10th Doctor - New Earth (i)

Serial 201 – Earth 2.0
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Body Swap Shops

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides - Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial 201 – Earth 2.0 -

"Hey kids, guess what? You have a reason to live again! Yes, the show that undermines your entire existence on planet Earth and beyond has returned! Isn't that super-duper? You honestly don't deserve to ever see anything this good but now on BBC ONE... Doctor Who..."


It’s 10 in the morning on Boxing Day, and at the Powell Estate Mickey and Jackie have starting heavy-petting in the middle of breakfast, in front of the horrified Doctor, Rose and Cousin Mo. The Doctor decides this has put him off his sausages and Rose gets to her feet, screaming that she can’t take this any more and wants to get as far away from her mother and ex-boyfriend copulating as possible.

As she runs out of the flat, the Doctor blinks and realizes he doesn’t particularly want to stay either and hurries off after her. Mo stays to finish their untouched breakfasts before she leaves, quite indifferent to the copulating couple on the kitchen table.

The Doctor enters the TARDIS and begins to activate various controls, while Rose vandalizes Mickey’s beetle and sprays DIE SCUM on his imitation leopard-skin seats. Soon she joins her friend inside the craft and in no time at all they are spinning through the time vortex. When Rose inquires as to where they are going, the Doctor explains excitedly: "No idea! I can’t remember how this bloody thing works at all! I managed to fluke it the first few times, but, hell, I was living in denial!"


Parte the First

The ship soon lands and the two travellers find themselves on a windy hillside before a grand city where the grass smells of pine air fresheners. The Doctor explains that it is the year 5,000,000,023 AD and the planet is Earth 2.0, the next Earth, New Earth even - a new world on which the remains of humanity settled after the original Earth was destroyed by the expanding sun. The city before them is New New Cardiff.

Rose points out that there is rather large sign saying "WELCOME TO THE CITY STATE CRAFE TEC HEYDRA ON THE PLANET COFFRA" which makes the Doctor blink a few times, shove his hands deeper into his pocket, suck air through his teeth, tilt his head from side to side and sigh.

"Well... obviously... it’s a time share. Next year this place will be swarming with humans, mark my words, you won’t be able to tell the difference between this and Cardiff."

The Doctor then pretends to become very fascinated with the contents of his pockets and then notes something odd with his handy-dandy-all-purpose-telepathic-psychic-paper: words are appearing on it, as if someone is trying to contact them, someone supremely all-powerful projecting their thoughts across time and space!

0010234 00000001-
00110001 000000 00
123456156756662--------1
>I
546002646 0000000000000000001111
11111111011234864100000
cfx-103268631-3151643k;jaj
PLEASE, WHERE AM I?
******** 015154122 124
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 7773
HELP ME
244+56030000 12346843333
AS PART OF THE MACHINE, WE KNOW THE MACHINE
54637896 00000110000000001111
111111110112346864100000
cfx-103268631-3151643k;jaj
I DON'T WANT TO DIE
cfx-103268631-3151643k;jaj
11111111011978864100000
>2 >4>6 >8
WARD 26. PLEASE COME.

The Doctor and Rose decide that it is some scrambled text message and not worth wasting their time on, so instead they’ll do what all tourists do in Crafe Tec Heydra and get their holographs taken in front of the Temporal Difference of Opinion Memorial in the centre of town.

The TARDIS travelers soon admire the carvings on the monolith, with artwork showing a race of metal beings and a race of flesh being clashing in a fearsome explosion and solitary survivor in a frock coat and long girly hair walking away from the wreckage. Under this is a phrase scratched into the stone: "YOU ARE NOT ALONE".

The Doctor buys a T-shirt with that slogan while Rose gets a purple Bob Dylan cap with the words I SAW THE CRUDE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE INVISIBLE WAR AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID HAT, and they discuss whether or not the artist got the Eighth Doctor’s nose the right size.

It is now the Doctor notices the huge, dark and monastic Hospital of Evergreen Days in the middle of the sci-fi high-towered city full of whizzing shuttles like Coruscant in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The travellers enter the hospital via the foyer and find it filled
with feline-like nurses, who busy themselves with their visitors and
patients. The Doctor explains that these are the Sister of Plentitude who run a hospice for the Face of Bond, the ancient creature that made numerous self-conscious cameos in the first series.

Rose questions why they are doing this incredibly pointless thing, and the Doctor explains there are countless dubious stories and urban legends surrounding the Face of Bond, in particular the prophecy that moments before his death Boe will impart his final secret to one like himself – the wanderer, the man with out a home, the lonely God.

"What? Like you, you mean?" Rose asks.

"Eh? Course not me, what would be the odds of that?!" the Doctor retorts. "Everyone knows the final secret will be four little words and everyone’s been guessing what they are for centuries! That’s why the Sisters are keeping an eye on him so when the big-headed poser finally karks it, there’ll definitely be someone there to hear them!"

The Doctor heads for the lift, noting that he’s always suspected the infamous four words will be "The Butler Did It" though the clever money is on either "I Am Your Father" or "You Are My Mother". So lost is he in guessing the stunning revelations the Face of Bond might make if he could ever be bothered, the Doctor does not notice a scrawny albino dwarf covered in henna patterns watching them in wide-eyed amazement.

And to be honest, a scrawny albino dwarf covered in henna patterns watching them in wide-eyed amazement bouncing up and down gasping "Human! Pureblood human! Bugger me sideways! She must be the ONLY pureblood human in the ENTIRE BLOODY UNIVERSE!" as he points at Rose is KIND of noticeable...

However at that moment, the Doctor and Rose are distracted when the Duke of New New York, a legendary descendant of Isaac Hayes, is rushed into the Hospital after choking on a cocktail olive. His lawyer, Krau Flovis, threatens to sue absolutely everyone for allowing this to happen until the Doctor sighs, sets his sonic screwdriver to "Heimlich Maneuver", and saves the Duke’s life instantly.

Flovis continues to threaten the Doctor with legal action for interfering with her client, so the Doctor kicks Flovis in the shin and runs away very quickly into a lift and escapes, forgetting to take Rose with him. Thus, she has to get another lift with the scrawny albino dwarf who nervously introduces himself as Chip "Zaggit" Jamison before the lift’s automatic cleansing system soaks them in disinfectant – leading to Doctor Who’s first High-Def wet T-shirt scene.

The rather damp, sticky and, most-important, transparently-clad Rose gets out of the lift in the cellars of the hospital and when Chip follows her, Rose picking up a discarded metal bar and threatens to beat him to death unless he stops stalking her. Then she whimpers and runs away. Chip follows and there is a predictable Benny Hill chase sequence ending with Rose running into a dungeon where she finds...

JOAN COLLINS!

The no-longer-humanoid sheet of skin is sitting in a corner, watching a projector film playing an endless home movie of an acid house rave party. Rose is shocked and disturbed at this for many reasons, least of all that during their last encounter at Milliways, Collins was set alight and melted into a puddle.

Joan Collins explains that her brain survived... somehow... and the Face of Bond offered her remains a lift on the back of space truck. However, Collins’ insurance policy didn’t cover third party murder and she has used all her cash to reconstruct her trampoline-like body with the remaining skin from her ancient, original buttocks.

"And thanks to you, you dirty blonde assassin, I’m just desiccating in my pit, letting the memories play! Oh, I remember that night. Speed cocktails from the Ambassador of Stoatgobbler. That was the last time anyone told me I was beautiful. It was a pivotal moment, looking back on it, and changed the entire course of my life... but now you’re here! This is beyond coincidence! This is destiny! At last I can be revenged you, DOCTOR!"

Rose remembers that due to a slight misunderstanding, everyone at the Restaurant at the End of the World thought SHE was the Doctor and the Northern bloke with the big ears and the leather jacket was actually Rose Tyler. Awkwardly, she explains the situation to Joan Collins, who proves to be surprisingly understanding about the whole thing.

She then has Chip pull a lever on a nearby control panel and Rose’s arms are grabbed by two chains of light, emitted from nearby run-down machinery. Upon his mistress’ orders the clone then activates the psycho-graft, causing a cage of light to descend on the trapped Earthling. There is a flash and the light surrounding Rose vanishes leaving Rose sly and foxy and with a strange American accent.

"Result!" 'Rose' laughs as she marvels at once again having arms, fingers and hair, ignoring the hysterical screams of "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED THERE?!?" from 'Joan Collins'.

Yes, it is true, Joan Collins has swapped bodies with Rose Tyler!

Cue completely gratuitous scenes of Billie Piper in a wet T-shirt fondling herself in front of a full-length mirror as a tattooed albino dwarf watched on... GOD DAMN IT, I LOVE THIS FREAKING SHOW!!

The Doctor, meanwhile, makes his way to the Face of Bond Ward in the upper levels of the hospital while he and Sister Jatt, one of the hospital’s cat nurses, exchange ideas on what Bond’s last message will be and the bookies odds on said ideas.

On the way they meet Flovis and the Duke of New New York, the former of which starts having a go at performing surgery on the Duke without written permission and official from the senate. The Doctor notes that the Duke is turning to stone – Petrifold Regression, a nasty STD carried by silicon-based lifeforms the Duke caught during his lifetime of charity and abstinence with a hooker called Granite Gretel.

Sister Jatt is confident that the Duke will "be up and about screwing prostitutes in no time" but the Doctor has known many a statue to have once played the field with similar hopeless optimism. Jatt bitches that the Hospital is waging an ongoing war against STDs, but somehow humanity continues to find ways to spread genital diseases...

"When we said we were taking a lifelong vow to heal and mend, we thought we were just finding a way to pass the time..."

The duo finally reach the Face of Bond sitting in the corner, and the Doctor kneels before the tank and laughs: "Bet you didn’t expect to see ME again, did you? I look a bit different, but it's me... it's the Doctor... and I survived that business with the Dustbins – total fluke, huh? So, anyway, you dead yet?"

The Face of Bond sighs.

Just then the Duke of New New York arrives with a bottle of champagne, having been miraculously cured of all diseases despite the Doctor knowing that Petrifold Regression is completely and utterly incurable – but, somehow, the Sisters of Plentitude have found a cure with the tender application of science and two minutes in Intensive Care.

The Doctor turns to the attending nurse, Matron Casp, and delicately raises the matter by grabbing her by the wimple and screaming "HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?!" at the top of his voice.

Matron Casp explains such matters are covered by patient confidentially and tells him to piss off. Scowling, the Doctor stalks the wards of the hospital and finds all the patients cured of infirmities and diseases which are normally considered "extinction-level catastrophes", all in a matter of minutes. When Joan Collins arrives wearing Rose’s body and searching for the leather-clad Northerner she now intends to kill, the Doctor greets her and the two remain totally unaware they are actually mortal enemies. As you do.

"There you are! Have you seen these patients? Look at that bloke with the red skin? He’s got Marconi’s Disease – you hear that beeping? Morse code for 'Let Me Cure You'. Nasty thing, Marconi’s Disease, it makes you generate ironic Morse Code messages, and it should take years to recover. He’s due out tomorrow! I’ve never seen anything like it! And that guy, the one completely white? Pallidome Pancrosis. Kills you in ten minutes, and he’s fine! How the hell do they do it? Some kind of cell washing cascade? Hypnosis? Placebos? HOW?!?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because they’re not telling me! I HATE NOT KNOWING! I LIKE SPOILERS!" The Doctor glances at Rose and notices her shirt is completely unbuttoned and she’s no longer wearing a bra. "Is it getting hot in here?" he asks hopefully.

Joan Collins very suddenly pulls his face towards her and plants a smacking kiss on his lips. When she finally pulls away, he looks extremely shocked and she’s slightly breathless. He stares at her as she wipes her mouthj like she’s eaten fried chicken.

"Sorry," she explains. "I haven’t been getting much lately."

She walks off. The Doctor watches her go looking extremely dazed and tousled. "Yep!" he grins, smoothing his hair down. "I still got it! And this time I’m NOT going to die right afterwards! Yee-HAH!"

The Doctor, invigorated, heads off through the hospital to search for Intensive Care to find out the truth behind this curiously innovative level of treatment in the hospital and the reason why the nurses have kept it a secret from the outside world. Failing that, a secret passage will do him just fine.

The Face of Bond sends his personal masseuse, Novice Hame, to go and fetch the Doctor, and if she accidentally throws him down some stairs, well, then that’s perfectly all right with him. Hame heads off into the depths of the Hospital and finds the Doctor and Rose sneaking behind a tapestry marked "GO BACK! YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!"

Creeping down a long, dark corridor, the Doctor and Joan Collins find an endless industrial passageway lined with identical, glass-fronted booths glowing an unfriendly green colour – Borg chic by anyone’s standards. "Odd how the cellar of this hospital looks like that paper mill the Nestle Consciousness was in way back at the start, eh, Rose?" the Doctor asks her. "It’s so distinctive! Odd to find it over five billion years in the future, like those gravel pits I keep ending up in come what may..."

The Doctor opens one of the cell chambers and finds, inside... the Duke of New New York, sobbing and turning to stone as they watch. In the next cell are the other patients the Doctor’s seen, all diseased and drooling like zombies. Joan Collins notes that there must be millions of cells, for all the patients who have ever visited the hospital, all linked by psycho-graft body swappers.

"Hmmmm. The patients come here and get linked up to this machinery, and somehow a copy of them with all their memories and personality is let loose in their stead. Jings, if I were paranoid, Rose, I’d say the nurses were up to something dodgy and not curing people at all!"

"That sounds rather convincing, actually."

"Does it? Oh yeah, so it does! The Nuns, being unable to cure all the diseases in the Galaxy, have resorted to cloning healthy duplicates of their patients. They transfer the patient’s minds into those new bodies and claim to have cured the illness and imprison the original sick bodies in these green cells! Brilliant! I’ve seen it tried a few times by the NHS but never on a scale like this. Think of it! Plague carriers hidden away with hideous diseases whilst the patients in the public eye were healthy... just like The Picture of Dorian Gray!" the Doctor gasps. "Deliberate, or a coincidence?"

Novice Hame finally catches up with them and immediately starts reciting their prepared statement abdicating all possible responsibility: "It’s for the greater cause! The Sisterhood has sworn to help! Mankind needed us when it was their turn on the time share, and they caught so many disgusting diseases! We couldn't cope! We did try! We tried everything! We tried growing clones and using it as a plague farm for cures, but it was felt too Gothic by every focus group we tried! So the Sisterhood came up with a scheme to make patients better without curing them! It’s all perfectly legal!"

"So why don’t you tell anyone?" Joan Collins asks.

"It kind of kills the mystical omnipotence vibe," Hame explains.

"But this is deeply immoral!" Joan Collins complains.

The Doctor bugs out his eyes with a psychotic zeal. "I say it’s perfectly reasonable, because I AM THE DOCTOR! And if YOU don’t like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, well there isn’t one! Patrick Moore notwithstanding, IT STOPS WITH ME! And I will NOT be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!! You’ll do it MY way, because I LIKE it my way! I’m better than you, I’m more powerful than you SO DO AS YOU’RE TOLD!!!!"

Hame and Joan Collins stare at the Time Lord as he foams at the mouth.

"Oh, was I being dictatorial again?" the Doctor asks suddenly. "I suppose saying your own authority is absolute is just a small step away from being a dictator... Is that the sort of person I am now? Am I megalomaniacal tyrant? A deranged psycho control freak? And NOT ginger?"

"Wait a minute," Joan Collins snaps. "YOU are the Doctor? THE Doctor? From Milliways? The SAME Doctor with a NEW face? And you have a go at ME for having plastic surgery? YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE!!!"

"Er, Rose, what are you on about?"

"YOU UTTER SCUMBAG!!!"

"I’m being very, very calm. You want to beware of that - very, very calm. And the only reason I’m being so very, very calm is that the brain is a delicate thing. And I might smash yours in UNLESS you tell me what the hell you’re talking about?"

"I’m not Rose!"

"Then who are you? Some sort of really sexed-up Auton?!"

"So soon forgotten? I am the Last Human!"

"Dave Lister?"

"No, Joan Collins!"

"Jings, forty years of outstanding villains out for my blood, and a one-note non-entity satirical piece of skin is the one that comes back?! That’s just wrong!"

Furious, Joan Collins takes out Rose’s perfume and sprays it in the Doctor’s face – and he immediately keels over at the incredible potency of Divine Aura # 4!!


Parte the Second

Novice Hame decides this all getting way to weird for her and decides to get someone else to deal with it. She hits the alarm button and runs for her life as fast as she can, passing Chip who has been wandering around the place looking for something to do.

Chip approaches and gets shouted at by Joan Collins to tie the unconscious Doctor up while she plans to blackmail the hell out of the Sisters of Plentitude by revealing their dark secrets to the rest of the planet, especially Today Tonight. Matron Casp arrives with Sister Jatt and point out they are a charity and don’t have the funds.

"Now I’ve discovered your private health care scheme, we’ve got business to discuss! The clients pay you a fortune. And that's exactly what I need!" Joan Collins laughs. "A one-off payment, that's all I want... oh, and perhaps a yacht. With lots of drugs and oiled musclemen. In return for which, I shall tell the City nothing of your institutional murder."

"But these aren’t real people any more," Matron Casp says smugly. "Legally, they have no proper existence!"

"Don’t patronize me, Catgut! Do you have any idea who I am?"

"No."

"I AM JOAN COLLINS!"

"Didn’t you die 23 years ago?"

"That was for tax reasons."

"So, legally, you’re dead."

"So? Look, I'll tell them! And you've no way of stopping me!"

"Bet your life?" snarls Jatt, and claws burst out of her gloves, Wolverine-style. "TIME TO DIE!"

"What? You’re nurses for Christ sake!" Joan Collins wails. "You take lifelong vows to heal! And now you’re trying to kill me? Am I the only one here who finds this just a little bit contradictory?"

"You have no official existence," laughs Casp. "We can do what we like, you peroxide blonde slut!"

"What we need now is an outrageously contrived escape!" the Doctor shouts – and immediately Chip sneezes into a fuse box. There is a short circuit and all the cells suddenly pop open as the zombie-like patients lurch out of the cells, between the Cat Nuns and the fugitives.

"Yep, that’s contrived enough," the Doctor notes.

It seems that the body-swapping hasn’t QUITE worked out on the dying clones, and they aren’t totally mindless – and knowing they’ve been condemned to death en mass has left a mass of very angry zombified plague victims unleashed. "Probably the Gelth pissing about again," the Doctor confides to the audience, assuming they have the faintest idea what the hell he’s talking about.

"We understood what you did to us!" moans the Zombie Duke. "And we will end it! As part of the machine, we know the machine!"

"Oh. So YOU were the ones who were texting me!" the Doctor notes. "That’s an integral plot point tied up right there! Jings, didn’t expect that. But there’s a misunderstanding, I’m fully booked today trying to guess the Face of Bond’s last words. No zombie hoards until tomorrow!"

The zombies take this remarkably reasonably, then turn on the cat nuns and rip them limb from limb and feast on their entrails. Despite their huge adamantium claws, all the cat nuns can do is hiss and threaten to scratch them like actual feline domesticus... and unsurprisingly are mercilessly slaughtered by the brain-munching zombies.

As more and more cells are opened and more zombies shuffle out, the Doctor spots a great big threatening button marked "Maximum Quarantine" and presses it, sending the whole hospital into lock down. Shutters seal off every entrance and exit to the hospital, causing alarm amongst the patients, staff and visitors, who are all still betting what the final words of the Face of Bond will be.

Joan Collins screams angrily at the Doctor he’s trapped them inside a building now crawling with thousands of flesh-eating zombies even now staggering slowly towards them, muttering 'stop the pain...' and reaching out to them!

"It’s more fun this way! Don’t worry," the Doctor says soothingly. "I’ve got a history with dealing with zombie plagues. This is just another day in the office for me – admittedly with more cat nun entrails, but still..."

Joan Collins and Chip notice the hordes of zombies, scream and runaway and the Doctor skips after them, laughing like a loon, as they flee deeper into the building. The zombies meanwhile make their way into the various wards and start slaughtering non-speaking extras. No, I tell a lie, one woman does scream "Help me!" before they rip her arms off.

Krau Flovis is having an illegal smoke and bitching at everyone when the walking dead arrive and she screams like a girl and runs for it, only to find Novice Hame has hidden in a cardboard box. The zombies press themselves against a glass window in a cheap Romero homage of death and we cut back to the main plot:

Since the Doctor’s thoughtful quarantine has jammed all the lifts, Joan Collins, Chip and the Doctor are forced to flee down numerous flights of steps until they get ambushed by another roaming mob of zombies. They back up the stairs as the undead advance, before the Doctor and Joan Collins toss the whimpering Chip to the zombies. The plague victims look at the duo with that "You BASTARDS!" expression as Chip is handed back down the zombie line and the others retreat.

Somehow Chip escapes having his flesh stripped from his puny little body and hides in the hospital’s septic tank. The zombies aren’t prepared to wade into that shit to feast on him, but it’s arguable it would be a lot easier to exit via their stomachs.

The Doctor and Joan Collins meanwhile lock themselves into the dungeon Collins was using as her base of operations earlier. Meanwhile, Rose furiously hurls abuse at the Doctor, wanting to know what the hell he’s been up doing while she has been trapped in trampoline-form!

The Time Lord, however, is too busy critiquing the architecture to respond. "So this is where you were hiding. Sitting right on top of the secret you needed to blackmail the nurses all the time, and you never even noticed! Honestly, how thick are you?"

"Oh, excuse me, I’m not the one who unleashed a horde of flesh-eating zombies to liven up the mood!"

"Don’t judge me, little madam!" the Doctor shouts at her. "You hacked into their body-swapping bollocks and stole Rose’s body! Why the hell did you do that?"

"Well, I was sick of the old me. It was rubbish at corners. So what are we going to do, fleetingly returning to the whole 'zombies all clambering to get inside this room and kill us all?"

"Well, for starters," asks Rose, "can we swap bodies back?"

"But I’ll be left here to be eaten!" Joan Collins protests.

"Still not seeing a problem here," the Doctor shrugs and crosses to the psycho-graft machinery.

"Aren’t you getting a little TIRED of killing me?!" Joan Collins screams hysterically as the pounding outside the doors increases. "What did I ever do to you anyway?"

"You did it all to yourself?" the Doctor suggests. "Life is suffering? Maybe I’m just a complete bastard who doesn’t know when to stop? All of the above? Who can say?" He zaps the machinery with the sonic screwdriver. "Don’t worry, Rose, I’m a Time Lord. I know all about psycho-tele-bio-genetic transmission thingamajigs like this..."

There is a blinding flash of light.

"Oh, bollocks," grumbles the skin trampoline.

"Blimy, my head..." gasps the blonde teen, looking around in a daze.

"Oh, my," says the spiky-haired Scotsman incredibly camply. "This is... different. Goodness me, I'm a man. Yum. So many parts! And hardly used... Ah.. ah! Two hearts! Oh, baby, I'm beating out a samba!"

Yep, the Doctor has swapped bodies with Rose, and Rose has swapped bodies with Joan Collins, so Rose is back to normal, the Doctor is now stuck in the corner and Joan Collins is wiggling around crazily.

As the Doctor bitches about not having enough psycho-graft energy to try again, Rose demands Joan Collins help swap them back before further comedic hi-jinks occur. "Lesson in logic," Joan Collins retorts, "the Doctor keeps trying to kill us all. Little Rose Tyler does not. Ergo, I keep the Doctor’s body – temporarily, though, because frankly, this nose needs work – and the Doctor is stuck in mine where he can’t KILL ME!"

"But I’m only one who can save us!" the Doctor protests.

"And how exactly do you intend to save us when those zombie people suddenly burst through the doors?" Joan Collins demands.

"Well..." the Doctor flounders. "Jings. No idea. Of course, we could always just make an even MORE outrageously contrived escape from certain death than we did last time!"

"How?" Rose asks, punching a wall – and immediately a secret passageway opens, revealing a ladder heading upwards.

"Am I good or what?" the Doctor marvels as the diseased patients storm the dungeon. Rose and Joan Collins flee up the ladder as the zombies lurch and lumber around the trapped Doctor. He mutters to himself quietly as the zombies stare at him.

"Don’t panic. Never panic. Om mane padme hum. Karma moves in mysterious ways. No endings. Only new beginnings. Sense the act of creation, the touch of a divine sculpture. The Great Circle of Life maintains the balance. Harmony in movement is life itself. Clear the mind of all negative thought. No fear. No negativity. Just peace. ARGGGHH! I CAN’T STAND THIS! SOMEBODY SAVE MEEEEEEEE!"

In the lift shaft Rose and Joan Collins make their escape but are
stopped when Matron Casp bursts out of the shadows like the spring-loaded cats of yore and tries to scratch Rose’s eyes out, only for Rose to clothesline her and send her plummeting to her doom – even though she lands on her feet, she is ripped apart by the waiting zombies.

Rose and Joan Collins manage to make their way to the top of the shaft only to find the secret panel won’t open and neither of them now how to use the sonic screwdriver to actually open the bloody thing.

Suddenly there is a flash and the Doctor is suddenly back in his own body, bragging about how he managed to kick the psycho-graft to bodyswap... only to realize that "Rose" is now Joan Collins and the real Rose is back in Collins’ body in the dungeon below. And since the Doctor cannot get to the psycho-graft, they’re stuck the way they are until further notice.

"Oh well. Win some, lose some," he notes and zaps the hatch with the screwdriver as the zombies start climbing up the ladder towards them. The Doctor and Joan Collins escape through it, slamming the hatch as diseased hands start banging it.

Back in the dungeon, Rose screams blue murder on the Doctor.

The Doctor and Joan Collins emerge into Ward 26 where Novice Hame, the Face of Bond, the Duke of New New York and Krau Flovis are present. Gripped with zombiephobia, Flovis attacks them with a chair while roaring like a wild animal.

Staring at her for a long moment, the Doctor and Joan Collins quietly shuffle around her and chat to Hame and the others. It seems that the zombies have slaughtered everyone else in the Hospital of Evergreen Days, but the Duke insists they get up onto the roof and get the police to try and save them.

"You can’t do that!" the Doctor shouts at them. "If they forced entry, they’d break quarantine. We can't let a zombie get out - there is ten million people in the city, they'd all be at risk! Didn’t you WATCH '28 Weeks Later'?!"

"And do you have a better plan, Mr. Highest Authority?" Novice Hame demands, folding her arms.

"Get me intravenous palliatives for every disease you’ve got!" the Doctor screams back at her. "Move it! If I know one thing... apart from psycho-tele-bio-genetic transmissions... it’s biochemistry against evil greed-based schemes of suffering and misery! As the Venusian proverb has it, never put your threshwart in a bandersnatch! I’ve no idea what it means, but it’s probably ironic! ALLONZEE!"

With all the available drip feeds strapped to his jacket, the Doctor opens the lift-shaft with the screwdriver and jumps onto the lift cables and attaches a botched zip line to it which he happened to have in his pocket for just this sort of emergency. "Come on, I need another pair of hands!" he shouts over his shoulder at Joan Collins.

"Well, go to the hand department, you’re not having mine!"

"Technically, they belong to Rose..."

"Why should I? You keep threatening me and you’re so rude and horrible plus you almost killed me three times!"

"Well, if you’re SO desperate to stay alive, then why don’t you live a little?" the Doctor jeers. "Yellow chicken!"

Joan Collins finally agrees, mainly to shut the jerk up for a moment, and grabs onto the Doctor’s back. He activates the zip line and they rapidly descend to the roof of the lift capsule on the ground floor. By the time they do so, his trousers have been vaporized and smoke is pouring out of his crotch.

"Jings! Shoulda thought of that earlier, really!" squeaks the Doctor as he hobbles over to the lift disinfectant system which seemed like one-gag padding at the start but turned out to be an incredibly important plot point. Opening up the container for the disinfectant system, the Doctor rips the tops of the packets of each solution with his teeth and squirts them inside. "I'm cooking up a cocktail. I know a bit about medicine myself!"

Joan Collins points out that mixing all the different drugs together randomly is bound to lead to complications and worse the drugs are INTRAVENOUS drugs - even when mixed with other intravenous drugs and disinfectant, they shouldn’t have any effect when passed on through touch. The Doctor retorts that super-duper Year Five Billion technology should sort that out for him and when he links it to the hitherto-unmentioned hospital-wide fire sprinkler system.

"Cure them?!" the Doctor laughs, zapping the mixture with his sonic screwdriver. "How the hell am I supposed to cure them? This hospital doesn’t have any general cures, and these IVs are full of dishwashing liquid! Which, if using a bio-standard vector, should become a completely lethal nerve gas! You know what they say, Joan? Fight germs with bio-warfare!"

"You’re going to kill them all?!"

"No, I’m going to sterilize the hospital. Sounds MUCH nicer!" The Doctor laughs like a madman and uses his sonic screwdriver to activate the sprinklers. "EAT DISINFECTANT, YOU DISEASED MONGREL LEPERS!"

The infect zombies milling about in the foyer are soaked with mixture, and the numerous boils, bleeding eyes and granite infections start to disappear... Within minutes the ex-patients doused in the muck are cured, and every trace of disease is gone from the Hospital.

"Jings, the stuff actually cured them!" the Doctor exclaims. "Well, fancy that! Life will out and nature finds a way, eh? Who would have thought a few bottles of oven cleaner and saline solution could prove the ultimate cure for all diseases in the entire universe? I mean, seriously, what ARE the odds of that?"

Only two hours since the TARDIS arrived on Coffra, the Doctor had created a whole new race of people and caused the total collapse of the Hospital of Evergreen Days, not to mention completely screwing up a whole galaxy’s health service for ever while simultaneously giving the clues that eternal life can be found in the cleaning products aisle of your local supermarket.

As Novice Hame is lead off by police officers screaming, "NEXT TIME, DOCTOR! NEXT TIME! RRROWWWLLL!!", the Doctor, Joan Collins and Rose are trying to fix the broken psycho-graft.

"Now, I’m fairly certain I know what I’m doing this time," the Doctor promises as he reverses the polarity of the neutron flow and there is a huge flash. The Doctor’s and Rose’s bodies sway for a moment as they regain their balance.

"It worked! I’m in the right body!" Rose cheers.

"Me too! Welcome back!" the Doctor cheers. "What about you, Joan?"

The human trampoline looks around in confusion. "What the hell happened there?" it asks in a monotonous whine. "Why is everything so flat!"

"But if that’s not Joan Collins, she must have body-swapped with someone!" Rose points out for anyone so damn stupid as to have not already worked this out for themselves.

"Oh, sweet Lord!" complains the body of Chip as he enters. "I’ve been turned into Joe Pasquale! Talk about from class to brass..."

Just then, the loudspeaker booms: "THE FACE OF BOND IS ABOUT TO REVEAL HIS FINAL SECRET. ALL LIFE FORMS WILL PRESENT THEMSELVES TO THE BETTING SHOPS FOR THE MESSAGE!"

The Doctor, Rose and Joan dash off to Ward 26 as they wonder what the message might be: "I Listen To Dylan"? "I Like Red Herrings"? "I am the Walrus!"? "Look Out! Behind You!"? "Your Fly Is Undone"? "Got any loose change?"? "I Will Explain Later"? "Where Is My Body?"? "Please Pull My Finger"? "What’s Six Times Seven?"? "Oh No, Not Again"? "I Liked Eccleston Better"? "Butch It Up Mary!"? "That Logo Is Crap"? "I Prefer Star Trek"? "Use Vimto Recipes Wisely"? "Seriously, Elvis IS Dead"? "I Shot JR"? "They’re My Own Teeth"? "I Shagged Paris Hilton"?

The Face of Bond falls out of his tank as it shatters. "I have grown tired of this universe, and I have lived for millions of years. I have seen worlds born and die, stars collide, and the heavens burn. But in all my existence, I never saved more than when I switched my car insurance to Geico! It may SOUND impossible, but..."

"Is... THAT the secret?" asks the Duke fearfully.

"Hmm? No, the great secret, the four last words..." the Face of Boe has a violent coughing fit and manages to whisper something to the Doctor before slumping still.

The Doctor looks at the giant severed head and mutters, "You’re making my soul shed tears of pain, you’re aware of that, right?"

"What did the Face of Bond say?" asks Rose helpfully.

"He said... You Are Not Alone."

"What does that mean?"

The Doctor shrugs. "I don’t know."

"I thought you were supposed to be the last of the Time Lords?"

"You Are Not Alone. That’s all he said. You Are Not Alone." The Doctor turns to look down at the dead Bond and kicks him repeatedly. "YOU SELFISH PIECE OF SHIT! YOU BIG, FAT, SELFISH, BALD-AS-A-BILLIARD-BALL, HEAD-SHAPED, TEXTBOOK-ENIGMATIC FUCKER!"

"He chose the four words on the memorial right outside! How utterly unimaginative!" shouts Joan Collins and kicks the head as well.

"And that’s why NO ONE bet on him saying it! GOD DAMN!" adds the Duke, shooting the corpse full of holes with a handy sub-machine gun.

"Wow. Five billion years of spite," Rose observes, and she, the Doctor and Joan Collins walk away as the mob tear the ex-Face of Bond apart, in scenes clearly meant to be a direct and ironic counterpoint to all those zombie massacres earlier on in the story.

The Doctor turns to face Joan Collins. "And now for you, you dirty, conniving bitch!"

"But everything’s happy! Everything’s fine! Can’t you just leave me alone and trying to commit cold-blooded murder?"

"Uh-uh. You’ve lived long enough. Leave that body and end it!"

"I don’t want to die!"

"No one does. Well, except suicidal people."

"Oh, wait," says Joan Collins, thinking quickly. "I’ve just suffered a lethal heart failure! I’m going to drop dead here and now! I’m dying! You can sod off now you’ve destroyed the health system!"

"Oh, no, you’re not getting away THAT easily," the Doctor laughs and he and Rose drag her out of the hospital, as the Duke of New New York and his lawyer muse over the heap of shit the Doctor’s left in.

"What are we supposed to do with these technologically-dependant, emotionally-stunted zombie creatures with no immune systems whatsoever and rapidly decreasing life spans?" Krau Flovis complains. "What are they going to do with their lives on a planet identical in every way to Earth? And now the Hospital of Evergreen Days is collapsed, what do we do when people get ill or old? How will we stay alive?"

"Well," the Duke muses, "we could medically implant them and stuff with machines to replace their failing organs and make them immortal and immune to all sicknesses?"

"Sort of 'cyborg men'?" Flovis suggests. "Cybermen?"

"Yeah, why not? What’s the worst that could happen?"

'Bum-dum-brum-ba-BRUMDAAAA-BWUUUUM!' goes the incidental music.

"Honest, Rose," the Doctor notes as they return to the TARDIS, "this gets renamed Earth 2.0. and lasts another billion years. Then humanity moves on, another planet Earth. Then another. Then another."

"Where does it end?" asks Rose.

"Dunno. Milliways? Maybe it never does? No one sees it all, especially not Joan Collins! HAH!" the Doctor laughs cruelly. "Life goes on though. For some. Sucked in!"

"My heart’s slowing, I’ll be dead in no time, you can leave me here," Joan Collins protests as she is thrown through the doors of the police box by the Doctor and Rose.

Just then, a familiar shambling figure lurches over the pine-grass towards them, waving his hands and groaning, "Hey, Doctor! Man overboard! It’s me, Captain Jack Sparrow! Remember?"

Whistling innocently, the Doctor throws Rose inside the TARDIS, follows and slams the door shut. "Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for 'Dynasty', Joan. People cancelled their subscriptions to Playboy because of you! But I think you can make one last trip," he adds, crossing to the console and slamming down controls. "We’ve been invited to an acid rave party at the Sunshine Camp!"

Captain Jack sighs as the police box fades away. "This is becoming depressingly predictable," he mutters, swigging from an IV drip.

Elsewhere, elsetime, the TARDIS lands as the Doctor explains that he watched her home movie and has thus taken Joan back in time so she can meet her past self, tell her she’s beautiful and trigger this whole ontological paradox. He then opens the doors to let Joan loose in her own past and telling her "not to look back and die like the trampoline-shaped motherfucker you are".

"Aren’t you worried she might be about to change history or something?" asks Rose. "What if she’s just faking and isn’t about to die?"

"Rose Tyler!" the Doctor shouts are her. "How many times do I have to say it? I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’ve been mucking about with time and space for nine hundred and three years, and I’m the man who’s going to let a psycho-mass-murderess loose in her own timestream out of total confidence I know what I’m doing. You got a problem with that?"

Joan-Collins-as-Chip kicks the Doctor violently in the groin until he collapses and then runs out of the TARDIS laughing diabolically. Rose looks down at the pathetic sight of the Doctor writhing in agony, saddened by what she sees. She walks off into the TARDIS interior, leaving the Doctor to sob in pain alone.

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Next Time...
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"We’re under attack! There are creatures! We can’t stop them! We are doomed! Et cetera!"
"I need to know what they’re looking for, and there’s only one way I can do that, so close your eyes and try not to fidget."
"You’re inside my pants."
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!?!?!"
"A spaceship from the fifty-first century stalking a woman from the eighteenth! HAH! It’s funny because it’s true..."
"They must have found the right phone number, so they’re sending in the orders for lunch!"
"ARTHUR!"
"The clock on the mantel is broken! I’ve missed Eastenders! Doctor! DOCTOR! HELLO?! I’M TALKING TO YOU!!!"
"Hmm? Wazzat?"
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...The Nun In The Lift-Shaft...
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