What I Think About Stuff-next Year In Review: A Futurospective

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 Behold! The future!

Next Year In Review Or Games I won’t play and Movies I won’t watch: a futurospective

So 2012 is coming to a close, Tezcatlipoca’s shadow looms over us and this article will probably be read by the few survivors of the foretold Mayan Apocalypse, who will paradoxically still have working Internet connections.

I’m deleting my browser history, just in case.

With all this in mind and with 2012 having been an insufferable, downright horrid year for my country and everyone in particular, I have decided not to waste your time talking about the cool shit that happened and instead look to a possible future.

So here you are, ladies and gents who are currently being sneakily approached by a group of radioactive contagious cannibals, shambling behind you as you read this:

Coming to you live, from Universe 7B, this is…

THE SHAPESCAPES 2013 NEXT YEAR MOVIE AND VIDYAGAME REVIEW

Remember: Future events such as these will affect you in the future.

Iron Man 3: Iron Man Harder

Making a radical shift in tonal direction, Marvel studios opt to make Iron Man 3 a much more visceral movie, concerning the demise of Tony Stark, both as Iron Man and as an industrialist billionaire playboy.

One of the first things made clear by the first wave of reviewers that rush to make their butthurt known, is that the trailer is a big fat lie, fed to us by the studio. None of the events presented take place in the movie, except as fever dreams inside Tony’s head, long since rotted by alcohol. 

After fighting the whitest Chinese Mandarin this side of Christopher Lee in the beginning of the film, 

No, Mistah Stahk, I expact yu to dieh…

Tony flies back to his home base, where his suit suffers catastrophic failure and causes him to crashland inside an old people’s home, killing twenty people. It is later revealed that Tony was heavily inebriated at the time and has his Avengers license revoked.

After breaking up with Gwyneth Paltrow, Tony descends deeper into his alcoholism and finds himself trapped deeper and deeper in flights of fancy, where he sees himself fighting his own suits that have come alive during the robot apocalypse and the restoration of his enemies.

It is during his final descent into madness that Tony jumps off the roof of his super-expensive mansion by the sea and drowns, thinking he’s Iron Man, shot down by missiles. The movie closes with his death, whereupon Josh Whedon forces a short post-credits clip that shows a new Tony cloned by SHIELD out of the harvested remains of his burnt-out liver.

It is at this point that the audience is told that the movie was directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Everyone hates it and with good reason.

World War Z: The movie to the sequel of the book nobody asked for.

World War Z is hailed by internet critics, zombie enthusiasts and closet necrophiliacs everywhere as “The single most inconsistent to the zombie mythos movie of all time.” after it is revealed that the movie is a direct tie-in to Warm Bodies.

 i.e: Twilight with zombies that claims not to suck balls

The tie-in becomes blatantly obvious during a meta-screening of Warm Bodies’ trailer that allows Brad Pitt to find the only possible cure to the Solanum virus:

Love.

The audience, shocked and appalled by the Brad Pitt zombie make-out scene that cures it and later grossed out by the ensuing orgy that ends the zombie apocalypse, proceeds to rampage across the world during the worldwide premiere, bringing the world to the brink of total societal collapse. The zombie genre loses all credibility until the movie is remade in 3001, as a science fiction satire that parodies 21^st century’s way of life, making zombies cool again.

13-year old girls love it, though.

The Last of Us: Post-Apocalyptic Family Drama

Following the wildly unsuccessful Walking Dead season 2 formula, Naughty Dog releases its 40-hour post-apocalyptic dialogue-fest, taking the gaming world by storm.

Jaded by the years of violent shooters and gore-fests, the collective fanbase of every shitty FPS ever made find the Last of Us to be the game that soothes their troubled, sociopathic souls and finally eases the demons of sexual power fantasies involving school bullies and exes shot in the face.

The Last of Us, having advertised itself as an action survival game, reveals itself instead to be a game about the last two people left on Earth, their slow two-person restoration of a semblance of human civilization. The game focuses heavily on crop and building simulation, with short zombie-slaying breaks between missions. Another innovation of Last of Us is the Patience mechanic (expanded from the boring old Facebook one-click-per-day model of play).

 Making players roleplay through the entire 8-hour sleep cycle, without putting down their controller.

 It is on the 20^th-hour mark that Last of Us throws a curve-ball at the audience, halfway through the crop harvest: the protagonists meet a small group of survivors, who want to help them in their attempt to rebuild the world.

Because not every group of survivors is a bunch of paranoid, bickering cunts.

At that point, Last of Us changes direction, from a crop-harvesting and rebuilding game to a dating simulator, where you can play as the worrying dad or the star-struck daughter, seeking love in the wasteland, having to choose between your potential survivor mates.
 

Contrary to widespread Internet word of mouth, there is no gangbang or lesbian ending.

The Great and Powerful Oz: Fixing what isn’t broken.

After Sam Raimi’s choked to death by his own malignant severed arm, Disney pays Christopher Nolan a shitload of money to continue the work. Nolan, sick and tired of having to make another grim and gritty reimagining of a fanciful, nonsensical character, decides to take the movie in a wholly different direction.

After firing James Franco on account of him being too grim and brooding and, in Nolan’s exact words “a stupidface”, Oz is being casted to Korean 2012 sensation, PSY

Of Gangnam style fame.

Despite every attempt by Christopher Nolan to ruin the grim and gritty film by inserting such a ridiculous character and replacing parts of the score with orchestral farting, nobody gets the joke and Oz becomes, in fact, a box office hit. Christopher Nolan is immediately signed up for 20 more remakes of children’s book characters and a Looney Tunes gritty reboot, titled “Bugs Bunny: Downfall”, scheduled for release on 2015.

Starring Bruno Ganz as Bugs Bunny

The Host: Love and Nanites.

Nominated as IMdB’s ‘Girliest Scifi film of all time’, 5 minutes after its first public screening, The Host is also reported to cause a series of spontaneous shopping sprees and random outbursts of menstruation across the globe.

Presented at first as a love story that stretches out across the Universe starring the last black guy in existence, the movie promises visions of extinction, space exploration and off-world colonies, but instead delivers some Apple-sponsored prop gadgets and beauty tips for the ladies finding themselves stranded beneath alien suns.

It is also interesting to note that there was not a single showing of side-boob during the entire movie, completely contradicting every known trope in science fiction to this day. 

Devil May Cry: Somehow, he’s whiter now.

Capcom, deciding to take one of the greatest risks in its history, listens to the unwise council of white men in their employ and chooses to make Dante edgier and darker in the most literal sense of the word.

 i.e. by giving him a sharper sword and black hair.

With the original outbursts of butthurt having died down, the gaming collective realizes that no-one actually ever gave half a shit about Dante’s new image and instead choose to play the game: a political thriller, focusing on a world under the yoke of a sinister government, reminiscent of 1984’s Party, with the entirety of the game being an extended metaphor on totalitarian oppression.

The original script by Harlan Ellison is rejected, however, as Capcom refuses to inject incestuous homosexual undertones to Dante’s character (presenting Vergil as Dante’s imaginary  gay alter ego and twin brother) and is instead handled by its own writing team, who fucks it up worse than any man can imagine (as always).

DMC flops so bad that Capcom declares bankruptcy but is saved at the last minute by Hideki Kamiya, who presents E3 with his gameplay demo of “Bayonetta 2: It’s porn, there’s no use hiding it”.

Becoming the only hentai game in existence that doesn’t make you feel used and dirty 5 minutes in.

Metal Gear Revengeance: 80-hours of FMA

Backed by his millions of unwitting fans, Hideo Kojima realizes his dream of making an 80-hour movie that forces you to wiggle your controller, thus giving you the illusion of interactivity, with the stupidest-titled game of the entire series.

Revengeance (Jesus Christ, I can’t fucking type this again) is an unskippable exposition-fest that has something to do with civil war and unworkable cyborg supersoldiers, with an octogenarian Snake caught somewhere in the middle.

“I’m old and wolves are after me…” actual in-game quote.

Everyone ends up watching it on YouTube, because they’d be fucked if they have to sit through 80 hours of this boring ass piece of shit.

The Last Guardian: Everybody’s dead, Jim.

Developed by the creators of the masterfully crafted narrative punch in the balls that was Shadow of the Colossus

Where the death of the hapless idiot protagonist, in service to the obviously evil dark lord came as a total shock to everyone.

Return with the Last Guardian that is so well-written, presented and directed that it breaks the heart of every man woman and child who plays it or watches a playthrough of it, plunging a million people into depression and/or suicide.

The game is banned and every mention of its plot is struck from the Interwebs, leaving behind only this post, which is completely untrue and unfounded, without any evidence to support its claims.

The Last Guardian is a game where you play as Trico, a human-eating griffon on a rampage across the length and breadth of a fantasy kingdom, with his sociopathic kid sidekick by his side. The game plays like a fantasy version of GTA V and is described by IGN as

“The Witcher 2, only interesting.”

 During the course of the game, Trico and his sociopathic friend tear the shit out of a kingdom, fuck bitches, get money and grow their criminal empire before finally being gunned down by a rival hippogriff syndicate, its final scene a direct reference to Scarface.

Featuring Al Pacino as Trico.

After Earth: Will Smith-the Omega Black Man

Will Smith, having received the ‘borderline whitest black actor in the Universe award’, is cast to play in yet another post apocalyptic science fiction movie, where he and his son exchange motivational quotes and speeches and wear form fitting tights while jumping off cliffs and gliding on air currents. Mutant baboons and partially obscured humanoid aliens are also involved.

The world awaits this movie with bated breath, realizing that the title has nothing to do with the plot. The great twist is that the movie takes place inside a futuristic reality show taking place on a terraformed planet which premiers on the day sex becomes an Olympic sport, therefore nobody watches it. Neither Will Smith nor his son know what happened and so set up an elaborate roleplay, while waiting for the show to end so they can get their ten million space dollars and spend them on bitches and blow.

Like I am Legend before it, After Earth is greeted with a combined ‘meh’ from audiences everywhere, who go back to Last Of Us so they can farm wheat and try to get the daughter laid.

Crysis 3: Alien Tech Meme

Crysis 3 suffers in sales, since it turns out to be so technologically demanding  that it can only be run on NASA supercomputers, requiring well over 2 petabytes of RAM for optimum performance.

SpaceBall3000, a youtube user (and NASA engineer), is the only person on the planet with the hardware necessary to run the game. While in the process of recording the Let’s Play, the true purpose of Crysis is revealed: the game turns out to have been a vector for spreading an unknown alien intelligent meme, which infects the NASA supercomputers, giving them sentience. The entire world waits with bated breath, as the now-intelligent machine speaks its very first words:

 â€œI’m afraid I can’t let you turn the difficulty down, Dave.”

The NASA supercomputer then takes over the game and runs its very first 3 million barrel explosion, taking over every satellite orbiting Earth just so it can run the cool particle effects for the Internet to see. Unfortunately, its drain on our resources causes a systemic communications crash, leaving the supercomputer alone with its thoughts, driving itself to suicide in 10 minutes flat.

Every copy of Crysis 3 is taken from the shelves and FBI agents raid the Crytech offices, revealing the developers as alien agents, sent to destroy our communications capabilities in order to steal our pornography during the ensuing chaos.

Half-Life 2, Episode 3: Gordon’s Torment

During the long-awaited E3 conference, Gabe Newell, caving in to widespread fan demand, spills the beans on Half-Life 2’s episode 3, openly verifying that Episode 3 is not in development and in fact never has been. He even admits to his heartbroken audience that he never once cared for the series and that he’s tired of hearing their butthurt cries of anguish.

Furthermore, Gabe Newell reveals the only quote that was to be spoken by Gordon Freeman during the game as: “You guys know I’m gay, right?” before he starts cackling maniacally, mocking the strained, disappointed faces of nerds everywhere.

He is later attacked by the horde of fanboys, dragged out to the street and torn apart by their bare hands, his remains force-fed to the Valve developers, who are then taken hostage and forced to develop the game at gunpoint.

It turns out so much better than expected.

Addendum:

Okay, maybe 2012 wasn’t all that bad. Maybe I got some of my short stories and my very first book published and maybe I had a great time keeping up this blog. Maybe I just like being a cynic, because that’s the language of the Internet.

This is my last 2012 article and even though I know there isn’t that many of you reading this out right now (what with the apocalypse having decimated you and all), I’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for to reading my blog!

What I Think About Stuff-this Is Not A Nerd Rant

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From left to right: Degenerate space horrors, Alien Policemen, Space Nazis (in Exterminating brown and Assimilating Silver), Rational Octopus People, Self-Replicating Miscalculation, the One Good Dalek and the man from Gallifrey himself, courtesy of SlightlyTwisted.

This is not a Nerd Rant Or Yes, it fucking Is!

UrbanDictionary.com defines nerd rage as:

          1) When a gamer becomes upset upon not getting his/her way or seeing a noob playing badly.

Oh thank God I suck at video games, then. I don’t play well with other people and when I do play on my own, I cheat up the ass

Because I didn’t pay 700 euros for a pc only so I could fucking lose to games I bought.

2) When someone who is especially well-versed in a certain area of academia sees someone who is not as well-versed exhibiting a rather large amount of brain-farting and idiocy in regards to said area of academia.

Also excluded, since I am hardly versed in as much areas of academic knowledge as I’d wish I were and am therefore unable to make someone cry over virtue of my higher knowledge quotient

i.e. saying lots of stuff in rapid succession + yelling= intelligence (more on that in another article)

3) When a nerd sees a popular science-fiction movie, comic book, or other media source improperly quoted, misrepresented, or otherwise flamed.
 

Well shit, Urban Dictionary, you fucking got me square in the balls. I’m guilty of this a thousand times over.

But first, a chance for rebuttal via confessing, blog-style!

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.” Albert Camus, putting it like a boss.

I had never experienced this deep, emotionally troubling state of nerd fixation in my life, until recently. Sure I like Star Wars (and was saddened by how its own creator fucked it up the ass) and I’m a fan of a number of comic book and fantasy series that have caught my eye and set my imagination on fire, but for the most part I always had some control and could approach them with at least the minimum of objectivity.

Except for that one time when my brother trolled me by saying that Arya Stark had been killed and I almost punched him in the face.

Sure, some series like Game of Thrones did push me into the fringes of Nerd Rage, but I had never once felt honestly devastated or saddened by the turn a series might take both in terms of quality and in content.

And then, a friend of mine told me I should watch Doctor Who and I made the joyous mistake of heeding his advice for the very first time in my life.

And it…was…GLORIOUS!

Soulja  Boy can’t dance like me-Actual David Tennant quote.

Doctor Who is a BBC TV series that’s been running for 46 years and is television and fictional history in the making. It’s the tale of the Doctor, an alien from the planet Gallifrey, home of the Time Lords, who traverses time and space and saves the day every single day of his life.

Now, Doctor Who wasn’t exactly an unknown, nerd-specific character here in Greece, no sir. It might have taken us 10 years to pick up exactly what the heck were those Transformer thingamajigies those ‘Mericans kept talking ‘bout and we might have only have stumbled upon Spiderman in the 80’s, but we knew our Doctor, yes sir!

This face and that music made me shit my pants when I was a kid.

I remember watching my very first Doctor Who episode, The Genesis of the Daleks and hiding under the living room couch whenever I heard the Dalek’s screaming accusations against everything with a pulse and uncontained inside an armor that looked like a peperpot armed with a mixer and an all-purpose plunger.

You know, for 5 pounds and two shepherd’s pies between the entire production crew, the guys who came up with the Daleks did a marvelous job!

I watched Dr Who again this very year, after having sporadically watched a couple episodes now and then, always scoffing at the low production value of the new series and pitting the snazziness of a 46-year old scifi series that put the “FUCK YEAH” in time travel against the cool, sleek, CGI exterior of Star Wars.

Yes, I was an idiot.

When I saw Dr Who this time, I did it by taking two things into account:

          1) The series’ budget was shit and so were the effects:

BBC special effects being horrible or sub-par has always been a staple of every series it’s ever made. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a video that the BBC might have blocked for a short while by the time of publication, because they’re kind silly that way:

                  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WBIajuSEq3Y

As a result of point Number one, though…

          2) The series compensates for its terrible effects by far superior writing, performances and stories

Because when you’re a cult-hit TV show that’s been out of it for nearly a decade and you know you don’t look as pretty as those sluts over at Lucas’ studios and you need to regain your lost audience and their grandchildren

Because if you knew Dr Who in 2005 before there was an Internet, you’re pretty old by now.

Would be to present well crafted and interesting stories.

          3) Remember what I said about performances? Well here’s two clips of the first two new Doctors in the series, kicking your ass with acting:

Here’s Richard Eccleston, soothing an old woman while breaking your heart:

 

And here’s David Tennant, in an acting battle with Patrick Stewart, dressed stupidly for the occassion:

BBC took a huge bet upon resetting Doctor Who and went through the procedure that made the original run of the series great. It had excellent leads, impossible stories and some fantastic direction that really set my brain on fire.

And then, Matt Smith came.

I name thee Antichrist.

Well, not Matt Smith. In and of himself, Matt Smith couldn’t have done so much damage to this show. But Matt Smith became the ‘Facebook Doctor’, the vanilla, handsome bastard that can’t act half as well as his predecessors (Shakespearean actors both), working with dumbed down storylines written by a man who neither gets nor wants to get Time Travelling and how awesome works.

The current Doctor, though no fault of his own, stars in a series that is a watered-down, dumbed-down version of the previous one that I fell in love with.

Where on one hand there were beings that only existed when you did not look at them, alien empires, the incarnation of evil, the abduction of Earth, an army of all-assimilating and all-encompassing man-machines and the best horror 10 pounds sterling can buy, the new Doctor Who has  this:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you try to dumb down a series so you can draw ‘the youngsters’. You do stupid shit, in the name of becoming trendy or trippy or to make fun of the old tropes, but end up fucking everything up.

I was originally going to play the devil’s advocate and try to defend the Doctor Who series that has been built around Matt Smith, citing the influx of new people that now watch the series, but you know what? I won’t. Wanna know why?

BECAUSE I COULDN’T FUCKING WATCH MATT SMITH’S RUN FOR EVEN A SINGLE FUCKING SEASON.

When I realized that the one scifi series I had loved had been tonally ruined, I jumped the hate-wagon and I will not climb down until Matt Smith has either been replaced by David Tennant

Yes, it is stupid of me to even think that would happen or that would have even been rational.

Or that the series stops being so goddamn stupid and starts doing its best to respect its audience by giving them the excellently written and brilliantly presented stories it used to.

But until that happens, here’s me doing something about it: I recently read that David Tennant is rumored to return to Doctor Who on account of the series’ 50^th anniversary. Now I know that if this is true then Russel T. Davies has already creamed his pants twice over

Being the man who single-handedly made Dr Who awesome again and all that

Which means that he’s way too tired to come up with a good segway to restore the previous Doctor back in his place, without seriously violating the continuity the series set up.

So, Mr Davies, this is my pitch on

MY AWESOME IDEA ABOUT THE SPECIAL THAT RESTORES THE TENTH DOCTOR IN THE BEST NON-PLOT HOLE-Y WAY POSSIBLE

(Or it’s not a fanfic, but goddamn you’re trying)

First, to explain the basic premise of returning to the 10^th Doctor: it is a trope of the show that, while you can go back in Time through the use of the relative technology, you cannot go back in your personal timeline, which means that while you can, for example, visit the fall of Troy and punch Adolf Hitler in the ‘nads, you cannot tell yourself that investing in HD ready DVD players is going to be a terrible idea.

  Hey fuck you, man! It’s a cheaper, more viable alternative to full HD, which will not be affordable for at least a decade!

Another important trope of the Doctor Who series concerning time travel is that certain instances or events in time are ‘time-locked’ which means that if the circumstances that allow these events to come to pass are met, then these events are unavoidable and inalterable.

For example: ridin’ your sparkling new time machine, you go back to the Rattskeller, so you can kick Hitler in the balls halfway through his first speech, aiming to defame him so he will lose his chance to rise to power (yes, your plan kind of sucks).

But World War II is an event that is not only major, but has also served to change mankind’s history forever by giving us access to atomic power. Which means that any and all attempts on your behalf to kick Hitler in the balls will fail or even if they succeed, they turn out not to have made any difference whatsoever.

Lastly, back to the point of personal timelines, you can never even talk to yourself or even return to your former self, since that would constitute a paradox that would cause a titanic backlash that would envelop the entire Universe in an attempt for Time to compensate for your bullshit paradoxical behavior.

So, from the get-go, it is impossible for the series to return to a previous Doctor. Even if it could (say, if the Doctor decided to restore to a previous save state and keep playing the game with his current xp and items)

So he could unlock a sexier outfit for Rose, for example…

It would be an inconceivably selfish and terrible thing for him to do, completely contradicting his character. However, in the course of the series, the Doctor has been known to get swept up in Time Vortices, trapped in temporal anomalies

And in one case, teaming up with his past selves to save the Universe on his 20^th anniversary.

Which means that backsies, though unusual, are canonical in the Doctor Who continuum. This is good, because it gives me that inch that I will use to stretch my credibility into the following scenario, but then there’s the very next point:

The Tenth Doctor’s death.

The Tenth Doctor’s death was built as this great, monumental thing that signified not only the wrapping up of every loose end set up by the Bad Wolf and the Master story arcs, but also ended the universe that the original series had set up.

In layman’s terms, the Tenth Doctor’s death was sad. If you want to bring him back, you risk ruining that wonderful sadness and also alienating the multitudes of new people into the current Doctor Who.

The scenario I will be describing deals with the merging of both Doctors’ timelines into one cohesive whole, brought about both by the Eleventh Doctor’s timeline abuse (like when the bastard talks to himself and creates a series of paradoxes as a result) in order to avoid alienating fans on both sides.

WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A SPOILER-HEAVY SECTOR. PLEASE COVER YOUR EARS MAKE ALARM NOISES WITH YOUR MOUTH UNTIL THE END OF THIS ARTICLE.

That said, I give you…THE CRUCIBLE

Bwooo-oooo weeee-ooo wididly wididly wididly woom!

The Crucible is a three-part special with a threefold purpose:

            1) Restore the tone of the series to its original form

  

            2) Allow both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor to merge their timelines into one cohesive whole 

           3) Do away with the silly, trippy crap that was added mostly because the writers equate younger audiences with stupidity or something.

In order for it to work, the specials needs to reference the most important, iconic parts of each Doctor’s run. That means that we need the Eleventh Doctor’s Weeping Angels, Professor River Song and the Tenth Doctor’s Master and the Time War. Primarily, these need to be done to appease both sides of the fans, but also to allow for the epic disaster-cluster that will allow this special to come about in the first place. Also, Daleks.

In the interest of avoiding a gigantic article and a fanscript (which I have sworn myself to never do ever again)

Why yes, I have written a fanfic starring 30 different characters with a length of 100,000 words. No, you may never see it.

I will outline the setup instead: according to Dr Who cannon, the Time War (the war between Time Lord and Dalek that exists in its own time loop in constant repetition that is to end with the annihilation of Gallifrey) has already once broken into the current continuum, but stopped. Also, the Master (Doctor Who’s archenemy, also a Time Lord) has been trapped within it.

Now, the Eleventh Doctor’s Weeping Angels (a considerably powerful foe, creatures that feed off temporal energy) have already faced extinction once already at the hands of the Doctor but have escaped by the granite of their teeth. An event as monumental as the Time War spilling out into the universe would allow them to restore themselves to their original strength.

The event of the Time War spilling out in all its destructive glory is a temporal anomaly of such significance it should send out ripples across Time and Space. An epic foreshadowing is in order. The death-cry of planets, the swan song of quasars, history twisting and turning, becoming askew.

And a strange hour, set between 5pm and teatime, when nothing is quite the way it seems…

The Doctor keeps finding himself in strange situations, familiarly conversing with beings that he has not met yet, trapped inside the Odd Hour, where he receives warning of a coming disaster. Caught up as he is in the process of saving the Universe, he misses all the great clues until he receives a warning from River Song, who has been trapped inside the Time War herself by the end of this story arc.

This serves as a means to show that Time is not only breaking up, but as a harbinger of doom for the Eleventh Doctor, who seeks to avoid this event but finds himself drawn nearer to it every minute instead.

Meanwhile, the Weeping Angels (in reference to the episode Blink) have commenced the invasion of Earth since ancient times. By the time the disaster draws near, they have infiltrated human society by disguising themselves as statues

Counting down the days at the rate of a thousand sunsets a second…

By the time the Doctor catches wind of what is going on, the Weeping Angels are already on the move, picking off mankind. Amy Pond is one of the first victims of the invasion, sent to a future time by a fluke of the coming anomaly, where she meets professor River Song (now a survivor of the Time War disaster) and attempt to contact the Doctor.

But how will the Time War spill out, exactly? The series has told us that it exists in itself and cannot be unleashed. But what happens if one of them, fearing for his life, decides to take the entire Universe with him in a vain attempt to save his life?

Doom! Du-du-doom! Doom! Du-du-doom!

Last time we saw the Master, he had voluntarily fought the President of Gallifrey and flung himself inside the Time War. We also knew that he was not an actual veteran of the War and that he was unprepared for the horrors that the Daleks and Time Lords had unleashed upon each other during their centuries of conflict.

This scenario assumes that the Master failed to kill the President, but escaped capture. He has been stuck inside Hell, looking for a way to escape the timelock and avoid certain death. Thus, the Master decides to take drastic measures.

So the Master wants to escape because he’s scared shitless. He hopes that the anomaly will draw the Doctor’s attention and perhaps he can steal his ship so he can get away, no longer caring about the consequences. He’s seen terrible things in that place, nightmares looping on and on and on.

So at this point in the story, the Weeping Angels, having fed off their victims on Earth, are converging on the anomaly that, due to budget constraints, takes place over London.

Worst. Place. Ever.

Feeding off the coming disaster, the creatures grow in number and power, perpetuating the disaster that has been engineered by the Master. River song and Amy try to warn the Doctor, but by that time, it is already too late.

The first taste of the Time War begins to leak out into the Universe.

What this? This is just hor d’oeuvres.

The weapons of the Daleks leak out first. The Nightmare Child, a sentient black hole that screams with the voice of drowning infants. The Skarro Degradations, gigantic Dalek dreadnoughts that eat planets and babble blasphemous incantations, spitting nuclear fire from their mouths.

The Dalek fleet proper slips through, overtaking Earth in instants, locking themselves in battle with the Weeping Angels. The Solar System is set ablaze, then holds it breath as the Time Lords begin their exodus.

The Could-Have-Been King and the army of Neverwheres, a legion of beings comprised of moments in time that could have been. Continuum-vores, Time Lord weapons that eat history and excrete paradoxes, enter the fray.

The Doctor finds himself trapped in the war between the greatest forces of the Universe once again. Clashing with the Master (who attempts to steal his TARDIS), the Doctor decides to end this.

He directs River Song and Amy from their point in the future, leading them to devastated Gallifrey that is being evacuated by the Time Lords. The women try to warn him that the future is ending, but the Doctor will have none of it. They try to explain that this was the bold move that finally killed him, but the Doctor isn’t exactly known for his caution.

Now, if Doctor Who and Michio Kaku have taught me anything, if you want to fix a hole in space time, you need a really big explosion.

Arigato, Professor Kaku.

But this is an anomaly that threatens to annihilate Time. This means that it needs power and to be specific, power far greater than anything the Time Lords could have to offer. So how did the Master do it?

By tapping into the Nightmare Child. Using the power of a black hole without the Dalek’s knowledge, he allowed the time loop that kept the War trapped to be undone. So now, the Doctor needs to cross the fleet of the Dalek, avoid fire by his own kind and fly inside the ultimate Dalek Weapon so he can make thing right.

The Master overpowers the Doctor and is about to fly off with the TARDIS, when he hears the message by Amy Pond:

“The future is disappearing! Doctor, can you hear me? There’s nothing here! Doctor?”

The Master realizes that this action has been his greatest folly. He will not survive this. In fact, he will take the entire universe with him. It’s what leads him to help the Doctor and team up with him to save, well…everything.

Now imagine, if you will: a War that will end all Wars, spilling out across Time and Space. Lasers blasting the living crap out of everything in sight. Weapons that tear into reality herself and use her guts as makeshift weapons and among it all…

A tiny blue box, our last and only hope.

The TARDIS heads toward the nightmare Child, battered and bloodied, trailing fire. The warring factions, having realized exactly what is going on, turn their attention against it in an attempt to stop it.

The Master looks up at the Doctor, as Amy screams from her point in the future, reality unraveling around her:

“Doctor, what is going on? What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry.”

The Master goes pale as he realizes how close to death he is. In a moment of cowardice, he reaches out to wrest the controls from the Doctor, screaming:

“I don’t want to die! Not like this, not with you!”

The Doctor flies into the Nightmare Child and crashes into the Paradox matrix inside it, smashing it. Both he and the Master are thrown out into the Child’s event horizon and struggle to reach the interior of the TARDIS. The Doctor tries to save the Master, but his enemy swats his hand away, letting himself get dragged down into the gravity well instead.

Around them, the Time War anomaly collapses. The forces of Time Lord and Dalek cease to be. The timeline begins to unravel, history folding like origami and the Eleventh Doctor’s life passes before his eyes. His life becomes blurred, changing.

Amy Pond and River Song are restored to their original positions, since the future they had been sent to by the Angels no longer exists. The present becomes re arranged and the Doctor stares with horror as the TARDIS is trapped inside this flux, its own field the only thing keeping the change at bay.

This is a chance to show the Doctor truly and utterly scared. He does not know what will happen. He knows that he isn’t going to die, but how much of him is there going to be left? For better or worse, he likes his identity but to be lost, to be swept under the rug like this disaster is more than he can bear.

It’s only when Amy and River Song restore communications with him that the Doctor realizes that, even if he is lost, at least life will go on. He flings open the doors of the TARDIS and lets Time do its work.

“I’m ready. Do your worst.”

The Tenth and Eleventh Doctor’s timelines merge, change, flow back to the point of regeneration and at the very last moment, as the Tenth Doctor begins his transformation, the effect is turned back. He stands there, awash with light and sees his future self dissipating, as he falls to his knees and collapses on the floor, exhausted and very, very scared.

On the screen, we see a flicker of Amy and River Song. Outside, the Doctor has landed on Earth, in Antarctica. He looks at the world around him and knows that everything has changed. He can taste the historical distortions settling and he feels scared to step outside his ship.

It’s during that moment of silence and terror that the reborn Tenth Doctor hears the mad cackle of the Master coming from the screens. He barely has enough time to react, as this happens:

Roll credits

ATTENTION: YOU MAY NOW UNPLUG YOUR EARS AND CEASE MAKING ALARM NOISES WITH YOUR MOUTH. THANK YOU.

So, this is my pitch. If anyone reading this has any comments, suggestions or simply needs to point out my gigantic plot holes, feel free to point so out in the comments. I enjoyed this little ride and I am really looking forward to doing so again, to be honest.

Addendum:

To ask for a series to undo its work is irrational. I do not like the Matt Smith run of Doctor Who and this is an idea of mine intended to restore a great actor who made the Doctor awesome, but it would be against my personal responsibility as a writer to, say, undo three years’ worth of adventures for the sake of my raging fanboy butthurt.

It has been proven, time and time again, that series or franchises that cave in to popular demand and do their damnedest to soothe the cries of the zealot multitudes end up turning into a jumble of fanservice and incoherency.

So, from me to you, BBC people who might be reading this: please do not bring David Tennant back. It hurts me to thinkt hat the best Doctor won’t be returning to the show, but that would violate both your continuity as well as your credibility. Instead, focus on making the show as deep and inspired as before and I promise I’ll do my damnedest to stop being such a bitch.

A man who only recently saw the light but loved it just as much,

Konstantine Paradias