The One Hundred and Fifteenth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Schwarzenegger Serial 5R: California - The State of Decay Searching for a way back to the Turk's Head Pub (located at 92 High Street in Exeter, England, Earth), or in fact to any drinking establishment in the entire multiverse of the space-time alwayswhen, the Doctor and Romana arrive in the TARDIS on a stereotypical medieval-like planet. Here, they find that the villagers are governed by.. WAIT FOR IT!...three rulers, which have cleverly been called - "The Three Who Rule". The Doctor briefly wonders why the people of E-Space have seemingly decided that society is best run by three tyrannical despots each playing their own twisted power games of evil -- he also wants to know what he can do to become an evil dictator. To his suprise he only needs 2 signatures and 3,500 Galactic Credits. The Doctor seems ready and willing to take control of this cliche medieval-like planet, until he is informed by Romana and K9 that this will mean undertaking a lame science fiction name such as Ming the Merciless, or King Zarquo. Instead the Doctor merely opts to meet the ruling powers that be -- King Zargo, Queen Galaxian and their less successful co-dictator, Billy. These rulers live in a dark and mysterious, very cardboard-looking, tower overlooking the village. These leaders have wisely outlawed technological equipment, because that is just the sort of impossible thing that leaders do in these sort of science fiction stories. The leaders also decree that young villagers be taken from their homes and brought to them, never to be seen again....which is actually the SAME plot that we see in "Kingdom of Lust"...well, if you're into bad softcore 60s exploitation porn, you might have seen Kingdom of Lust. It's not that good, and its sort of embarassing, so let's just forget I mentioned this. Okay? Thanks. After the Doctor and Romana are captured by a group of rebel scientists, they are tied up and tortured with long cylindrical devices...WAIT A MINUTE! This *IS* like Kingdom of Lust. Terrance Dicks must have just totally plagarised this whole damn thing! Why did I never see this before? It's so damn obvious! Or it would be...if you and I were the sort of person who would watch such flith. Still, the scenes with the leather straps weren't THAT bad, you know in a sort of innocent 60s way. Umm...yeah, let's really get away from this now. Anyway, the rebel scientists are led by Kalmar Gravitron the Great Mind of Ethnos. Kalmar is immediately smitten with Adric and he uses his connections to make Adric his personal bodyguard. Apparently, compared to the other rebel scientists, Adric is seen as a really buff guy. Adric is confronted by Billy, who attempts to put the young boy under his influence. (See this part is a lot more like this sci-fi gay porno I haven't seen either). Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana enter the wobbly cardboard tower and discover that it is in fact a wobbly cardboard spaceship, The Hydrox, which, hundreds of years ago, was pulled through the Cheap Vortex Entrance into E-Space just like the TARDIS was. Furthermore, King Zargo, Queen Galaxian and Billy are not the descendants of the original crew, they ARE the original crew. They are Vampires. If you want to believe the continuity presented in this episode, then..okay. Here we go - The Great Vampires were a race of highly improbable creatures that the Time Lords themselves ignored repeatedly millennia ago. The Great Vampires pillaged world upon world, the Time Lords sat back and talked about philosophy. Entire solar systems fell into a tyranny of bloodletting and the destruction of countless souls -- the Time Lords paused for a moment, before deciding that they really needed a good long sip of lemonade and a Jaffa Cake. The galaxies themselves fell into endless chaos, all civilization seemed certainly doomed. The Time Lords debated their involvement, and after 500 years of tense consideration -- they decided to get back to it later. Finally when the universe could no longer support life as we understand it, the Time Lords decided to take action -- but just then -- the Great Vampires went into E-Space. The Time Lords, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it was the-universe-next-door's problem, and breathed a sigh of relief as they went back to reading fishing magazines of unimaginable power. In short The Time Lords had done fuck all. As usual. Now in E-Space the Doctor faces a fate worse than death -- an eternity of being a walking dead shell of the man he currently is, which really isn't much to start with in the first place. The Doctor manages to convince Adric of the real identities of the rulers, and then they decide not to just run away in terror, but instead to bravely and righteously run away in terror very VERY fast. Book(s)/Other Related - Doctor Who and the Creepy Violin Vampires: The Ultimate Plot Device The Undead for Dummies Fluffs - Tom Baker seemed pale for most of this story Goofs - The Doctor says the Tower decor is early Saxon when actually it's late Saxon/early Romanesque. I know, I KNOW, it seems nitpicky, but after you take a few classes in classical art, it drives you nuts. I still haven't forgiven the Romans for those damned composite columns. Technobabble - Apparently there is a TechnoNapsterFileShare System dancing on a grave stone labelled RIAA. Links and References - The Doctor asks Romana to put on a silver catsuit and answer to the name Zoe. She doesn't comply, and this is never mentioned again. Untelevised Misadventures - The Doctor tells Romana 'There was once an old hermit from the mountains of South Gallifrey...one day he took me aside, and we went to a magical place, a wonderland of excitement and mystery..a place called.. Milton Keynes! Wait, a minute, no, it was Flantagus V. Milton Keynes is where I bought some Jelly Babies. I also get those two confused. Must be the concrete cows." Romana says she used to work in the Bureau of Ancient Records and once saw a reference to 'The Record of Rassilon'. This, the Doctor discovers, was an embarrassing Beatles cover album. Groovy DVD Extras - Use your remote control in an Adric shooting gallery! Roots - Definitely "Kingdom of Lust". I have it on Betamax somewhere if you want me to prove it. Dialogue Disasters - Doctor: Night must fall, Romana, even in E-Space. Romana: What are you rattling on about now you drunken old bastard? Dialogue Triumphs - Doctor: [To Romana] Psst, you are wonderful. Romana: Suppose I am. I've never really thought about it. Romana: [To the Doctor] You are incredible. Doctor: Well, yes, I am. I always think about that. Dialogue Oddities - (ORIGINAL SCRIPT) The Doctor: Adric, we need your mathematical skills to calculate the precise escape velocity required to leave E-Space. (ON SCREEN) Tom Baker: Oh fuck it, I'll just use an abacus! Viewer Quotes - "I thought the whole production was given a definite atmosphere of gloom and foreboding by the darkly lit and sumptuous sets of the Tower...then I discovered that they had just run past 10 o'clock and the BBC had shut the lights off." - Andrew Jones (1985) "I remember when Jesus fought Vampires. That was totally radical. They should have never forced that book into the Apocrypha. Goddamn Council of Nicea. At least Doctor Who is trying to set the story straight." - Father James O' Maley (1985) "I want to take this opportunity to clear up a misquote that's been attributed to me over the years. A lot of times I've been quoted as saying 'This story looks a lot like a Hammer film'. What I really said is 'This looks a lot like film that has been hit by a Hammer. Big Difference." - Jeff Boyd (2003) "I don't think I can remember a story that was as well plotted...well, there was The Beard of Evil.. so just forget I said anything." - I just quoted him anyway, I'm like that. (2002) Psychotic Nostalgia - "You don't need to be a vampire to drink the blood of the damned, you know. I can't say that this was -THE- episode that made me want to drink human blood, but it definitely reinforced what was going on in my life." Tom Baker Speaks! "Ahh yes, the VAMPIRES! I went to a vampire rave in London a few years ago, I was hired by the DJ to act as a human statue. That is how far I have fallen since my days as a BBC hero. I don't have many memories of this season, well, this YEAR of my life. To be honest I've downplayed how much I was drinking at this time in my life. It was actually much worse than anyone knows. My love for fermented beverages came to me as a young boy. I discovered the joys of floor polish, while I was attempting to make a living as a mop. It wasn't a fantastic job, and it didn't pay well, but my head and hair was a natural mop, and I got to eat whatever fluff got stuck in my hair. It was the best job of my childhood. My fondest memories are being used to mop up the floors of Leicester Cathedral." Rumors & Facts - This story is another example of the extreme lengths John Satan-Turner and Bidmead would go to turn a completely unusuable script into a script that was still unusable but which they would be willing to go ahead and use anyway. Before the beginning of season 18, Terrance Dicks sent in a script that betrayed the fact that he hadn't actually been paying attention to Doctor Who for years. The script, apparently written for season 18, featured the Doctor and his savage companion Leela. In the script, "The Vampire Mutations", the Doctor and Leela, land on a planet whose civilisation has regressed from innovative sketch comedy to reality shows. The citizens live in a perpetual state of fear, they might be tempted at any moment to backstab the hell out of their fellow-man for fame and fortune. At night, when the reality tv starts, people become transformed into zombies. The planet's rulers have been in power for a thousand years, and it turns out that they are really space vampires. Dicks had planned that The Vampire Mutations would be an undetectable ripoff of Bram Stoker's Dracula -- but it was actually VERY detectable. How detectable? It could be seen from space. Bidmead and Satan-Turner admonished Dicks for his attempt to so blantantly steal an internationally famous classic horror novel, and told him that he should focus on ripping off the Hammer films instead. Unfortunately, while Dicks was midway through re-scripting the serial, in a moment of clueless leadership, Head of Serial Graeme McDonald ordered its cancellation, because he feared it would be seen as a send-up of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Satan-Turner was aware that McDonald would stick with whatever silly notion had passed his mind, no matter how factless and insane it was. He also knew that he could force Dicks to do whatever he wanted. So against Dick's artistic objections he removed all references to anything McDonald said was "Frankenstein-like". As a result, various changes were made, including the decision to have the vampires' wobbly cardboard castle turn out to be a wobbly cardboard spaceship in disguise and the inclusion of the material which was basically a cheap re-write of the Kingdom of Lust. Beyond all this Dicks had to totally re-write the whole story concept from scratch. Leela had to be replaced with Romana, K-9, and Adric. Overall this was done well, but with a few major oversights - - Adric, hired as a bodyguard for his strength, kills someone with a janis thorn. - Romana's stirring speeches about her "tribe" - The infamous scene when K-9 kills a passerby with a machete. These radical changes are made worse by an unfortunate development. Adric's character was still being justified by Bidmead and Smyth when Dicks' was finishing up his final version of the script. Because Adric's character was still being pitched as an artful dodger ala Oliver Twist, Dicks inadvertently accentuated some character traits which would soon be abandoned -- most notably Adric is a untrustworthy, selfish, son of a bitch. Which sadly was a far better character than what we eventually got. It's about time, that I told one of the more disturbing truths of season 18. When it came time to cast the role of Adric, Satan-Turner was approached about the part, via internal casting adviser Jenny Jenkins, by a young BBC clerk in the News Information Department named Matthew Waterhouse. Waterhouse was a fan of Doctor Who, even holding a membership in the Doctor Who Worship Cult. Satan-Turner was immediately taken with the young lad, and 500 quid in hotel room fees and a dirty weekend in France later, Waterhouse ultimately won the role, despite the fact his only prior acting experience was as an extra in a commerical for motor oil.