The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story)

The Curse of Fatal Death was a parody mini-episode created as part of 1999's Red Nose Day.

Synopsis
The Master corners the Doctor and Emma on Tersurus, prepared to unleash the deadly vengeance of deadly revenge!

Plot
The Master pursues the Doctor in his TARDIS, maniacally bellowing that the Doctor's certain death awaits him on Zaston IV. The Doctor, from his own TARDIS, replies that the Master really ought to learn to turn off his speaker before he blabs his entire plan, and that he wants to meet him on the planet Tersurus to give him an important piece of news.

The Doctor and his assistant, Emma, land in a vast, empty castle on Tersurus. He explains that the Tersurons were a kindly, peace-loving race, but shunned and abhorred due to their communicating solely through precisely modulated farting. They destroyed themselves after discovering fire. The Master pins them to the wall with energy pulses, and having arrived a century earlier to bribe the castle's architect, prepares to subject them to the Spikes of Doom. However the Doctor had anticipated this move and bribed the architect first. Instead they find themselves relaxing in the Sofa of Reasonable Comfort. However, the Master declares that he anticipated this, and bribed the architect even earlier, and drops a giant block on their heads. The Doctor and Emma emerge from a door in the (hollow) block, of course having arrived even earlier...

Emma interrupts and prompts the Doctor to announce what he has come to say: he and Emma are in love, and the Doctor plans to retire from travelling through time and space (having saved every planet in the Universe a minimum of twenty-seven times), and settle down in domestic bliss.

Nauseated by this prospect, the Master announces that he will go back in time, buy the architect an expensive dinner, place a lever next to where he is standing, and a trap door where the Doctor and Emma are standing. He prepares to plunge them into the vast and disgusting sewers of Tersurus. However when he pulls said lever, the trap door opens under his own feet, the Doctor having bought the architect an expensive dinner earlier. As they go to leave, the front doors burst open and the Master appears, significantly aged, having spent three hundred twelve years climbing through the sewers, locating his TARDIS and travelling back in time to the current day. Accompanying him are the Daleks (the only creatures not repulsed by the Master's smell, having no noses). The Master boasts that his body have been augmented by Dalek technology: he now has a plunger in place of a right hand, though Emma points out that the Master doesn't know what it can do. The Daleks prepare to exterminate them, but the Master decides he will kill them himself. He charges forward, but the Doctor steps aside and the Master plunges straight through the trap door again. He comes in again, another three hundred twelve years older. The Daleks pursue the Doctor and Emma through the numerous (and very similar looking) corridors, but one Dalek accidentally bumps into the Master, causing him to fall through the trap door yet again...

The Daleks have captured the Doctor and Emma rather than exterminating them ("Why?" asks Emma, "I'll explain later," replies the Doctor) and tied them to chairs (the presence of which on a Dalek ship is also questioned by Emma; a Dalek replies "We will explain, later."). They've also restored the Master to his original age, and augmented him further... Dalek sensor bumps on his chest (etheric beam locators... and they're very firm), though the Doctor chafes the Master over the sensor's resemblance to breasts. The Master announces that in exchange, he has given the Daleks the secret to controlling a Zectronic energy beam, which will give them power over the entire universe ("How?" asks Emma, "I'll explain later," replies the Doctor). The Master charges up the beam, but the Dalek Supreme whispers to the Doctor that they plan to exterminate the Master after the beam is active. The Doctor realises that both he and the Master speak fluent Tersuran, so he farts a warning to him. The Master speaks the message out loud as he receives it for the benefit of the audience, but in doing so alerts the Daleks that he now knows their plan, leading them to blast the Doctor and the beam generator. The generator, now overloading, is beyond the Master's capabilities to repair; only the Doctor can fix it. The Doctor tells Emma "I love you" (in Tersuran, with the Master translating) before regenerating into a quite handsome, if a bit vain, persona. He confirms that Emma is still very much interested.

The Daleks beg the Doctor to help deactivate the Zectronic beam generator in exchange for his life, to which he agrees as a perfect way to finish his "career", but an explosion causes him to regenerate again, this time into a shy persona, very nervous around girls (especially the Master, with his oddly-placed etheric beam locators). He goes back to try once again to deactivate the beam, when another burst of energy causes him to regenerate yet again. The new Doctor, very handsome and charming indeed, is rather embarrassed that he wasted three bodies simply because he forgot to unplug the generator first. The crisis appears to be over, and Emma is quite looking forward to getting to know this new Doctor, when a residual burst of pure Zectronic energy knocks him down. With the Zectronic energy preventing his regeneration process from happening, the Doctor appears to die permanently. Both the Master and the Daleks, to honour the Doctor's supreme sacrifice, resolve to permanently forswear evil. Yet to everyone's amazement, the Doctor's features begin to change, and he regenerates, but this time into a very buxom woman. Emma, alas, doesn't swing that way, so the wedding is off. The new Doctor is quite excited to discover that her sonic screwdriver has three settings, but then she and the Master lock eyes, the two express their mutual attraction, and go off together.

Cast

 * "Ninth Doctor" - Rowan Atkinson
 * "Tenth Doctor" - Richard E. Grant
 * "Eleventh Doctor" - Jim Broadbent
 * "Twelfth Doctor" - Hugh Grant
 * "Thirteenth Doctor" - Joanna Lumley
 * "Emma" - Julia Sawalha
 * "Seventeenth Master" - Jonathan Pryce
 * Dalek Voices - Roy Skelton, Dave Chapman

Crew

 * Note: The usual definitions of Special Effects and Visual Effects were flipped around on this episode, meaning that The Mill were credited with providing the Special Effects, and Andy McVean with the Visual Effects. For the sake of consistency with other post-1996 productions, they are presented here as they would be credited on the BBC Wales series.

Story notes

 * The TARDIS console, TARDIS walls, and Dalek props were provided by a group of fans who, at the time, were using them for the fan-film Devious.
 * Joanna Lumley becomes the first woman to play the Doctor in an officially licenced (if non-canonical) production. The idea of the Doctor changing sexes during regeneration is not new, having been postulated as early as Tom Baker's time on the series.
 * Richard E. Grant played a different (and equally non-canonical) version of the Doctor in Scream of the Shalka.
 * The official series revisited the idea of the Doctor experiencing romance with his companion with Rose Tyler and River Song, as well as with Madame de Pompadour. Moffat wrote the stories introducing the last two examples.
 * This episode was written by Steven Moffat, who would write for the official, canonical version of the show beginning in 2005. He wrote several acclaimed scripts for the 2005- revival and in 2008 was appointed the show's new executive producer. Coincidentally, his scripts included the romantic relationships with River and Madame de Pompadour cited, above.
 * In an episode of Doctor Who Confidential, Russell T Davies claims that Hugh Grant's Doctor is one of his favourites.
 * In his column for Doctor Who Magazine #417, Moffat says Richard Curtis, creator of Blackadder and later to write an episode of Series 5 of Doctor Who, was the person who invited Moffat to write this spoof.
 * The opening credits and logo from the 1974-80 era are reused. During the original broadcast on Red Nose Day, the spherical Red Nose logo was superimposed over the "O" in "WHO."
 * Special effects footage of the TARDIS from the opening credits of the 1996 TV movie is reused for the opening scene in which the Master views the exterior of the Doctor's TARDIS on his scanner.
 * This was the final television Doctor Who performance by vocal artist Roy Skelton, who had done voice work on the series since The War Machines and is commonly associated with providing Dalek vocals.

Ratings
To be added.

Myths

 * This production is often assumed to have been a Children in Need charity event. This confusion likely stems from the 2005 series' dedication to CIN. In reality, this serial was made for Comic Relief.
 * The title of the story is often misnamed The Curse of the Fatal Death.

Filming locations
To be added.

Production errors

 * At several points, the Dalek operators can be seen in the section below the eyestalk.
 * While following the Master, several Daleks repeatedly collide.

Continuity

 * The Master allied himself with the Daleks in DW: Frontier in Space.
 * In DW: The Deadly Assassin, Chancellor Goth rescued The Master from the planet Tersurus. The redundant title of "Fatal Death" is also a parody of that serial's tautological title (an assassin is, by definition, deadly).
 * During The Taking of Planet 5, the Eighth Doctor faces a creature called a Memeovore, a devourer of concept, which is apparently responsible for the Tersurans' unusual means of communication when it deprives them of the concept of other means of expressing themselves.

Home video and audio releases

 * In a likely tongue-in-cheek manner, BBC Video released The Curse of Fatal Death in September 1999 and treated it like any other Doctor Who story. The VHS release contained a two-part version with a new opening for Part One, plus a "Making of" feature and several other Who comedy skits which had been produced in the past. As the special was never broadcast in North America, it is a video exclusive for that audience.
 * The Australian release (right) used the diamond-logo and 1990s "Classic Series" fonts; the North American release used the current "Classic Series" logo and fonts.
 * The full story has also been released in the UK iTunes Store as part of the Best of Comic Relief series. Money from each purchase is donated to the charity.
 * As of yet, no DVD release has occurred. The fact that BBC Video is in the process of reissuing all its VHS releases to that format, however, suggests the possibility of a future release of this nature.