Underwear

Ninety-Eighth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide
O' Today's My BIRTHDAY!

Serial 4Y - Underwear -

 At the edge of the universe, where planets are born from cosmic
debris, one entity has laid dormant - waiting.  A twisted creation
from the last remains of the tortured souls from the most brutal
psychic war ever known, it has waited for it's day to lay waste
to everything.  Endless aeons passed, and still the creature
waited, so long that mystic eternities were formed and crushed
under entropy, and still unblinking it slept...waiting...waiting....

 It would sadly have to continue to wait, the BBC simply
doesn't have enough money for this sort of thing!  The TARDIS
lands instead on a tacky looking space ship that looks suspiciously
like a wobbly candy dish.  The aliens on board the vessel wanted to
be called the Aztekka, but sadly that name was already taken by a
popular disco, so they chose to call themselves the Minyans.

 To the Minyans the Time Lords are gods.  This betrays the
rather limited intelligence of the Minyans as it was the
time lords who were responsible for the end of their civilization!
Well, except for the fully operational candy dish star crusier.
The entire supra-advanced industrial society the Minyans enjoyed
was destroyed by internecine warfare.  Minyos melted away into
the blazing fusion blast, the towering glass skyscrapers of
their once proud megacities warped into misshappened parodies
of their former selves before imploding and showering the
world with molten shrapnel of liquid death - for budgetary
purposes this all happened completely off camera and even
the onscreen descriptions were severely toned down from the
original script which had been written on toilet paper as to
fulfill two functions.

 As the Doctor joins this latest chapter in the entirely
off screen epic of the dying Minyan race, it turns out that
those on the candy dish star cruiser have founded Minyos 2:
This Time It's Personal.  Now with their new home secured,
they are looking for a legendary lost space ship called the
P7E, which carried all of their underwear.  The Doctor helps
the captain, Jackson, locate his own underwear, which is
quite hilarious and embarrassing as Jackson was actually
wearing it at the time.

 Even after this great discovery it is at last only one
pair of underwear.  The P7E must be found before it is
too late.  With an underwear detector made out of an
elastic band, two pieces of string, and a magnet, the
Doctor leads the crew to the whereabouts of the P7E.
Once it is located they board the mysterious vessel which
closely resembles a dirty ashtray.  Once a board they
discover the crew has forgotten their original purpose
as 'The High And Mighty Guardians Of the Tightie-Whities'.
The crew now serve the ship's computer, the Orac.

 We are informed by one of the crew that beastly and
disgusting half-man half-machine creatures guard the
mighty and powerful computer, however as again, the
budget simply won't allow for this, the Doctor and friends
stroll in, take the underwear, and run away as fast as
possible!


Book(s)/Other Related - Doctor Who The G-String Cowboy (Canada Only)
                        Doctor Mysterio Undergarmenta Magnificento!
    '10101011111101111110 or I Am The Computer That Loves Underwear'

Fluffs - Tom Baker seemed completely gormy for most of this story

Fashion Victims - The Minyan space helmets are obviously metal pots

Goofs - The artefacts have weird things written on them such
        as 'Made In Minyos', 'Killroy Was Here', 'SPAM' and
       'Kill Those Bloody Belgian Bastards'.
        One or two of the scenes in this story must have cost
        the BBC SOME AMOUNT of money.

Technobabble - "No wonder this space ship looks like a candy dish -
                It's got a Cadbury's Hyperstitial Drive!"

Links and References -
The Doctor cheerfully reminiscences about all the times he's
landed on REALISTIC looking space ships - even though he
references some examples directly, such as the Spiceminer in
'The Robots With Breasts', - we MUST assume he has a lot more
liberal definition of 'realistic' than the fans!

Untelevised Misadventures -
For reasons unknown the Doctor is no longer welcomed in Aberdeen
and has been barred from every pub in Blackpool.

Dialogue Disasters -

Jackson: The quest is the quest!
Herrick: The quest is the quest!
Orfe: The quest is the quest!
Tala: The quest is the quest!
Doctor: Oh excuse me, are we talking about The Quest again?

Jackson: Whatever blows, sucks.
Doctor: I wish my first wife thought that way.

Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Don't ever play with strange weapons, Leela -- AIM THEM!

Leela reveals much about the Doctor -
Leela: Don't worry, he has fathered many.
Doctor: They've never been able to prove it.

Doctor: Have you ever heard of the Flying Dutchman?
Leela: No.
Doctor: Pity. He probably has big poofy underwear.

Orac: There are no gods but me!  Orac was not created!
      I made myself!
Doctor: I'm sorry, are you trying to quote David Warner
        in Time Bandits?
Orac: Lasers!  8 o'clock!  Day one!
Doctor: Just let me know when Ralph Richardson gets here.

The classic final scene between the Doctor and Leela:
Doctor: Another insane object, another self-aggrandising artefact!
Leela: Oh Doctor, I can't believe they said that about you!

Dialogue Oddities -

(ORIGINAL SCRIPT)
The Doctor: Wherever there is evil, there must be justice!
            One can't just sit idly by and partake in the
            spectacle of destruction!

(ON SCREEN)
Tom Baker: Ohh look - EVIL!

Viewers' Quotes -

"My first thought was that this was a fairly tasteless rip off
of the work of the generations of Greek storytellers who
created and refined the myth of Jason and the Argonauts.
Then I realised that Mark Antony was the script editor!
Hell, for all I know him and Homer were drinking buddies!"
                           - Leonard Anderson (1990)

"I wouldn't trust Antony for a Athenian Minute!"
                          - Homer (800 BC)

"There are some who say Underwear was a damn terrible story, and
yes it was. The first episode was very tedious, and the plot in
general seemed very weak. The sets were bad, the acting was bad, the
script was bad. However, it is easy to over look the reliance on weapons.
One of the annoying characteristics of the Doctor has always been that he
never carries a gun and blows the fuck out of evil. Sure he uses his wits
to get out of tricky situations, but where's the cold hard godly justice
of a fully loaded .45?"  - Father James O'Maley (1978)

"There is far more to admire in Underwear than you would guess.
I mean this is the story which...umm..I don't remember ANYTHING
about this story!"    - Kate Skipton (1986)

"Okay season 15, this should be easy.  There was Lighthouse
Cutaway, The Indivisible Enemy, Image of the Ken Doll, The
Fun Makers, and then..umm..ahh....what HELL came after the
Fun Makers???"      - Charles Daniels (2000)

Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I don't wear underwear. Never ask me about this again, please."

Tom Baker Speaks!
"Yes, this story was...I'm sorry, I have no clue what I'm looking
at.  I don't remember this at all.  Are you sure this was one
of mine?  Oh, yes, there I am!  Well, it looks like me.  I guess
it could be someone else, who just looks like me, quiet a bit
I'd have to wager.  Still, they are calling him Doctor, so it
must be me.  I say, I do look a lot taller in person don't I?
He looks like a short jammy git, doesn't he?  I MUST have been
very drunk or something during this entire proceeding.  Being
a children's hero in the 70s was rather stressful, you know?
Still, at least I look like I'm getting paid."

Rumors & Facts -

It has sometimes been suggested that Doctor Who is at its
best when its ass is showing. Those who hold that view
would no doubt find much to admire in Underwear.

 Marc Antony fully took over from Sherlock Holmes as Doctor Who's
script editor after trailing Holmes and trying to gather damaging
photographs for much of the year. It quickly became obvious that
Antony would have his hands full for the planned finale for the season,
The Killer Cats Of Molester Jones by David Weird. Consequently, for the
penultimate serial he turned to the script writing genius that had
made Invdivisible Enemy a rather cheap reality.

 Although Antony and producer Graham Williams were under pressure
from their superiors to move away from stories which would be
entertaining, costly, horrific, funny, science fictiony, dramatic,
or even visual in nature, Antony intended to continue his predecessor's
tradition of plagiarising liberally from any source that moved.  He
suggested the writers might look to Greek mythology which had always
been popular in the Rome of Antony's time.  They adapted the quest
of Jason and the Argonauts to find the fabled Golden Fleece into a
science fiction epic of a bunch of aliens looking for their misplaced
underwear. This adventure was first entitled Undergarments and then later
simplified into Underwear.

The director assigned to Serial 4Y was Norman Stewart. Stewart had just
gone entirely out of his mind after working at the BBC for a number of
years.  Stewart recently been promised by the BBC that he would be at
the head of "a space epic beyond the wildest imaginings of Jules Verne
and HG Wells".  After writing a script requiring a budget of 15 Million
Pounds, quite a hefty sum for 1977, he was maddened to discover
the BBC was only willing to offer 3 shillings and an egg.
This came as somewhat a double blow because not only were shillings
no longer legal tender in the United Kingdom, but the egg was eaten
by a hungry delivery man before it ever reached his office.
This experience left Stewart a gibbering mad man, which led
the BBC to believe he would be perfect on "a crap programme like
Doctor Who".

 A challenge immediately confronted Stewart after Williams attended
a preview screening of the motion picture Star Wars.  Star Wars had
already proven a hit in North America and would debut in the UK in
early 1978, at the SAME time Underwear would be on television screens
across the nation.  Williams decided that Underwear should look
ten times MORE impressive than Star Wars in order to save face.
In an act of insanity, Williams invested the ENTIRE BUDGET on
one effect in which the entire universe is imploded and then
all the events in history play back through a warp effect which
then forms the shape of the TARDIS and opens out into a thousand
marching spider Dustbins ready to emerge as the new masters of time
and space.

 While this was impressive - there was no more budget to do vital
things like buy film and video tape.  Things then went ENTIRELY
TO HELL when Williams realised he hadn't sought proper permissions
and Terry Nation refused the USE of the DUSTBINS!

 At this point, Williams elected to commit suicide slowly over a period
of two weeks.  Antony rushed to William's home in a panic and dragged
him back to the BBC studios against his will.  When they arrived, they
discovered the entire place in complete disarray - BBC employees were
walking through the building blow torching badly stacked film stock,
conservative MPs were having illicit sexual affairs in the water closets,
and someone had given Noel Edmunds a job on a popular children's show.

 Doctor Who was still under orders not to spend any money, as had often
been the case under Pinchcliffe.  However, inflation was skyrocketing
in 1977, unemployment was at an all time high, there was an energy
crisis in full swing, and the vending machines were entirely out
of Crunchie bars.  This series of events left Williams and Antony
with two options: either completely lose the next serial or kill
themselves.  Williams was fairly exhausted from his last attempt
so he suggested the former.

 Even while this story was driving the controlling forces to suicide
the writers were already thinking that Underwear could be their little
gold mine. They suggested that this story be used to spin off into their
own science-fiction series, in which the Minyans travelled through space
becoming involved in other mythology-inspired adventures. Not even the
BBC was stupid enough to follow up this ridiculous idea, however.

 Meanwhile, the Doctor's other new companion, K-9, was finally unveiled
to the public on October 6th.  That day, it is reported, over 600 kids
joyfully kicked the K-9 model into a thousand million pieces.  Earning
K-9 the right to be called "The Most Kickable Companion".