Here,
for
the impatient, less dedicated, and uninterested, is the storyline for
the
New Soap, complete with appropriate links.
A quicker version, with just the pertinent pivotal plot-points, can be found here. We get on the narrative bus in this prequel episode: Once upon a time, long long ago, in a galaxy different to the one you are in now, there were two super heroes: A/V Woman and Conman. They upheld the law, assisted by the Four Postmen of the Appocalypse: Darth Unpleasant, Darth Castrate, Darth Walsh and Darth Leon. But the philosopher Yoga, and his three Zen Flamenco Dancer groupies staged a coup and founded the POG Institute, stealing many of the secret powers of the Four Postmen, and reducing A/V Woman and Conman to small time detectives. When his previous POG master, Nick Brunswick, is killed, Jack Barrett is placed under the care of Omra and his wife. But Jack is less than happy with his lot, and is seduced to the bleak side by Darth Unpleasant. Meanwhile Omra is cloned in order to do two jobs at once for the understaffed POG council. His first self is to travel to Birmingham to plead for the assistance of the Zen Flamenco Dancers, while his second self is to round up a plague of sheep brought about by Darth Unpleasant and to locate Unpleasant and bring him to justice. Another person out to kill Unpleasant is the bounty-hunter and former Postman of the Appocalypse, Leon, and he and Omra eventually find themselves in Unpleasant's lair, fighting it out with Unpleasant and Jack (now operating under the pseudonym Sidor). Meanwhile, the other Omra is driven insane by Birmingham, and kills the Zen Flamenco Dancers, stealing their sacred Crystal of Enderon before destroying the city. Leon accidentally gets cloned a vast amount of times, and everyone is forced to escape from Darth Unpleasant's lair. Unpleasant consequently orders the rebuilding of a new, bigger Birmingham. The two
Omras fight over a reactor shaft and one dies, while Siddor's
ex-girlfriend,
Queen
Pate, finds the Crystal of Enderon, and gives it to Princess Rae.
The
Leons populate Glecon 7, and send an observer down to Earth to learn
about
human life.
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I V E
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Leon infiltrates a hall of residence at York University, 1998, where Stew, Jim, Alex, Chris, Babysham, Midge and Tomy live under the watchful eye of eccentric porter "Economics". Everything is going relatively smoothly until their cleaner, Barnie, is discovered dead. At this point things go very wrong indeed. Babysham is revealed as a malfunctioning robot, Leon is an alien observer, Alex has been turned into a goose by the evil Biology Department, and Chris has cloned himself. In the chaos of the moment, with Babysham embarking on a killing spree, Midge flicks the auto-destruct button in the kitchen and consequently blows everything up. |
O U G H T |
MI7, a local
security
agency, have watched the events and are dismayed by the explosion, as
they
were grooming the occupants for MI7 training. So they decide to bring
Stew,
Jim, Leon, Alex, Chris and Midge back to life,
along with their inside man, Ant. Jim is employed as a computer
whizkid,
Chris gets a job as a secret agent, Midge becomes a starship
crewmember,
and the other three are but unquestioning pawns in a yet to be revealed
grand plan.
Jim, Stew, Leon and Alex move into a new house provided for them by MI7, and settle into the drudgery of everyday life. Meanwile, Chris is sent on a top secret mission to Vienna. Unfortunately he stumbles upon his anti-matter persona and causes a cross-dimensional rift into which tumble Jim, Stew, Leon and Alex. Jim finds himself in a desert where he is helped to safety by two droids: A2D2 and J3PO. They take him to the Mighty Omra who begins to train Jim in the Powers of Greyskull. While al this is going on, Alex, Leon and Stew find that their personalities have gotten swapped about and discover that the only way to realign them is to extract cheese from the arse of a cow. Whilst doing this they accidentally also bring forth a Nordic God: Rod of Maygar. He is on a desperate search for the Crystal of Enderon and must beat the Goddess Jane to said crystal if he is to retain his deific state. The realigned Leon, Alex and Stew agree to help him. Meanwhile, Jane is in a scale model version of Europe, with the real James Bond. This Europe is secreted within the chin of a private detective called Stan, but eventually he is forced to turn his chin off, thus sending Jane and Bond tumbling into a departure lounge containing Stan and his girlfriend, Mitch Caribina. The four of them, along with a businessman called John, reveal that they are all after the Crystal of Enderon, and agree to search for it together. The Crystal of Enderon is in the custody of The Not Quite So Evil Genius Siddor, who has stolen it from the beautiful Princess Rae. To protect the crystal, and to wipe out our heroes, he has employed Babysham as an armour plated killing machine. But Babysham has malfunctioned again, and has wiped out Siddor's cronies, who, it should be noted, bare a striking resemblence to the heirarchy of MI7. Stan, Bond, Jane, Mitch and John find their way to Siddor's lair wherin all bar Jane are killed by Babysham. Jane avoids death by distracting Babysham with an episode of Home and Away. Meanwhile, Jim and J3P0 are arrested trying to steal a spaceship after Jim accidentally kills Omra in a training session. The two find themselves on a prison planet over-run by disco dancing aliens. There they meet up with Stew, Alex, Leon and Rod, and join forces with the prison governer, Sarah. Jane finds our heroes and
they all
enter a game of Fifteen to One,
orchestrated
by Babysham, in order to try and win the crystal, which is being
offered
as the prize. But when Jim, Stew, Leon, Alex and Sarah find themselves
prematurely knocked out of the game, they steal the crystal instead in
order to use it to buy their freedom from the aliens.
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N E
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In
disguise, they negotiate with the aliens but the aliens realise
that
our heroes are humans, and kill Leon and Sarah. The others are saved
however,
thanks to a drunken starship crew playing with their energizer beams at
a New Year's do at the Traveller's Rest,
Brookhouse.
From here, Stew attempts to lead his colleagues back home to York, but
instead they find themselves
stranded on a railway
line. Fortunately, Jim finds a monkey's paw, and they wish
themselves
back home, in good health, and with Sarah Michelle Gellar as Stew's
wife.
Jim becomes engrossed in the US soap opera, Sunset Beach, which leads to our heroes getting sucked into the television. Here, a friendly teacher, Han, informs them that they must locate the Chronicles of Enderon in order for him to complete a spell that will return them to the real world. Meanwhile, on Glecon 7, a planet occupied by people who look like Leon, another Leon is sent down to join our team. As the team set off, Sarah Michelle Gellar stakes Stew for being a vampire, and the team decide to cremate his dusty remains. At the funeral, they are joined by the new Leon, before being met by Daevid Allen of the 70s band Gong, who tells them that Craig T. Nelson, of the US sit-com Coach, may have the book they seek. He glids them to America where they invoke the guitar sensation, Santana, in order to find Craig. Santana appears and transports them to Craig's house. But he tells them that Craig has been transported to our universe and is as such unavailable. Craig's live in lover, and old friend of Alex, Alana, appears and accesses the cable inteligence AX3 who tells them that the one person who will know the whereabouts of the book is Tosh, the late detective from TV serial The Bill. He directs them to a rentable property owned by a Mr. Frizzard from where they might be directed to Tosh. Frizzard's attic contains the gateway to Heaven, and there to meet our heroes is Stew, who proves to be the son of God. Stew explains that Heaven is currently a warzone and that it is God and Tosh who are fighting it out. They all meet Che F. Gurdwara, a hot-dog stall owner, and guerilla, and he agrees to take them deep into enemy territory. On the way, Sarah Michelle Gellar gets blown up. Whilst
resting
in a trech behind enemy lines, the
television
gets retuned, and in a moment of lucidity, our heroes realise that
Han has been lying to them for his own ends and that all they need do
to
escape is turn off the TV. But as they
prepare
to leave, they are attacked by a range of evil beings, and in the
melee,
Alex escapes into TV static, while Jim is killed.
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W O
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But
Jim
regenerates. He explains that he is a timelord, and then he, Stew
and
Leon set out into the static to find Alex.
They stumble across Rod and Jane who have now been charged with completing twelve tasks. The two parties agree to assist each other, Alex turns up, and, under contractual obligation to Rod and Jane, our heroes work on the tasks. They accuire a BBC computer and locate BBC expert Fred Harris to convert it into a supercomputer. But the Fred Harris they have located is an evil doppleganger, and the real Fred is imprisoned by Berlin, the Wicked Witch of the West. The
evil Fred
Harris builds a supercomputer which hypnotises our heroes and turns
them into mindless zombies, while his good counterpart takes
advantage
of a fatal disagreement Berlin has with Siddor, to escape, leaving
his friend Johnny Ball to fight in an epic battle against Siddor.
Johnny
is able to escape too, but is persued by Siddor and eventually killed.
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H R E E
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The
good Fred Harris kills the evil Fred Harris and frees our heroes
but
then he gets killed by Siddor. But
just as Siddor is about to murder our heroes, Babysham
comes to the rescue. He dispatches Siddor before complaining about
why he hasn't been in the programme for a while. It transpires that he
has been filming a special Caribbean episode, which
we watch while our heroes return to their own dimension.
In the episode, our heroes are captured by pirates, and a fierce sea battle ensues while Stew is called to task for providing sub-standard scripts, and is eventually sacked. Working his time off, he delivers his final scripts:a prequel episode that reveals Siddor to be Jim's dad. |
O U R
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Under
a new script team and safely back in their own dimension (having passed
through Fred Harris's magical door at the start of the Caribbean
Special),
Stew, Jim, Leon, Alex and Stew's girlfriend Caroline find
themselves in a new home in York, and decide that it's time to go
for
a drink. But they arrive at their favourite pub,
the Red Lion, to find that its current landlords, Conman and A/V
Woman,
are retiring and that the new owner is none other than Jim's dad, and
the
team's arch-nemesis, Siddor. This causes the team much distress.
On the way back home, Alex kills Stew on the grounds that Stew is a demon. The evidence is compelling. The group hold yet another funeral for Stew, and his dad, God, shows up, leaving behind Stew's sister, Sally. Meanwhile, Alex goes back in time to Judea, to see if Stew was always a demon. It seems he was not, and the question now is "is the baby Caroline is carrying half-demon or not?" The answer to this question turns out to be "it is" when she dramatically gives birth to a pineapple on a bus. On the subject of Siddor, Jim decides that he alone must defeat Siddor, using logic. The attempt is a miserable failure, and from the contest, Siddor learns that he has a daughter. The
team go
off in search of Jim's sister Anna, in order to reach her before Siddor
does. On the way, Babysham trains them in
combat
techniques. They reach Anna's apartment where
she and her boyfriend Craig agree to assist in the fight against
Siddor.
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I X
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The
team persuade A/V Woman and Conman to
help
them, and then Jim, Leon, Alex, Anna, Craig, Caroline, Percy the
Pineapple,
A/V Woman, Conman, Babysham, and Babysham's cronies Chris and Alan, set
out to face Siddor in a final showdown.
Siddor
manages
to kill everyone bar Leon. Leon then manages to kill Siddor, and heads
off back to Glecon 7. Meanwhile,
our dead heroes
find themselves in Hell, which is actually a very nice place to be.
Here they are able to live out their fantasies forever.
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E V E N |
But
their enjoyment is soon interrupted when Leon
visits
them to tell them that super intelligent geese are holding the Earth to
ransom. The team agree to help vanquish the evil geese, and find
themselves back in York, where Alan, who strangely hasn't been
enjoying
hell owing to a latent streak of Christianity, attempts to escape the
group
and take advantage of the situation, only to
find
himself caught up in a murderous goose-worshipping sect.
Meanwhile, a mysterious Timelord known as The Doctor, drags his assistant, Sarah Michelle Gellar, around York and stumbles across his future selves, old Jim and new Jim. The three Jims lead our heroes to the geese who are in a spaceship in orbit above the Earth. The goose-worshipping sect are also here, torturing a goose-expert for information. During a heated battle, our heroes realise that they can't die because they are already dead, but also learn that they can experience pain, and that if they get blown up they will be experiencing a lot of pain over a very wide area. Despite this, they manage to defeat the goose-worshippers who reveal themselves to be the heads of MI7. They are here to rescue Alan from Hell, but they have been double-crossed by the geese, who have stolen dalek technology to become an awsome fighting force. Our
heroes and
MI7 team up to destroy the geese. However, the Earth is still set to
explode,
and despite their best efforts, our heroes fail to prevent this. So
they
attempt to escape in the TARDISes. But the Earth explodes before they
can
dematerialise, and the goose-ship is caught in the fireball, tearing
our
heroes apart in a very painful way and leaving them scattered across
the
universe in eternal agony.
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I G H T |
Fortunately,
Jim
is able to regenerate, and manages to go back in time to help save
the Earth and our heroes. He is able to gather everyone into the
space-born Barbican, and they are lucky enough to escape the Earth
before it explodes. Unfortunately, most of the cast are crushed when
the
seating supports in the Barbican give way.
Following
a
detour through a Stargate, the remaining cast: Jim, Alex, Leon,
Stew,
Alan, Babysham, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ant, finally reach the
Planet Musaka in a battered Tardis with a broken time-drive. Here
they
set up home, and life is fine until their craving for female
companionship
drives them to visit nearby planet F34,
where
they meet another future version of Jim who has a working tardis. Faced
with the knowledge that they can return to Hell, Sarah
goes insane and shoots Alex. Consequently she is knocked out by
Leon,
leaving them with no conscious women, but with the option to return to
the paradise that is Hell. |
I N E
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EPISODE
ONE:
Back in Hell with things apparently resolved, Babysham runs a detective agency, ably assisted by Alan. Babysham agrees to accompany an antiques dealer, Eugene Mayburn, on a blackmail payout, only for Mayburn to knock Babysham out in a quarry and leave him for dead. When Babysham comes round, he learns that he has been framed for Mayburn's subsequent murder, and so he goes on the run. EPISODE TWO: Babysham and Alan team up with Mayburn's cousin, Jade, in the hunt for the true killer. The killer turns out to be Mayburn's wife Letitia's bit on the side, Tomy. But Babysham and Jade sense that there is more to the plot, not least the blackmail payments. Letitia takes Babysham to a graveyard, where she suggests some further lines of enquiry and then has sex with him. EPISODE THREE: Babysham has contracted an immobilising virus in the course of his antics, and so Jim is called upon to dig it out and fix the problem. Meanwhile, Alan tracks down a satanic cult of antiques experts. EPISODE FOUR: Babysham, Alan and Jade stake out the cult's black mass, only to be caught and taken prisoner. At gunpoint, Babysham is forced to open a small box, with quasi-nuclear results. EPISODE FIVE: Convinced that there is an increasingly theological bent to events, Babysham calls in Stew (and his business partner, Leon) to advise on such matters. But Stew ends up held prisoner by Letitia and her boyfriend Satan (worshipful master of the antiques cult), who have revived ur-deity Bhuvana. Bhuvana (who turns out to be Stew's mother) is intent on organising a coup of Heaven, but Stew just thinks she's barmy from spending the last 2000 years as a lime tree. EPISODE SIX: God arrives in Hell on a state visit, as we learn that Babysham has been used as a pawn in the cult's schemes (his laser eye being critical to the release of Bhuvana's powers from the box in Ep4). Bhuvana and the cult prepare to oust God, only for Leon to beat them to it. Leon seemingly kills God, Bhuvana and Satan, and dramatically wounds God's bodyguard, Alex. Leon is then seemingly pursued by Jim before making an extravagant exit in a passing flying saucer. |
A B Y S H A M |
Confusion
reigns in lieu of God. Leon and Jim are clearly working together,
participating in one of a series of elaborate plots designed to
re-order the afterlife and close the gaping Stargate. The Heavenly
Council are overthrown by the Heaven 17 under the direction of Che F.
Gurdwara, and the Toshists are forced to surrender Heaven to Gabriel
and his cronies. Meanwhile, Stew is killed by Babysham to protect him
from the laws of succession, and an earlier Stew is recovered to lend a
veil of legitimacy to the proceedings. Stew's old right-hand man, John,
returns in the form of Siddor to save Hell from self-destruction, using
the Crystal of Enderon to re-activate the Hell Tardis that controls the
afterlife. And, following a second blood-bath in Heaven at the hands of
Che F., and another set-to with Alan and Ant, Alex and Leon install
Omra and the goddess Inanna as timeshare rulers of the new regime.
While the Stargate is being closed at the funeral of God, Fred Harris
appears to rescue our heroes from their Chockabloc induced fantasy. But
Leon, no longer convinced of the soundness of their plans, heads off on
his own to destroy all their work while he still can. |
A N S X |
THE END |
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