K9 & Bitches

The One Hundred and Nineteenth Entry in the Charles Daniels 
Unauthorized Programme Guide O' Rammstein                          

Serial K9 - K9 & Bitches -         

 Christmas, 1981 - Off screen the Doctor has run out of
any ideas and decided to get all of his old companions
their very own K-9 for Christmas.  Apparently the Brigadier
used his K-9 for target practice, Jamie attempted to use
K-9 and his nose ray as a weapon against the British,
and Zoe found a suitable home for it in a museum of
obsolete computers.  Overall, the gift did not go over
well...

 Sarah travels to Milton Keynes to visit her aunt Helga for
Christmas, but finds that she has not yet returned from a
lost weekend in America.  Sarah meets Brendan, a man who -
due to mental affliction - insists that he is a potato.
Sarah avoids Brendan, and decides to meet some other 
characters - who are there largely to create a plot
and pad out scenes - Sarah meets Lily Gregson, owner
of the local post office and part-time transvestite,
and Commander Pollock, a retired Navy man who insists
that he was not affilated with Hitler in anyway - and
even if he was, he had no idea that Hitler was a Nazi.

 Bored shitless, Sarah starts to play with a cardboard
box she finds abandoned in one corner of her aunt Helga's
house.  Eventually, after standing on it, throwing it,
and spinning it wildly on the carpet to get some 
cool static eletric sparks, Sarah finally considers
opening it.   The box contains a K-9 Mk III, a gift 
to Sarah from her old friend/nemesis, the Doctor. 

 Meanwhile, Brendan has been going around the city
centre mentioning, as discreetly as possible, that
he is in fact a new potato.  Speaking out in such
a brazen fashion, Brendan is kidnapped by a cult of 
witches, who plan to sacrifice him at midnight to 
the goddess Yetaxa, in order to stop their crops 
from failing.  It seems they believe that sacrificing
a potato, the size of a man, will somehow appease
the dark goddess of corn.

 Sarah and K-9 track down the witches, who are revealed
to be most of the population of Milton Keynes,
and unmask the High Priest and Priestess - 
Commander Pollock and Erwin Rommel. 

Book(s)/Other Related - K9: The Electric Pimp 
                        K-9: It's a Dog's Life
                        The Sarah Jane Trouser Suit Pattern Book

Fluffs - K9 seemed absent for most of this story
         "Mistress, I am unable to quanitifier-quantefe--quanta--oh
fuck."

Goofs - K-9, product of an advanced super technology from beyond the
stars
        is revealed to have a Ri-Sec Bus Driver, and 128k of RAM.


Fashion Victims - Sarah featured in many hip and modern fashions 
                  such as an orange and brown trouser suit, and
                  various outfits with checked collars and pink
                  scarves

Technobabble - 
"To control the mind of K-9 you must be a programmer of the
most amazing skill, Mistress.  I will demonstrate the complex
syntax with which my superbrain has been constructed -

10 For k = 1 to 5
20 Print "Hello World"
30 Next

 This complex and subtle language will take decades to
master, Mistress."

Links and References - 
Sarah Jane has a strange holiday tradition of sending
Christmas cards to her vanquished enemies.  We see her
mailing Christmas Greetings to Q Tip, El Molestare Grande,
and The Cybermen. (Serial 4G), (Serial 4N), (Serial 4D)
Even though I am unsure how the postman is suppose to
handle addresses like -

The Cybermen
Planet Teladon
Deep Space
AD 2643  
5XO 12G

Untelevised Misadventures - 
Sarah Jane mentions that she once successfully
repelled a complete Cyberinvasion Force on the
Isle of Wight.

Groovy DVD Extras -
A remix of the classic K-9 theme song,
as performed by the German band - Rammstein.


Dialogue Disasters -

Lilly: In Milton Keynes we only worship Satan
       on Sundays dear.


A scene which became surreal and stupid due to a 
lame typo which the actor apparently didn't spot -
David: "Yes, it's true.  We all worship Stan in the village."


Dialogue Triumphs -

Further mischief abounds with same typo -
Pollock: "You can not kill me Sarah Jane!!  I AM
          EMPOWERED FULLY BY THE DARK LORD STAN!"


Viewer Quotes -

"Can I just admit here I enjoyed watching K9 and Bitches?
I hired it on whim, and I enjoyed it sooooo much!
It was great to see the adventures of a robot dog,
without worrying about anything exciting or interesting
happening.  I have to go now, have my pills to take."
         - Cameron Mason, rec.arts.drwho (2000)

"From watching it I get the impression that it was put
together by drug addicts in a couple of days, and possibly
all done without formal editing equipment.  In fact I
think I read in Doctor Who Magazine once that they
just had the tapes, a razor blade, and some sticky
tape -- and on the first day they ran out of sticky tape."
          - Jason Meahan, rec.arts.drwho (1993)

"The storyline was really uninvolving. Silly men in 
goat masks can be interesting. But what we got in
K-9 and Bitches was a rather generic cult with no
clearly defined doctrines.  This cult just went
around doing the standard evil cultish things.
It really annoys me when I see this on television,
because when you've been in an organized cult that
goes around sacrificing people, like I have, you
really come to respect the complexity of that 
organization.  Think about it.  Your cult has to
go off and kill someone AT LEAST every harvest
festival. And if you're in a halfway decent cult
they are going to have a few ritual days of their
own, on their own calendar.  So you could probably
clock out a good 16 people a year, every year, for
20 years.  So if you are willing to go the whole way,
to make this cult a life long career, then you're
going to have to kill somewhere around 320 people.
Now, you try doing that when you belong to a cult
that just smokes dope all day and is filled with
squatters.  They just don't have the organizational
skills to kill that many people, that consistently,
over so many years and not get caught.  So, to be
realistic, you really need to show a focused group
of very organized people.  Type A personalities."
    - Altar Boy, rec.arts.drwho (1994)


"If a Doctor Who spinoff like 'K9 and Bitches' 
can happen in real life, anything is possible."
          - Troy Dravecky (1999)
          

Psychotic Nostalgia -
"K9 and Bitches unlocked the demonic realities
of the innermind, right before my eyes.  But then,
that music...the horrible music from BEYOND HELL!!
It was too much for me, so I put the video back."



Rumors & Facts -

  Following the alleged, many say completely invented,
public outcry that had occurred when the news that K9
would be leaving Doctor Who, Satan-Turner had put
forward to his BBC superiors the suggestion that the
robot dog be given its own programme.   

 Apparently Satan-Turner was just joking.  But had
to absorb the shock, and pretend he really thought
it was a good idea, when the Beeb execs gave him
a budget and studio time.

 Unable to think of a clever or tactful way to tell
the powers that be that they were totally and completely
insane, pilot production set in motion.  The initial
outline for the story was written by Satan-Turner 
himself as he was somewhat desperate to make sure
the show didn't totally ruin his reputation at the BBC.

 Satan-Turner's first draft, under the working title 
"Doggy Style", sketched out a basic idea for an occult
spectacular of damnation and unending horror set in 
Milton Keynes.

 Soon after filming began, the crew had several days
of tension, frustration and worry.  As Satan-Turner
had suggested the series as joke at a BBC board meeting
he hadn't actually accounted for all the practicalities
of the idea.  Namely, they had the script written and
the sets built, but no one had actually gathered up
the courage to phone Elisabeth Sladen or John Leeson
and ask them if they'd be available or willing to
do the programme.  

 Filming continued for twelve full days, the credit sequence
was finalised, and it was shortly after this, on 12 May, that
Satan-Turner first contacted Elisabeth Sladen to see if she
would be willing to appear in the special. Fortunately she 
readily agreed to be involved with a Doctor Who production
- something she had previously said she would rather be shot 
in the head than doing.  Mostly likely she agreed when she
learned that Tom Baker had finally been completely locked out
of the BBC lots.  Shortly thereafter, John Leeson agreed
in similar circumstances.

 Terence Dudley was invited to review the script, and suggested
a title change from "Doggy Style" to "K-9 and Bitches", which
he thought would sound modern, allude further to K-9 being a
male robot dog, and would allow the word "bitches" on the telly
if they could convince the BBC that it was to refer to female
dogs K-9 would meet and the complex way in which Sarah Jane
would be seen by K-9 as a member of his pack.   

  Terrence Dudley also offered multiple suggestions for the
title music, but Satan-Turner insisted that it should give
the audience flashbacks to Hawaii Five-0.

 K-9 and Bitches won a quite respectable viewing figure of 
8.4 million and would no doubt have done even better if 
more people had watched.   Even with these strong viewing
figures the option of a full series was never pursued 
by Satan-Turner for obvious reasons.  Reportedly many 
BBC executives were heartbroken by this decision. 

 This series was doomed.  Possibly because the idea was
simply untenable.  But mostly because there was no way
Elisabeth Sladen was going to take second billing to a
goddamn robot dog.