The Loonbase

Thirty-fifth Entry in the Charles Daniels Unauthorized Programme Guide O'
Insanity

Serial HH - The Loonbase -

In the year 2070 Hobo and his deputy Captain Silly Pants command
a wacky station on the Moon.  There they operate the Goonitron,
a loony machine which has control over all the wackos on Earth.
When the Doctor arrives he discovers a disgusting and disturbing
disease has broken out.  The Doctor decides that in the midst
of strange kidnappings, the Goonitron losing coordination, and
the Cybermen poisoning everyone, that he should play his recorder
loudly in the loon dome because it has great acoustics.
Passionate pleas for the Doctor to stop his auditory attacks
when everyone is down on their luck anyway fall on tone deaf ears.
Ben and Polly decide that they should bring up the idea to the
Doctor of looking into what is going on.  The Doctor doesn't
seem interested at first but then a Cyberman starts to touch
him and call him "pretty eyes".  Deciding that he can't stand
another sexual encounter with the cyberfiends he gets involved
in the mystery - which really isn't so mysterious.
The Cybermen plan to kidnap loonies and force them to operate
the Goonitron into destroying the Earth by making it's lunatics
all run for political office simultaneously.  Polly fights back
by macing horny Cybermen but the main fleet sexually repressed
baddies is heading towards them as quickly as possible.   Suddenly the
Doctor realises that the Cybermen are are susceptible to goonity
variations - that is why the need loonies to operate the Goonitron.
So by deflecting the machine's action to the Moon's surface
he sends the Cybermen and their ship on a Goonfest usually
reserved for the Three Stooges.  With the Cybermen hyped up on
goofballs the Doctor returns to his annoying recorder playing
much to everyone's dismay.

Book(s)/Other Related - Doctor Who & The Loonies
                        Doctor Who Visits The Goonbase
                        The Cybermen High On Acid Colouring Book With
                        Special Psychedelic Colouring Crayons For Hippies
                        And Inner City Children

Fluffs - Troughton seemed to enjoy annoying the cast for most of this story
         Anneke Wills talks about living on the move even though this is
         well before her years as a drifting prostitute
         Troughton's reference to Lister being at Glasgow is wrong (it
         should be Liverpool or Red Dwarf)

Fashion Victims - The Cybermen's 'Iron Wills' now glow in the dark.
                  Beniot wears a silly fake moustache, black beret,
                  stripey shirt, and carries around handfuls of
                  baguettes so we don't forget he's French.

Goofs - The episode two cliffhanger is apparently that Cybermen are
        in the Loonbase, even though they've been going around
        threatening to bugger everyone for a good 50 minutes or so.
        The addition of Jamie leads to bizarre line sharing, for
        instance Ben is now a freakin' genius who knows the secrets
        of the friggin' universe everytime it helps the damn plot
        along!  Damn that sort of out of character stuff annoys me!
        In episode two when a Cybermen tries to push down Polly
        he doesn't even come close to touching her but she bends
        over anyway - is this a mistake or is Polly just into this
        sort of thing?
        The Cybermen's ships look like paper plates held up by string
        even though research clearly shows them to be paper plates
        held up by thread.
        Why did they let the Doctor play the recorder in the first
        place?  And how strong are their ear drums?

Links - The Doctor is filled with a sense of terror as a Cyberman
        asks him if that is a recorder in his pocket or if he just
        happy to see him.   Visions of the Tense Planet fill his
        mind

Technobabble - The "Goonitron" works on "Luna Wacky" technology

Dialogue Disasters -

A Cyberman says:
"Relationships?  Yes, we know this weakness of yours. We are swingers."
He then spends the next scene begging Polly to go out with him for
one miserable stinking moment of his life.  When confronted by this
sad contradiction by Ben he tries to play it off macho by saying
"It was a joke.  Only stupid earth brains like yours would have been
fooled.  Geez!  See if I care."  He also makes great use of sarcasm
"Oh yeah!!  I'm SOO SURE she likes YOU so much better than ME.  I'm
SURE she just HATES Iron Wills!"

Dialogue Triumphs -

DOCTOR: There are some corners of the universe which have breed
        the most terrible things...then there are the Cybermen.
        Still, someone's got to fight them, so what the hell.

Rumors & Facts -

The Loonbase was met with some popularity when it first aired.  People
were happy to see the return of the pathetic sexually repressed foes
that had been the death of the original Doctor.  The second appearance
secured their long standing place in the series history and indeed
in the public's traumatized memory.
In a new special section I will call the "THANK GOD IT'S JUST A RUMOR"
subsection I have to bring out the research which can let Doctor Who
fans take a breather at last.   The brief shot of sperm cells under
a microscope slide was from a 15 foot piece of stock footage taken
from an episode called "Science And Life" in a series called "Men and
Microbes" and was definitely NOT supplied personally by Troughton
himself at a BBC office party!   I myself was scared to delve into
the sickly squishy depths of this mystery but I felt it had to be
done.
Following the recording of the final episode a problem was encountered
with the soundtrack.   Apparently several Cybermen were heard carrying
out a genuine drug deal on the set that was definitely never scripted
or authourized by the BBC. This drug deal was edited out whenever
possible but enough of it still exists on the soundtrack to know
that someone got a serious bum deal.
This story had a total budget of 10 pounds 99.  The existing visual
evidence suggests that they did not experience any problems coming
in well UNDER this budget.
In order to save money to fit the budget the script was taken
directly from The Tense Planet whenever possible including a
strange cliffhanger scene that shows Troughton regenerating into
Troughton for no reason whatsoever.
On BBC documentation serial HH was commonly nicknamed "Hot 'n Horny"
in honour of Hartnell's run on the show.