h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had made much progress with the GGGE- Great Galactic Gallireyan Epic and in so doing I believe that I had added something to both the Eighth Doctor and the Daleks.

I was thus looking for something new... something that was very, very different....

INVASION OF THE DEATH CARRIERS

Ah with a title like that, either it could be said that I was taking the mickey or attempting create a unique story concept all in way of its own.
Strangely enough this story occurred simultaneously as Messrs Mills and Penny had released a story also set during the sixties, though I was extending more into the middle sixties.

I had decided by this time to explore unknown territory by using the Fourth Doctor coupled with Leela and K9, though K9 remained as a footnote, a reference that he was still in the TARDIS and therefore unavailable to join in.

The story starts with the strange, eerie death of an unknown, his name was there, his details but his relevance to the story as a whole purely there to add the cliche of seventies and eighties horror novels by having one paragraph devoted to them and suddenly and viciously dying.

As he finds himself seemingly and bizarrely enough by a gang of hippies, his body is later discovered by the Doctor and Leela as being very dead.
Here I was being very cliched to the Quatermass formula of things, being postmodernistic as I started to tear open{figuratively speaking} the episode.

It was meant to be bizarre, the Tom Baker version or a version of the Mind Robber but when Leela starts to change, to become a hippy he is then chased almost like a Benny Hill moment though not humourous in any way.

Though not holding any cliff-hangers, it insteads dares to plays with the genre and deploys fictional ones, ones that the Doctor is very much aware of.
The London he arrives in has been cordoned off by the military and while he manages to elude the screaming fans, who believe him to be the messiah he is left to explore a very deserted London.

Meanwhile making another plot form a generic eccentric scientist is toying with chemicals while a bubbly scientist Miss Lee tries to help him. This is a postmodern take on of the Third Doctor era complete with a military attache- the Colonel, tunnel visioned, precise helpless leader with only the scientist to fall back on.

I should have called it: A Generic Adventure because these characters are more associated with Quatermass then anything particularly the fact that the Colonel is only one-sided while the scientist- the ludicrously titled Professor works at some chemicals but isn't actually touching anything.

The only break in behaviour is the need of a bubbly assistant who the Professor keeps looking over- in Doctor Who this would have been the crumpet material. Though it fits into the series by deconstructing the basic levels that Who defined.

Coming across a military cordon the Doctor is surprised to find only one army lorry and one soldier, though the soldier is wearing a new uniform but he is faceless, a dummy but is immediately arrested by another soldier.
On remarking that the Doctor has killed him, the Doctor acts now as the really fictional character becoming factual.

The dummy is an extra, when they go no one knows who they are, they are faceless, only there for one reason, to be killed by the unknown menace but as the soldier, Private Wallace accuses the Doctor of the death, he is shot.
Though he is alive and Wallace cannot act particularly when a musical sting can be heard- the cliche of the dramatic incidental music score at an important moment of the serial.

The Professor follows his roots as the carbon cutout of the Doctor to go charging into danger to collect samples from London unaware that Miss Lee, his assistant is playing a Jo Grant by needlessly hiding away for no apparent reason.

Their behaviour is atypical of the characters as they fall into B-movie cliches as the Colonel becomes more and more a Brigadier while Miss Lee becomes more of a blonde bimbo using overly dramatic terms in much the same way as the Ambassadors.... of Death stylised opening moments.

Though oddly enough Wallace's behaviour seems to change at this conundrum, no longer is he a hostile figure but friendly acting like an old friend, even knowing the Doctor and claiming that he can help out.
A sign of the series regulars as uninteresting as they started out they soon became liked and became part of the UNIT family though the Doctor is very much the alien to them, the overly dramatic effect is not wasted as each character becomes nothing more than a stereotype.

Arriving at a clearly marked secret military installation plays at UNIT greatly, no one ever saw the front of the HQ but in the studio there were only two or three room where the action took place, something that the Doctor points out to the Colonel who is more triumphant that now that the Doctor has arrived that the destruction can be ended.

Strangely enough Wallace continues to keep switching rank as the Doctor behaves towards them but the Colonel is more interersted in bombing London, returning to his roots as an efficient military mind but is then forewarned that the Professor and his assistant are in London.

This would play out as a third Doctor moment from Invasion of the Dinosaurs or Terror of the Autons but the hippies, the Groove Gang turning into with no doubt the accompanyment of CSO into Axon-like figures who are only so much as rubber monsters known as 'Rubberoids' a place on seventies rubbery green monsters that wobble along the street. Particularly with Miss Lee doing her screaming bit and showing a lot of cleavage at the same time.

The Colonel's actions to cancel the bombing, reminiscent of Terror of the Autons descend to a cliffhanger moment where the lights go out but the only one cool and calm is the Doctor, who can firmly see what will happen.
A cliff-hanger but to the Doctor the room and characters blur before becoming animated with no trouble in sight.

The Doctor then attempts many direct methods of catching at the conscience of the 'characters' revealing that everything is sham, their uniforms, identities, the sets and situations are nothing but these characters cannot act on this, it conflicts against everything they believe in but choose not to listen.

Informing the Groove Gang, two non-marked figures instrucyt them to stop the Doctor, something is revealed to be a guiding intelligence in this situation though as the situation descends into a base under seige the Doctor's place changes once again. He is dubbed a villain by the Professor and is cut down by the twin figures.

The facade as it is later revealed is a huge entertainment zone created by the one one at the heart of all things, the Professor himself. His motives suggest a child at heart, whose wish to return to a certain televesion era bring something familiar to all readers.
Thus a world without creativity and only production has degenerated by one one man's rule and that the Professor retreated into 'his' world so that he could fight the good fight again.

Efficiate Mikus, Grader One is without question a try on a certain person whose need to cleanse television of science fiction ruined the world for all. His efficient, productive world demonstrates that without escapism there is no original thought dumbing down a population.

The day is saved by science fiction, Leela and the TARDIS is all right, having suffering the effects of the multiverse they are free from it and able to deal with Mikus by imprisonment.
Broadcasting the science fiction created by the Professor, who radical re-working has created a living fantasy where Mikus is imprisoned while the characters gain three-dimensions, real names like Colonel Thomas Crane, a packed and armed military force Special Unit 13 awaits deployment in any emergency.

Ably assisted by Dr. Rebecca Lee, Professor Donald McDoom and for a few episodes Doctor John Smith help in the destruction of evil, yes the monsters are that much more threatening with better effects and really good names- The Murkers.

The great fantasy that we all wanted to play, particularlty when the series is treated more so like Quatermass with a name of: DOOMSDAY!

Thus the story plays out like a Rob Shearman story that treats to deconstructing and reconstructiong the ethos of Doctor Who and its effect on our lives....

It even ends on a... 'Oh no, not again moment' with Leela asking what 'Groovy' means.

This story shall always remain a personal favourite of mine.