Happiness Will Prevail

[john_amend_all]

At least, it will prevail if the management of the supermarkets I visit has anything to do with it. Why are shops so insistent that Christmas songs have to be sung at a snail-like pace, in tones so syrupy they'd rot the Kandyman's teeth, and played on an inescapable loop? It's probably a good thing I don't have a working sonic screwdriver, or their PA systems would have lost a lot of their loudspeakers.

(While I'm thinking of The Happiness Patrol: If it was done today, I'm not sure who'd be worth caricaturing as the Helen A figure, but the Kandyman ought to be as close to Ronald McDonald as the BBC could get away with. And be the happy, smiling face of the regime's propaganda, as well as its psychotic executioner.)
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Comments

[liadt]

Pity the poor workers who have to listen to it all day for several weeks! And have their attempts to have reggae Christmas played over the speakers taken off:(

[thisbluespirit]

... and then it'd be forever listed as the moment Steven Moffat killed Doctor Who with the help of Ronald McDonald, ignoring the social and political satire and everything else.

Actually, I bet McDonald's have more clout than Bassett's - they probably would kill Doctor Who, so they should probably not. (The Happiness Patrol, sadly, will never not be relevant.)

[john_amend_all]

It would be a fairly glorious way to go, though, if it left a generation of children inoculated against such a jealously-guarded mascot.

(And of course the Seventh Doctor did take a pop at McDonalds, too, in Ghost Light. But it was just a sideswipe, not a full-blown parody).

I'm trying to think, now. Has the Whoniverse done 'Happy smiling corporate mascot is really the monster'? The closest I can get at the moment is the Ood in Planet of the Ood, except that the real monsters there are the humans. Or Max Capricorn in Voyage of the Damned, perhaps.

[john_amend_all]

ObGoons: "My friend and I represent a leading firm of earplug manufacturers."

I have a nasty feeling that the choice of music isn't just arbitrary you-will-play-this-because-we-say-so, but that someone's done a series of scientific tests and determined that that's the music that makes people spend most on things they don't need.

[thisbluespirit]

It feels like something it must have done at some point in the spin-off media, if not on the show. I suppose you come close with things like the Autons, but... hmm. That certainly should be done, if it hasn't been. It probably ought to be audio/book, though, as I suspect it could be too terrifiying for TV.

[liadt]

It think the music's effects have worn off me this year. I think some at ASDA just really likes Fergal Sharkey though. I feel sorry for them having to wear stupid antlers for the whole of December.