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Serial 6Z/7 – ...ick
...ick
An Alternate Programme Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
An Extract From The EC
Unauthorized Programme Guide O' YUCK!!
Serial 6Z/7 - ...ick -
Peri is utterly, utterly furious. The Doctor has
yet AGAIN taken them to a planet he insists isn't Earth, except it totally resembles that planet and he refuses to give it
a name. He explains he has piloted the TARDIS here because he wishes to observe the most exhaustively comprehensive dictionary
of the English language in history – apparently learning a language is "a whole work-out for the mouth".
Peri
takes this opportunity to complain about the fact every single 'alien' they encounter not only LOOKS humanoid, but also speaks
perfect English! The Doctor rolls his eyes and retorts:
"Peri, haven't you realized it yet? Every species in the entire
universe speaks English. It's only your backwards gene pool that can't get its act together and use a common lexicon, you
ape-descended freaks! Now eat this kumquat and SHUT THE HELL UP!!"
Sil, meanwhile, has started selling dictionaries
from the TARDIS library and he bumps into a Scrabble champion called Warren who has dropped in on the unnamed university,
mainly in the hope he might meet someone of the opposite gender interested in sex. When Peri arrives, she discovers that the
locals have a truly pathetic barter system using words as currency. Sil then realizes that the cash he has received is, in
fact, pages from a torn-out thesaurus and goes into a sulk. Thus, Warren thinks he's got a chance with Peri, until he learns
she doesn't accept adverbs as payment.
The Doctor meets up with the compiler of the Lexicon, Osama, and offers her
a leather-bound volume compiling all the obscure, original and preposterous insults people have called him over the years.
Osama promptly decides to scrap work on the Lexicon and read the Doctor's gift for the rest of her life. When Professor Cordless
demands to know where the compiler is, the Doctor hastily claims she has committed suicide and offers a hastily-scribbled
suicide note. Unfortunately, it is riddled with errors, atrocious penmanship and has been signed 'The Doctor' out of sheer,
muscular habit. Cordless nevertheless refuses to bring in the police as the story simply doesn't have the budget for it.
At
this moment, a rejected Warren lurches into the room and demands a work station so he can look up rude words. However the
list includes works, archaisms, idiomatic spellings, acronyms, compounds, back-formations, toponyms, doublespeak, argot, scientific
terms, jargon, and foreign borrowings... in other words, he might as well get on the net and start looking up porn if he wants
to get off. He does just that and leaves the library in a state one would not wish to find it, and prompting exclamations
of the title of the story.
With the Lexicon's opening delayed, the Doctor, Peri and Sil decide to try and entertain
the masses by recreating Monty Python sketches – the Doctor is Palin, Cleese is played by Peri, and Sil acts his little
heart out as the dead parrot. However, the Doctor finds Peri is substituting some of the dialogue for New Englandisms and
soon a fist fight begins that ends with the gratuitous loss of clothing and the Doctor and Peri wrestling in custard.
By
this time, the time travelers are swearing so loudly and violently at each other that they are actually providing NEW words
for the Lexicon! Peri goes into intense detail about how the Doctor annoys her, irritates her, rejects her sexual advances
and lusts after her behind her back, using longer and more complicated words. The Doctor lashes back, complaining about her
whining, her dress sense, her continual complaints about 19th century England and the fact she never thanked him for saving
her life from Spectrox Toxaemia!
Sil starts the delegates of the university gambling over which wrestler will triumph
both physically and linguistically – until he remembers what they use for currency here.
The fight ends when
Peri throttles the Doctor and holds him under the custard long enough for a disturbing cliffhanger. By now, the gratuitous
swearing, baiting and name-calling has created whole new languages and the delegates can no longer understand each other.
The custard-spattered Doctor curses Peri for shattering universal communication, while Sil congratulates her as he starts
his profitable Transgalactic Babel-masters business to become rich and powerful.
Fuming, the Doctor grabs Sil and Peri
and drags them back to the TARDIS. This is the last straw – he plans to take Sil back to his home planet of Thoros Beta
and dump him there. Besides, he's confident nothing bad could happen to him on THAT eyesore of a planet...
Book(s)/Other
Related -
Doctor Who – Eew!
Dr. Who & The Adjective of Noun Picture Book
DAL-LEK And Other Completely Useless
Encyclopedias
Goofs -
This story shows Delphonese as farting and Terseron as eyebrow-waggling. HOW THE HELL
DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THAT MISTAKE?!!?!?
Cordless is surprised by Warren ruining the furniture when he suggested Warren
do it in the first place!
Technobabble -
A lot of words the Doctor calls Peri are so complicated I can barely
sound them out and thus COULD be technobabble, but he's after her blood all right. That bitch is going down...
Links
and References -
Peri distracts the crowd, adlibs during the dead parrot sketch and tortures the Doctor with the various
skills she learned during her time as an MTV video jockey in Lanzarote (Mammaries of Fire).
Untelevised Misadventures
-
The Doctor explains that he once helped out Doctor Samuel Johnson by providing a constant supply of Oxford English Dictionaries.
True, this causes a temporal tautology as no one ever actually WRITES the Dictionary, but the Doctor says, "Who cares? The
original was already missing 'sausage', 'turnip', 'aadvark' and 'disphrasialogorreahic'!"
Groovy DVD Extras -
A
special edition of Countdown where Tom Baker watches the infamous 1927 "...ick!" video clip and asks Molly to show it again.
Dialogue
Disasters -
Sil: We have gone beyond definition. High definition! I wonder if
there's a market for plasma-screen
television here...?
Cordless: The letter of the law is a foreign alphabet here.
Doctor: Uh... that's a quote from
a song, isn't it?
Dialogue Triumphs -
The Doctor on Warren's use of internet pornography:
"He'll amuse
himself, I'm certain."
Warren: I've read the reviews, and I don't like what I hear.
Doctor: That doesn't actually
make any sense.
Warren: Damn.
Peri: YOU'RE F*CKED, DOCTOR!!!
Sil: Language, Peri!
Peri: ENGLISH!
Doctor:
Pah! AMERICAN, more like!!
Viewer Quotes -
"Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronnnerronntuon nthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenethurnuk.
I just wanted to share that with you."
- This bloke I know who ALWAYS beats me at scrabble (2003)
"Damn it! I wanted
the Doctor Who story '...ick', NOT the 1988 Nineteen-Twenty-Seven album '...ick'. Did you even CHECK my list, you red-clad
BASTARD??!"
- Dave Restal's 'Thank You' letter to Santa (Christmas 2002)
"I used to think Australians are all itinerant
backpackers with a vocabulary consisting solely of 'no', 'worries' and 'mate'. And you know what? I was right! They're nothing
more than filthy colonial offspring of convict scum!"
- Phillip Ruddock (2000)
"With wesonance from Rispers of Error,
the story itself is bandard, stut the therbiage verein rivals the outpurgated exputs of pordsmiths Wip and Bane Jaker, and
there's fenty of plun to be had in hearing Bolin Caker leading his rines with all rue delish. Despite some mat floments there
is a tharm chat comes through on lepeated ristenings."
- Reverend Spooner (2003)
Psychotic Nostalgia -
"I
often use tongue-twisters. Medieval torture, that's my thing!"
Colin Baker Speaks!
"I love it when listeners
have to look up words in a dictionary, mainly because I live in hope that one day, someone, somewhere will be listening to
one of my stories, go to check the dictionary and see my face staring up at them. Apparently, there's a photo of me under
'Encephalic Donkey Gonad'. Or so Nicola claims."
Rumors & Facts -
Life-long fan of Doctor Who and backpacker,
the alliterative Phillip Pascoe, vowed in 1999 to get a Sixth Doctor Big Finish story – mainly due to the scurrilous
rumors that Colin Baker refused to work unless surrounded by his personal harem. This and the photographic evidence that Nicola
Bryant wore LESS recording audio stories than she did in the original TV series.
Pascoe's submission consisted of pages
torn out of The Doctor Who Puzzled Book and the Find Your Fate novel Criticism in Space (featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri,
Turlough and K9). However, he sent it at just the right time – August 2000, during the precise moment that Gay Russell
announced he would produce ANYTHING that hadn't already been offered to Tom Baker. So taken aback at the instant submission,
he accidentally allowed Nick Briggs to direct it. Fortunately, the sequence where John Smith, bald, toothbrush-wielding university
lecturer steals the Doctor's remaining regenerations and the TARDIS was cut for timing reasons.
By curious coincidence,
...ick shares its name with an 1980s Australian rock album, ...ick. The band, 1927, makes finding the 1988 release rather
difficult – especially as there is also an album called ...ick previously released by another Australian band, 1988,
in 1927. By another curious coincidence, the lead singer of the more recent ...ick was called Phillip Pascoe and, oddly enough,
the song is based, in fact, on a Doctor Who story almost identical to this one – revolving around a furious Peri wrestling
in custard while Sil watches on.
If you can't be arsed to spend $50 on this Big Finish release, I suggest you seek
out the original video clip in 1988. True, it will take far more time, effort and sanity for what is effectively a four-and-a-half
minute snatch from this story, but it does involve full-colour shots of Nicola Bryant wrestling in custard.
There is
really little else to say about ...ick is challenging, thought provoking and rewarding. And it has Peri wrestling in custard.
What more do you want? Seriously!
"...ick" by 1927 (1988)
I'll grab your head
Hold you under the
The
custard skin
And I'll be ready
When you twist
And try to drag me in
I thought 'ugly' meant Sil
But now
you've really
Made me ill
This is the last time
You try to pretend this Earth
Isn't actually the
Planet of
my birth
Tum-tum-ta-daaa!
Ick! Ick! Ick!
You really make me sick!
Don't try to resist me
And I swear,
I'll do it quick!
I have had it up to here
I refuse to take any more
I'm gonna hold you under
Till you're at heaven's
door!
This stupid university
Devoted to lots of words
Filled with scrabble-loving
Spectacle-wearing nerds
You
just brought me here
To make me look really dumb
Now you're drowning in custard
And you're time has come!
Tum-tum-ta-daaa!
Ick!
Ick! Ick!
You really make me sick!
Don't try to resist me
And I swear, I'll do it quick!
I have had it up to here
I
refuse to take any more
I'm gonna hold you under
Till you're at heaven's DOOR!
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