Moxx of Balhoon: The Revenge!

Massive Spoiler Warnings!!

Those who do not want Spoilers...RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!








It's -

The One Hundred and Sixty-Fourth Entry in the Charles Daniels
Unauthorized Programme Guide O'Naughty Tiger


Episode 1.02 - Moxx of Balhoon: The Revenge! - 

 The Doctor explains to Rose that they can travel absolutely
anywhere in the vast oceans of time and space and offers her
the choice of where she wants to go for her first trip in the
TARDIS.

 Disappointingly she chooses to go back to the previous Sunday
as she completely missed the EastEnders Omnibus on BBC1 and is now
horribly lost.

 After sitting through 3 hours of the soap, the Doctor is on the
brink of losing his mind and shoves Rose and the telly into the
TARDIS, taking off and arriving in the 22nd century.

 When Rose asks if this means she can now catch up on a full
100 years of EastEnders, the Doctor screams violently
and catapults them to the New Roman Empire of the year 12,005.

 Rose surfs the channel listings and discovers a special 10,000
year Omnibus edition of EastEnders running on BBC1039, and the
in desperation the Doctor offers to take her to a land so exciting
that the inhabitants have something even better to watch than
EastEnders.

 For this long distance travel a special device emerges from
the TARDIS console -

"You've got to be joking!  Is that a bicycle pump?"

"No!  Umm...well, it's a pump of sorts....JUST NEVER YOU MIND!
I'll show you something amazing Rose Tyler!  Just you wait and see.  
But please, close your eyes for a minute.  This can get
embarrassing."


 Sometime later Rose emerges from the TARDIS to find herself in an
opulent viewing gallery with a window built into an entire wall.
The Doctor uses his magical wand to open the shades, revealing that
they’re in a space station orbiting the Earth -- and with a flash of
intense light, the sun begins to expand. 

 "It's the year 5.5/Fiona/26.  The end of the world....."

(Credit sequence)
 
 Rich, elite, and terribly bored beings have made their way to
a space station to witness the death of the Earth; the earth
and its sun could actually survive for several billion more
years, but it's become terribly unfashionable, and hope is that
the space will soon be used to build a truly monumentous block of
flats.

 The Galactic Trust, who take pride in preserving ancient planets,
also take bribes from major development firms.  This has allowed
for the premature destruction of the planet AND created a great
venue for a truly enjoyable party.

 As Rose enjoys a sausage roll, it begins to sink in for her that
she’s about to witness the death of her home planet, and so, with
suitable emotion, she enquires if anyone at the party has any red
wine on offer.

 Meanwhile the Doctor tries, and fails, to impress the party guests
with a psychically imprinted blank sheet of paper that he found as
a free toy in a 50th century box of Wheetabix.

 Rose is somewhat thrown and embarrassed when she discovers a slice
of pizza she's been holding, is actually a party guest from Alpha
Sigma.  

 She is then entirely terrified when he asks after "his pal Ted,
who looks rather like a sausage roll".


 Rose decides to put down the pizza slice and mingle with the
more bipedal guests (we can call it racism, but honestly,
21st century earthers just don't know any better).

 The most important guests seem to be Jabe, Lute, and Coffa,
walking humanoid trees from the forests of Birmingham; the squat
blue Moxx of Balhoon; the dark-hooded Adherents of the Repeated
Meme; a giant head in a jar known as the Face of Boe; and 
the Ambassadors from the Virtual Domain of the Self-Pitying Blog. 

 The visitors exchange gifts to symbolise peace; Jabe presents
the Doctor with a picture of their god - Ozzy Osbourne; and
the Moxx of Balhoon spits at Rose, because he suspects her of
consuming half of his friends at the party; The Adherents hand out
tiny chunks of HTML code; and the Self-Pitying Blog sits in the
corner and weeps morosely.

 The Doctor offers the gift of air from his lungs by breathing
on the other visitors, which is actually deeply rude as he's
just eaten up the last of the garlic bread.

 Rose notes uneasily that the Doctor seems to be flirting with
a tree. 

 There is some further embarrassment experienced by the hosts
of the party when they introduce Lady Cassandra O’Brien, the
Last Human, and someone astutely points out that they are
actually holding up a blank piece of A4 paper.

 After a moment of quick investigation they wheel in the
REAL Lady Cassandra who is actually little more than a
translucent sheet of skin with eyes, a mouth, and a rather
unfortunate Meat Loaf tattoo.

 When the Doctor first sees Cassandra - stretched out tightly
over a frame above a brain in a jar - he shouts 

"MORBIUS!!  BUT HOW?!"

 But the Doctor is quickly assured by the masked surgeons who 
moisturise Cassandra that she is a completely different brain
in a completely different jar -- and in either case, her rather
unfortunate love affair with Morbius is now completely over
and in the past.

 Cassandra offers a truly unusual set of gifts from Earth:
the egg of a grizzly bear; the leg bone of a shark; and a
1950s jukebox which she mis-identifies as a blue whale, the
largest living creature in Earth history. 

 The alien guests begin to mingle as the jukebox/blue whale
plays Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, and Rose, overwhelmed, finally
succumbs to nausea and rushes out of the hospitality zone. 

 Jabe takes a quick scan of the Doctor, but it takes the
scanner quite a while to identify his species -- and when it
finally does, the scanner accuses Jabe of playing a practical
joke on it and shuts itself off.

 Rose finds her way to a small side room, but as she watches the
expanding sun through the window, a small blue woman in a
maintenance worker’s uniform arrives. The woman remains
uncomfortably silent when Rose addresses her.

 Rose wonders why the little blue woman seems so tense and
uncomfortable around her, and then Rose quickly realises that
no progressive, beat you over the head with a fish, statement
has yet been made about the openness and beauty of human tolerance
and sexuality in this episode.

 Rose roughly and passionately grabs the little blue woman by
the shoulders, leans in close to her, and then administers serious
tongue.

 The little blue lady coughs in surprise, and tries to clear
her throat.

 "Wow miss!  I'm used to people not giving me permission to speak.
But they don't usually do it by licking my tonsils."

 Rose stands back and is deeply embarrassed.

 "Oh, no.  This was supposed to be a racial tolerance scene..."

 "I think so miss."

 "Not an inter-racial lesbian sequence then."

 "Don't believe so, Miss."

 "Oh, alright.  Sorry about that.   Just, umm, get on with
  whatever it was you were doing then.  Don't mind me."

 "Oh thank you Miss.  If you don't mind I'll just be brutally
  murdered by robotic spiders now Miss."

 "OH NO!  GO RIGHT AHEAD!!  Umm...wait, murdered by robotic
  spiders?"

  
 The little blue lady is viciously murdered by robotic spiders.
Rose quickly leaves the room, hoping to forget the entire ordeal.


 The Doctor eventually finds Rose sitting alone in a viewing
gallery. Rose admits that she’s having trouble dealing with
so many aliens; the events from the party keep playing through
her mind and she realises that it's possible that she ate at
least 15 of the guests, and perhaps drank one if that wasn't 
actually an Orange Fanta she had.

 The Doctor looks intensely into the distance, "The Last of
the Great Philosophers of the Gagrahoon, the only intelligence
in the universe known to be naturally carbonated. What a sad end."

 When Rose asks the Doctor where he’s from, he immediately says
Grimsby.  

 Rose calls him on this, and he admits he's lying, but he
evades answering the question again.

 Then Rose asks why the aliens are all speaking English.
The Doctor calmly explains "Oh that!  I just monkeyed around
with your brain!  You just think they're speaking English!"

 Rose is deeply upset that her perceptions have been altered
without her knowledge or permission.  The Doctor doesn't
understand her anger and retorts -

 "Hey!  I had to go to night school for 13 weeks to learn
how to do that!  And I did really really well.  I almost got
a B!"

 Frustrated, she presses him for answers, demanding to know
who he is, where he’s from, and if he has the proper licences
needed to fly a TARDIS. But the Doctor loses his temper and
refuses to speak to her. 

 Realising that it's not a good idea to piss off the only
guy who can give her a ride home, Rose drops the subject
entirely.

 The Doctor, now calmer, explains to Rose that he used to
run a successful cellphone cloning con on a million different
inhabited worlds; he takes her cell phone and sticks a magical
sonic doohickey in the back slot -- and, to Rose’s surprise,
orders a pizza to be delivered.

 Rose asks if she can use the cell phone to call up her mother
and the Doctor grudgingly gives it back to her.

 Rose dials up her mom and is at first thrilled to hear her
voice, but soon all her mother says is stuff along the lines of
"When are you going to get a proper boyfriend with a good job?
When are you going to go to get off your arse and do A levels?
When are you going to go see the doctor about that awkward rash?"

 Rose hangs up the phone abruptly and as she puts the phone away
it occurs to her that her mother has been dead for five billion
years; this helps her cope a little! 


 Meanwhile, in his private office, the Stewart is cooking
chicken nuggets through the rather unsafe method of lowering
the defensive sun filter slightly.

 When a robotic spider sneaks into the room and raises the
sun filter all the way the results are truly horrifying and
yet smell eerily delicious.

 The room fills with the blazing, unfiltered light and
4,000-degree heat of the sun...both the nuggets and Stewart
are more than ready. 


 The Doctor sniffs the air in curiosity "An awkward stench,
as if someone placed a mortuary right next to a chippie..."

 Before the Doctor can investigate, his new girlfriend Jabe
interrogates him about his wife/partner/concubine/prostitute/
pet human.

 The Doctor, wanting to avoid awkward questions from Jabe,
abandons Rose to be knocked unconscious and dragged away
by the Adherents to the Repeated Meme. 


 On their way to the main computer complex, Jabe asks the
Doctor why he's chosen to visit Platform One as it witnesses
the destruction of earth.  The Doctor explains to Jabe that
they are all in serious life-or-death trouble as a murderer
is on the loose and there is nobody around to help them.
This is, of course, absolutely horrible and yet he feels
oddly excited by the prospect - "Call it a fetish if you like."

 Jabe agrees that the Doctor seems a little too excited by this.

 She wonders what kind of person enjoys seeking out trouble; 
perhaps a moron.

 Jabe admits that she knows who and what the Doctor is -- and
that she understands just how much he’s lost. The Doctor,
struggling not to sneeze, begins to tear up.

 At that moment, Cassandra remote-detonates all of her
robotic spiders - she didn't mean to; she just depressed
the wrong button on her Evil Spiderbot Remote control Unit.

 The explosions rip through the mainframe, taking out
computer control and shutting down the station’s force fields.
Cassandra and her surgeons then teleport out, leaving the others,
who, bluntly put - are fucked.

 The party takes a downbeat turn as the guests clue in on
the fact that they are all going to die horribly when the
sun explodes.  Some of them question the sanity of planning
to be so near a stellar explosion in the first place, but 
the vast majority just sink further into depression - doubly
so for the Ambassadors from the Virtual Domain of the
Self-Pitying Blog.

 With no hard evidence, but somehow deeply convinced that
there must be a manual reset switch, the Doctor takes Jabe
back to the computer complex. 

 Unfortunately, the designers of the space station ALSO designed
incredibly complex video game levels.  This section of the 
station is modelled after a particularly vicious level in 
which giant, deadly sharp, fans spin wildly above a catwalk
which provides the only access to the reset switch which
your character needs to trip to survive and advance forward
to kill the boss.

 And to make it even worse, you can't save on this level!

 The Doctor makes a hazardous dash forward through the
rotating fan blades, as Jabe wildly punches buttons on
a gamepad so fast and furiously that the friction generated
causes her to burst into flames.

 With only ten seconds left to complete the level, the Doctor
calms himself down, closes his eyes, and steps forward -- passing
safely between the blades. 

 He then pulls the reset switch and orders the computer
to reactivate the shields, and it does so just as the Earth
is struck by the outer atmosphere of the sun and explodes.

 The timing of all of this is just too damned cliche to be
believed.


 Rose makes her way to the reception hall, where she finds
that the Moxx of Balhoon, amongst others, has been reduced to
ashes. 

 The Doctor returns alone, he angrily picks up Cassandra’s
“grizzly bear egg” and smashes it open, revealing the
teleportation feed she used to beam herself through the
5,000-degree heat outside Platform One.

 When the Doctor reverses the feed, Cassandra materialises
back in the reception hall. 

 Initially shaken, she recovers her poise and challenges
the Doctor to try charging her with murder.

 The Doctor explains that he has no interest in dealing
with legal systems.  He approaches Cassandra, folds her
in half, and places her in a spiral notebook which he
returns to an inner pocket in his leather jacket.

 Rose is annoyed - "You can't use the last living human
as scrap paper!"

 "Oh yeah?  Why not?  I just have to remember to write
on the side without the unfortunate Meat Loaf tattoo."


 Later, as the survivors depart, the Doctor finds Rose
watching the Earth’s remains float past the viewing window.
In the final moments, everyone was too busy trying to
save themselves to look outside, and when the Earth’s long
history came to an end, nobody was watching. 

 The Doctor leads Rose back to the TARDIS and takes her
back to 21st-century London, where she sees people walking
down the street, living their ordinary lives and taking it
all for granted -- something Rose will never do again.

 The Doctor finally admits that his home planet was destroyed
in a war; he is the last of his people, the Time Lords, and
he travels alone because he is deeply sad and can never get
a date. 

 Now he’s shown Rose just how dangerous those travels can be.
After a moment, Rose makes her choice: she’ll keep travelling
with the Doctor, but first she wants to catch up on the 
latest EastEnders.

 The Doctor groans, "You'll never follow it all, they'll
be making episodes for another five billion years." 

 
Book(s)/Other Related - 

'"I QUIT!" The Christopher Eccleston Years (Opps!  YEAR!)'

"Billie Piper In Sex Scandal with The Moxx of Balhoon!"
   - As Reported by The Sun, 31/03/2005 

SFX Magazine Issue 129 complete with large, glossy paper poster
of Billie Piper kissing Jabe


Links and References - 
Cassandra was apparently romantically involved with Morbius
after meeting him at a "Brain-In-A-Jar Singles Night Out" 


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor has regenerated, Gallifrey was destroyed, the time
lords are dead, and the Doctor has been deeply traumatized...
nope...we didn't miss much! 
 
Groovy DVD Extras -
Interactive Menus


Dialogue Disasters -

----
 
  Rose: But he was ALIEN and I ate him.
        As a snack.

Doctor: Yeah.

  Rose: Okay.

----


Dialogue Triumphs -
 

Doctor: You think it'll last forever. The people, and cars,
        and concrete. But it won't. Then one day it's all gone.
        All of it, except for EastEnders.
----

Rose: What happened?

Doctor: There was a war and we lost. A lot.

------------------------------------------------------------


Viewer Quotes -

"This story was deeply insensitive to those members of
society, who through no fault of their own, have deeply
embarrassing Meat Loaf tattoos.  When is society going to
move on, and progress to a point where these individuals
can live their lives in peace?"
       - John "Bat Out Of Hell" Stevenson (2005)

"Watched Doctor Who tonight.  They made fun of bloggers.
I would have been upset but I was already too dehydrated
from crying about having to live in this damned house
with my parents, like I do every night.
 My boyfriend doesn't understand me. He tried to climb
on top of me in public again.  That's so annoying.
If he didn't give me so much marijuana, I'd probably
be really upset at him.
 I talked to Roger about it, but he didn't understand me
either.  
 No one understands me.  I hate this world.
 It's just terrible.
 I wrote some poetry about it, but I won't share it here."
     - The Wilted Rose, Livejournal (2005)

"Do you think these were the same blue people as from
Star Trek The Next Generation?  I'm going to write a
fanfic starring Riker about it."  - Adamis Tonis (2005)


Russell T Davies Speaks!
"I got to live my dream of creating a character with
a distinct look, a wonderful design that immediately
betrays the attitude and tone of the character,
hyping him up, getting him press coverage, and then
doing sod all with him.

I spent half the budget for this episode just marketing
the Moxx of Balhoon, getting him on magazine covers,
in tv commercials, getting him seen at Hollywood parties
and in strip clubs...and then just put him on screen
for fifteen seconds, and made sure he had nothing at
all to do with the plot.

I even worked overtime to make sure he had no memorable
lines and no one could even imagine a way to justify
the expense.

This wasn't just style over substance, this was STYLE
WITHOUT SUBSTANCE!"
 


Christopher Eccleston speaks!
"I think everyone knew by the time we made episode 2 that
I was going to go.

You have to understand, I got the first script in the mail
and I was SO EXCITED, I couldn't wait to enjoy the quality
writing of Russell T Davies.
And so I opened it up and the first word of the script was
"London".
LONDON.  I mean, I was so terrified of received pronunciation
that I decided to quit then and there.
I looked later and it started "London - A typical day, we see
people go about their lives in the sprawling metropolis,
sped up like scurrying ants, unaware of the larger and more
fantastic universe around them."
And that's a good start.  But, I just couldn't deal with that
word, LONDON.
It's terrifying." 


Rumors & Facts -

 The first episode, Mickey, had secured an audience greater
than the BBC had been expecting -

"To be honest with you, we would have been happy with 3
viewers, with a margin of error of 4.  We'd have honestly
been happy with -1 viewers.  If our programme had actually
just killed someone, we'd be thrilled."

 On the basis of the success of episode 1, Head of Drama
Jane Tranter did not hesitate in commissioning both a
Christmas special and a second season -

 "I didn't hesitate because I thought 'Great!  Everyone was
really curious about the first episode and tuned in. 
I better commission a second season and a Christmas special
right away before the ratings tank next week as people hear
how crap it was.'
  I wasn't being too terribly optimistic."


 Just hours later, however, it was learned that while the
new Doctor Who series would continue beyond its initial
thirteen episodes, and Billie Piper would return as Rose
Tyler, Christopher Eccleston would be running away from
the role with the determination and intensity of a man on 
fire.

 Initial BBC reports, apparently released to head off a
leak to the tabloids, suggested that Eccleston was too
lazy to put up with the gruelling recording schedule, had
feared becoming too associated with the role of the Doctor,
and had been approached by Tom Baker who was at the time
only wearing his trademark scarf and reportedly commented
to Eccleston "You aren't the Doctor until you wrestle this
scarf off my naked body."


 On April 4th, however, Tranter admitted that the BBC
had not consulted with Eccleston before preparing the
press release, and that the reasons cited for his decision
were inaccurate -- except for the report about Tom Baker
which apparently was true and was currently being investigated
by the Metropolitan Police.

 Apparently the police were fully aware of the situation
as both Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann had reported
similar incidents in the past -- although Peter Davison
and Colin Baker have never made themselves available for
comment on this issue.

 Tranter apologised to Eccleston for the misattribution, as
well as not following through on a promise to keep his
encounter with Tom Baker a secret. 

 As had so often been the case in the past, controversy once
again stalked Doctor Who behind the scenes, even as the
programme flourished on television.