The One Hundred and Sixtieth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Sally Jupiter Serial 7M - The Chess of Fenric - Part One Deep inside the forgotten interiors of the TARDIS, the Doctor stares forward with grim resolve and a touch of remorse. The Doctor already knows that their next destination will take them to meet ultimate evil - the dark spawn known throughout the galaxy as the Vampyr. Sensing a presence the Doctor tries to explain one of the secrets he has kept hidden - "In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is-" "ACE!" "Exactly." Britain, 1942. The TARDIS materializes in a naval base which houses the ULTIMA Code-Breaker, the most powerful computer in the world capable of factoring a 3 digit number in only 5 days! "That's less than 48 hours a digit!" Explains Dr Judson with pride. The Doctor and Ace manage to get quite far into the camp before being confronted by Nazis. The Doctor is shocked to see these soldiers on a naval base as far into England as Whitby, but he soon discovers these are incredibly stupid Nazis who are so confused they are fighting on the side of the British. The Doctor bluffs his way past them and takes Ace to meet the paralysed Dr Judson. The Doctor orders Ace to "distract" Judson but she is deeply put off by the idea - "It's like being asked to screw Stephen Hawking's grandfather." "That's the paradox." Replies the Doctor with an odd smile. The Doctor uses a red pen and a rubber stamp reading "Happy Birthday!" to forge very unconvincing documents from the War Office, in a sad attempt to provide himself and Ace with credentials. Judson doesn't seem terribly convinced by the documents and loudly notes that the Doctor has drawn in an incredibly unconvincing red moustache for himself. But when Ace starts to rub his shoulders he, for some reason, ceases any protest. The Doctor sends Ace to the barracks "to sleep" while he wanders the grounds, pondering what's to happen next, realizing what's to happen next, and then desperately trying to forget what's to happen next. Meanwhile, a squadron of Soviet soldiers is actively playing beach volleyball on the coast at Maidens' Point. The Soviets are deadly serious about the game, considering it the ultimate proof of Communist superiority. "When the capitalist pigs engage in the sport of beach volleyball they're opponents are always scantily clad young women - I should know, I've seen the films!! But it is Comrade Stalin who knows the true beauty of this game. Fit, agile, communist men, heavily skilled, heavily armed with automatic weaponry, joining together as comrades in the field of battle which is Beach Volleyball! With no decadent homosexual subtext whatsoever!" Deeply embarrassed, one of the Soviets admits that, in his excitement, he forgot to bring ball. "where did you leave it??? On the submarine? On the dingy? In the hotel?" "In Smolensk." "In Smolensk?! We come all the way out here, to the Yorkshire coast to play a rousing game of Beach Volleyball, and you left the BALL in Smolensk. AND you didn't even bother to mention before NOW? Why not before we left the motherland! Before we landed in the hostile British Isles? BEFORE WE SET UP THE DAMNED NET!" "Forgive me comrade. I thought it would turn up." "This means only one thing. We must go inland. Subdue the closest military base. And secure a ball. If we can manage that within the hour, we still could have a pretty good game." "Yes comrade." The Doctor and Ace visit the local church, where Judson is copying ancient Viking inscriptions. When Ace asks him why he's bothering, Judson explains that he hopes to build a whole new interface for electronic computers such as the ULTIMA machine. Judson explains that he will create a runic typewriter so he can type complex instructions into his computer. Ace: Wait? You want to create a keyboard for your computer using Viking runes? Why the hell would you do that? Judson: I was originally considering creating one in Latin. But that's just so terribly common. Ace: And you're using this old church inscription to figure out the rune alphabet? That's a bit of a waste of a weekend. Why not just go to the Jorvik Viking Centre? Judson: The what? Ace: They've got the rune alphabet on little sheets of paper, so you can write name in runic symbols. It's pretty sad really, but the animatronic Vikings are wicked. Judson: Animus-what? (The Doctor whacks Ace hard with his question mark umbrella) Doctor: Nevermind Professor Judson. My colleague is suffering from a severe head injury. Ace decides she needs to sit down and clutch her head for a moment or two. Whilst sitting in the pews Ace meets two young girls, Jean and Phyllis, and arranges to meet them later at Maidens' Point. Re-joining the Doctor, Ace tells him that she has become aware of a dark and unknowable evil lurking in the crypts below, but the Doctor ignores her, concentrating instead on a desperate and doomed attempt to solve a Rubik's cube. "Had this thing in my pocket for 600 years! Today might just be the day!" The Doctor takes Ace to Maidens' Point to meet her friends, but finds an abandoned volleyball net...and for some reason immediately thinks "COMMUNISTS"! The Doctor is somehow aware that Soviets are near, and so he promptly abandons Ace and her friends at the one place they are likely to return to. Ace asks for a gun to protect herself if the Soviets return but the Doctor leaves her only with the following advice - "Don't go into the water". Which in Ace's opinion is pretty lame advice seeing as how she is surrounded by an ocean of it, and only wearing her swim suit. Jean and Phyllis' do not seem overly bothered as they only really wanted to come to Maiden's Point to smoke and drink beer. Though eventually they get pissed and insist on having a swim. Ace, not wanting a cruel and stupid death, abandons them to their fate, bothering only to wave goodbye and steal a packet of fags before leaving. The Doctor returns to the church and meets Reverend Wainwright. During a relaxed conversation Wainwright mentions that his father had already translated the Viking inscriptions and used them to unleash a horrifically evil force which was once buried beneath the church. Stunned, the Doctor asks Wainwright why his father would ever dream of unleashing dark and evil gods from five minutes before the dawn of time upon this quiet and peaceful village - "No real reason. He was always kind of an arsehole, know what I'm saying?" The Doctor realises that he should probably immediately run to the ULTIMA machine to stop Judson's translations. However he's feeling slightly bummed over yet another failed attempt to crack the Rubik's Cube, and really needs to sit, relax, and sip a hot cappuccino before proceeding. When the Doctor eventually returns to the naval base he discovers an office which is a perfect copy of the German cipher room in Berlin; The officer who works there, Millington, explains that he is trying to understand how the Nazis think. "Really? Why don't you just ask the Nazis already working here?" "Those guys? Gunther and Franz? Well, let's just say, they don't think like regular Nazis." "A few bricks short of a wall?" "A few walls short of a Reichstag more like." The Doctor notes to Millington that he thinks the office is perfect in everyway, except for two things - Millington's old school photograph and a chess set. Millington causally explains that we went to boarding school with Goering, and is currently playing chess-by-mail with Adolf Hitler. "Fair enough." The Doctor hands Millington a copy of the runic inscription and Millington concludes that the writing is Viking. The Doctor annoyed as he already knew that, hands Millington an english translation of the runes and Millington concludes that the final battle of the gods is at hand. What bothers the Doctor deeply is that Millington seems perfectly relaxed about that. "Oh yes, the final battle between good and evil, light and dark, being and non-being. I say, would you like a cup of tea?" The Doctor's face lights up when Ace enters the office, but immediately falls again when he sees a group of Soviets pointing Simonov SKS rifles at her head - "Give us a volleyball, or the girl gets it!" Part Two The Doctor and Ace quote from "Stalin's Personal Rule Book of Soviet VolleyBall" to convince the Soviets that they are sympathetic to their cause. Above suspicion, the Doctor and Ace are freed. The Doctor and Ace return to the church, where they find more inscriptions -- "WOW! Professor! We didn't see these before. Did some dark and evil force from beyond burn these runes into the very stone of the church?" "No, we just didn't look here before." "Oh." After careful investigation of the area they discover a spooky underground cavern where soldiers and technicians from the naval base are tapping into a natural source of lethal toxins, which they intend to use as weapons against the Nazis. When Millington discovers them he is about to have them shot for being Soviet spies, but, luckily the Doctor is extremely well read and quotes Norse mythology. Quoting stuff you've read is apparently the most convincing way to persuade people and avoid death. After some ramblings about Odin and Loki, Millington firmly believes that the Doctor and him are on the same side. Millington agrees to show him everything -- but the Doctor only wants to see the secret facility and insists that Millington can keep his trousers on. Disgusted and worried, Ace elects remain behind. The Doctor learns that the blatantly poor security at the naval base is a deliberate lure; the Soviets were meant to easily overrun this place in their desperate search for volleyball sporting equipment. Following orders from Whitehall, Millington has planted a toxic bomb in the heart of a very badly stitched volleyball. One that he is certain will burst open on the very first serve. "The Soviet love of volleyball will be their ultimate demise. Today we will kill two teams. And once we have proven successful we will export hundreds, thousands, MILLIONS of killer volleyballs to Russia." "That's your plan??? That's how you plan to crush the Soviet forces after the war?" "Yes. If you think that's silly, you should see what the Americans are doing with bats." The Doctor leaves Millington in the caverns and decides to follow up on other leads. Oh yeah, and just in case I haven't mentioned them in awhile, Jean and Phyllis went into the sea and were brutally killed. Just so we're on the same page. Meanwhile, Judson translates the "final" inscription as LET THE CHAINS OF FENRIC SHATTER. Ace points out to Judson that the final inscription also matches the pattern of a complex logic diagram, complex enough to be run as a computer programme. Judson excitedly sets off to run the programme on the ULTIMA machine. So really, we should blame Ace for the apocalypse. The Doctor arrives at the cottage of one Miss Hardaker's, only to find that Jean and Phyllis have already returned and killed her, draining the blood out of her body. The Doctor then decides to take a leisurely stroll to the church, thinking he might possibly stop off and save Wainwright from the two vampires and then ask Wainwright to prepare him another cappuccino out of his heartfelt appreciation of not being a snack for undead demon possessed girls. The two vampire girls have already tracked down Wainwright and find him to be a willing victim. Partly this is caused by Wainwright's loss of faith due to the British government's brutal tactics in the war. Most of his attitude however can be attributed to the fact that the girls have taken to adorning their new vampiric bodies with sexy lingerie (well, sexy for 1942 anyway...still, the stockings aren't that bad). To Wainwright's disappointment, The Doctor's strength of will drives the girls away. The Doctor assures Wainwright that all will be under control as long as no one is stupid enough to tell Judson that the final Viking inscriptions are a computer programme. In the computer room Ace helps Judson install his newly finished keyboard which will be useful after the completion of the Viking Rune Apocalypse programme that ULTIMA is running. The ULTIMA machine has already begun printing out the names of Viking settlers, and vampire mutations are rising from the waves at Maidens' Point and storming the beach. By the time the Doctor arrives drinking a piping hot cappuccino, the ULTIMA machine is running at four times maximum speed and can't be shut off... Part Three The Doctor explains that the ULTIMA machine has opened up a gateway to a race called the Haemovores - vampire mutations from millions of years in the future. "And if you think the Soviets were a threat, the Haemovores love Volleyball beyond your darkest imaginings!" The Doctor explains that the only possible way to stop the onslaught is to recover the legendary flask of Gaochang, which was lost in Brixton centuries ago. Ace remembers that she has a legendary chinese flask that she bought at a carboot sale in Brightlingsea, but decides it's probably not important and doesn't mention she has it in her rucksack. The Doctor and Ace organize a tactical retreat back to the church. Once inside the Doctor explains to everyone that strong faith generates a psychic barrier which Haemovores can't penetrate. A few moments later Ace is alone with the Doctor and ponders the significance of the faith barrier. "I mean, if strong faith can hold back vampiric evil, maybe that means something deeper. Like maybe their is some higher power listening to us all the time." "Well not exactly Ace. I made that up to calm them down. Those people are basically all snackfood for the forces of the night. Here, take these." "What am I suppose to do with wooden tent pegs?" "Not tent pegs. Stakes. Stab them in the heart. They die." "This is all very Peter Cushing, Professor. Does garlic kill them too?" "I once met a vampyr in Venice who explained that the creatures of the night are just very self-conscious about their appearance and personal hygiene. He told me they just avoided garlic out of fears of bad breath. Still, if you want to feed one a pizza go ahead, can't hurt anything." Meanwhile Millington is alone in the dark, waiting for the evil powers of Fenric to arise; given that Fenric hasn't been seen in a thousand years, and I very much doubt that Whitby would be his first stop on a global domination tour, Millington is being rather optimistic. Ace has endless questions about the nature of the vampires, but the Doctor has gotten bored with her and begun to ignore her again. Frustrated, Ace decides to whack the Doctor over the head with her flask to get his attention. The flask breaks into countless pieces which immediately begin to smoke. The Doctor reluctantly explains that the flask she bought at the carboot sale contained a primal force of pure evil which existed roughly five minutes before the creation of the Universe -- and is now breaking free. The Doctor tells Ace to seductively lure Judson away from the church, which she starts to do, but it's too late. The Haemovores break into the church, led by Jean and Phyllis, and Wainwright tries to use his faith to hold them back - but is eaten within seconds. Judson is blasted with all the power from the flask. As a cliche thunderstorm breaks over the church and the Haemovores enter, the Doctor and Ace see the paralysed Judson stand up on his own two feet. "We play the contest again...Time Lord." Part Four It seems that Millington was correct all along, and that I was rash to call him optimistic; For some reason or other the all powerful evil god Fenric HAS chosen Whitby as the first battleground in the ultimate war between good and evil. It all seems so random to me, but there you have it. Fenric vanishes from the church and Millington orders some local schoolgirls to shoot the Doctor and his friends for treason. Why in the hell local schoolgirls should be in a church armed with Barettas I don't know. The girls form a firing squad outside, but they are interrupted by the Soviet squadron. The Soviets see the Doctor and Ace being stared down by a group of armed young girls and immediately assume the worst - "Do you see comrades!? The decadence? The depravity of the western capitalist bourgeois? Here is a grown man, getting ready to play an incredibly violent and arousing game of volleyball against a group of young ladies dressed as schoolgirls. The sight sickens me comrades! We must put a stop to this!" The Soviets grab the Doctor and Ace and carry them away from the scene. The leader of the Soviet squadron turns to the armed schoolgirls and proclaims - "Do not thank me for saving your dignity and purity from the evil capitalist pig man. Thank only Comrade Stalin and the righteous and moral art of the game of volleyball." The Doctor and Ace wait to be carried about half a mile before knocking out their Soviet capturers, and setting off their own way on foot. The Doctor explains that he needs to fetch the chess set from Millington's office. "But wait Professor. If you move around all the pieces, won't that ruin the chess-by-mail game that Millington is playing with his friend? That will be very upsetting." "Ace, Millington's friend is Adolf Hitler!" "Oh." "Anyway, the game is just stupid. Both sides insisted on playing white." The Doctor thinks that stealing the chess set should be as easy as...well, stealing a chess set for instance. But Millington has booby-trapped his chessboard with explosives and they barely escape with their lives. The Doctor places the charred chessboard on a new table and finishes setting up his chessboard trap. Once completely ready the Doctor challenges Fenric to find the solution; Fenric is very confident, he's been practicing everyday on teletext. The Doctor hopes that the metaphorical struggle will weaken Fenric and allow him to trap Fenric as he did the last time they did battle, in the most horrific game of baby oil twister ever seen in this universe. Ace studies the board intensely, gets bored, and then thoughtlessly asks if the game couldn't be won if the two opposing pawns joined sides to kill the King. The Doctor slams his hands into his head - "ACE!!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?! You've just given Fenric the solution!" To the Doctor and Ace's surprise, Fenric is deeply annoyed and refuses to make the winning move. "What the hell kind of puzzle is this?! Doctor, THAT is an illegal move! Do you know how many hours I've spent reading chess theory books? Sketching chess diagrams? WAITING for that damned page on teletext to load?! And all you offer me is some stupid puzzle where I have to make some goddamn illegal move that any streetkid could figure out after 3 minutes of vaguely looking at the board?! This really takes the cake Doctor, even for you!" Disgusted with the entire situation, Fenric makes the winning move and tells Ace that her jacket is really stupid. Ace is thrown by this sudden insult, but then stunned when Fenric continues. Fenric explains that everything that has unfolded here has been a part of his plan; he directed the Vikings to Whitby, he made sure the runes survived in the church, he made sure that he got trapped in a magical chinese flask owned by some guy named David who was in serious need of money and planned to sell it at a carboot sale in Brightlingsea, he personally bought Ace an advanced train ticket to Brightlingsea for the weekend of the carboot sale, and he briefly possessed Ace's friend Hazel who gave her the ticket "when her family decided to go to EuroDisney instead". Ace asks Fenric why in the hell he would go to such trouble, and Fenric claims it was just to pass the time away and have a laugh before killing her. Ace smiles widely, knowing that while she has the Doctor on her side Fenric can not harm her. This all seems to work perfectly well until the Doctor callously breathes a sigh of relief and says - "Oh thank god Fenric. I thought you would have killed her ages ago! Didn't expect you to wait this long." Ace is shocked and terrified as the Doctor explains that he's he's known since he met Ace on Iceworld that she was a pawn in Fenric's game, part of the trap being set for him, just another pretty emotionally crippled girl with an ancient chinese flask of unimaginable power. Ace collapses in tears, the servants of Fenric rush in to kill her in her weakened state. Ace, realising that she can't rely on the Doctor to save her, acts to defend her own life and in blind rage she repeatedly stakes the vampires to death in the most severe and brutal way conceivable. His servants dead, Fenric only smiles...until Ace walks up to him, knees him in the groin, and uses her bloodsoaked stake to make Fenric's body look like a whiffle ball. The physical body Fenric was possessing is dead, and Fenric once again returns to the world of the formless metaphysical. A walking form of sweat and blood Ace approaches the Doctor grasping the wooden stake in her hand so firmly that her knuckles are snow white beneath the flakes of blood splattered across them. "Professor. I know why you said those things. You just needed me to act. Needed me to kill them for you. Needed to help me free my mind from being dependent on you. Thanks." "Well, not exactly. You were just a pawn in a sick twisted game between me and a dark god of chaos. But look at you now! You've been promoted to a Queen!" Book(s)/Other Related - Stalin's Personal Rule Book of Soviet VolleyBall: Revised Edition Doctor Who And The Glourious Five Year Plan (USSR only) Doctor Who And The Collectible Card Game of Fenric (tm) Links and References - The Doctor mentions that this entire adventure is giving him a very creepy "Vampire The Masquerade" vibe; a game he was last seen playing briefly in Dragonbreath. Untelevised Misadventures - Fenric met the Doctor in third century Constantinople and, defeated at twister (and possibly baby oil chess as well), was banished to 'a shadow dimension' while its earthly essence was imprisoned in a flask for 17 centuries. Groovy DVD Extras - If you go to the Special Features menu, highlight the third special feature "Grainy Behind the Scenes Video", and then click the right arrow key this will cause a Doctor Who logo to appear. Click the logo and a rather disturbing Ace/Willow slash fic story written by some lesbian fangirl will appear. I read up to about page 3 when Willow becomes a vampire and wears that lycra outfit...it's pretty good. Wish it had pictures though. But that's just me.... Well...I'm hoping that's not just me. I don't want to be the weird one around here. Dialogue Disasters - ---- Confused Nazis fighting on the side of the British Gunther: How many times must I tell you Franz?? They are not swinehunds - They are Tea Drinking Aryans!" ---- Dialogue Triumphs - ---- Ace: I'm not a little girl anymore. Doctor: When we get to Maiden's Head would you like me to buy you an ice cream? Ace: Oh yes please! ---- Ace: There's a wind whipping up. I can feel it through my clothes... (Editor's note, this line appears both in the story as televised and in the DVD special feature I just mentioned, so...it must be pretty good.) ---- Ace: And the half time score: Perivale, six hundred million; Rest of the Universe, nil! Doctor: Ace, you don't score chess like that. ---- Ace: Have to move faster than that if you want to keep up with me. Faster than light. Dr Judson: Faster than light in a vacuum right? Because if you were to reflect light through a fluid- Ace: Shut up old man! I'm trying to seduce you. Where was I? Oh yeah, We're hardly moving yet. Sometimes I travel so fast I don't exist. ---- Doctor: Time. The beginning of all beginnings. Two forces, only good and evil, then chaos. Time is born, matter, space. The universe cries out like a newborn. The forces shatter as the universe explodes outwards. Only echoes remain, and yet somehow Somehow, the evil force survives, An intelligence - pure evil. Ace: No Professor, I'm pretty sure those aren't the lyrics to the Dark Side of the Moon. Doctor: But that song about Time, called...Time. That's it isn't it? Ace: No that goes more like - "And you run and run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" I don't think they actually mention the ever surviving echoes of pure evil. Doctor: Well then WHAT in the world am I thinking of? I guess it doesn't matter. The time is gone. The song is over. Thought I'd something more to say. ------------------------------------------------------------ Viewer Quotes - "The shining thread of this story. That one special element that I will take away, is the touching story of the Reverend who loses his faith. To this day I wonder, when I lost my faith, WHY wasn't I seduced by demonic ladies of the night? Don't get me wrong. Immortal sexual sin with undead women of timeless beauty is nothing compared to the glory of our lord. But, considering all sides, it ain't half bad either." - Father James O' Maley (1989) "In this story we see that Ace is no longer just a tomboy, but a young vicious female killing machine coming to terms with her own sexuality. GOD I LOVE THIS STORY!" - Janet Greene, alt.fetish.lesbian.vampire (1997) "More churches exploded in this story than any previous Doctor Who story to date. A strange way to judge quality. But one which proves itself true time and time again." - Daniel Gumpy (1989) Sylvester McCoy Speaks! "I love going back into history and World War Two was just a fantastic setting for a story. You see so many films and television depictions of World War Two that you think that you know everything about the era. It wasn't until Fenric however that I learned of the deep Soviet respect and love for volleyball. Completely surprising to me. Apparently Karl Marx said that football was the opiate of the people." Sophie Aldred Speaks! "Fenric was really a very powerful and sexual show for Ace, but then Vampire tales tend to be sexually charged. The whole, Ace being incredibly important was completely not my doing at all. I was really chuffed that they liked the character and what I was doing and thought that I should go around molesting the cosmos as my special way of helping the Doctor. Chess Of Fenric was my favourite because of that character development and that I must have been the first action heroine to practically rape a guy in a wheelchair. I'm sure those scenes stood out because when they did the first few scripts for the X-Men movies, they asked me if I'd be interested in playing Professor Xavier's girlfriend." Rumors & Facts - Following the tumultuous production of Season Twenty-Three in 1986, Doctor Who producer John Satan-Turner had requested - for roughly the ten thousandth time -- that he be transferred to a prison in Angola rather than being forced to continue his work for the BBC. His request denied, and having no other national prison system to turn to, Satan-Turner remained. He was briefly happy during Doctor Who's silver anniversary season in 1988, but was adamant that at the end of the year he would build a raft from driftwood and make a mad escape attempt to France. Producer Paul Stone, responsible for such fantasy programming as The Box Of Delights, was apparently offered the post, but turned it down, changed his name, and immediately moved to Brazil to escape the BBC. Satan-Turner once again faced an ultimatum: produce Doctor Who or lose thumbs. Reluctantly, Satan-Turner was back at the helm with all ten fingers for a ninth season. Meanwhile, in May 1988 a mysterious gentleman known only as "Big Ian" began discussions with script editor Andrew Cartmel about a new storyline for Season Twenty-Six. Big Ian suggested an adventure set during the Second World War on the coast of Britain which included plotlines concerning the dawn of the computer age, as well as vampire legends and Norse mythology. Cartmel was never happy with stories that merely pulled together three totally different themes in a haphazard and illogical way. Cartmel asked Big Ian to come up with at least 2 other completely unconnected ideas and weave them into the story as well. When Big Ian suggested volleyball and ancient gods trapped in flasks might be a laugh, he was commissioned on the spot.