The One Hundred and Nineteenth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Rammstein Serial K9 - K9 & Bitches - Christmas, 1981 - Off screen the Doctor has run out of any ideas and decided to get all of his old companions their very own K-9 for Christmas. Apparently the Brigadier used his K-9 for target practice, Jamie attempted to use K-9 and his nose ray as a weapon against the British, and Zoe found a suitable home for it in a museum of obsolete computers. Overall, the gift did not go over well... Sarah travels to Milton Keynes to visit her aunt Helga for Christmas, but finds that she has not yet returned from a lost weekend in America. Sarah meets Brendan, a man who - due to mental affliction - insists that he is a potato. Sarah avoids Brendan, and decides to meet some other characters - who are there largely to create a plot and pad out scenes - Sarah meets Lily Gregson, owner of the local post office and part-time transvestite, and Commander Pollock, a retired Navy man who insists that he was not affilated with Hitler in anyway - and even if he was, he had no idea that Hitler was a Nazi. Bored shitless, Sarah starts to play with a cardboard box she finds abandoned in one corner of her aunt Helga's house. Eventually, after standing on it, throwing it, and spinning it wildly on the carpet to get some cool static eletric sparks, Sarah finally considers opening it. The box contains a K-9 Mk III, a gift to Sarah from her old friend/nemesis, the Doctor. Meanwhile, Brendan has been going around the city centre mentioning, as discreetly as possible, that he is in fact a new potato. Speaking out in such a brazen fashion, Brendan is kidnapped by a cult of witches, who plan to sacrifice him at midnight to the goddess Yetaxa, in order to stop their crops from failing. It seems they believe that sacrificing a potato, the size of a man, will somehow appease the dark goddess of corn. Sarah and K-9 track down the witches, who are revealed to be most of the population of Milton Keynes, and unmask the High Priest and Priestess - Commander Pollock and Erwin Rommel. Book(s)/Other Related - K9: The Electric Pimp K-9: It's a Dog's Life The Sarah Jane Trouser Suit Pattern Book Fluffs - K9 seemed absent for most of this story "Mistress, I am unable to quanitifier-quantefe--quanta--oh fuck." Goofs - K-9, product of an advanced super technology from beyond the stars is revealed to have a Ri-Sec Bus Driver, and 128k of RAM. Fashion Victims - Sarah featured in many hip and modern fashions such as an orange and brown trouser suit, and various outfits with checked collars and pink scarves Technobabble - "To control the mind of K-9 you must be a programmer of the most amazing skill, Mistress. I will demonstrate the complex syntax with which my superbrain has been constructed - 10 For k = 1 to 5 20 Print "Hello World" 30 Next This complex and subtle language will take decades to master, Mistress." Links and References - Sarah Jane has a strange holiday tradition of sending Christmas cards to her vanquished enemies. We see her mailing Christmas Greetings to Q Tip, El Molestare Grande, and The Cybermen. (Serial 4G), (Serial 4N), (Serial 4D) Even though I am unsure how the postman is suppose to handle addresses like - The Cybermen Planet Teladon Deep Space AD 2643 5XO 12G Untelevised Misadventures - Sarah Jane mentions that she once successfully repelled a complete Cyberinvasion Force on the Isle of Wight. Groovy DVD Extras - A remix of the classic K-9 theme song, as performed by the German band - Rammstein. Dialogue Disasters - Lilly: In Milton Keynes we only worship Satan on Sundays dear. A scene which became surreal and stupid due to a lame typo which the actor apparently didn't spot - David: "Yes, it's true. We all worship Stan in the village." Dialogue Triumphs - Further mischief abounds with same typo - Pollock: "You can not kill me Sarah Jane!! I AM EMPOWERED FULLY BY THE DARK LORD STAN!" Viewer Quotes - "Can I just admit here I enjoyed watching K9 and Bitches? I hired it on whim, and I enjoyed it sooooo much! It was great to see the adventures of a robot dog, without worrying about anything exciting or interesting happening. I have to go now, have my pills to take." - Cameron Mason, rec.arts.drwho (2000) "From watching it I get the impression that it was put together by drug addicts in a couple of days, and possibly all done without formal editing equipment. In fact I think I read in Doctor Who Magazine once that they just had the tapes, a razor blade, and some sticky tape -- and on the first day they ran out of sticky tape." - Jason Meahan, rec.arts.drwho (1993) "The storyline was really uninvolving. Silly men in goat masks can be interesting. But what we got in K-9 and Bitches was a rather generic cult with no clearly defined doctrines. This cult just went around doing the standard evil cultish things. It really annoys me when I see this on television, because when you've been in an organized cult that goes around sacrificing people, like I have, you really come to respect the complexity of that organization. Think about it. Your cult has to go off and kill someone AT LEAST every harvest festival. And if you're in a halfway decent cult they are going to have a few ritual days of their own, on their own calendar. So you could probably clock out a good 16 people a year, every year, for 20 years. So if you are willing to go the whole way, to make this cult a life long career, then you're going to have to kill somewhere around 320 people. Now, you try doing that when you belong to a cult that just smokes dope all day and is filled with squatters. They just don't have the organizational skills to kill that many people, that consistently, over so many years and not get caught. So, to be realistic, you really need to show a focused group of very organized people. Type A personalities." - Altar Boy, rec.arts.drwho (1994) "If a Doctor Who spinoff like 'K9 and Bitches' can happen in real life, anything is possible." - Troy Dravecky (1999) Psychotic Nostalgia - "K9 and Bitches unlocked the demonic realities of the innermind, right before my eyes. But then, that music...the horrible music from BEYOND HELL!! It was too much for me, so I put the video back." Rumors & Facts - Following the alleged, many say completely invented, public outcry that had occurred when the news that K9 would be leaving Doctor Who, Satan-Turner had put forward to his BBC superiors the suggestion that the robot dog be given its own programme. Apparently Satan-Turner was just joking. But had to absorb the shock, and pretend he really thought it was a good idea, when the Beeb execs gave him a budget and studio time. Unable to think of a clever or tactful way to tell the powers that be that they were totally and completely insane, pilot production set in motion. The initial outline for the story was written by Satan-Turner himself as he was somewhat desperate to make sure the show didn't totally ruin his reputation at the BBC. Satan-Turner's first draft, under the working title "Doggy Style", sketched out a basic idea for an occult spectacular of damnation and unending horror set in Milton Keynes. Soon after filming began, the crew had several days of tension, frustration and worry. As Satan-Turner had suggested the series as joke at a BBC board meeting he hadn't actually accounted for all the practicalities of the idea. Namely, they had the script written and the sets built, but no one had actually gathered up the courage to phone Elisabeth Sladen or John Leeson and ask them if they'd be available or willing to do the programme. Filming continued for twelve full days, the credit sequence was finalised, and it was shortly after this, on 12 May, that Satan-Turner first contacted Elisabeth Sladen to see if she would be willing to appear in the special. Fortunately she readily agreed to be involved with a Doctor Who production - something she had previously said she would rather be shot in the head than doing. Mostly likely she agreed when she learned that Tom Baker had finally been completely locked out of the BBC lots. Shortly thereafter, John Leeson agreed in similar circumstances. Terence Dudley was invited to review the script, and suggested a title change from "Doggy Style" to "K-9 and Bitches", which he thought would sound modern, allude further to K-9 being a male robot dog, and would allow the word "bitches" on the telly if they could convince the BBC that it was to refer to female dogs K-9 would meet and the complex way in which Sarah Jane would be seen by K-9 as a member of his pack. Terrence Dudley also offered multiple suggestions for the title music, but Satan-Turner insisted that it should give the audience flashbacks to Hawaii Five-0. K-9 and Bitches won a quite respectable viewing figure of 8.4 million and would no doubt have done even better if more people had watched. Even with these strong viewing figures the option of a full series was never pursued by Satan-Turner for obvious reasons. Reportedly many BBC executives were heartbroken by this decision. This series was doomed. Possibly because the idea was simply untenable. But mostly because there was no way Elisabeth Sladen was going to take second billing to a goddamn robot dog.