"The One Doctor (Big Finish)" Published in CT Number 291
“It was on the planet Genereos that my mentor, Merlock Moans, encountered the time-traveller known as the Doctor. Indeed, we encountered two of him, something that puzzled me somewhat. Luckily, Moans enlightened me: one of them was an impostor. Deciding that this could prove an interesting chapter of my diaries of Merlock Moans, as written by me, Proctor Motson, I decided to record our adventures with Mel and the Doctor. Moans quickly spotted the impostor, and we decided to tag along with the real Doctor and Mel, but to just record the events only and not interfere at all. I discovered from Mel that she and the Doctor had been playing a game of Monopoly before, where the Doctor had been particularly melodramatic. I must admit, I wish I had been there to see that. One thing that did disturb Moans was the Doctor’s quoting of the old Chesney Hawks’ song: The One and Only, when he proclaimed he was “the one Doctor, the one and only, and there’s no-body I’d rather be.” Still, I guess we all must draw influence from somewhere. As we progressed through our adventures, Moans mentioned to me that he had a great idea for my diaries by including an over-the-top music score, he felt it would work well with this story. The Doctor over-heard him and agreed. Naturally the fake Doctor (Banto Zane) disagreed.
“When the alien cylinder arrived, I was with Banto Zane and Sally-Anne. Moans had gone with the Doctor and Mel. I overheard Zane mention that audio wasn’t as good as video as you couldn’t see the monsters. I was inclined to disagree with this, the previous play I saw had particularly poor special effects and the monsters all looked fake. With audio the monsters can never be faked as it’s all in your own mind. When the Doctor, Mel and Moans rejoined us, we decided to appease the alien cylinder, which surprised me a bit. From my research into the Doctor, I had expected him to find a way to defeat the alien. Moans quickly pointed-out that in such circumstances there was little anyone could do except appease the alien, after all, it could destroy an entire planet. I agreed but was distracted by Banto Zane’s STARDIS, as Mel said, it was simply a port-a-loo! However, we all had a good old laugh at the flushing sounds it made when it dematerialised.
“When it came to collecting the tribute, I went again with Banto and Mel, but Moans has since told me what happened to him, the Doctor and Sally-Anne. I found Mel a pleasure to work with. She was very quick-witted and a useful member of the team, the complete opposite to what I had expected from reviewing some of her previous adventures with the Doctor. I have to say, I felt rather privileged to be with her. Our task was to recover unit ZX-491, but some nasty Assembler Robots looked to stop us. It was a nasty situation until they told us to assemble the item, and if we could do it, we could leave. This all seemed easy until Mel realised “The Shelves of Infinity”TM could never be completed. Mel however found the solution and we were able to escape. We rejoined the others on the TARDIS and Moans told me about their adventures. They had had to rescue Mentos, a super-computer, from a Weakest Link-style gameshow called Super Brain. He had seen the Doctor fail, but Sally-Anne succeed.
“Anyway, the final item was a gigantic diamond, which we obtained with ease, well, after a Jelloid had eaten the Doctor. He soon got himself out of that, and with a few more hiccups, was able to obtain the diamond. Just as I was departing in the transporter along with the Doctor and Sally-Anne (Moans was in the TARDIS), I heard some of the Jelloid’s song, and it sounded a lot better than some of the Earth music I had heard recently.
“The Doctor soon managed to “defeat” the alien cylinder, which had actually come for the Doctor, The Doctor gave them the fake Doctor, Banto Zane. This seemed a strange intro-music as some point, it reminded him of the Delaware mix he had heard on bit callous for my tastes, but the Doctor later said he would free Zane.
“I certainly enjoyed my adventures with the Doctor, as did Moans. Whilst he wasn’t as much of a detective as Moans is, he managed to get the job done in the end with the aid of Mel. Moans mentioned that he had had thought he heard a Frontier in Space. I agreed with Moans, but I hadn’t found it a problem. Moans later asked me how highly I rated our adventure with the Doctor. I gave the rather cheeky response that I rated it at 155 Marlecs, hoping to catch him out. Moans saw through this and said he though 95% was about right, even if my sums weren’t quite right. He then advised me not to try and be funny, I could never match the skills of Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman. I think Moans may be right on that score too.”
By Proctor Motson (aka Peter Witney)