The Doomswood Curse

Serial CP2 – The Doomswood Charley
An Alternative Program Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
Another Entry in the EC Unauthorized Guide O' Highway Robbery

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor listens in a stunned mixture of awe and disgust as Charley cheerfully relates the countless sexual encounters she had. It seems that not only do 98 per cent of all carbon-based life forms know Charley in the biblical sense, but they actually rate her far higher in bed than Captain Jack Sparrow who is a "real prude" in comparison with the Pollard girl.

The Doctor desperately lists every name he can think of in the hope of finding one person she hasn’t done the horizontal mambo with and, thirty-one days after he starts the list discovers someone Charley HASN’T had sex with:

Dick Turpin!

Charley insists that not even SHE is capable of sleeping with fictional characters ("Well," she notes with a smile, "there WAS that one time with Sir John Squarehart..."), and Dick Turpin is nothing more than a cliched plot device from Harrison Ainsworth’s romantic novel "Rookwood". The Doctor refuses and insists that, while he may not be as dashing or romantic or responsible for all the highwaymen tales Ainsworth credited with, Turpin was a real if obscure criminal.

Charley refuses to leave a possible gap in her sexual curriculum vitae and demands the Doctor pilot the TARDIS to 1738 England so she can entwine the genuine Dick Turpin within her dimpled thighs. The Doctor is convinced that Turpin picks up sticks in the autumn time if you get my drift and is unlikely to be turned on by the Rubenesque brunette but will definitely fall for a sensually-handsome, curly blonde-haired Adonis in a technicolour dream coat!

The two time travelers challenge each other to be the first to bed the unjustly-famous highwayman – and you can guarantee that sentence will never be written or spoken again the history of this world. Or any other, come to that...

The TARDIS materialises inside a crypt where Charley immediately tries to creep the Doctor with spooky owl impressions and suggests the entombed dead will rise again in search for fresh blood like in certain well-known Italian horror flicks. However, this manages to freak Charley herself out as well and the two run out of the crypt screaming hysterically.

The duo find themselves in the gardens of a large estate and immediately bump into Sir Ralph Roomwood as he has a crafty fag in private. Such nicotine-based desperation means he’s daft enough to accept the completely random claims from the duo that they are, in fact, hired assassins sent from one of the lesser-known 18th Century Mafiosi families to kill the bride on her wedding day.

By a staggering coincidence, there IS a bride-to-be on the premises, Eleanor Trelawny, and the wedding to Sir Ralph’s son John happens tomorrow! And since Sir Ralph considers Eleanor a money-grabbing succubus, he’s more than happy for the Doctor and Charley to take Eleanor out... and make it look like an accident.

Sir Ralph introduces the Doctor and Charley to his harridan of a wife, Sybil, and Charley immediately runs off with the serving maid Suzie to ask about any fit young highwaymen who might be in town and looking to climb the walls of sexual ecstasy. Suzie angrily notes that the 'fearless, noble knights of the road' are vicious, savage, murdering psychopaths who indulge in rape, home invasion and mindless violence. Worryingly, this only succeeds in exciting Charley even more!

Just then, a twig falls from the tree and Sir Ralph has a complete nervous breakdown. After much confusion, exposition and histrionics it is explained that the Doomwood family have a rather strange curse on them which involves falling twigs heralding the death of the eldest in the family before they live to see their son wed – which is a rather neat explanation for Sir Ralph’s desire to kill the bride-to-be now I think of it. Bloody good for me, eh?

Meanwhile Charley decides to pass the time by seducing some info out of John in the crypt for maximum gothic fetish. Over the aeons, Charley has elevated flirting to a high art, and within three minutes of meeting her, John is not only utterly in love with her and completely forgotten Eleanour, they’re screwing on top of his grandmother’s tomb. Things get even kinkier as they open said tomb, play games with the skeleton within, and then start having sex INSIDE the tomb.

Meanwhile, Sir Ralph falls dead – and the suspicious Doctor accuses Sybil of spiking his evening glass of arsenic! Just then, John staggers in, on the point of collapse after his intense sexual gymnastics and the Doctor heads to the tomb to find Charley gone and Suzie lying on the ground, in a wedding dress, stabbed through the heart. Charley appears, explains that the kinky stuff REALLY got out of hand.

John embraces Charley and reveals that he loves her and must marry her before the night is out. The Doctor laughs cruelly that Charley’s swinging bachelorette lifestyle is about to end, but Charley has a cunning plan! The Edwardian Adventuress explains that she is, in fact, John’s long lost sister who was given to a party of gypsies by Sybill so they would sod off.

Realizing he’s been bonking his own sister does strange things to John’s mind and he falls screaming to the ground, while Charley gloats she has enough info about the real Dick Turpin to get into bed with him before the Doctor can. Laughing evilly, she leaps onto a convenient horse and rides off into the sunset.

"Cunning bitch," the Doctor muses, before noting that if Charley really IS John’s sister, she will be the first to die from the curse of the tree as another twig ominously falls. This cheers the Time Lord up immensely and he decides to return to the TARDIS.

But before he can enter, Sybil punches him in the gut, throws him into the open tomb and slams the lid shut. The Doctor shouts that the Blind Dead of cult Italian zombie fame have awoken, the Knights Templar demanding the blood that can give them eternal youth. Interested, Sybil opens the tomb... and the Doctor headbutts her unconscious. She falls backwards in such a way as to cause the entire crypt to collapse and bury the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, Charley is riding through the glen when all of a sudden she is order to stand and deliver by an evil-looking highwayman. Using her Amazing Talent for Role-Playing (ignored in nine out of ten non-Alan Barnes stories), Charley convinces Dick Turpin – for IT IS HE!!! – that Charley is Turpin’s old partner in crime and bed... Gypsy Charlotte!

Turpin, extremely gullible and extremely frustrated in equal measure, instantly accepts Charley as his old pal who robs, thieves and sexually harrasses those who deserve it and they both head to the outlaw’s hideout where they can fornicate amongst the stolen booty. So to speak.

Back at the house, Eleanor arrives complaining she was robbed by two highwaymen who seemed to be more concerned about the contents of their respective underpants than stealing her jewelry. The Doctor moans with despair as he realizes Charley has won, while John insists he can never love Eleanor now he’s been with a REAL woman like Charley... which unsurprisingly leads to a brutal beating from Eleanor.

It strikes the Doctor that if Charley is Dick Turpin’s new partner, then folklore has it that he’ll accidentally shoot her during a raid and thus the twig-based curse is accurate. Despite the Time Lord’s strong refusal to believe in the supernatural, the thought of Charley being shot dead lightens his mood incredibly.

At that moment, an extremely-shagged-out Dick Turpin and Charley arrive up to storm the wedding, steal all the valuable wedding gifts and nick a bit of cake. Just then the battered and bleeding John runs up to Charley and begs for some of her... tight embrace... while Dick Turpin raises his gun. However, he’s so knackered from all the sex he can barely see straight! This, the Doctor know, is the moment when Turpin shoots his girlfriend dead!

Turpin shoots the Doctor by mistake. "Bang goes that theory," the Time Lord puns before collapsing with a sucking chest wound. However he does NOT die and does NOT regenerate, as this would piss off the fans and thus lies there gurgling for an episode or so, before getting up and saying he feels completely better. He then says he is Eleanour’s flamboyantly homosexual uncle who immediately starts listing every man and boy, toll-keeper and shepherd, ragamuffin and didicoy he’s done behind the bike sheds.

Just then, Charley’s niece Polly Wright and her boyfriend Ben Jackson appear – as they traditionally do in Charley Pollard stories when the nature of reality itself has fallen apart at the seams – and Dick Turpin immediately tries to kill them. Charley doesn’t try to stop since the newcomers are most likely hallucinations, and neither Ben nor Polly take offense.

However, Dick Turpin’s aim is still awful and all he succeeds in killing is his own horse, his beloved Black Bess who everyone – even Charley – is disturbed to discover he loved more than any woman.

Driven insane by rage and grief, Dick Turpin undergoes an Incredible-Hulk-style metamorphosis and turns into a giant, muscle-bound kaiju of total destruction that will annihilate York and everything in it!

"Today has been a very strange day," Ben Jackson muses.

The Doctor and Charley then start making fun of Dick Turpin for his schizophrenic portrayal as a noble, daring, chivalrous butcher, petty criminal and violent thief, a loyal friend and brutal robber who fears no man as long as he’s hiding! Finally, Charley critiques his sexual performance and Turpin symbolically shrinks back to normal size and, deeply ashamed, hangs himself.

This probably fucks up the web of time, but the story is very nearly over, so Ben and Polly vanish in a whiff of plot contrivance, the Doctor steals Eleanor’s bouquet, Sir Ralph and Suzie return from the dead (revealing SHE, in fact, is John’s long lost sister) while Sybil stops being a complete bitch.

Marveling at this Sapphire & Steel type reset happy ending, the Doctor and Charley go on their merry way in the TARDIS... until the argument about who REALLY slept with Karl Marx begins.

Book(s)/Other Related -
Charley Does Dick (Turpin)
Doctor Who: To Catch A Thief by Jared "No Nickname" Hansen
Highwaymen To Hell

Fluffs – India Fisher seemed to be held up for most of this story.
"Oi, Zancho Panzo, gimme yer serd! Ah’m frem Yurksheer!"

Goofs –
Charley ISN’T naked on the cover!


Technobabble -
The Doctor’s fluid sexuality is part of "Time Lord fag oversights".


Links and References -
The Doctor considers seeing if they make a movie about the events of this adventure at the Time Lord’s Great Video Library of the planet Parrot-Shat (The Jazzocize Machine).


Untelevised Misadventures -
The Doctor has "done it" with Capability Brown. By "done it", however, we mean "gardening".


Dialogue Disasters –

Dick Turpin: I never thought I’d die in bed till I met you, Charlotte!

Doctor: John, your wonderful life with Charley is a fiction, a fiction that has not only taken your father from you but is also interfering with your grief. You MUSTN’T return to lust-filled ignorance! In that life of non-stop sex, he’ll never again be able to enjoy TRUE happiness.
John: ...so?


Dialogue Triumphs -

Charley: What a perfect Dick he is!

Turnpike: That Pollard girl reminds him of a girl he once knew, a beauty who didn’t mind half the country seeing her as God made her.
Doctor: I knew her once myself.
Turnpike: For how long?
Doctor: About 427 pages.



Viewer Quotes -

"So let me get this straight: there WEREN’T any blood-sucking zombie knights in the crypt? Why the hell did I pay for this then? You want my cold hard cash, Big Finish? Then when you promise zombie apocalypse you fucking well deliver!" – Dave Restal (2009)

"Wasn’t as crap as the one with Richard III." – Peter Davison (2008)

"When I read that the Sixth Doctor and Charlotte were to meet Dick Turpin, I envisaged a rollicking story of romance with the great fabled filanderer getting up to mischief; all crackling fires, howling winds and swathed in the gritty lifestyle of days gone by. A bit of swash and a smattering of buckle. That’ll teach me to have even mediocre expectations! THIS IS WAS SHIT!"
– (2008)

"THE Dick Turpin is in this audio?!?!?! GOOOOOOD FACT! He is my absolute favorite audio historical love muppet! HOORAY for more Turpin! I was already excited, now I’m practically beside myself. And yet, after all that, he isn’t in this audio NEARLY enough for my taste! NEEDZ MOAR DICK TURPIN!!!!!!" – some guy who like Dick Turpin (2007)

"Charley banging anyone in site. Well worth the 12 bucks I ALMOST paid for this before stealing it off bit torrent."
– Nigel Verkoff (2009)

"Growing up in Canada I’ve never known much about his Dick Turpin, so this was an informative starting point for my curiosity. I intend to base my entire historical thesis on this story."
– Stupid, Stupid Man (2008)


India Fisher Speaks!
"I really love the dynamic that’s building up between the Sixth Doctor and Charley. It’s only our second story and you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. If that Doctor was ever going to sleep with a woman, it’d be me. The URST has built up really quickly, as it does most of the time I’m in the room, with the wind in our hair. Some might call that over-romanticized, but none to my face if they want to live to see another dawn. I’m the best gangster’s moll there is, full stop!"


Colin Baker Speaks!
"Sil, Peri, Frobisher, Evelyn, Mel and Charley... the thing about having six companions is that I’m six times more likely to get work than the other Doctors – I’ve got quite a backlog of good karma since 1986, you know. And India is truly worthy of joining my stable of fillies. That’s just an expression though, but India was very disappointed, she’d brought a saddle and everything... But, yes, The Rookwood Broomwood Doomwood Touchwood Curse of Charley was the next story I did with India. This is apparently the first ever Doctor Who story with Dick Turpin used as a glorified sex object for Charley to carry out her obscene desires. This sort of story has NEVER been done before. I’m honoured."


Eddie Hitler Speaks!
"I’m the only one whose done any fucking work on this series – I dunno why anyone else at Big Finish gets paid for what is basically me making a solo album with Colin and Indie. I’m sick of getting caught with my trousers down. I’m tired of having to go out on a limb for this series, even though it’s only the second episode. Big Finish wanted me to let other people write this series, but I said, no way, I wasn’t about to break up the band. What a fucking mistake. My idea for 'Robin Hood & His Dead Virgin Muff Divers of Armageddon Kill Santa on Christmas Eve' wasn’t even CONSIDERED for recording! It was fucking brilliant! Way better than this 'Dick Turpin of Death Rocks The Cradle of Black Death' bollocks we were forced to go with thanks to the BBC! I refuse to let my artistic visage be compromised... any further than it already has been! Well, from now on, I’m doing whatever the hell I want and if Briggsy doesn’t like it he can fuck off back to Cardiff. Let us adjourn to our very spacious recording studio to record the next story, the Sixth Doctor and Charley in 'Flogging A Dead Horse of the Dustbins'!"


Rumors & Facts -

It was over six months after the release of The Contempt of Charely that the sequel was finally allowed anywhere near the public. The audiences loved the gritty, Ashes-to-Ashes crossover and exciting presence of the no-nonsense Gene Genie, weird phone calls, and a murder mystery inside a creepy apartment complex.

So when they got four episodes of Charley flirting with Dick Turpin while the Doctor worries about twigs falling from trees, the transition was so jarring thirteen listeners got whiplash in the first week alone. True, the whole point of Charley’s Odyssey is the freedom to tell different types of hardcore erotica, but it was normally done with a tad more style than this.

Eddie Hitler’s idea for the second story of the Sixth Doctor and Charley would have featured a crossover with the popular postmodern TV series Robin Hood with the main selling point apparently being "Charley in a three way with Saracen Djaq and Lady Marion"! However the BBC weren’t willing to compromise the reputation of their version of Robin Hood (or at least, wanted the fun of doing it themselves), and it was pointed out that the Sixth Doctor had already biblically known most of Sherwood forest in Jacqueline Raynor’s The Maid Marion Conspiracy.

In a fit of mindless fury, Hitler told Raynor SHE could write the damn story if she was so bloody brilliant, little realizing how mentally unstable she was as evidence by her work in 300 and Doctor Who and the Goodies.

The end result was a lesson painfully learned.

Seriously, what the hell was up with that ending?!