The Cutprice Guignol

(scene opens on Vastra, Jenny, and Strax)

Vastra: We need to find the Doctor! Something terrible has happened in Victorian London once again!

Jenny: But where could he be?!

 

 

(cut to the interior of the TARDIS; the Doctor is alone, on the back of a stegosaurus, playing an accordion, wearing those goofy star-shaped glasses with the bars on them)

The Doctor: Licking. To lick is human. Or is it? I wouldn’t know, because I’m an alien. Why do we lick things? Wikipedia defines licking as the action of passing the tongue over a surface, typically either to deposit saliva onto the surface, or to collect liquid, food or minerals onto the tongue for ingestion, or to communicate with other animals. I put things in terms you stupid humans could understand, because I hate you unless you’re a moderately attractive woman in the twenty-to-twenty-five bracket.

(credits, except it’s actually just footage of Murray Gold taking a poo on a vinyl of the original theme song)

(cut to Clara in Coal Hill Academy, where she stands at the head of a class full of students)

Clara: …and that’s how I totally nailed Joan of Arc or whatever. Yeah! Representation. This is what representation is.

Student: Will this be on the test?

Student 2: My UCAS deadline is coming-

(Tardis noises)

Clara: Sh! I have better things to do now.

(Tardis materialises; the Doctor, deftly playing a clarinet, pokes his head out the door)

The Doctor: Clara, there’s an alien monster thing whose power is tied to some human sense for some reason even though it’s from outer space and probably doesn’t encounter that many humans terrorising Victorian London-

Clara: When is there ever not?

(she bounds towards the Tardis; as she reaches the door, the cast of Class appear, panting, at the entrance to the classroom)

Member of the Class Cast (yes, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen it, I don’t know any of their names, no wonder it got bloody cancelled so quickly): We could come and help!

(Clara and the Doctor exchange a look; Doctor slightly shakes his head; the two silently retreat into the Tardis)

(Cut to Victorian London; Vastra, Strax, and Jenny battle an enormous unseen monster moments before the Doctor and Clara arrive in the Tardis. The Doctor waves a sonic household object – fuck knows, let’s say a plunger – and the monster retreats)

Clara: What was that?

Vastra: It looked like…it looked like a giant Starburst.

Doctor: They were an Opal Fruit once. Like me. I was a –

(Murray Gold’s terrible score swells dramatically and obscures the end of the sentence)

Clara: Wow, that explains everything!

Doctor: Whatever you do, don’t lick it. It’ll get inside your mind and turn you to mush.

Vastra: Here’s an unreasonably raunchy joke about licking to underline the fact I’m a lesbian.

Jenny: Can we kiss on camera?

Vastra: Not really ever, no.

Clara: Why would I want to lick it?

 

Doctor: It can read your thoughts to become your favourite flavour. It’ll get inside your head-

Clara: Wait, don’t you do that all the time?

Doctor: Yeah, but when I do it it’s for good reasons, like forcibly wiping the memory of a woman begging me not to. Come on, we’ve got corridors to run down!

(montage of corridor running; a secondary character is injured at the hands of the monster after half an hour of jogging about sets that are definitely cribbed from that old BBC reboot of Robin Hood)

Doctor (strumming a lute): Nothing to be done for him now, but that’s puny humans for you.

(Doctor shoots secondary character in the face; Murray Gold’s score tinkles titteringly)

Clara: I’m pretty sure you could have helped-

Doctor: Nope, no time for anything other that savage callousness in the face of human suffering! Come on, I’ve got a monologue to do.

(Doctor, playing a violin – no, crap, that’s the other show, you know, the one that’s just like this one, fuck, shit, okay, say he’s riffing on a child-size xylophone –  finally confronts the monster)

Doctor: You see, because I am the Doctor. And I save people. Except when I let them die and don’t give a shit about it. The Doctor. I’m an alien, and I’m vastly superior to every human I come into contact with, except you, the viewer stand-in, because you, the viewer, are great, and you, the viewer, should never stop watching this show. By the way, I know all about death and loss and suffering because I’m the last of my kind, even though I’m not, and I watched my people burn, even though I didn’t, and I killed millions of beings, even though that never happened. Now let me repeat these points ad nauseum while every TV reviewer in the country twats themselves stupid over how this is the television moment of the decade even though this is all based on retconned events that never happened in canon.

Monster: I see your point.

(monster dissolves; beneath exterior, it reveals a broom with “the real monster was human nature” pinned to it)

Jenny: I suppose I should get back to being a maid for a woman who hits on other people in front of me and treats me like a second-class citizen.

Clara (solemnly): Representation.

(the Doctor, played by Benedict Cumberbatch because they genuinely couldn’t tell the difference anymore, and Clara climb into the Tardis and return to Clara’s classroom, where the children have reported her to the education authorities. Cut to credits.)

Announcer: NEXT WEEK ON Doctor Who!

Missy: Here are a collection of non-sequitur that only sound good because Michelle Gomez is saying them!

(End episode)

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