But can they do it with such a thrilling disregard for what actually happened in the story?
I doubt it.
This week, Doctor Who lands on Earth and so of course he goes straight to the pub. His face wears a look of grim determination, as if he's already mapped out the next four days worth of drinking, and has clear targets for what will constitute an acceptable hangover.
The pub is mysteriously deserted. Which suits Doctor Who fine, but is kind of weird. It's the 70s, after all, and drinking during the day is not so much frowned upon as actively encouraged.
Eventually a bar guy turns up, and so Doctor Who instantly starts being weird at him and playing with his things. The man does not really react with any surprise, which means either
a) this is not really Earth, but a fake version without any of the nuances of the real thing, or
b) this man has met Doctor Who before.
Quite soon, Sarah Jane trips and falls down a hill, and her face comes off. It turns out she's a robot or something. Albeit one that comes to bits quite easily.
I don't think she's always been a robot, in all the previous stories. I think this is just a pretend version, that turned up recently. Otherwise, it's a marvel her face hasn't come off a number of times already. She does do a lot of falling off things.
Also, Doctor Who would be furious to find out that he had a super killer robot with him all the time, and she never said anything. All that running away, when he could have just been shouting, "Murder Davros, Sarah! Crush his ugly green skull with your metal hands!"
Sarah-Robot soon gets on with the business of trying to kill Doctor Who. She doesn't seem to mind that her face is still off, and that she looks both nightmarish and faintly ridiculous at the same time.
You'd think that if you programmed a robot to impersonate someone, so closely as to fool their very best friends, that you'd give it some fairly clear instructions. Like, "Try to speak with the same mannerisms," and, "Don't mention anything about our plot to destroy the humans," and, "If your face falls off, make sure to put it back on."
Doctor Who is starting to think that he's not really on Earth. There is no beer in the pub, and everyone is being really boring and not reacting to any of his hilarious attempts to confuse them. Plus there's the thing with Sarah's face coming off.
He's very keen to get back to normal Earth, where he can start being wilfully eccentric and get a proper reaction out of people. Oh, and warn them about the invasion of killer robot duplicates. Probably. If he gets time.
This is the King Alien, who is in charge of all the robots. He's a Kraal, and his main thing is building robots and doing invasions. His face wears the familiar expression of someone who has had his afternoon ruined by the madcap antics of Doctor Who.
He's hanging out with his little human mate, who he clearly despises. Human Guy is pathetically desperate to impress King Alien, and has gone to such desperate lengths as accidentally betraying Earth, helping out with the invasion and trying to look cool by wearing an eyepatch.
Having said all that, they do appear to be holding hands, so maybe it's just one of those bitchy relationships that works despite itself.
Real-Sarah has been captured and is hanging out with the aliens. Except look - it's Harry! We thought he'd left.
Well, it turns out it's not Harry. It's a bad Robot doing a disguise. Sarah can tell right away, even without Harry's face coming off. He's scowling. you see. Real Harry would never scowl.
I think, even if he was about to murder you, real Harry would look, at worst, slightly apologetic, as if he was about to ask you to give back that five pounds you borrowed.
King Alien captures Doctor Who as well, and ties him to a big stone thing in the middle of town. He's off to invade Real Earth now, you see, so he's going to blow up the pretend one. Which seems short sighted. Guaranteed the minute he destroys it, he'll think of something that it would be really handy for.
This would have been a good argument for Doctor Who to make. "Don't blow everything up - you might need it later." But no. He just does his usual thing of taunting the villain and being really rude about his personal appearance.
Have you ever stopped to think, Doctor Who, that maybe if you weren't so petulant and borderline racist all the time, and stopped calling everyone ugly whenever you disagreed with them, then maybe they'd stop tying you to bombs?
Doctor Who escapes, of course, and ends up having to hang out with Eyepatch Guy. This does not appear to fill him with joy.
I think they're on the way to Real-Earth. Eyepatch guy talks excitedly for the whole journey about how ace it's going to be, and how everyone's going to really get on with his Alien mates, and what does Doctor Who think people will make of his cool new image, with the eyepatch and everything?
Doctor Who has clearly developed an instant hatred for this man, and expresses it by telling him that his Alien mates are evil, and he's betrayed Earth, and everyone who dies is his fault, and his eyepatch is the only thing he could imagine that would make his already stupid face look stupider.
Doctor Who eventually gets to Earth and starts to give some thought to stopping the invasion. There is a lot of exciting running around, featuring these Space Suit Robots, who shoot people with their fingers!
Doctor Who looks quite disbelieving here, and with good reason. Sure, the Robots might have super cool finger-guns. Or, perhaps more plausibly, they might have forgotten to bring their guns, and be trying to style it out.
There's more zany fun later, as Doctor Who meets a Robot version of himself. He's not bothered, obviously, and is clearly focusing less on the prospect of imminent death than on the excellent possibilities this will afford for skiving work.
The existence of a Robot Doctor Who does raise the question - what were the aliens hoping to achieve with this? Let's say the Robot version successfully takes the place of the real one. What then? No-one ever listens to him anyway, and he's always getting arrested and called a spy and nearly killed.
I give it three days before Robot Doctor Who comes back to the office, crying and saying he doesn't want to do it anymore and can he just be a photocopier or something please?
The story ends with victory for Doctor Who, or possibly his Robot duplicate. One of them goes off into space, with Sarah.
Or possibly her Robot duplicate.
No comments:
Post a Comment