" because the writers John Mark and Michelle Taylor were rabid geometry fetishists but the truth is far less kinky and thus far less interesting. And sadly it is not the case that it is a sly reference to dead parrots.

The fact of the matter is that Mark and Taylor wanted to state clearly exactly which incarnation the new Doctor was by naming the story after the geometric shape with the corresponding number of sides. But it rapidly became clear no one could agree on which shape. At first, the story was titled "Pentagon" in the belief that since he had replaced the Fourth Doctor, Jeff Coburn was the fifth. Producer Douglas Phillips pointed out it should be "Triangle" since Coburn was the third Doctor the SCADs had used, while Raymond Dugong suggested "Decagon" since Coburn was three Doctors on past Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor and thus the number was ten.

The only thing everyone could agree on was that Coburn was an incarnation that numbered either two or above, and so the story was named "A Polygon" to leave the matter open, while fans not knowing this wondered if it was a typo for "Appalling", "Apple Ian", "A Pox On You, BBC!", "Apt Onion", "An Opinion" or simply "Unappealing".

Chosen by Phillips to be the brand new Doctor for the 1990s was former chorus boy, gaffer, check out chick, consumer surveyor and gibbon whisperer, Jeffrey Coburn. Coburn himself admitted he was probably not correctly job motivated, and in fact assumed that Doctor Who was some incredibly messed up Star Trek spin off.

This suited Phillips perfectly since this meant Coburn would not become a rabid psycho fan and actually stick to a script put in front of him -- unlike his immediate predecessor, David Segal, who had managed to smuggle himself back inside the studio disguised as a packing crate of cut price human testicles.

Phillips wanted Coburn's Doctor to be a radical departure from what had gone before, as he was quoted as saying during a police raid in 1996 where he was arrested for the possession of thick lips -

"I saw David's portrayal of the Doctor as The Twat. You could always count on him to get you into incredibly awkward and painful situations and whinge and complain all the time that it wasn't his fault. And that was well and good. We need twats, and the children loved the fact that no matter how cruelly they were picked on at school, they would never be as unpopular as Segal's Doctor."

Phillips believed there was an inherent danger to that approach. If you knew the Doctor was going to save the day by sheer luck and lie through his teeth about how damn clever and handsome he is, there's no suspense. You know you'll come back next week and it will just be a remake of Return of the Cybermen for the six hundredth time.

Thus Coburn's Doctor would not be so self-assured, but rather confused, who didn't know every alien in the galaxy on a first-name basis and who would be discovering things even as the listener did. A younger, more vulnerable incarnation with a spray on eccentricity and something quite weird in his lapel.

It was then that Phillips realized at this rate they were going to end up with an incarnation already done on TV by Peter Davison! Dugong agreed and instead they decided to base the new incarnation of the Time Lord on the personality and mannerisms of Coburn himself.

Coburn himself admitted he wasn't particularly in love with the character of the time-travelling meddler with two hearts and a time machine and would rather play a nice, kindly magician with a suit, top hat, cloak, and an endless supply of tutu-wearing assistants to saw in half and quietly bury in the back garden.

The production team conferred for a moment and decided to compromise and use the Peter Davison Doctor, only instead of cricket his weakness would be magic, and he would wear a traditional magician's outfit with a real shoestring for the shoestring bow tie and a lapel pin "of awesome significance" which Coburn suggested be a red-white-blue pin because he thought it looked neat.

Coburn was often ridiculously amused at fan theories about what the lapel pin really was - a Gallifreyan super weapon of mass destruction from before the days of Rassilon? The symbol of the Doctor's campus fraternity at college? A secret remote control system for the TARDIS? - and took great pleasure in breaking the news that the pin meant absolutely fuck all and the only reason it was worn because the Doctor thought it looked good.

Fan writers generally ignore this explanation, as 250 page novels surely have more weight behind the retcon fan theories than the useless meat puppets that read out the dialogue.

Production of A Polygon hit a snag when Phillips discovered that Segal was still in the main cast as he portrayed the Bastard with his truly awful Anthony Ainley impersonation which, to be fair, could be mistaken for the real actor if heard on a bad phone line by someone who had never heard a human being speak before.

Phillips was confused about Segal playing both the Doctor and his mortal enemy, not fully aware of the depths of the uber-fan's insanity, and thus decided that Segal and Coburn would swap places in the script. He expected this to mean Segal would play a minor background character and Coburn would play the Doctor, but it was only on recording that it became obvious Coburn was now playing the Bastard and Segal was still playing the Doctor!

Hastily, Dugong penned a scene where this mess up was justified in the plot, and everyone was impressed at the way Coburn made the Bastard a suave, sophisticated sociopath virtually unbeatable. This just made Segal despise Coburn even more, and he took out his frustrations on Sheri Devine, attempting to stab her to death.

Devine, professional she is, insisted she could continue to record scenes with only two or three tourniquets and a paramedic on standby, but in the end, all of her lines were cut because Dara Hamilton is such an annoying two-faced bitch.

So, with the Doctor's new persona foggily defined and second hand book of crap magic tricks in hand, Jeffrey Coburn was ready to step into the TARDIS and become the latest fan incarnation of the most popular Time Lord in Britain who only four or five people in the entire world would actually know about.