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avevale_intelligencer) wrote2009-05-13 10:40 pm
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2009-05-13 10:40 pm
Still processing...
From: Office of Co-ordinator [REDACTED], Celestial Intervention Agency
Attention: President, High Council
Subject: See text
Your Excellency requested that the Agency investigate and take appropriate action with regard to the series of dramatic fictions broadcast on "television" by a certain nation on the planet Earth (co-ordinates attached) in the latter half of the twentieth century (according to that nation's adopted calendar). Our report follows.
Our agents found that there had been a substantive breach of security, in that certain records relating to the runaway Time Lord known as "the Doctor" had been leaked via telepathic insertion to certain individuals on the aforementioned planet. Because of the method used, the recipients would be convinced that the fictions derived from those leaked records were entirely "their own idea," and indeed, the finished product differed from the raw data in a number of respects, attributable to the limitations of the species involved, the historical and technological state of the planet, and the individuals' particular foibles and concerns. Our agents were particularly entertained by the way in which almost every incident in the Doctor's career was adjusted to make it "all about Earth" in one way or another. The parochialism of primitive species is an unfailing source of entertainment.
However, despite these variances, our agents determined that a dangerous level of accuracy remained present in the televised accounts, and in particular those which bore to a greater or lesser extent on Gallifrey itself. This fact, coupled with the apparently careful selection of recipients from among those who might be expected to contribute to the "television programme" in question, leaves no room for doubt that the leakage was deliberate, systematic and malicious. Our prime suspect at this point is, of course, "the Doctor" himself, though his reasons for doing this, or indeed for any of his lunatic actions, remain as opaque to us as ever. Fortunately, the increased security precautions which were instituted following the original leak have successfully prevented any repetition, with the result that when the available information had, as we thought, been exhausted, the "television programmes" continued under their own steam for a short period and then, due in part, we believe, to a subliminal public perception of a falling off in quality (hardly surprising), were terminated.
At this point we originally determined that the incident was closed. However, on the advice of Your Excellency, we re-opened the investigation, and discovered that the original programmes, derived from the leaked documents, had proved unusually persistent in the collective cultural consciousness, had been continued and further developed in other media (text, sound recordings, sequential image-based narratives), and, in short, that far more information had been disseminated around the planet than had previously been apparent. Furthermore, in the very short intervening period, the species concerned had made distressingly long strides, and currently stand on the very brink of piercing the quantum fallacy and acquiring interstellar travel. A few scant decades should do it.
Your Excellency informed us that direct action was necessary, and graciously allowed us a free hand, within the bounds of the Laws of Time and Your Excellency's enlightened and compassionate strictures regarding the taking of life. It was not easy to arrive at an elegant solution within these parameters, but I believe our agents have surpassed themselves. The attached holo-recordings show episodes from a new series, created in the same way as the original, but based entirely on disinformation seeded by our agents.
You will note from the recordings, among other interesting factors, that "the Doctor" is depicted here as absurdly youthful, and also as sexually attracted and attractive to humans. While this notion will disgust any right-thinking Time Lord, I cannot but regard it as a stroke of genius: the human species, like so many primitive proto-sentients, is entirely governed by its glands, and one sure way to prevent ratiocination is to engage the hormonal mechanisms in this way. Next to this tour de force, the planting of the idea that Gallifrey no longer exists and that "the Doctor" is the only member of our species still in existence almost seems mundane.
The new series of fictions is well produced, containing all the elements that appeal to a culture at this level of development, including regular repetitions of the image of one or two people running or jumping away from something behind them that has just exploded or burst into flames. This is apparently a sine qua non. Our agents are confident that it will become even more popular than the original series, and will effortlessly eclipse it in the public memory. Thus the detrimental effect on our planetary security of the original leak will be devalued and rendered trivial, with only a tiny and unregarded minority retaining any clear memory of the information contained in the leaked documents. Deniability, thanks to the telepathic insertion method used, is complete: the writers of the new series would resist with extreme prejudice any suggestion that they are not the originators of the fictions presented therein.
I formally request Your Excellency's leave to declare this case successfully closed.
[SIGNATURE REDACTED]
Co-ordinator, C.I.A.
Attention: President, High Council
Subject: See text
Your Excellency requested that the Agency investigate and take appropriate action with regard to the series of dramatic fictions broadcast on "television" by a certain nation on the planet Earth (co-ordinates attached) in the latter half of the twentieth century (according to that nation's adopted calendar). Our report follows.
Our agents found that there had been a substantive breach of security, in that certain records relating to the runaway Time Lord known as "the Doctor" had been leaked via telepathic insertion to certain individuals on the aforementioned planet. Because of the method used, the recipients would be convinced that the fictions derived from those leaked records were entirely "their own idea," and indeed, the finished product differed from the raw data in a number of respects, attributable to the limitations of the species involved, the historical and technological state of the planet, and the individuals' particular foibles and concerns. Our agents were particularly entertained by the way in which almost every incident in the Doctor's career was adjusted to make it "all about Earth" in one way or another. The parochialism of primitive species is an unfailing source of entertainment.
However, despite these variances, our agents determined that a dangerous level of accuracy remained present in the televised accounts, and in particular those which bore to a greater or lesser extent on Gallifrey itself. This fact, coupled with the apparently careful selection of recipients from among those who might be expected to contribute to the "television programme" in question, leaves no room for doubt that the leakage was deliberate, systematic and malicious. Our prime suspect at this point is, of course, "the Doctor" himself, though his reasons for doing this, or indeed for any of his lunatic actions, remain as opaque to us as ever. Fortunately, the increased security precautions which were instituted following the original leak have successfully prevented any repetition, with the result that when the available information had, as we thought, been exhausted, the "television programmes" continued under their own steam for a short period and then, due in part, we believe, to a subliminal public perception of a falling off in quality (hardly surprising), were terminated.
At this point we originally determined that the incident was closed. However, on the advice of Your Excellency, we re-opened the investigation, and discovered that the original programmes, derived from the leaked documents, had proved unusually persistent in the collective cultural consciousness, had been continued and further developed in other media (text, sound recordings, sequential image-based narratives), and, in short, that far more information had been disseminated around the planet than had previously been apparent. Furthermore, in the very short intervening period, the species concerned had made distressingly long strides, and currently stand on the very brink of piercing the quantum fallacy and acquiring interstellar travel. A few scant decades should do it.
Your Excellency informed us that direct action was necessary, and graciously allowed us a free hand, within the bounds of the Laws of Time and Your Excellency's enlightened and compassionate strictures regarding the taking of life. It was not easy to arrive at an elegant solution within these parameters, but I believe our agents have surpassed themselves. The attached holo-recordings show episodes from a new series, created in the same way as the original, but based entirely on disinformation seeded by our agents.
You will note from the recordings, among other interesting factors, that "the Doctor" is depicted here as absurdly youthful, and also as sexually attracted and attractive to humans. While this notion will disgust any right-thinking Time Lord, I cannot but regard it as a stroke of genius: the human species, like so many primitive proto-sentients, is entirely governed by its glands, and one sure way to prevent ratiocination is to engage the hormonal mechanisms in this way. Next to this tour de force, the planting of the idea that Gallifrey no longer exists and that "the Doctor" is the only member of our species still in existence almost seems mundane.
The new series of fictions is well produced, containing all the elements that appeal to a culture at this level of development, including regular repetitions of the image of one or two people running or jumping away from something behind them that has just exploded or burst into flames. This is apparently a sine qua non. Our agents are confident that it will become even more popular than the original series, and will effortlessly eclipse it in the public memory. Thus the detrimental effect on our planetary security of the original leak will be devalued and rendered trivial, with only a tiny and unregarded minority retaining any clear memory of the information contained in the leaked documents. Deniability, thanks to the telepathic insertion method used, is complete: the writers of the new series would resist with extreme prejudice any suggestion that they are not the originators of the fictions presented therein.
I formally request Your Excellency's leave to declare this case successfully closed.
[SIGNATURE REDACTED]
Co-ordinator, C.I.A.
no subject
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... still haven't convinced me to stop watching NuWho though, although I'll take a Baker/McGann audio any day.
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We can confirm that certain early broadcasts of material that included particularly troubling and accurate information about Gallifrey and the Time Lords have been redacted by an agent going back in time to ensure those "VTs" are missing from the vaults. It was considered too dangerous to branch the time line by removing information about those episodes entirely, but through judicious writing of fictional summaries for the missing episodes, the then young viewers now believe the version presented on websites and in TVZone over their own imperfect memories.
no subject
*(See File MS/Sol3/DW/Summerfield,B.S.)
Apparently, Coordinator, the humans are getting cleverer than you realise. (Hmm, I wonder if I should have finished that sentence a word sooner? No, "getting" would then be redundant. As would, on reflection, the entire statement.) Within a mere decade of achieving the state you describe in your addendum, they had already succeeded in recovering complete soundtracks of those so called "missing" documents, and have been been working assiduously to collect and collate visual information to go along with them.
I now find that a group of agitators calling themselves the "Restoration Team" have succesfully recovered of vital colour-coded strategic information on Dalek activities from a document that *your* agents had... what was your phrase?... "successfully and irreversibly" rendered monochrome! See attached. Can you explain this?
I can. If you had seen fit to consult me earlier in this matter, I could have told you from my experience with the humans that nothing stimulates them to activity more surely than the sense of outrage over losing something they consider theirs, and that nothing focusses their attention better than a seemingly impossible challenge! You would have been far better, in my humble opinion, rather than attempting to delete or manipulate these leaked records to have simply buried them under a deluge of brighter and more eye-catching fictions of a similar kind. Instead, your agents in key positions within the organisation that produced the offending works have zealously supressed almost any output that might have worked as a smokescreen. We need the humans flooded with more of this "Sci-Fi" stuff, not less!
And with that in mind, K9 and I have work to do on our own contribution. Kindly turn your attention to some matter more within the scope of your abilities, and take no further action on this until ordered by me!
R.
----
[FRAGMENT OF AUDIO RECORDING DISCOVERED 2009 CE; VOICEPRINT IDENTIFIED AS SUBJECT MS/Sol3/DW/Ward]
"Well, Doctor... I've done what I can..."
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(And I was amused by the timestamp, in context: "Edited at 2009-05-14 11:28 pm (local)", was that local Gallifrey time or local Earth time?)
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And from reading through the discussions on the working group's wiki, I learned some very useful things about PAL decoding that are now helping me to solve the annoying cross-colour problems on a certain set of DVDs that really shouldn't have been released without at least some basic clean-up... (It would be easier if I had access to the analogue source tapes, of course! =:o} )