JOIN MY MERCENARY TASK FORCE

It's this simple. I'm gathering a team of ninjas, spies, acrobats, masters of disguise, a couple of indiscriminate killers, an economist and a well-trained marmoset.

Our mission will be to infiltrate the third world country of Zimbabwe and attempt to save some bits of television history...and maybe do something about human rights and shit. Mostly the TV.

Zimbabwe is of course ruled by Robert Mugabe who is, without a doubt, one of the biggest living dicks on the planet. Here's some greatest hits off the top of my head.

• Promoting violence toward homosexuals
• Total wreckage of the economy...
• Triggering hyperinflation to the point where $1 US is equal to $37fucking,000,000 Zimbabwean bones.
• Blatant manipulation of elections
• Deciding the results of said elections anyway
  
• Not allowing BBC employees into the country
• Contributed to lowering the average life span in his country to 35 years of age.
• Arresting and beating political opponents

I take issue with the fifth bullet point. Here's the thing. In an act of blatant stupidity, many years ago, the BBC erased huge chunks of the first several years of Doctor Who from their archives to save space or some shit. Apparently, they were very unclear on what the word "archive" means. As a result, there are currently over one hundred missing episodes of the longest running science fiction program ever. There used to be even more, but some have been found or reconstructed from people literally pointing a camera at their TV and recording them that way (because VCRs weren't around yet).

Now, many of the episodes that were recovered in their original state have been found in countries that had purchased early seasons of Doctor Who before the archive wipe. Nigeria, for instance, has had several eps found inside its borders. Another such country? Zimbabwe.

Except His Most Assholishness, Mugabe, holds the United Kingdom in utter contempt, blaming the colonisation of Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) for every crappy thing (including that which is his own doing) in the big Z. Despite that fact, he loved to vacay in London before the EU put a travel ban on him. Because he's a dick...who takes extravagant trips to a country he hates while the people in his country subsist on $15,120,805,200 a year (400 yankee dollars).

So, with his blaming of the UK, the BBC can't get anyone in to go rooting around for tapes. And even if they did, I imagine they'd probably be beaten, jailed and raped with tree branches by Mugabe's goons for the effort.

Thus, I shall lead* a strike force into the heart of Harare to recover whatever we can find. "The Tenth Planet" would be cool.

*By "lead a strike force" what I mean is "assign a special ringtone and wait for good news while I have pancakes at the IHOP."