In light of my terrible lack of devotion to this site I have decided to stop using pages and go back to using posts.

Consequently all of the comments that everyone had made on myself and Tony’s rantings, have gone.

As I say, sorry.

The Osterhagen Key has to be the most pointless device in the history of UNIT (an organisation so rubbish that even the United Nations have disowned them).

In the event of the Earth being under an attack, deemed so terrible that death for 6.8 billion people might seem a good idea, three people from the now Unified Intelligence Taskforce would descend into remote bunkers and trigger 26 nuclear warheads.

And thus Earth would become rubble.

This isn’t so bad when you consider that approximately 3 million of those people would be Welsh, 270,000 of those being from Swansea and, more specifically, one would be Russell T Davies.

But who would invent such a stupid device (apart from some tit called Osterhagen or Davies)? The Samurai? The Venerable Order of Lemmings? The Manic-Depressives’ Wing of Arkham Asylum?

Not only that but in true Russell T Davies fashion, i.e. honking out the fucking obvious at full volume, Osterhagen is in fact an anagram of ‘earths gone’. Genius.

In defence of the actual prop, it did look halfway realistic, nice copper contacts, matt black computer-plastic finish, good shape. It’s a fucking change from the brightly coloured perspex squares of previous Whos.

Featured in the 2007 Christmas special Voyage Of The Damned, Bannakaffalatta is a four foot tall alien from the planet Sto. He looks like this.

What an astonishing design, huh? No, no it’s not is it.

Aside from the obviously shit design and name, Bannakaffalatta is also responsible for some of the most cringingly obvious dialogue ever witnessed in Doctor Who history.

This squeaky voiced, crimson, conker faced prick, managed, with the help of Russell T Davies’ usual appalling dialogue, to equate cyborg rights to those of gay people.

That’s right Bannakaffalatta was ashamed that he was a cyborg. So ashamed that Astrid Peth (Kylie Minogue in a career defining low) had to sit beside him, as he died, stroking his spiky bonce telling him that there was nothing to be ashamed about.

You see, as it turns out being a cyborg was widely accepted in the universe and that, and get this, cyborgs could even marry now!

Talk about laying it on thick.

The end of Bannakaffalatta came about a few seconds after he first revealed himself to be a cyborg by unleashing a huge blast of energy from his chest. I would ask though, since when has being a bit on the robotic side meant that you can zap fuck off dirty bolts of electricity from your chest?

I suppose Russell would say that’s the beauty of sci-fi, it lets you write badly and get away with it do whatever you want free of constraint. I’d say it was just plain shit.

Where do I begin with Daleks?

There is so much wrong with this classic villain that it’s hard to know how they’ve managed to survive relatively unchanged for forty five years. My best guess is that rather counter intuitively that the most feared race in the universe has become a familiar, warm and cuddly reminder of childhood and therefore untouchable in the (weak) minds of the nation.

When I say nation I do of course mean the estate of Terry Nation who no doubt see the unchanged, unimpressive, unemotional Daleks as a cash cow to be milked until the end of all time.

They first sprung into being in 1963 in the second Doctor Who series and are described as a powerful race of mutants seeking to dominate the entire universe. They are completely without emotion, so no love or pity or guilt or compassion. Oh, except they can still hate.

Yeah, that makes sense, no emotion except hate. Nice one. Not one-dimensional in the slightest then?

It makes my fucking blood boil to see this supposedly master race portrayed so badly. Like most of Doctor Who the Daleks are a great idea spoiled by piss-poor implementation.

In fairness to them I recall the first time they appeared in the new Doctor Who. The ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, discovered one in some rich nutter’s underground, alien artifact museum.

Even though it was chained up and damaged Christopher Eccleston still managed to portray palpable fear. For an instant I felt the true menace that an alien race that was hell bent on wiping out everything that wasn’t them, could inspire.

Of course later in that episode when it inevitably escaped it became the shouty caricature we know and, I am reliably informed, love.

The principal behind the Daleks is sound, see my comments above, it’s the design and execution (should that be extermination?) that’s flawed. The design hasn’t changed in any significant way since they first appeared, the picture at the top of the page is from the 1965 movie Dr Who And The Daleks and the image below from the 2007 episode Daleks In Manhattan.

Not much fucking difference is there? Forty two years and they still have sticks for arms, light bulbs on their heads and a single ‘eye’ on a stalk.

BBC should look to the gold standard of series reboots Battlestar Galactica and their handling of the reinvention of the Cylons. The new Cylons were familiar yet more menacing. The designers of Battlestar Galactica used CG to their benefit, no longer did the Cylons need to have a bloke inside, therefore they designed them free of those constraints.

And they did a fucking great job. The only real movement we’ve had on the Dalek front, aside from changes in colour and dimensions, has been this abortion.

Dalek Sec. Part Dalek, part human, part spiv. What the fuck were they thinking!

I think it’s safe to say that it’s time they were redesigned. In the redesign they should look to change three of the most obviously shit Dalek characteristics.

1. The Voice
   That fucking voice! Jesus it’s old hat. Why must they insist on screaming exterminate at the top of their lungs all the time?

   A greater sense of menace would be achieved with a deep, menacing, growling, animal voice. Or better yet no voice at all, have them communicate telepathically, with only the chief Dalek ever communicating anything.

   Surely that makes sense? If they’re as advanced and as hell bent on destruction as we’re lead to believe surely they wouldn’t have to communicate with each other, and anyone within the vicinity, in their preposterous shouty voices?

2. The Shell
   How many times have they changed the actual Dalek creature inside the shell? This relatively unseen, aspect of the design has been redesigned numerous times but they always left the bit that matters alone.

   It’s time they looked at giving the Daleks different shells, all we get at the moment is a few different colours. Hardly the most important consideration to a master race? Although, having said that, the Nazis did like a good uniform.

   No, this is too obvious to ignore. The traditional Dalek shell might be ideal for life on Skaro, assuming radiation turned every surface to glass, lovely smooth glass, but for the conquering of space I think we need to look at a few more designs.

   Call me a radical but I think it’s probably time they had legs. Legs and big fucking guns. Make them scary again. An army of insect like Daleks that, very much like the Cylons, retain a few design hints of the past (I’m thinking bobbles and ‘eye’ stalks) but manage to give them a true air of menace.

   Sure they should keep the traditional shell for use on board their ships or whatever, just give them some more appropriate tools for the universe domination part of the thing. For example flying, I have no desire to see the traditional Daleks flying.

   If they need to fly give them flying machines, remember the Dalek is inside the shell, the shell is not the Dalek.

3. Their Goals
   What are their goals nowadays? Do we actually know?

   The Klingons joined the federation when shit got fucked up in their solar system. The Cylons have found God. Christ, even the Predators help humans from time to time.

   The Daleks just seem to be painted as overwhelmingly ineffectual pantomime villains, who’s only apparent goal is to interrupt The Doctor’s regular visits to Queen Victoria and William Shakespeare (as routinely as Michael Parkinson interviews Muhammad Ali and Billy Connolly, each new Doctor is sure to visit that pair at some point).

   Give them a proper purpose, let them regroup, redesign and come back stronger to either take over the universe or alternatively join forces with The Doctor to defeat a race of beings who threaten even them.

Whatever they do though let’s not have them atop the Empire State Building again though, eh? What was the fucking point of that!

The Absorbaloff is a big fat alien played by Peter Kay in a rubber suit. At least I think it’s a rubber suit, it’s hard to tell.

The basic premise of the Absorbaloff is that it absorbs the bodies of those it comes in contact with. It does this to, er, well, to, er, I’m fucked if I know why he does it but rest assured he does. Often with hilarious consequences! As you would no doubt expect what with Peter Kay being the funny-man behind the suit.

It’s a bit of a metaphor that, Peter Kay wearing a suit. He probably wore it in the same way he wears the jolly-top-bloke demeanour he wears on every public appearance. A demeanour that hides a broken man despising himself for trotting out the same side splitting comedy gems as ‘Garlic? Bread?’ and ‘Fancy a brew?’ night after night, to council house dwellers who’ve driven all the way from Bolton to see him.

I digress.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will no doubt have noticed that the creatures name Absorbaloff is a play on the fact that the creature in question absorbs-a-lot. The clever substitution of the final tee sound for an eff sound, cunningly hiding it from the average member of the Doctor Who audience.

The creature was designed (pffft, designed indeed) by a nine year old Blue Peter competition winner called William Grantham.

William? How very Radio 4. Given the recent Blue Peter competition hoo-hah though, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were to find out that William Grantham was Russell T Davies in a rubber mask.

The storyline surrounding the Absorbaloff relates to a really shit super pals club called LINDA (which stands for, and I’m not shitting you here, London Investigation ‘N’ Detective Agency. Christ I ask you), which gets infiltrated by a shady character called Victor Kennedy, also played by Peter Kay.

Once he joins the group, members start going missing.

Cue E.L.O., lots of anguished expressions from David Tennant, the immortal line ‘Elton! Get a spade!’ and then it’s over. The Absorbaloff is killed never to be seen again.

Oh, and thanks to the Absorbaloff there’s a heavy suggestion that the hero of the piece gets blow jobs from a paving slab.

Having watched most of the re imagined Doctor Who since its launch back in 2005, I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated at its lack of imagination and its willingness to trot out the same tired old baddies and aliens time and time again.

This sense of frustration has grown and grown until eventually it reached a stupefying crescendo a few weeks ago with the screening of the abysmal ‘The Sontaran Stratagem’, with its ridiculous aliens and hammy acting it managed to completely trounce the last remaining hopes I had that Doctor Who could be great again.

The program has become a vehicle for Russell T Davies’ egotistical desires. He’s slowly raping each and every Doctor Who property, one by one. Sometimes even two at a time.

So in order to vent my frustration I bought the domain DoctorWhoIsShit.com and set about creating a repository for my musings.

I hasten to add it’s not finished yet but I’m going to be posting on it anyway. So there.