AAAGH! v the Silence

Here's the AAAGH! from issue #216 of Doctor Who Adventures, the week after Day of the Moon was broadcast. It was written by me, drawn by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who gave kind permission to post it here.

Tomorrow: AAAGH! at Eurovision.

AAAGH! at Easter

Another AAAGH! comic strip, this from issue #215 of Doctor Who Adventures, published the week after Easter. Written by me, art by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who kindly gave permission to post it here. Next time: AAAGH! meets the Silence.

AAAGH! meets the Doctor

Another AAAGH!, this time from Doctor Who Adventures #213 earlier this year. You might like to know that AAAGH! goes to war in the current issue out in shops now, in a strip featuring the Krotons, a Slitheen and Chris Moyles.

As always, the above strip is by me, illustrated by Brian Williamson and edited by the splendid Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, and posted up here with permission. Paul's also posted up one of his AAAGH!s - in which Nervil and Mrs Tinkle meet the EastEnders.

AAAGH! and the Atraxi

Another AAAGH!, this time from issue #209 and featuring the Atraxi and a Weeping Angel. As before, script by me, art by Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, and posted up here with the kind permission of the lovely Doctor Who Adventures.

AAAGH! and the Racnoss

Putting up my AAAGH! meets Idris comic strip went down well so I've permission from my splendid bosses at Doctor Who Adventures magazine (every Thursday, with free gifts and mayhem) to put up more.

Each week, young Nervil and his robot Mrs Tinkle, find jobs for old Doctor Who monsters. This is my first one, from issue 207 in February. It features the Empress of the Racnoss (from The Runaway Bride), and a joke in the last panel which I came up with when I was little.

Written by me, illustrated by clever Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes.

Some comics

Very exciting to see that there'll be a book of Jamie Smart's amazing Doctor Who searches. I've loved Jamie's work since I first saw Fish-Head Steve in the DFC - which you can now read in full on his site. And for older but no less silly readers, there's also Corporate Skull, again free and on the internet, you lucky, lucky swine.

But enough about other people.

As well as lovely, silly, AAAGH!, I've also been writing a few other comic strips for Doctor Who Adventures. That includes "The Very Cool Bow Tie!" in issue 218 (from a couple of weeks back) which included Amy and Rory in pre-Raphaelite costume for no other reason than my amusement.

I raise this as I've not really talked about comics work on here before. I've pitched on-and-off to 2000AD since I was 16, and am still gathering rejections. But as well as Doctor Who Adventures, I've written comics and short stories for GE Fabbri's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, have just completed a comic drawn by William Potter about a team of superheroes, some of whom are autistic, and wrote an eight-page strip for Electric Sheep magazine.

The strip, "Final Cut" is drawn by Pearlyn Quan and you can see a PDF preview here. I wrote it last summer, and am a bit surprised reading it now how not-entirely-cheery it is.

AAAGH!

Since January, Doctor Who Adventures has featured a back-up comic strip, AAAGH, in which a small boy and a robot lady find odd jobs for Doctor Who monsters. It's basically an excuse for mayhem, silliness and celebrity guests. I have written a whole bundle of them, usually while giggling madly. Here's Idris, Doctor Who's wife and wheels in one, popping by the office.


Doctor Who Adventures is out every Thursday. Thanks to Paul Lang, creator of AAAGH and evil overlord, and editor Natalie Barnes.

Songonyms

I don't usually write about music. The whole point of music is that it's different from writing. Like a joke, the moment you start explaining it the thing doesn't work. And yet...

Some songs are very like other songs. Famously, the Hammond organ bit of Procul Harum's “A Whiter Shader of Pale” was inspired by J.S. Bach (see this archived page for much learned discussion on what and to what extent).

“La Bamba” by Richie Valens is pretty much the same tune as “Twist and Shout”, while there's more than a little of “My Way” in Bowie's “Life on Mars” – as this superb version shows. (See The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain website for more splendiditude.)

I also keep hearing TV themes in pop tunes. The NME has spotted that Muse's “Uprising” is a lot like Doctor Who. But S Club 7's “Reach for the Sky” is the theme tune to Duck Tales and Alexander O'Neal's “Criticize” is the theme tune to Duckula.

And then there are the lyrics. Ronan Keating's “When You Say Nothing At All” has the same message for the ladies as Joe Dolce's “Shaddap You Face”.

Any more?

The Firemakers

In Reading, yesterday, there was the impressive sight of two geeks attempting a barbecue. I can do typing. I can do reaching things from shelves. Beyond that, I am pushing my luck...

First, there was an attempt to fix-up the proper barbecue to its gas cylinder. But there were two gas cylinders: one propane, one butane. Could we remember which one would evenly cook a burger and which would just explode? No. So we consulted the women and they explained, "The blue one".

So then we needed to fit a regulator to the butane cylinder. This helps regulate the amount of gas as it comes out, and stops the thing exploding. You attach the rubber hose to the regulator, then fit the regulator to the cylinder, and then fit the other end of the hose to the barbie. Easy.

We scoured the shed for the hose, bought especially for this purpose. Couldn't find it, so checked with the women. One of the women looked quickly into the shed and spotted it, right in front of us.

I managed manfully to fit the hose to the regulator. It's not easy, because the nozzle of the regulator is all notched and bobbly to make it impossible for the hose to slip. Or, indeed, fit on.

Then we tried fitting the regulator to the cylinder. Hmm. Except, as the internet tells us:

Gas bottles come in a variety of different sizes and, confusingly with different regulator fittings. The clip-on regulators used for barbecues are blue for butane, with a standard internal valve size of 21mm. Propane regulators are red with 27mm in internal size. That means that it is not possible to connect to a propane bottle using a butane regulator or vice versa.

Infomania: Barbecue gas - butane or propane?

Guess which we had.

So, Plan B. We had some disposable, "instant" barbecues in little foil trays waiting on standby. And, with a bit of sliced genius, put them on the shelf of the proper barbecue so it looked like we were doing this properly. Soon the barbie was going great guns, flames licking up into the sunlight.

And then we spotted a small error in our thinking.

With the help of a woman with tongs, we got the cardboard off before the whole thing exploded. And then managed to cook the food pretty well. Though I did manage to throw some sausages on the floor. And sunburnt my arms a fair bit. All of this achieved without recourse to any booze.

Ho hum. Think I shall spend the summer indoors, typing. Not that I've got all the much choice...

Some links

Hooray for the Internet and its fascinating contents. The paperback edition of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science includes an extraordinary new chapter on “vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath”, also posted on the Internet for free:

Sadly I was unable to write about him at the time that book was initially published, as he was suing my ass in the High Court … It is a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience, as I hope you’ll see, and it was also a pretty unpleasant episode, not just for me, but also for the many other people he’s tried to sue, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and more. If you’re ever looking for a warning sign that you’re on the wrong side of an argument, suing Medecins Sans Frontieres is probably a pretty good clue."

Ben Goldacre, “The doctor will sue you now”, or “Matthias Rath – steal this chaper”, BadScience.net, 9 April 2009.

I’ve not got or read the book yet but have heard many Good Things and have followed Ben’s column in the Guardian for eons. Hope to get it for my birthday, when I’ve got through my Christmas books. Ben was also on Newswipe last night discussing press coverage of MMR.

Must admit I’d thought that old news; but it’s why we need to continue to be vigilant. And Graham Linehan has posted on the jaw-dropping behaviour from The Daily Mail in having it both ways on the HPV vaccine.

Graham has also posted the most wonderful link to a transcript of a story conference between Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan in the early, murky days of Raiders of the Last Ark. Just WOW.

On page 97 we learn that “slimy pirates” Kinglsey Shacklebolt and Presuming Ed were going to be Lithuanian. Which is my tortuous link to this:

“Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.”

Johann Hari, “You are being lied to about pirates”, The Huffington Post 12 April 2009.

And on a much more silly level, Alex alerted me to the existence of this rude Doctor Who Easter egg. And I, of course, responded with this.

How to make a banana look EXACTLY like a penguin

Bananas are good. They contain zinc. And can be made to look EXACTLY like penguins. Here's how:

Step one.
Take a banana, any banana. In these enlightened times, a straight one works just as fine as a bent one. Hold the banana with the stalk bit pointing up, the curve of the banana pointing away from you. Almost as if the banana is a longbow and you're about to fire it.


Step two.
Grasp the stalk and yank it backwards. The skin around the front of the stalk should crack easily. Pulling on the stalk, you should be able to peel backwards, down the outer, long curve of the banana. Ideally, you should have about a third of the circumference of the banana attached to the stalk, two-thirds still gripping the soft flesh. You might need to tear a bit to make that work. This is within the rules.


Step three.
Now confront the two-thirds of skin gripping the inner curve of the banana. Split it down the middle, to about half the length of the banana. Let the flaps flap. I'm sure your flaps will be much more evenly distributed than mine; no matter. Can you see what it is yet?

Step four.
Now flip the stalky flap back up, so it rests on the top of the banana. Say, that stalk looks EXACTLY like a penguin's beak. And those side flaps are EXACTLY like it's wings. Hot damn and hot diggedy, you've achieved alchemy! And must be burnt as witch.

Amaze your friends! Baffle your enemies! And chuck some money at Comic Relief.

Fmoo

My chums at the Herald asked me and some other sage persons to write 100 words on a favourite children's book. I've chosen "The Hermit and the Bear" by John Yeoman, illustrated by Quentin Blake (Andre Deutsch, London 1984).

(I thought better of best-cover-ever Death to the Daleks, or of best-opening-line ever Dalek Invasion of Earth ("Through the ruin of a city stalked the ruin of a man"). And I could also have gone for Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger or The Twits, or Mr Silly, but they should be set texts for kids, so I chose one you might not have heard of.)

Apparently no-less-august a person than Brian Cant read "The Hermit and the Bear" for Jackanory in March 1988. Like Tom Baker reading "The Iron Man", Rik Mayall reading "George's Marvellous Medicine" and the million-and-one books read by Bernard Cribbens, these things should be made available for download - perhaps just as MP3 sound files.

Iris and Iris

Big Finish have posted the blurb and cast for The Two Irises, written by me. It's out in April (or, as part of a boxset in February). And it may well be the silliest thing I've ever written - which is saying something.

A new adventure for eccentric adventurer, Iris Wildthyme and her companion, Panda in their time travelling London double-decker bus!

Panda wakes from a near death experience to find that Iris has sacrificed herself to save him. There’s a new Iris on the bus – and she is a he!

The new teetotal and decidedly male Iris sets course for the war-torn earth of the 22nd century, where “his” old enemies the Naxians are lying in wait…

The cast is Katy Manning (Iris Wildthyme), David Benson (Panda), Dan Hogarth (Iris Wildthyme), John Dorney (Roger the Naxian), Scott Handcock (Barry). I'm hoping to hear the dialogue edit later today.

YKITS

The new issue of SFX includes a new interview with Russell T Davis and, according to the doctorwhonews.com,

"he confirms that UNIT, the fictional military organisation returning to the show in the new series, is now the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, and not the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce as it was previously known."

Apparently, the UN didn't approve of the fictional organisation that so effectively (if fictionally) has curbed alien invasions, weird diseases and mining operations. I wonder if they'd also be bothered by a re-make of North by Northwest.

Anyway, ages ago a bunch of like-minded writing types discussed what UNIT might stand for if not the United Nation's Intelligence Taskforce. My suggestion, which I'm still far too pleased with, was:

You Know It's Topsecret.

Reduced Droo

The following nonsense was first performed before a live audience of Doctor Who fans in Winchester in July 2002. The Dr played the lady parts, and me, Nimbos and N. played everything else.

I have thoughts of doing a New Series one. If just to do Eccles's mad-wave "Hellooo!"

The Entire History of Dr Who...
in Six Minutes

COMPANION 1:
That girl Susan’s an oddball.

COMPANION 2:
She borrows my books.

COMPANION 1:
Let’s follow her home. Barbara! This police box is alive.

ENTER DR WHO, GRIPPING HIS LAPELS.

DR WHO:
What do you want, hmm?

COMPANION 1:
Excuse me, Dr Who...

DR WHO:
That’s not my name, Chatterton. This is the TARDIS. It’s like television. It doesn’t have wheels. You’re coming with me.

COMPANION 2:
I don’t know why, but I believe you.

DR WHO:
The ship still looks like a police box. That’s not right. Once it looked like a chair. I’m off for a smoke.

CAVEMAN:
Ug. Fire.

DR WHO:
Back to the ship! I’m giving up smoking. It gets me in trouble.

COMPANION 1:
Where are we? All the trees are dead. Can we stay in the ship?

DR WHO:
No, I’ve broken it and we need new mercury.

DALEK:
EXTERMINATE!

COMPANION 1:
My legs!

DALEK:
GIVE US YOUR DRUGS!

DR WHO:
Break their computer!

DALEK:
THIS... IS THE END... OF THE DAAAAAAAAAAALEKS.

DR WHO:
Susan, put those scissors down.

MARCO POLO:
Hello Dr Who, I’m Marco Polo. I don’t exist in the archives, but I’m really good.

YARTEK:
Hello Dr Who, I’m Yartek – Leader Of The Alien Voord. I do exist in the archives, and I’m rubbish.

DR WHO:
I should say there’s a pattern here.

TLOTXL:
Hello Dr Who, I’m Tlotxl, Aztec gentleman and –

DR WHO:
I don’t want to know.

TLOTXL:
But –

DR WHO:
Not one line.

COMPANION:
Doctor, I think you’ve got us home!

DALEK (swimming):
WE ARE THE MASTERS OF EARTH!

DR WHO:
Masters of Earth? You poor, pathetic creatures – we must dare to stop you! Oh, and Susan?

SUSAN:
Yes grandfather?

DR WHO:
I shall come back for The Five Doctors. See you.

PURVES:
Hello Dr Who, I’m Peter Purves, pilot of the future.

DR WHO:
You don’t look like you’re from the future in that sweater, m’boy!

PURVES:
I have a Panda called Hi-fi.

DR WHO:
So you do. Happy Christmas.

DALEK:
PLEASE CAN WE HAVE OUR TARANIUM CORE BACK PLEASE MISTER?

PURVES:
They’ve killed the new girls!

DR WHO:
Call that a masterplan? It’s not very clever at all, just The Chase for twice as long!

DALEK:
THIS... IS THE END... OF THE DAAAAAAAAAAALEKS.

CYBERMAN (with sing song voice):
Hello Dr Who. I am Krang of the Cybermen. We will move our planet near your planet and take over your planet with our planet.

[Beat]

Oh. Our planet being near your planet has destroyed our planet. Not that I care.

DR WHO:
I’m feeling tired and moody and... and...

THE NEW DR WHO TAKES HIS PLACE.

NEW DR WHO:
... and I want to play the recorder!

POLLY:
But Ben! That’s not Dr Who!

DALEK:
HELLO DR WHO. EXTERMINATE.

POLLY:
Oh, well if the Daleks recognise him.

DR WHO:
Oh my giddy aunt. My trousers are shrinking and I’ve lost my hat.

THE DALEK ADVANCES.

DR WHO (with JAMIE hiding behind him): Don’t worry Jamie, it’s all done with mirrors.

JAMIE:
Have some Jamie Factor, laddie!

DALEK:
OCH! THIS... IS THE END... OF THE DAAAAAAAAAAALEKS.

DR WHO:
Look out Jamie! Monsters for weeks and weeks!

TIME LORD:
Dr Who! What have you been up to?

DR WHO:
Oh no! My people! Um... well...

TIME LORD:
Don’t try to wriggle out of it – we’ve got quite a lot of video clips.

DR WHO:
I’ve battled the most terrible monsters. The Daleks! The Cybermen! And... and... the Quarks!

TIME LORD:
You’ve been very naughty. So we’re going to exile you to Earth during the early, experimental years of Colour Separation Overlay.

DR WHO:
You utter shits! Nooooooooo....

THE NEW DR WHO TAKES HIS PLACE, FALLS OVER.

BRIGADIER:
I say old man, you’re not the Dr Who I know!

DR WHO:
Shoes.

BRIGADIER:
How about a job as my scientific advisor?

JO GRANT:
Can I have a job too? I did general science at A level.

MASTER:
You will obey me.

JO GRANT:
I won’t! I won’t! And I’m marrying my boyfriend!

DR WHO:
Jehosophat, Brigadier. Captain Yates has been up to something despicable behind our backs!

BRIGADIER:
He can’t be all bent - he said about the spiders.

DR WHO:
Spiders? I’m scared to death of them.

BRIGADIER:
Here we go again.

THE NEW DR WHO HAS MAD EYES.

BRIGADIER:
You all right, Doctor?

DR WHO:
What?!? Of course!?! Feck!?! Girls!?! Wires! Little leather costumes!?! Dog!

K9: Affirmative, master.

DR WHO (morosely):
Actually. Now I’ve had Romana, I might just... let go. (Gestures as per Logopolis).

NEW DR WHO (tossing hair, looking pretty):
Hmmm. Adric’s died and it’s all my fault. I’m a bit blond, me.

THE FIRST DR WHO:
Goodness me! So there are five of me now!

PERI (acting with breasts):
Dark-ter! Turlough rescued me from drowning, and now I’m covered in this horrid sticky stuff!

DR WHO:
Hold tight, Peri, and swallow my milk. Gosh, none left for me. Is this death? Adric!

PERI:
Dark-ter – you’ve changed. Ezz sarm-then rarng?

NEW DR WHO:
Sacked? Sacked?? SACKED??!?

A NEW DR WHO TAKES HIS PLACE.

DALEK:
DOCTOR! A NEW APPEARANCE!

DR WHO (now all moody):
So, you’ve conquered stairs. You better have the Hand of Omega. Bwah ha ha!

DALEK:
WE DESTROYED OUR PLANET! THIS... IS THE END... OF THE DAAAAAAAAAAALEKS.

ACE (cockernee):
‘Ere Professor, I ain’t a little girl no more.

DR WHO:
You’re shit, ah. No, I lied. Come on Hace, we’ve got work to do. Oh no! I’ve been shot!

NEW DR WHO:
Puccini!

[He turns on GRACE.]

You stuck your tube in me. Now it’s my turn…

Mashed bandage

Yesterday was good but long, and I got home in time to fall asleep over pizza. Mmm.

Finished off some things today which is rather satisfying, but have lots that still requires attendance. Also had a message from someone lovely I used to work with, who may have some more stuff to throw me.

And while all this goes on, the backside of my mind crashes pop bands together for hilario-comedic effect:

Ned's Atomic Kitten
Beastie Boyzone
Marvin Gaye Dad
The Chemical Brotherhood of Man
The Barry White Stripes