Embedded Files
This week on Doctor Who we meet Leela. She lives in an alien jungle, and her hobbies are wearing leather and murdering people with knives.
She's meant to be a savage, but she's way smarter than most people you would meet - even people who don't live in alien jungles. If she'd hadn't been born here and had instead been brought up in, say, Plymouth, she'd probably be a director of communications and addicted to peppermint lattes.
She might still murder people with knives though. She's really into that, in a way which suggests it's a core character trait and not really a product of her environment.
Leela lives with a bunch of tribe-blokes in this horrible wooden hut. They seem unsuited for the role of 'ferocious jungle warriors', and are all dreadfully polite and appear to use a wide variety of hair products.
They do, however, find time for some enjoyably mad religious shenanigans. They've got a crazy Evil God they've got to worship, and they very much believe that there are invisible bad guys living out in the jungle.
Leela reckons this is all nonsense, and gets herself thrown out of the tribe for saying things like, "Your God has a stupid name," and, "You're all a bunch of lazy hipsters, get a job."
Leela wanders around the jungle for a bit. She's pretty relieved to be away from the constant theatrical whining of the tribe-guys, but she's beginning to worry that their Evil God With A Stupid Name will kill her for blasphemy, which would be embarrassing.
At this point Doctor Who wanders into the story. He's clearly up to some no-good, devious jungle business, and has frozen on the spot upon seeing Leela. It looks like he assumed that the TV show was over once Sarah Jane left, and has just been doing whatever he wants. Now he's horrified to find that there are still other people about, who might see him and ask what he's up to.
Soon Doctor Who's fascination for the unusual gets the better of him. Leela is casually chatting to the sky about how great murder is, and this is exactly the kind of mad behaviour that gets Doctor Who's undivided attention.
It might also be the case that Doctor Who has no idea how to work the TARDIS dishwasher, and has been eating his meals off CD cases since Sarah Jane left. He always seems to need a woman around, and while most people might look at Leela and see a violent murderer, he sees only someone who might conceivably know which day the bins go out.
Meanwhile, some kind of incomprehensible action scene is taking place.
The tribe-guys are being attacked by something, and that something is "A Massive Ghost Version of Doctor Who's Face." It's hard to imagine anything more unsettling, and the tribe guys are, quite understandably, shooting at it with many guns.
It will transpire that their God With The Stupid Name looks and sounds exactly like Doctor Who, except massive and more like a mad ghost. This makes a lot of sense of why the tribe-guys are terrified of him. Doctor Who is peculiar enough at non-God size, and one can only imagine how distressing his non-sequiturs would be at five times the volume.
Doctor Who is thrilled and excited to find that the local God looks like him, and commands everyone to attack the Big Space Fortress where God lives.
Leela is sceptical for a while, and spends quite a lot of time calling Doctor Who "The Evil One", and trying to stab him with knives. But then Doctor Who introduces her to guns, and she perks right up.
Here we see Leela having a fantastic time with her new space gun. She's creeping around the Space Fortress, her pleasure at all the murder only tempered by how inappropriate her clothing choices are for a freezing metal corridor.
Doctor Who confronts the Evil God With The Stupid Name. Sure enough, it looks and sounds just like him, and they have an exciting afternoon being incredibly weird to each other until they both suffer massive mental breakdowns.
It turns out that the Evil God is, in fact, a computer that went bonkers ages ago, after talking to Doctor Who for half an hour. This makes complete sense, and in fact it's a wonder it doesn't happen more often. The galaxy should be littered with alien intelligences, all doing confused impressions of Doctor Who, all driven beyond sanity after a whole afternoon listening to him cackling about bumblebees.
The story ends with this astonishing event. It's unclear what exactly is occurring, but it has to be one of the most enjoyable images ever created.
If anyone involved in this adventure is asked how it ended, I imagine they just say, "Well, the massive glowing head of Doctor Who vomited electric fire over a screaming bald man."
Once you've heard that, all further questions would seem banal and redundant.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse