Kinda'

To celebrate the 40th anniversary, I've written up TWO new entries.

The One Hundred and Twenty-Second Entry in the Charles Daniels
Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Sorta
Thanks to #drwhochat for random words they supplied as I wrote this

Serial 5Y - Kinda' -

 The TARDIS, a sort of big blue box if you hadn't noticed previously, has
arrived on the beautiful jungle world of Diva Loka.  Inside the Doctor
acts strangely exhausted and tells his companions to go on without him.
Tegan and Adric leave the TARDIS to explore and Nyssa stays behind to
assist the Doctor.  After Tegan and Adric depart the Doctor admits to
Nyssa that he isn't really sick at all.  Nyssa asks him why he was
pretending and the Doctor casually explains that the last 19,384 worlds
he's landed on have been death traps waiting to happen -- and he just
wants to see how this one plays out first, as he has a good hunch that
this world is Death Trap 19,385.  Nyssa is upset and reminds the Doctor
that he is using Tegan and Adric as death trap bait.  The Doctor dutifully
reminds Nyssa that she is an intelligent and competent girl -- and
therefore he'd rather spend time with her as they watch a math geek and
a failed stripper die. The Doctor turns on the scanner screen and
prepares some Insta-Pop Pop Corn of Rassilon.

 Tegan and Adric encounter the three surviving members of Devo, whose
careers have recently vanished under mysterious circumstances. Tegan
and Adric are deemed well dressed by the Devo crew -- showing that
their time on Diva Loka has driven them to complete insanity.
Devo takes the pair to the Command Dome where they meet a mysterious
and powerful dark god, Todd.

 Todd is an immortal soul eater who has roamed the universe, collecting
the souls and careers of 80s bands and placing them on Diva Loka for
some purpose that somehow serves dark gods from before the beginning of
time everywhere.   The evil one, Todd, traps Tegan in an audio dome and
blasts her into submission with the ungodly raw music of Wham!

 Meanwhile the Doctor, watching all of this from the TARDIS, explains
that the natives must be attempting to communicate with the band members,
but the experience of the telepathic communion has caused their minds to
snap. He also suggests that a release of ultra-betaron particles could
reverse the psychosis, thus destroying Todd's power.  A random passerby
in the temporal plane explains that the Doctor has kinda' gotten it
right -- his understanding isn't PERFECT, but it will have to do for the
time being.

 Meanwhile, Tegan is being assaulted with a collection of music by
various straightlaced teen pop stars who later went on to pose nude in
Dutch magazines, and her temporary insanity enables her to enter a low
budget world of an evil where she meets an entity called the Mara.

 Immediately the Doctor shoots out of his chair so fast he drops the
Milk Duds. Nyssa is alarmed, and the Doctor explains one of his dark
secrets -- that the current writer seems to have just made up on the
spot so he could cut back to the Doctor.  In Time Lord society, one
is occasionally encouraged to date dark gods of unspeakable power.
The Doctor once dated a dark god called The Mara, which, he's pretty
damned sure is this one, as there aren't a whole hell of a lot of
dark gods from before the beginning of time banging about.  Nyssa
demands to know the depth of their relationship, but the Doctor
explains that it never went far because, like most dark gods that age,
all the Mara wanted was death, destruction and void everlasting, and
wasn't too terribly keen on the art of conversation and classical ballet.

 In the strange universe of evil, Tegan meets an unusual man named
Douglas, who desires to take her body, and, with the aid of trickery and
mind games, confuses her into agreeing to let him "possess her".   For
all his troubles though, Douglas only gets about 10 minutes of fun with
it -- but the Doctor dutifully records the event on the TARDIS scanner
screen for "histological reasons".

 Inside the bizarre altered state, Tegan remembers that a local man
offered her a sacred artifact he called "the Box of Ganja", which he
had claimed was a telepathic communication device, but instead it seems
to have unhinged her mind. Tegan reaches out for the box and
smashes it -- freeing her from the universe of strangeness -- and
making the rest of the proceedings decidedly less surreal.

 The Doctor uses his own telepathic powers to make contact with his
ex-girlfriend, the Mara - Goddess of Fear. She manifests herself as a
gigantic snake. The Doctor and the Mara try very hard to act as if they
are mildly interested in where their life paths have taken them since
they last saw each other, and make some polite chit-chat.  Nyssa senses
some tension between them.  Like any two lovers, uncomfortable by the
changes time has made, still feeling the faint lingerings of the past
bonds, always wondering what would have happened if only you joined
forces and ravaged the universe together -- Nah, it would never work out
the Doctor assures Nyssa.

The Doctor casts the Mara away from the planet using some unrealistic,
vaguely defined power which is entirely convenient to the plot.

Meanwhile, the various band members have decided that Diva Loka is just
too freaky for them, and claim that the world is unsuitable for
colonisation.   The Doctor is outraged - "LOOK!  Not only did I have to
call up my old Ex, I had to have a long chat with her and banish her
into another universe -- JUST SO YOU COULD STAY HERE!!!"

 The Doctor smashes the spaceship left by Todd, and leaves the
earthlings to start a new life on Diva Loka.

Book(s)/Other Related - Dr Who - Revenge of the Hair Bands
                        Tegan on Drugs: The Psychedelic Colouring Book
                        Doctor Who And The Vague Menace

Fluffs - Peter Davison seemed roughly right for most of this story

Goofs -
This story leads us to believe that the Doctor has at one point, had sex
with an origami snake monster.


Fashion Victims - Tegan.  Always.


Technobabble -
"The TARDIS comes equipped with translocational psychic visual
amplifiers...it's great for voyeurism!"


Links and References -
The Doctor mentions that he has faced origami monsters before.
(Serial B, Serial C, Serial D, Serial E, Serial F, Serial G, Serial H,
Serial J, Serial K, Serial L, Serial M, Serial N, Serial O, Serial P,
Serial Q, Serial R, Serial S, Serial T, Serial U, Serial V, Serial W,
Serial X, Serial Y, Serial Z, Serial AA, Serial BB, Serial CC, Serial DD,
Serial EE, Serial FF, Serial GG, Serial HH, Serial JJ, Serial KK,
Serial LL, Serial MM...etc.)

Not to mention Serial WWW..the pain!!!


Untelevised Misadventures -
"The time lords always encouraged us to date a few dark gods, close the
gaps in the communities of all powerful beings - the Mara, Qisusuaoa,
Zodin, the Space Donkey of Indus Prime..."

Groovy DVD Extras -
Chapter selections, Interactive Menus


Dialogue Disasters -

Doctor: You're looking well.  I see you still like the
        snake motif.  Very fitting I always thought.
        Remember that time at Robert's with the....yes..
        very pretty...like I always said.

Mara: And you? How's the universe going?  Still saving it?

Doctor: Yeah.  You know...I don't know if I ever mentioned this..
        but..remember on our first date..when we went to the
        planet Argulisu, because you wanted to show me how
        easy it was to crush a civilization..and then, for me,
        you didn't.  That was sweet.  I really appreciated it.

Mara: Yeah...it was nothing.  Really.  I'd forgotten all about it...
      honestly.

Doctor: Yeah...great times.  Still...guess I have to banish you now.

Mara: Guess so.



Dialogue Triumphs -

Doctor: There are dark aspects of a time lord.
        Things too horrible to imagine.
Nyssa:  I saw you naked when you were Tom Baker.
Doctor: Oh, yes...well then, you know what I'm talking about.


Viewer Quotes -

"Everyone knows that Kinda' is about Buddhism..or Hinduism..or
Christainity...or..something."
                  - Drunken Philosopher's Monthly (March 1982)

"The terror and temptations that the Mara draws on are based around
classic Freudian theories and phobias - you know, sex with paper mache
snakes."             - Drunken Psychology Monthly (March 1982)

"Everyone knows this story is about the Indus River Valley region.
The pressures that faced people in that harsh environment.  The drive to
become a civilization when most of humanity was still being eaten by
sabre tooth tigers and freezing to death for the want of the idea of
rubbing two sticks together."
                       - Sober Sociology Magazine (March 1982)

"I think everyone is agreed that this story is based on the Bible and
Biblical teachings.  I'm not sure what parts it draws from exactly.
I don't actually READ the Bible very much, if at all.  Just whenever
anyone comes to me with a problem, I scream a lot about the fires of
damnation.  Seems to get the job done."
                           - Father James O'Maley (March 1982)


Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I dated a dark god once.  It wasn't all it was cracked up to be --
I mean the killing, the devastation, the endless destruction of all
living things in the cosmos----DAMN IT!!  It *WAS* Everything it was
cracked up to be and more! TAKE ME BACK N'GRAHLIP THE DESTROYER!!!
PLEASE!!!!"


Sarah Sutton Speaks!

"What do I remember of Kinda'?  Not a lot really.   I was only in that
serial for two scenes.  Why? It's pretty straightforward.  I wanted a
holiday, as working with Tom Baker had been very stressful.  You can't
get to know a man like Tom very quickly.  And the whole time he just
stared at me, with those strange piercing eyes of someone who had just
eaten half a pound of peyote and drank a bottle of tequila to wash it
down -- which is what I believe he actually was doing in the end.
So I really was ready for a vacation, and the writer said he didn't want
to write for that many companions anyway.  So I got the time off and to
my surprise, when I came back, I found out Janet was unconscious and
knocked out for the whole story as well!  I talked to the writer, some
months later, and he told me that he didn't like writing for regular
types of characters - just ancient snake gods and immortals.  Apparently
he had stunningly good success with that sort of material before.
 In any case, what I'm trying to say is that when you get three
assistants; Matthew, myself and Janet, you've got to find things for
them all to do. And in our stories the Doctor was more than happy to
make suggestions of what we could do, but even then sometimes it's
difficult, and it's easier just for two.  Unless of course you have the
Kama Sutra and a lot of spare time."


Rumors & Facts -

 The writer of this serial wanted to take a bold direction with Doctor
Who. Previously, the Doctor has always figured out the dilemma in a very
clever Sherlock Holmes style, and then unravelled the plot at hand with
masterstrokes of deduction and counter-deduction.  Kinda' explored a
scenario in which the Doctor only ever arrives at a very rough
approximation of the problem at hand and has to deal with it the best he
can.  Being isolated in the TARDIS the Doctor is able to watch his
companions and follow along what is happening on the planet --
more or less.

  At first this seems like a deeply stupid idea.  However since the
Doctor is never fully aware of the evil he is battling, what its
ultimate aims are, and even what its dinner plans are like that evening,
he is also never fully successful in defeating them.  Thus opening up
great hope for a series of sequels, in which the Doctor uses vague
generalities to defeat evil to some degree.

 Rumors have lurked in fandom about who wrote this serial.  The names
Kate Bush and Tom Stoppard usually enter this conversation at some point,
and then quickly vanish, as everyone realises the most likely writer was
a lapsed Buddhist with a drinking problem.