File On Doomsday

The One Hundred and Twenty-First Entry in the Charles Daniels 
Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Timesheet

Serial 5W - File On Doomsday -         

 The TARDIS materialises aboard a flying office block near the
legendary Frogstar.  The Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa meet the
a few frog-like aliens dressed in orange and blue leisure suits.
The frogoids - Ecstasy, Persuasion, and their leader, Bernard -
are super-intelligent creatures of pure evil and chaos.  However
as cool this sounds, they somehow overcome the stereotypes 
associated with creatures of pure evil and are incredibly boring.
 
 Aboard the flying office block the TARDIS crew meet humans 
taken from various ages in Earth's past - Bigotus, a Greek;
Gin Fukyu from China; Timmy, an Aborigine; and a Mayan, 
Larry Fredrickson. 

 Bernard has been piloting his enourmous office building
between Earth and Frogstar for many centuries.  These 
repeated trips have altered all humankind.  In dark caves
riddled around the planet earth are paintings of frogmen
talking on cellphones, writing notes on little yellow
sticky pieces of paper, and sitting around a large
rectangular tables in unending staff meetings of the gods.
Bernard admits to the Doctor that on his last trip to
earth he discovered a remote tribe of pygmys worshipping
a stapler his receptionist had left behind.  Apparently
he was able to recognise the stapler due to the dynamo
label, and the fact that the advanced technology required
to build a stapler was simply unknown to these earth ape 
creatures.

 The Doctor soon discovers the true horror of the frogstar
aliens.  The humans onboard have been officially filed as
office supplies, and barely survive in a small office
supply storeroom - the key to which was lost some 400 years
previously.  Bernard plans to use these living office
supplies in his ultimate conquest of the earth.

 Bernard doesn't want to conquer the earth for the
power, prestige, or even for it's vital stragetic
location.  Instead Bernard is deeply worried that
he will fail to spend all of his "hostile invasion"
budget by the end of the fiscal year.  Bernard
hopes that his inexperienced crew, combined with
a handful of outdated human servants who've been
living off sniffing markers for a few centuries,
will prove little match for the forces of 1981
earth.  With any luck Bernard will go entirely
over his alotted expenses and will be able to
demand a huge increase from his superiors.

 The Doctor confronts Bernard, telling him
that it is completely immoral to kill his own
workers and countless human beings in an insane
and desperate attempt to afford a few more
ballpoint pens in the next quarter.  Bernard
smiles and assures the Doctor that he is
an awesome manager and knows what's best.
Bernard betrays that he has the same delusion
as managers all across the galaxy - He believes 
himself to be God.

 The Doctor tells Bernard that he can't be god,
and to prove it he challenges him to a zero G
cricket match in outerspace.  Bernard and the
Doctor gear up and play the most vicious and
evil game of instellar cricket in the history
of the universe, pausing only for cucumber
sandwhiches.  After days of intense play, the
fate of the universe on the line, the Doctor
beats Bernard -- roundly -- with the cricket bat.
The game is called due to bad sportsmanship.

 The Doctor is desperate and tries to think
of a solution to this horrible dilemma.
After moments of intense thought in the office
supply room/makeshift prison, the Doctor discovers
that he has all the materials needed to create
a hydrogen bomb - 12 blue pens, 8 black pens,
3 orange highlighters, 17 pads of yellow sticky
notes, 3 bottles of liquid paper, and a package
of AA Batteries.

 The Doctor hastily assembles the bomb, and sets
it using a makeshift timer created from a disposable 
paper plate and a rubber eraser.  

 Closing the TARDIS doors just in time, the office
block explodes killing the Frogstar employees.
The Doctor assumes he and his companions are
safe - however, aboard the TARDIS, Nyssa collapses
due to an overdose of the colorful markers she
sniffed in the breakroom. 

Book(s)/Other Related - Dr Who & The Manager of Death
                        Dilbert: Timesheet of the Gods
                        Office Supplies Anonymous
                       
Fluffs - Peter Davison seemed overworked for most of this story

Goofs - 
Tegan calmly mentions that she speaks 3,000 Aboriginal
languages that are over 35,000 years old!  She explains
this away later by suggesting that all people from Australia
know at LEAST a few hundred languages from the dawn of time.

Fashion Victims -
Tegan's outfit was fashioned after and designed by 
the Human League.


Technobabble - 
"Because this game is in zero gravity, Doctor.  I've
decided to use ultra-refined super-uranium tackyon
stumps.  The universe will remain entirely safe --
as long as you don't knock them over." 

Links and References - 
Adric works out the precise trajectory of the
cricket balls using Nyssa's undergarments, just
as he did in The Zoo Keeper of Traken.

Untelevised Misadventures - 
The Doctor claims that he once went to the
Frogstar in order to stop inhumane experiments
with a perspective vortex.    

Groovy DVD Extras -
3 cut scenes featuring Adric carefully arranging
petticoats.

Dialogue Disasters -

Doctor: Nyssa, relieve him.
Nyssa: WHAT?!  What about you?
Doctor: I'll just sit here...and..observe.

Adric: He knows I'm no good with my hands!


Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: Don't mock him Tegan.  He may be a strange
        disgusting self-absorbed frog - but he's
        got better fashion sense than you.


Viewer Quotes -

"The scenes involving The Doctor playing cricket and
eating cucumber sandwhiches, without a spacesuit, were 
ludicrous but not really funny, I just felt -- VIOLATED. 
It was such crap really."  - Tom Neeman (1982)

"I can't be sure, but, I always thought god LOOKED
kind of like a frog.  And I don't mean French."
                 - Father James O' Maley (1981)

"I used to have a boss like that - evil, remorseless,
petty.  Come to think of it, my current boss is much
like that.  Actually, you know, now that you mention
it -- yeah, they've all been that way."
                 - David Grimes (1983)

"Shockingly frightening.  Shockingly real."
                 - Charles Daniels (2003)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"Don't trust amphibians.  I swear man.  Last time
I thought about God -- my house caught on fire.
Sure, I was burning some religious texts in the
middle of my livingroom and sort of egging god
on to bring his wraith upon me -- but it was
still pretty cool.  Wanna see the scar?"


Matthew Waterhouse Speaks!

Getting Matthew Waterhouse to agree to talk with me 
was not an easy task. After constant nagging he 
reluctantly agreed to meet me in a gay nightclub
in Soho.  I begged him to tell me about his days
as a Doctor Who icon and to autograph my Tom Baker
underwear - "I'm not sure that I have all that 
much to say about it all", he smiled cheekily. 
But before he could touch me I slipped him a cheap
knock out drug and dragged him back to my flat
where I tied him to my couch - which was still..
infested..from Tom Baker's tenure.

"I was never a great actor." Matthew confided
to me when he woke up the next morning.
"I was quite shy but, for some reason, John
Satan-Turner took a real interest in me.
I think he was attracted by my more sensitive
side; that is, I read quite a bit of Shakespeare
in my early teens and had always liked poetry.
Yet at the same time I spent most of my childhood 
reading Marvel Comics, especially Fantastic Four.
I decided to become an actor when I realised I
would never grow up and become Thing!"

"How do I feel about what happened with Adric?
Failure is more interesting than success. At least
that's what I told myself -- so I wouldn't cry
myself to sleep at night."  

"I was REALLY excited the night Circle Jerk episode
one was shown on telly for the first time.  I got
together with my greatest friends..a few guys I
had met at a Doctor Who convention and played
Dungeons and Dragons with a few times, they let
me be an elf and everything.  It was great.
Anyway after ten minutes of watching the first
episode, these guys picked me up, ran into the
street and stuffed me in a rubbish bin, crying
that I had ruined Doctor Who forever.  

I'll tell you, it was really uncomfortable when
I went back the next week to play D&D with them.
But my elf was SOO close to getting Ullomo's
Boots of Uncontrollable Dancing!   Anyway, the
guys kept killing my elf character, which sucked
as I had invested all that time and effort to
raise him all the way up to a level three character.
After that I found myself ambling around the park
behind our house, kicking a stone and feeling
mildly depressed."

"I felt really guilty, and I wanted to apologise
to Tom and Lalla because I didn't get onto the
show in the most honest or honourable way.
I remember on the first day waiting for Tom to 
come and say hello to me.  I really wanted
him to start a conversation with me -- HE WAS
SINBAD!  Anyway, by lunchtime Tom hadn't done 
so I sidled into the pub and stood on the other
side of the room and to my amazement he still
didn't. By four o' clock I thought it was getting
silly, so I went over and said hello to him.
He told me to piss off, and from that moment 
he's always reminded me of my dad.  I became 
inordinatly fond of him. To this day on the rare
occassions when I see him before he sees me
I glow with affection for this quite monstrous man. 
A few years ago, it was so great, I was at a 
Doctor Who Reunion party, and he denied ever
having even MET me!  Even though we worked
together for weeks.  Isn't that wild?"


Trivia -
In a tape recovered last August, Osama Bin Laden
praises this as his favourite Doctor Who story.


Rumors & Facts -

 Doctor Who writers were waking up at night screaming,
realising that they somehow had to fit four main
characters into all their scripts, and three of these
characters had to spend most their time screaming
and getting rescued by the one competent character
they had to work with.

 Satan-Turner watched the stories carefully, and
seemed to notice a chemistry developing between
Davison and Sarah Sutton.  Satan-Turner believed
that a happy actor was a spoiled actor.  And
immediately set upon a plan to keep Adric and
Tegan and kill off Nyssa as soon as possible.
Satan-Turner suggested a scene in File On Doomsday
in which the Doctor, Adric, and Tegan discover
that the frog people have eaten Nyssa as the main
course in a company pot luck.

 This move was of course strongly opposed by Davison,
however, who felt that Nyssa was the only companion
worth a damn on the series.  After several heated
debates, cricket bat blows to the head, and sensual
massages Satan-Turner relented. 

 Unhappy with his inability to ruin the series on
the companion side of things, Satan-Turner wanted
all the regulars to wear distinct clown costumes
which would remain essentially the same from
serial to serial; not only would this save on
wardrobe costs, but it was also seen as a way to
make the actors feel like trained monkeys and
to increase the ease at which Doctor Who action
figures could be made. 

 Adric had his math geek clothes, Tegan her
stripper stewardess garb, and Nyssa her alien
princess outfit.  Satan-Turner hit on the idea
of dressing up Davison in Victorian cricketing gear.
Earlier ideas for the Doctor's costume had included
polo jodhpurs and a leisure suit with gold medallions.
Unquestionable, from the very start however, was the
fact that the Fifth Doctor would bear question marks
on his shirt collar.