Doctor Hasn't A Clue (Doctor Who humour).

[Doctor Sinister]

The 83rd Doctor was played by renowned sitcom actor Derek Deadman. He appeared in seasons 340-343 of the long-running British SF series, "Doctor Who", which aired between the years 2336 and 2339 on BBC 1.

He was accompanied with his stunning blonde sidekick Millicent.

Under the auspices of a radical new Producer, Geoff Cambridge-Smythe (who was more used to producing light entertainment programs as opposed to SF drama), the show took a distinct turn for the worse, causing many fans to declare that the series was "not as good as it had been in the past" and "ruined forever".

This troubled era caused many Whovians to rename the series "Doctor Hasn't A Clue".

Equipped (as usual) with his trusty Sonic Hammer (TM), the Doctor was an engaging figure, but alas, almost totally useless and utterly incompetent.

This incarnation of the Doctor would often fail to spot things which were right in front of his eyes and during his four years in the role he completely failed to thwart any alien invasions whatsoever.

In fact, the 83rd Doctor's entire tenure saw him standing around making wisecracks and waiting for the live studio audiences to respond to jokey punchlines whilst the aliens were able to implement their plans almost completely unmolested.

One episode in particular consisted of a single monologue of topical asides by The Doctor, and the following episode saw him interviewing guests in a studio on Rigel VII.

Within the series' mythology, this inactivity on the Doctor's part led to almost total universal domination by the Daleks, who actually awarded him a medal for services to the Dalek Empire and regularly invited him to parties. Indeed, season 343, Deadman's last in the role, saw the Doctor ditch the TARDIS completely and move into a Seattle apartment which he shared with a Dalek, a Cybermat and a raggedy old sofa - with hilarious consequences.

Deadman and Cambridge-Smythe were assassinated in December 2339 by a cadre of aggrieved Doctor Who fans, leading to a reinvigorated series two years later.

Dr. S.

[The Kid]

If I was drinking some kind of warm beverage, it'd be all over the laptop by now.



TK

[Doctor Sinister]

It was in the adventure entitled “Clutch of the Pterranodites” that The 83rd Doctor caused the near extinction of the predominant native life form of the planet Pterrus IX through a catalogue of mis-steps, daydreaming and, ultimately, accidental nuclear apocalypse.

This story, from the early part of Season 340, was cited by Whovians as being a particularly bad indicator of the way the new Producer was going about making the show. The unexpected 5-minute musical interlude half-way through act three by the popular five-piece beat combo’ known as “Zombie Sex Attack” caused many fans to air their grievances in a violent protest outside the British Houses of Parliament, where they were forced to disperse only after the Police resorted to the use of rubber water cannons.

Producer Cambridge-Smythe countered the complaints with an impassioned argument that the entire episode had been attempting to highlight the cause of environmentalism, although he found it hard to maintain this defence when he was reminded that viewers had been able to win “fabulous prizes” during the show by pressing the red button, and that one of these prizes had been a matching set of lounge furniture made from real Tiger fur.

Dr. S.

[Doctor Sinister]

The 83rd Doctor’s navigation skills were even worse than those of his predecessors, and often he would land the TARDIS in a particularly difficult spot, as in the Season 341 adventure simply entitled “Fire” where the time machine materialised atop the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

By this time, Derek Deadman, lampooned and pilloried in the press, had taken to heavy drinking and was frequently papped outside seedy nightclubs with a new glamorous model on his arm every night. Unfortunately, as the discovery of Deadman’s diaries would reveal after his assassination, this was all a front, since his obsession with the bottom of a bottle left him incapable of anything other than being violently ill when he got home again.

This began to take its toll in Deadman’s on screen performances, but since the audience was, by this stage, vastly reduced in number, no-one really noticed, with one particular exception. The third episode of Season 342 saw Producer Cambridge-Smythe taking his experimental direction for the program to new extremes, with the majority of the episode taking the form of a glitzy quiz show in which members of the Doctor Who audience were invited onto the TARDIS set to win millions of Eurodollarpounds.

Alas, during the first half of the episode. Deadman had imbued rather too much lager and by the second half of the episode/show he was somewhat the worse for wear. The resulting spewage of the contents of his stomach over the show’s contestants was hastily covered up by the BBC and was one of the major contributing factors in the subsequent “accidental” wiping of that episode along with the rest of Deadman’s period as the Doctor.

The first complaint letters began to appear in the Radio Times…it was the beginning of the end.

Dr. S.

[legitimatealex]

Aaaah it just keeps getting better! Your humor is spot on. I also like what you've done with the fire

[Doctor Sinister]

The 83rd Doctor was no so much absent-minded as suffering from a complete lack of any common sense whatsoever.

Arriving on the airless seventh moon of Hakrovartan VI, our fearless but hopeless hero and his companion Millicent nearly died within moments of stepping out of the TARDIS, due to the Doctor's complete and utter failure to check that their air tanks were sufficiently full of, well...air.

Behind the scenes, this was in fact a cunning attempt by the Doctor Who production team to make an episode on the cheap with a series of flashbacks and recaps as the TARDIS crew struggled to breathe on the surface of the Hakrovartan moon.

This step was unfortunately necessary as a result of an astonishing clerical error on the part of Producer Cambridge-Smythe.

By failing to tick the correct box during the planning stages of the 341st season, 90% of the entire budget for that series was blown on a single episode which featured ten million Daleks singing happy birthday to the Doctor. The scene was intended to be rendered in CGI, but Cambridge-Smythe had inadvertently ordered the construction of ten million ACTUAL full-size Dalek props. These props were delivered on time and with great efficiency by a delighted supplier who couldn't believe his luck, much to the annoyance of the BBC's upper management who had to vacate their offices in order to store the Daleks prior to filming.

Subsequent attempts to sell the surplus Dalek props to the Doctor Who fan community were doomed to failure on the basis that there weren't all that many fans left by this time, and that the numbers of Daleks now available for sale led to a complete crash in the Dalek prop market. This, in turn, was a major contributing factor to the Stock Market crash of 2337 and the fifteenth Great Depression which followed.

Indeed, for several months after stock market values crashed through the floor, jobless bankers and traders could often be found camping out in abandoned Dalek props on street corners, because they were cheaper than cardboard boxes.

Dr. S.

[Doctor Sinister]

The Season 342 adventure “Marooned on Melanica” saw the TARDIS arriving on the eponymous water-world, where it promptly capsized and was set adrift on its side.

Never to be outdone by the elements, the 83rd Doctor and Millicent were forced to compromise, using the Sonic Hammer (TM), some spare wood and 73 pairs of underpants to create a sail whilst the TARDIS transmitted a distress beacon.

The episode concluded with the TARDIS springing a leak, whereupon the contents of the entire planetwide ocean of Melanica were drained into its infinite interior leaving the time machine resting on a handy rocky outcrop so our heroes could make good their escape.

This episode was particularly poorly received by those who accidentally happened to watch it, with the Doctor’s companion Millicent (played by Lucy Summers) spending most of the time vomiting over the side of the TARDIS as it bobbed about in the rough seas.

Unknown to the viewers, this was not acting, for by this time, Producer Cambridge-Smythe’s experimental direction for the show was all over the place, and in an astonishing lack of judgement, not to mention common sense, he had decided that in order to get the best performances from the TARDIS crew, he would actually set the TARDIS prop adrift FOR REAL in the Atlantic ocean for a whole week whilst camera crews on circling helicopters recorded their performances.

Things went badly wrong after the first day of filming, when a massive storm brewed and the helicopter support teams were forced to withdraw to dry land, leaving the prop TARDIS all alone at sea with the two actors on board. Inevitably, contact with the makeshift raft was lost, and frantic searches were mounted to locate it again.

After nearly two weeks, Deadman and Summers were on the verge of being officially listed as missing, presumed dead, when it was discovered that they had in fact spent the previous ten days living a life of relative luxury on board a cruise ship bound for Jamaica which had found them after their third day alone at sea.

BBC management covered up any mention of the entire incident, buying the actors’ silence with the promise that they could see out the end of the cruise to make up for their near-death experiences. However someone had to pick up the bill for not only the cruise, but the several thousand hours of helicopter time used in the search, and it is no coincidence that the BBC licence fee increased by 35% in the next fiscal year.

Dr. S.

[Doctor Sinister]

The opening story of season 341 in 2337 was entitled "Insects of Insanity". This two-part adventure saw the Doctor and Millicent attempting to stop off for a nice picnic on the planet Scarnelius, only to find themselves pursued back to the TARDIS by the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III.

In retrospect, opening sandwiches on a planet almost totally covered in natural honey pumped from the core and a known attraction for spacefaring insectoid life forms from all over the galaxy would undoubtedly be considered A Very Bad Idea.

The opening episode scored remarkably high (relatively speaking, anyway) in the BBC's assessment of audience appreciation scores, which was surprising given the addition of a canned laughter track over the chase scenes and the excessive use of Benny Hill style incidental music as the TARDIS crew attempted to evade being stung to pieces.

However episode two did not fare so well and this was undoubtedly due to yet another televisual experiment by the light entertainment-orientated Producer, Geoff Cambridge-Smythe. This episode saw a lengthy sequence which was set in the Scarnelian Honeycomb Caves, into which our heroes attempted to flee from their mental six-legged pursuers.

At seemingly random intervals (gauged to limit as far as possible the amount of disruption to the pacing and dramatic impact of the story), the Doctor and Millicent would encounter metal doors controlled by computers which would block their way. To add an air of interactivity to the proceedings, Cambridge-Smythe had decided that if the Doctor and Millicent were to proceed, viewers would have to correctly answer one of several multiple choice general knowledge questions which would flash up onto the their screens. Viewers had the options to press a red, green, yellow or blue button to answer the questions correctly. Answering each question correctly would see the episode continue, and give viewers the options to rack up huge cash prizes to boot.

Unfortunately, an error in the interactive features of the technology of the day meant that failure to answer the questions properly would cause the viewers' televisions to explode.

To be fair, this latter fact was unknown to the BBC at the time, and since a prior audit had determined that they could not afford for any more than a dozen or so winners to claim their prizes, engineers had rigged the system to avoid having to pay out too much money, by escalating the difficulty of the questions as the episode progressed.

As the subsequent Police investigations and criminal trials would reveal, no-one even got as far as the nigh-on impossible final question without suffering the forcible and violent failure of their TV sets, and three hundred and two people lost their lives in either the initial explosions or resulting fires. Even now, nobody knows how the adventure ended, and no-one particularly cared since the conflagrations had decimated what was left of the hard core Doctor Who fan community.

A tribute to the fallen can be seen to this very day in Trafalgar Square.

(This vignette is made in "tribute" to the psychopathic wasp that stung me today - the swine came back twice more for another go - and to that end, I have now vowed to eliminate ALL insect life forms from the Earth.)

Dr. S.

[Doctor Sinister]

I decided that the monsters in my latest episode of "Doctor Hasn't a Clue" needed a backstory.

Warning, very bad pun follows…



The Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III are amongst the most aggressive and hate-filled life forms in the known universe. Measuring up to 10 feet in length, with a wingspan of up to twelve feet, these massive insects are tremendously fast and agile and they are extremely hard to kill.

Evolution has provided them with an enormous venomous sting that runs for nearly the entire length of their bodies – this sting is flexible to the extent that it is almost prehensile, and long enough that it can actually face forward, allowing a one of these creatures to charge at its victim and sting it to death without having to turn its bottom in the direction of whatever has annoyed it, like most Earthbound insects.

The venom contained within a sting is powerful enough to kill twenty thousand humanoid life forms, and its potency is maintained by sheer willpower and the complete and utter hatred and contempt for all other forms of life. To make things worse, the sting is electrified, as is the entire creature, and able to deliver enough of a charge during a single sting to kill a herd of elephants.

Whilst intelligent, the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III are almost completely hostile. I say almost completely only because even they need to sleep sometimes and it’s difficult to attack things with your compound eyes closed. But even when they are resting, they are merely dreaming of new ways to inflict pain and death on other life forms.

Unfortunately for the universe, the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III are, as their name might imply, able to travel to other worlds using naturally evolved dimension-transference glands, which is just as well for them since their planet of origin is completely devoid of all life, having been stung and electrified to death and then stung again for good measure by these bad-tempered gits and if they weren’t able to move on, they would have died out millennia ago.

In addition, the presence of sugar or other high energy foodstuffs can send these creatures into a killing frenzy the like of which the universe has never seen before, and many worlds have had to develop emergency precautions for the storage of jam and Coca-Cola in the event of an attack.

Whilst some space faring races travel the universe in search of new life to meet, trade, conquer or exploit, the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III travel from world to world with only one thought – to sting and electrify all life to death as soon as possible and then to go and find some more things to kill. They will attack without mercy, destroy without thought, and without any care for their own wellbeing.

For anyone who might harbour the thought that it would be possible to reason with a Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasp of Vississitus III, give up now, because quite simply the creature doesn’t give a flying toss what you have to say, it simply hates you for merely existing and wishes to remove you from the gene pool.

However this single-minded attitude has led to their downfall on more than one occasion, with several other advanced races vowing to wipe them out for being complete toe rags.

The most famous campaign waged against the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III was put in place by the Lanagane people of Lanag IV.

Lanag IV was a beautiful world, consisting of large groups of lush, abundant archipelagos set in deep blue seas, and utterly devoid of any forms of life able to endanger the innocent humanoid Lanaganes. Indeed, their world was of such beauty, shortly after the Lanagane people made first contact with races occupying their neighbouring star systems, the world became a Universal Heritage Site and ideally suited to become THE holiday destination of choice for races from all over the nearest galaxies. People would flock to its sandy coasts and enjoy the sumptuous ice cream that the Lanaganes supplied, at decent prices.

All that was to change when a swarm of Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III randomly warped into place on one of the most popular islands of Lanag IV, whereupon, driven into insanity by the smell of raspberry ripple ice cream, the swarm wiped out over thirty thousand tourists in one day before warping out again.

The Lanaganes were incensed and after some fulsome apologies to the understanding races who had lost members of their respective species, they immediately closed down their entire tourist industry citing health and safety concerns and embarked on a new industry – WAR.

Using the silicon from the millions of beaches found on Lanag IV and essentially devastating their world in the process, the Lanaganes constructed an enormous space going glass screen, thirty million kilometres across, held in place by a fleet of fast Battleships which used tractor beams to speed the screen forward at FTL speeds generated by solar winds. The project was thus codenamed “Project Windshield”.

Thus the Lanagenes began a mission to wipe out the Gigantic Psychopathic Dimension-Hopping Electric Blue Stinging Wasps of Vississitus III by sweeping across the stars and smashing their enormous glass windshield into any stray creatures that they might find.

For all we know, they are still out there…

Dr. S.

[Benny]

Man you must've really gone mad after that bee attacked you

Funny backgroundstory


Benny

[Doctor Sinister]

The Doctor's companion Millicent did not fare well in season 342 (aired in 2338), being variously hypnotised, seduced, bamboozled, imprisoned and incapacitated during many of the episodes. But the most astonishing turn of events occurred in the third episode of the season, "Silver Lining" in which the TARDIS crew materialised on the planet Essekon Minor in the 541st century, ostensibly to return a lawnmower that the Doctor had borrowed from his best friend the Master three hundred years previously.

Blundering into danger as usual, Millicent and the Doctor were separated within thirty seconds of the episode's teaser opening before it crashed into a brand new title sequence. As an aside, the new sequence was a particularly psychedelic one that year, in full 5D "Ultra-Surround" with swirling pink flowers and subliminal advertising for a brand of soft drink that enquiries would later reveal would liquidise one's kidneys after prolonged use and resulting in the inevitable lawsuit for the beleaguered BBC.

As the episode progressed, with the Doctor's determination to return the lawnmower overriding any other sensible concern for the fate of his companion, it transpired that Millicent had unfortunately been partially converted into a Cyberman.

And much hilarity ensued.

Fortunately for our heroes, the cyber-conversion process was halted after Millicent suffered an allergic reaction to the gold pendant hanging around her neck, and she was able to retain much of her humanity.

In an unusual move, Millicent remained as a Cyberman for the next three episodes until the Doctor was able to find a cure. Said cure did eventually arrive, provided by the Master who had realised that he was only going to get his lawnmower back if he did a favour for the Doctor in return.

Those few people left watching the show had much praise for the performance of Millicent in her four episodes as a Cyberman, which was ironic since most of the scenes saw her stood in one corner of the TARDIS and portrayed by a plastic mannequin with butchered (and cybernised) lines from earlier episodes piped into the studio to make it appear as if she was talking.

The reason for this deception lay in the fact that the actress playing Millicent, Lucy Summers, had actually left the show in a fit of pique and had instead got a job working on breakfast TV as a weathergirl, where she would not so much predict the weather as arrange for it to occur based on audience preference (orbital weather control having finally been perfected in the year 2152).

Producer Cambridge-Smythe was therefore left in something of a quandary, but soon realised that the problem was not as bad as all that, since most of Millicent's lines consisted of dumb questions asked of the Doctor and screaming a lot. For the scenes where Millicent had to move, random passers-by would be conscripted to wear her clothes and the cyber-head. This did lead to some continuity errors when viewers observed scenes in which Millicent would change height dramatically, and in at least two episodes she was observed to have put on twelve stone, had hairy arms and even a tattoo on one arm that read "Muvver".

Fortunately for the show, Summers was fired from her weathergirl position after three weeks after accidentally ordering the total destruction of East Anglia by the weather-control satellites instead of a light shower as the locals had requested.

Brilliant Cyberhead design by JimmytheJ, used with permission. http://www.flickr.com/photos/10962799@N04/4777893173/

Dr. S.

[VBBN]

Man, I cracked up when I saw those heads. I don't want to cut slits in my connector bricks like that, but It does give an interesting look to the head.

[Doctor Sinister]

Man, I cracked up when I saw those heads. I don't want to cut slits in my connector bricks like that, but It does give an interesting look to the head.

It's actually pieces cut from a LEGO sticker.

Dr. S.

[Doctor Sinister]

The 83rd Doctor's attempt to recreate the antics of his 11th incarnation and allow his companion to "fly" through space from the door of the TARDIS was a well-meaning gesture, albeit one doomed to failure when attempted in the midst of a flaming asteroid storm.

Fortunately Millicent's resulting skull fractures, brain damage and third-degree facial burns took only two months to fully heal in the TARDIS medical bay, albeit she was then lost within the bowels of the ship for a further year due to the internal architecture of the craft rearranging itself, apparently at random. This was the supposedly exciting premise of the 341st season episode "Burns Night" which saw the Doctor battling with an evil entity which had taken over his time machine.

So called "bottle shows" can be quite common in TV SF series. The name derives from the fact that they generally only take place on board the leading spacecraft associated with that program so they are cheap to make as they typically use standing sets and employ only the existing cast. The appearance of a "bottle show" usually means that the Producers are saving their money for more expensive episodes later in the season.

However such shows are rare in Doctor Who and unfortunately, Producer Geoff Cambridge-Smythe's attempt to make such a show was a dismal failure in artistic terms and on the basis of actual cost.

A whole two thirds of the episode was given over to the Doctor rushing through what was obviously the same TARDIS corridor over and over again opening doors in the search for Millicent. Said corridor was dressed to appear as if it were a different one each time, with occasionally only a change in lighting to give the impression that it was at a lower level of the ship. This might have been OK for a 1978 episode of Blake's 7, but the audiences of 2337 demanded a little more from their TV shows.

But the problem mainly lay with what was "behind" those doors... In a desperate attempt to avoid having to spend money on filming new sequences, the Doctor would fling open a TARDIS door, only to see some badly superimposed footage from old 1970's episodes of The Two Ronnies or 1980's BBC variety shows with cabaret dancers and crooning Irish singers reciting old folk songs in rocking chairs. The Doctor would of course spend a few minutes studying this archive material before closing the door and moving on to the next one. It was Cambridge-Smythe's ultimate dream for Doctor Who - the variety show he had always dreamed of!

This material was supposed to be long out of copyright and thus free to use. Alas for Cambridge-Smythe, this was not the case, on the basis that the satellite channel "Dave" had consistently repeated every single BBC show at least thirty-four times every year for the past three centuries and were still coining in royalties from each repeat having had the copyright automatically renewed on an annual basis.

The episode therefore became the most expensive single outing for Doctor Who in its entire history, and as a result, the BBC were forced to sell their expensive London headquarters to meet the fees and operate for the next ten years out of a small wooden shack on the south bank of the Thames.

Based of course on this scene from "The Beast Below":



And here is an exclusive behind the scenes shot in which you can see that the entire vignette is indeed self-supporting - no trickery involved!



Dr. S.

[VBBN]

Man, I cracked up when I saw those heads. I don't want to cut slits in my connector bricks like that, but It does give an interesting look to the head.

It's actually pieces cut from a LEGO sticker.

Dr. S.

Ah that is a far better idea.The ridges of the sticker looked like plastic leftovers so I assumed it was cut.
I may have to use this idea somehow. No idea if I have those pieces though.