“Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet?”

Back in Doctor Who's Wilderness Years, there was a substrate of the (adult) fandom who decided to start taking advantage of the quaint way copyright of British television works: individual writers retain full rights to the scripts they wrote and characters therein introduced. 

And this meant that the enthusiastic fans could dig up the geriatric genius who'd written the first story with Sontarans or Autons in it, and persuade him to give them the rights to make an Sontaran/Auton/whatever television story. Of course, they couldn't use those elements of Who owned by the BBC (the Doctor himself, the TARDIS, the theme song, the Daleks), but that didn't stop a wave of spinoffs — which were, in essence, licensed fanfilms; certainly, there's no doubt that the type of fellow who do today's best fanfilms would have been doing these spin-offs at the time — from being released on home video. 

Sometimes, they would also persuade one of the iconic Who actors to lend a hand; they played their original part if rights were available, and if not,… they made the film anyway and changed a few cosmetic details to placate BBC lawyers. For example, there was a whole series of direct-to-video films starring Colin Baker, who was obviously playing the Sixth Doctor, except he was only ever referred to as “the Stranger”, he didn't have the patchwork coat, and the camera cut away whenever he and his friendly female companion headed for their perpetually-offscreen time machine. They occasionally used this same trick for the monsters whose rights they couldn't scrounge up; there was a series of films featuring the Cyberons, metallic, emotionless alien cyborgs who are so very obviously the Cybermen, except without the handlebars. 

They made a book about this stuff, of which this is

the cover illustration, bringing together a bunch of “licensed fanfilm”

 characters; front-and-center and from left to right are the retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

played by Nicholas Courtney in Downtime, a Cyberon, Sophie Aldred as not-Ace,

and Sylvester McCoy as Totally-Not-The-Seventh-Doctor-We-Swear. 

A lot of these 'DTV spin-offs' were produced by the comically-titled BBV Productions (nothing to do with the BBC: the BBV stands for Bill & Brenda's Videotapes, y'see, Bill and Brenda Baggs being the daring entrepreneurs behind the whole thing). And in 2001, shortly before they went out of business (Bill Baggs went on to become a health guru, of all things, I am told), BBV produced a very odd, 30-minutes-long, home-video-released self-parody by the title of Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet?. 

The story brought together the licensed Autons and Sontarans, and the unlicensed Cyberons, all chasing after Sylvester McCoy in a patchwork coat he'd curiously go on to wear in a 2004 reprise of the Seventh Doctor character, though here the conceit is that he's not dressed as the 7th Doctor, which just goes to show how flimsy these “no, we're not in breach of copyright, what on Earth are you talking about?” arguments usually were. 

Thing is, as the title might have clued you in already, this is precisely what DYHALTSTP? is all about. See, McCoy is here playing “the Chiropodist” (or “Foot Doctor” for philistines), a “Chrono-Duke” hwo travels around the universe in a time-traveling washing machine, and fights evil with his “sonic spoons”. Due to being “unlicensed”, he is under hot pursuit by “the Licensor” (Nigel Fairs), an incredibly campy Master parody who is head of the Licensed Reality CorporationTM. The Foot Doctor is helped by an enthusiastic chap going by “the Salesman” (Mark Donovan), who came to him under the belief that he was the real Doctor wanting to become his new companion. He is noticeably disappointed when he realizes that the Foot Doctor “is BBV” (yes, they actually say that) but stays anyway, and explains that he sells hackneyed plot devices, of which he packs a whole suitcase.

Not factoring into anything to any real degree except to pad out the runtime and add a few gags are a duo of Cyberons who have infiltrated Earth and are now living in a house. They interact with their human neighbors a little bit and moan about not haveing “ears” (=Cybermen handles) like they would do if they were licensed. There is also a Sontaran, the reason for the presence of whom is never made entirely clear; unlike the Cyberons, he's explicitly not in the Licensor's employ. I dunno. 

So is it any good? Ah, hm, well, about that. See, this metafictional gag-filled romp packed full of easter eggs and references is supposed to be just the kind of thing I like, and make no mistake, Paul Ebbs & Gareth Preston (both pull double-duties, as the stuntmen in the Cyberon and Auton costumes, a trapping so very typical of fanfilms today) turned in a very solid script. With the exception of a couple of dubious bits with the Sontaran, and one or two of the Cyberon gags, it is a masterful parody. The intent that this be a kind of “Monty Python does Doctor Who” thing is very clear, and the presence of a (terrible) animation interlude with Rassilon only adds to that feeling. I also feel like Nigel Fairs in his second part (the Cyberon's human neighbor Geoff) is pulling a rather poor Graham Chapman impression, but I could be wrong about that. (It is at the very least a poor performance, that much is certain.)

As for the actors, they too aren't to blame. Sylvester McCoy is Sylvester McCoy, and therefore a joy to watch, though he flip-flops between just playing the damn Seventh Doctor, and returning to the exaggerated pantomime of the early days of his pre-Who career; he's great at both but it can be a bit jarring. Nigel Fairs is pretty excruciating as Geoff, but it's a noble failure in trying to be funny, not the wooden acting of an amateur; his Licensor is a much better turn — he's a lot of fun to watch. Not quite as fun as Jonathan Pryce's equivalent character in The Curse of Fatal Death, of course; nothing can top that. And even at self-proclaimed “top-campiness”, Fairs's Licensor isn't actually quite as hammy as the fully-canonical Soldeed from The Horns of Nimon. Still, if we had to judge every hammy parody villain by the standards of Graham Crowden and Jonathan Pryce, there are precious few who could be called hammy at all. The other actors are good without being stand-outs (Rupert Booth, a noted fanfilm Doctor, here plays a Sontaran; he is as far as I know the only other actor aside from McCoy who's somehow “notable”.) The effects, surprisingly, aren't too bad either. There's some pretty good CGI by early-2000's-home-video standards in there. Nothing fancy, but it works well enough. 

No, the one, glaring, fatal flaw of DYHALTSTP? is the direction and editing. It is simply wretched, and I can't conceive of how Bill Baggs ever thought he could get away with — that. Incompetent editing that doesn't even have most fanfilms' decency to stick to long, basic shots and instead tries to frequently shift angles is the plague of this movie, mangling joke after joke and sucking anything like comedy timing out of something that could not possibly survive without it. The simple, funny idea that as he steps out of his washing-machine TARDIS, the Chiropodist is sprayed with clean laundry, is rendered almost incomprehensible to the watcher by some of the poorest intercutting of shots in the history of cinema. Bah! Bah! And bah! 

Of course, there are gags which even incompetent editing and sound design cannot bungle, and there are some sequences where the film rises to the levels of competency. It's not unwatchable — just nowhere near as funny as it could have been with better direction. 

In the end, I would say that I do recommend DYHALTSTP? to Who fans, especially if they're at least mildly aware of BBV. It's a good chance to see Sylvester McCoy do his thing once more, in a less bleak context than the latter half of his televised tenure, and also to play a fun game of ‘Spot the Reference’. Just don't go in expecting the Douglas Adams-level sci-fi gigglefest that summaries (and, indeed, the DVD backcover blurb) might lead you to believe it is… even though it was this close to being precisely that. Oh well. In the words of disappointed Doctor Who fans everywhere (and everywhen), there's always Big Finish. 

Post-Scriptum:

Also, I kinda like the theme song. It's obviously meant to remind you of the official Who tune, but I quite like it in its own right. Gets stuck in your head just as well as the real thing, too.