This week, the duo are in their secret headquarters in the Fletcher Jones Silver Ball, where they're part-way through yet another crisis meeting.

"... and in conclusion," The Colonel was saying, "I recommend we move the motion to give them all a good hiding and send them back to their mothers."

"I thought you were talking about last weekend's model train expo," The Doctor said.

"I was," The Colonel said. "Grown men playing with their model trains in public... what's up with that?"

The Doctor sighed. "Can I go now?"

"Not yet, Doctor, we're just coming up to the most important item on the agenda of the crisis meeting - the abalone threat matrix."

"What is this time? Teenagers binge-eating abalone?"

"No, Doctor, but I'll add that to the list." The Colonel scribbled something down before continuing. "We've got to do something about people poaching our abalone... don't they know they only way to cook abalone is on the barbecue?"

"In this case, Colonel, I think you'll find poaching means stealing, not boiling in water."

The Colonel paused. "Really? Well, that's even worse... people coming here and stealing our abalone. It's a vital natural resource. Don't they know 90 per cent of south-west households eat abalone with every meal?"

"I didn't think there was any abalone left to poach after that virus wiped them all out," The Doctor said.

The Colonel rallied brilliantly. "That's part of the problem," he said. "These poachers are spreading the abalone herpes virus by stealing our abalone and sleeping with them."

"How do you sleep with an abalone?"

"I think it helps if you get them really drunk first...."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but how do you propose stopping the poachers?"

"Glad you asked, Doctor," The Colonel said. "I've just thought of a foolproof plan that is guaranteed to work. It's so simple even an idiot could have come up with it." He paused for dramatic effect. "We hide the abalone. We remove the existing abalone population and replace them with masses of hi-tech decoy abalone with satellite surveillance capabilities, so we can catch this dirty scoundrels in the act. Let's see them try to sleep with our abalone now."

"That's great, Colonel, but where are you going to hide the abalone?"

The Colonel stopped in his tracks, but rallied once more. "We'll worry about that once we've collected them all. For now, let's just dump them in the kiddie pool at Aquazone."