Noblesse o-bilge

"Mmm, why the fack did I agree to sign up to Dr Who for an entire bleedin' series?" Why, indeed...

FINALLY.

You'd probably all long forgotten about this by now. And big apologies to those of you who sent me all those wonderful contributions which never got published. But now they have. Or are.

I'm talking about a certain Dr Who mini-script I produced some time back, based around the premise of what might happen when companions Martha Jones and Donna Noble (the latter about to become a more permanent fixture in Season Four) meet. In a nutshell, Ms Jones and Ms Noble didn't get on and had a bitch-fight to rival that of Alexis and Krystle in "Dynasty", with what I thought were humorous consequences. I SO loved writing it! (Click on the link above if you wanna read the thing in it's entirety).

At the time of writing the script, I was experiencing feelings of intense annoyance that Catherine Tate had been cast for the whole of Season Four and was seriously fearing the consequences. When some nice pictures of Ms T as Donna were published, with her actually looking quite alluring, the Donnaphobic feelings did subside somewhat. Unfortunately the recent broadcast of the Season Four trailer, brought my ditch-the-Donna desires bubbling to the surface once again. In just a couple of lines, the character managed to come across as a feckless cow with a line in stupid, unfunny humour ("Why do you call me miss? Do I look single?" "You're not mating with me, sunshine!") Aaaaah!! FACK OFF!!

Hence, a return to the subject of La Noble is probably quite timely.

And so because I knew that many of you out there were similarly endowed with wonderful creative powers, not to mention the fact that several of you were Whovians, I came up with an ingenious challenge: CONTINUE THE STORY. My Dr Who episode concluded with a cliff hanger of epic proportions: Donna having seemingly succeed in flushing Martha down a hospital toilet, and the Dr suddenly running into Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale, characters from "Blink", now flogging DVDs to make a living. And here's what you thought should happen next....

Dan came up with this:

Does Donna pull at her annoying face a bit and it goes all rubbery, only for her to be revealed as Adric, who survived the big bang by being The World's Oldest Joke (a new species of immortal) and hanging around in terrible comedies, evolving through time (and space) as The World's Worst Catchphrase where he worked his way from '... Nice out' to 'Mister Grimsdale' to 'suit you sir' to 'Am I bovvered?' therefore becoming Tate when he found his previously-unopened gold star badge was in fact a pocket watch what did make him all magical and explained how he had been around so long?

Then Martha recognises him from the DVD of Earthshock, laughs at his rubbish acting and he dies of utter utter shame.

Very surreal and thank you, Dan. Incidentally if you don't know who Adric is, try here. He was a mathematical genius from the planet Alzarius you know. Or to be more precise, an annoying, precocious brat of a companion with piggy features and a pudding bowl haircut. (And a bender in real life too, so rumour has it. Matthew Waterhouse, who played Adprick, apparently got more than friendly with a male Who fan at a convention and disappeared off to America with him. Positively Earthshocking!)

Meanwhile... Steve produced this:

After copious flushings and forced dunkings with a crusty looking hospital bog brush, Martha is beginning to get desperate.

"Look, I’m warning you Donna!”

"Yeah? Like I’m scaaared, right?”

Martha’s head is rammed perilously close to the S bend yet again and another yank on the chain sends another 5 litres of recycled water down onto Martha’s expensive hair-do. Donna rolls back her head and laughs demonically.

Suddenly an ear-piercing screech pierces the air. “Right! That’s it!”

With a highly polished RADA flourish Martha produces a laser screwdriver from out of the depths of her subtly powdered cleavage and jabs Donna in the ribs with it. The effect is instantaneous. Donna releases Martha’s head and back away, suddenly meek and humble.

“’Ere, wot you doin’?”

Martha can’t keep the fury from her voice. “I warned you didn’t I you mong-faced, ginger-bushed chav!”

“No, come on girl; take it easy... only ‘avin’ a laugh wun I? Bygones and all that, eh luv?”

“I don’t think so, you one trick pony... take that!”

With a high pitched zinging sound Donna is suddenly thrown into a fit of hyper fast aging and transforms before Martha’s vengeful eyes into East End Gran.

"Oh, oh, oh, oh me back. Wot you dun to me, eh? Wot you dun to me? Ooh. Me bladder ain’t ‘alf twitchin’. ‘Ere you ain’t got a spare colostomy fingie ‘anging abaht ave yer, luv? I feel a bit of a deluge comin’ on.”

Martha looks shocked. “Blimey, I wasn’t expecting it to do that. I thought I’d set it to ginger hair incineration mode. I’d better get the Doctor.”

Martha goes to the toilet door and leans out into the corridor shouting at the top of her voice. “Doctor! DOCTOR!”

Meanwhile Donna has popped out her false teeth and is polishing them with the elbows of her cardie. “Do anyfing for yer these nurses... real sweethearts... but fuck me ain’t they common! Spend far too much time on their backs as well... ‘aving their gynae whatsits poked abaht with. I know what these student doctors are like. Randy little bastards, the lot of them!”

With a squeal or rubber soled sneakers, the Doctor belts around the corner with a maniacal grin on his face. “Martha! There you are! Been looking all over for you. I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet!”

“I think I’ve already met her, Doctor... I think you’d better take a look.” Martha leads the Doctor into the toilets where he’s met with the horrific site of East End Gran sitting in a hot pool of her own urine.

“Jesus H Krishna Guru Murphy! Is that Donna?! What have you done to her, Martha?”

Martha looks shamefaced. “I’m not sure... I grabbed this laser screwdriver thing from the Master and I thought I’d figured out how to use it but...”

The Doctor shakes his head. “You’ve turned her into an incontinent old battle axe. I can’t time travel with that. Just think how many incontinent pads I’d have to store in the Tardis! I’d have to downsize my wardrobe. I just can’t do it!”

East End Gran rounds on the Doctor furiously. “Wot? Wot you say? You long shanked streak of acting school piss, how dare you. I ain’t wet meself. Tight as a gnats chuff my rosemary is. How bleedin’ dare you!”

The Doctor ahems and points at the lake of piss that surrounds East End Gran like a slightly off-yellow moat. “I beg to differ, love, look. That’s well shameful.”

“Yeah well, I ain’t bovvered.”

Martha joins in: “Yeah but don’t you feel the shame? You’ve wet your Nike’s and everything. That’s well shameful, that is.”

“Don’t care. Do I look like I care?”

The Doctor: “You’ve wet yourself. You’ve got loose white trash piss flaps.”

Martha: “Yeah swinging open like a B52’s bomb bay doors...”

“LOOK I AIN’T BOVVERED RIGHT!”

Ad infinitum...

Hilarious! Cheers Steve. He's clearly got a great ear for dialogue - very observational and clever! Spot on impersonation of East End gran too....

And then came this from Newplanet. His is more a collection of ideas and I'm afraid I didn't really have the time/was too lazy to turn it into a script proper. Some nice concepts though:

Well, I enjoyed your script and I liked how there seemed to be lots of references and comparisons to the Doctor's past assistants. Which got me to thinking wouldn't it be nice if loads of Doctors Assistants had been brought through time and space to the hospital where Martha works. We're talking Martha, Donna, Rose, Sarah-Jane, etc etc. We're also talking major rivalry and jealousy and much more cat-fighting and heads in toilet bowls!

Then I had the idea of the Kylie dolls. They're coming to life (like cute little mini versions of the Autons) and they're trying to kill off the Doc's past assistants. Who's behind it all? Well, it turns out that Astrid-the-Titanic-waitress has also been brought forward in time. It's here that she learns that in a parallel reality, she's a singer/actress who had a starring role in a TV Christmas Special about a time travelling Doctor (when hearing this, Rose also remembers she is a singer/actress in a parallel reality)! Discovering that the last Doctor's assistant who starred in a Christmas Special went on to become a real deal full-time variety, she (either Astrid or Astrid's parallel alter-ego) has decided to go to any lengths to secure her role as the Doc's next assistant. All the Doctor's most popular past assistants must die - even if it means getting a little help from the Nestene Consciousness to make sure it happens.

Neat idea (I especially like the idea of the Kylie-Auton dolls). Thanks Mr Newplanet! So, erm, who's gonna write da script?

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed the contributions. I really liked 'em! My only slight gripe is that no-one picked up on the Sally and Larry strand, not to mention what happened to Leo Jones, after being left completely naked in the middle of the hospital reception (shame about the last bit not being continued, perv that I occasionally am). And it would have been nice if a few more of you had submitted ideas to me, which was a pity. But it's never too late, as a certain pop star once said. I can always post some more you know...

Hope you enjoyed. Till the Real Ms Noble graces our screens then...I can hardly wait...