Doctor Hasn’t A Clue #13.

Posted by Doctor Sinister on August 31st, 2010 filed in Doctor Hasn't a Clue, Doctor Who, Humour, LEGO, Vignettes

DWHAC_013

During Doctor Who‘s history, there have been occasional celebratory or anniversary stories where our hero would accidentally meet a past incarnation of himself and/or old enemies from the show’s history.  However aside from two cut scenes from the 3rd Doctor story Day of the Daleks, the Time Lord had skillfully managed to avoid ever bumping into his own present incarnation.

All that would change of course with the arrival of the 83rd Doctor, who, as we have previously seen, was utterly incompetent and incapable of avoiding trouble even if it was heavily signposted with flashing neon arrows.

Thus it was that, in 2337, having incorrectly calculated the date using a clapped out calculator, drunken BBC executives happily agreed that that the 341st season of Doctor Who could feature an extra special episode to celebrate the 375th anniversary of the show, a whole year ahead of the true 375th anniversary.

Not believing his luck, Producer Cambridge-Smythe immediately set about writing what he thought would be the “ultimate” Doctor Who story, featuring all the surviving Doctors and many of the alien races he had encountered through the centuries.

All that came to a grinding halt half-way through planning, with an urgent memo’ from the 6th floor.  Having temporarily sobered up long enough to notice a big hole in the budget, someone in the BBC Executive Suite had spotted that the celebration of the show’s anniversary was a whole year ahead of schedule.  And to make it worse, someone else had installed new batteries in the previously errant calculator and as a result, the episode’s budget was slashed to less than 5% of what it had been before.

Quick thinking was required, not to mention the firing of several hundred actors and actresses who had been lined up to start filming during the following week.  A new script was commissioned and sets hastily built.

The resulting episode was wittily entitled The Half Doctor, and it opened with the TARDIS materialising on a tiny desert island on the planet Metraxis II, whereupon it immediately broke down, forcing the Doctor and his assistant Millicent to evacuate the craft and await rescue.

Although small and in danger of being swamped by the endless Metraxian sea, the island was home to some micro biotic indigenous forms of life.  However after a desperate and unsuccessful attempt by the Doctor to remotely fix the time machine with his sonic hammer backfired, the TARDIS console was damaged, and dangerous energies from the time vortex began to spill outside the ship.  This caused the previously benign creatures on the island to commence a process of vastly accelerated transmutation, evolving in a Darwinian cataclysm that threatened within days to overwhelm the Doctor and his companion as monstrous radioactive creatures began to emerge from the sands…

Things took a turn for the worse when, two weeks into their exile, the Doctor and Millicent were initially relieved to hear the wheezing, groaning arrival of another TARDIS…only to discover that in fact the new arrival was a future version of the 83rd Doctor, who, in his time stream, had successfully escaped the island after three years of being trapped, only to accidentally hit the fast return switch and arrive back on the island after five minutes and nearly three years in his own past.  This Doctor had also witnessed the death of Millicent, two years before, and now his TARDIS was again non-functional.

Now trapped with two useless Doctors and two broken TARDISes, and determined to avoid her apparently pre-determined fate, Millicent was forced to find a solution to the problems that beset the three travelers, on the basis that the two Doctors either spent their time arguing amongst themselves about who’s fault this all was, or telling each other appalling jokes to which they already knew the punchlines.

Alas, the desperate cost-cutting measures employed in the making of this episode were more than evident on screen…with the show’s denouement making less than optimal use of a number of painfully obvious polystyrene rocks, plastic crabs and rubber snakes.  The BBC couldn’t even afford proper water for the Metraxian sea, and had to make do with cellophane and blue card.  In addition to this, Derek Deadman’s insistence on receiving twice his fee for the episode resulted in all pre-publicity for the show being scrapped due to lack of funds,  resulting in an extremely low audience for the transmission, which may have been just as well.

The Half Doctor was a dismal failure, and meant no proper anniversary show in 2338 – but by that time, anyone taking the remotest interest in the show was generally back on the booze, including Cambridge-Smythe, Deadman, the cleaning lady and the entire BBC Executive on the 6th floor who hadn’t really given a toss about the show in the first place.

Dr. S.

 

PS:  Yes, I’ve built a second LEGO TARDIS. One will have functioning lights, the other is a spare which won’t have.

Dr. S.

DiggTwitterFacebookShare

Leave a Comment