Thursday, December 3, 2009

8th Doctor - The Next Life (ii)

Part Four – The Best Wife

After fifteen minutes of gratuitous girl-on-girl wrestling in mud with the moment of Armageddon less than an hour away, G'Dunce idly wonders if the mysterious Stargate-style ring in the basement might provide an escape attempt from the endless cycle.

Everyone else, however, is far too interested in Charley getting Grace in the sleeper hold.

REG burst into the hotel room, announces that he feels like a Snotaran has shat inside his head, and passes out. He then gets up, denounces C'Rizz as a traitorous lizard he would not trust with his non-existent sister, and passes out again.

In a lull in the mud-wrestling, the Doctor is impressed to learn that C'Rizz has apparently been using his companions all along in order to get here. It almost makes him interesting.

G'Dunce calls time out and the Doctor announces that Charley has won the first round. The second challenge will take place in the girl's shower room and is a predictable 'who looks better naked' competition.

As they head down to the shower, Charley idly explains that the Stargate-style thing in the basement is a gateway back to the old home universe, as explained to her by their mortal enemy Nicholas Briggs.

"On second thoughts, he might have just been talking out of his arse," Charley suggests, and the second competition begins.

The Doctor, C'Rizz and G'Dunce cheer and hoot and cajole the contestants and REG falls through the ceiling, insisting that as time and space in this universe are about to rip themselves apart, they really should try to escape.

He then sees what Grace is doing with the sponge and shuts up.

Grace wins the second competition, but only by a little. The Doctor announces the final challenge to decide who he will marry. Charley expects it will involve a sexual gratification competition, and so does Grace, but they are wrong.

"For the final test," the Doctor announces, "the contestants must act and star in a one-act play of their own devising, featuring a plot point that the characters must construct a dry stone wall."

Grace tells the Doctor to get stuffed, but Charley is up for it.

"Damn! It was some stupid Wisdom of Solomon crap, wasn't it, Doctor? It wasn't the play and the dry-stone wall that mattered, but what our reactions to the request were!"

"Well," the Doctor replies, "no, to be honest. But that's a bloody good idea. Right, Charley wins!"

Charley saunters up to Grace and spits in her eye. Grace then decides to try and break her neck. Time Lord and Eutermisans are utterly hypnotized by this spectacle – remember, both women are nude.

REG finally picks himself up and explains if THEY are not going to escape the destruction of the universe, he will. In his home universe, he will absorb all the alcohol available and move onto the next reality, and the next.

This finally gets their attention as he runs to said Stargate device and re-programs the energy portal and begins to cackle insanely at the sheer evilness of his plans.

C'Rizz pulls out a bazooka called "Big Emma" and shoots absolutely everyone but the Doctor. G'Dunce dies insisting that he has no idea who C'Rizz is, and that they are definitely not related.

The Doctor is shocked. He had assumed that C'Rizz has sided with his father on the Dark Side, like in a certain film trilogy he dare not mention for fear of legal reprisals.

C'Rizz berates the Doctor for thinking of doing something so cliché and then shoots down the Time Lord with the bazooka. The TARDIS materializes and Briggs and the Kro'ka emerge.

"Ha! It worked!" Briggs laughed. "You know, Kro'ka, I feel as happy as the Marquis de Sade would be if he'd gone into a bank career and foreclosed on twenty mortgages before lunch."

"I'm happy too, Mister B."

"Kro'ka, there are things with more complex minds than you living in toilets, so this comes as no surprise. Still, and with a sense of physical pain and emotional weakness, I will ask. Why are you happy?"

"Because everyone in the universe is watching my show!"

"Brilliant. Kro'ka, what few remaining viewers left in existence in the universe are more than likely evil zombies with heads barely solid enough to contain the black liquid ooze formerly known as their brains. Of course your show has ratings! Indeed, I dare say viewer appreciation of Double the Fist will climb higher as the molecular structure of said zombies is lost. Now shut up, or I'll take two fountain pens, shove them up your nostrils and use you as a desk ornament!"

C'Rizz has betrayed the Doctor and Charley and now wants a free ride into the next universe before this one ends. He also has "Big Emma" ready if they try and cheat him.

Briggs laughs evilly and orders the Kro'ka to lower the protective shield. The Kro'ka presses a button and a steel wall drops from the ceiling – unfortunately, with Briggs, the Kro'ka and C'Rizz all on the same side.

Briggs clears his throat in embarrassment and awkwardly offers to bring L'da along for the ride if he lowers the weapon.

Proving himself the only person more stupid than the Kro'ka, C'Rizz agrees and is quickly pistol-whipped unconscious.

With minutes left before the Apocalypse wave strikes Cardiff, REG panics and runs for it, leaving the Doctor, Charley and Grace with a bulkhead that can only be opened by decoding a specific logarithms.

Unfortunately, he lost his sonic screwdriver when his Fourth self nicked it, and neither of his naked female friends have any length of wire or skeleton keys about their person (the Doctor checks anyway).

Grace suggests they try on the other side of the bulkhead to find a lock-pick and, ironically, the bulkhead isn't locked in the first place. Even as they step through, however, the floor gives way and they plummet out of sight before either Briggs or the Kro'ka can react...


Part Five - The Eloping Storm

Briggs then activates the Stargate, and at the moment the divergent universe ends, the gateway will link up with an identical gateway on Gallifrey and allow him to escape.

He warns the Kro'ka for the upteenth time that, if they pass through the portal BEFORE that moment, they will reappear in Cardiff seconds after the Big Bang and suffer through the cycle all over again.

The Doctor, Grace and Charley struggle to find their way back up the shaft in a sequence of blatant padding, while REG has already broken into the basement via the back door.

Out of his mind on anti-freeze, the wide-eyed vamp lunges at Briggs and the Kro'ka, before spontaneously vomiting all over them. The toxic substance burns their flesh and the duo trip over a banana skin to plummet into the portal. How ironic.

REG is delighted! He's saved the day and it's only moments until the Stargate locks onto the real universe and he can escape – maybe he really IS up to this saving-the-universe-under-the-influence-of-alcohol lark? Before he can decide, he is shot in the back with his own harpoon gun and collapses with a cry of "Rumpitty".

The universes are coming into synch and it looks like the story is about to end – suddenly Grace announces that she is NOT Grace Holloway, but instead the embodiment of retroactive continuity.

She is ZIG-ZAG-GAY-ASS!

The energies around REG were left behind when he died and went to Cardiff, and the Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass has recorporealized into the form of the Eighth Doctor's sexual desire.

Charley points out that she had been insisting from the start that Grace was a zombie possessed by an evil force from before the dawn of time itself.

The Doctor reminds Charley she says this about ANY woman he talks to.

It seems that Charley is not the only deranged stalker after the Doctor – Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass appears to be the ultimate psycho fan, and she's more than willing to possess the teenager's body if that will, you know, get the Doctor going.

The Doctor doubts that even Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass can control Charley's libido, and luckily at this point REG gets up, announces that he is a little teapot, and falls over.

As he falls, he knocks over Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass and they both fall into the hole in the ground once more.

Amazed at his luck at having all the villains defeat themselves without any input from him whatsoever, the Doctor runs over to the TARDIS, screaming that he is free at last.

C'Rizz tries to stop him, gets knocked halfway across the room with a blow. The Doctor laughs fiendishly. "Hahaha! You foolish mortals! You thought Nicholas Briggs was lying when he said I was using you for my own evil ends? He was telling the truth! Now, I'm getting the hell out of here. Rose Tyler, here I come!"


Part Six – To Go Beyond (Any Resemblance To A Plot)

Charley insists that she may just be pathologically jealous of anyone who gets too close to the Doctor and only followed him into this universe because he's the best shag she's ever had, but promises that all she wants is to be taken back to her 1930s household where she can brag about her life to her 'square to the point of deformity' sisters.

Time is running out, and the Doctor concedes he might let Charley come with him. He then turns and asks C'Rizz to try and sweet-talk him.

Since it worked for Charley, C'Rizz insists that he may just be pathologically jealous of anyone who gets too close to the Doctor and only followed him into this universe because he's the best shag he's ever had, but promises that all he wants is to be taken back to Charley's 1930s household where he can brag about his life to her 'square to the point of deformity' sisters.

Oddly enough, this doesn't convince the Doctor to take him with him.

With a sudden change of heart, he orders that Charley and C'Rizz beg him to allow them into the TARDIS. But Cardiff finally shakes itself apart and, wasting no time, Charley and C'Rizz punch the Doctor in the groin and scramble into the TARDIS.

REG and Grace/Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass manage to climb out of the hole just in time to see the police box bounce up and down and hop into the Stargate a second before it shuts down.

At that moment, the Apocalypse begins in earnest. Rather than simply show stock footage from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy turned negative, instead fifty thousand zombies explode out of the ground, followed by vampires and demons.

Earthquakes begin to tear Cardiff apart as the universe ends. On Zendon, Gauda Prime, the Multi-Market and Light City, zombies and vampires brutally tear the peoples of the divergent cosmos to pieces and then eat them. Flames engulf matter itself...

"You know something, Grace? My mother Charley warned me there would be days like this," REG grunts.


Nicholas Briggs awakes, lying face down in total blackness. "Ohhhhh, GOD," he groans. "My head feels like a rugby game's been played on it! Oh, no! I've fallen into the start of the time loop again! Bloody hell! What *else* could possibly go wrong?"

"Hullo, Mister B!" the Kro'ka asks.

Briggs sighs. "I just had to bloody ask, didn't I?"

Briggs concludes that he must be in Hell – or at least it's closest universal equivalent. However, has he has ensured he carried an unlimited supply of jelly babies about his person and so is unconcerned - until he realizes he's eaten all the orange ones. Briggs screams "Damn it all! SHIT!" and breaks down in sobs.

As they finally reach each other, Briggs tells the Kro'ka to stay where he is while he runs off in one direction so they don't get lost. The Kro'ka, however, quickly finds Briggs, who tries to look of the bright side about their entombment on a lifeless planet in the middle of another universe.

Sadly, this is far more difficult than it appears and he idly wishes that they'd gone to a Guy Fawkes celebration at Ravenscourt Park. With it becoming ever more obvious this is a word-for-word copy of "Schizo Episode 1", the two of them walk off into the endless night, occasionally tripping over a wheelbarrow...


Elsewhere, floating through the endless void are Richard E Grant and Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass (still stuck in the form of Grace for budgetary reasons). Around them, atoms are taking their own sweet time to form and gather themselves into reforming the divergent universe.

"I have some extremely distressing news," REG announces suddenly.

"I don't want to hear it," Grace snaps. "I don't want to hear anything. Oh God, it's a nightmare out here, I tell you!"

"We don't have any wine. What are we going to do about it?"

"I don't know. I don't know. For Christ's sake, what's the matter with you? Are you an alcoholic or something? Eat some sugar like any normal half-human Time Lord love child!"

"How dare you!? How dare you!? How dare you call me inhumane!?"

"I didn't call you inhumane, you merely imagined it. Calm down."

"Right, you fucker - I'm going to start rebuilding the universe in my own image! After all, it'll only be twenty or thirty billennia until the next Apocalypse – and then the four horsemen will rue the day!"

"You have serious mental problems, you know that?

"God, how long until the pub opens?"

"Eight million years."

"God help us. Have you got any booze? YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE SOME BOOZE! I CAN'T GO ON LIKE THIS! My head's gone numb! I feel unusual! I must have some booze! I demand to have some booze!"

"If you do not shut up this exact instant I will ram a temporal spike into your frontal lobe and reduce whatever you call your brain to primeval porridge. Sorry, did I say 'reduce'? I meant 'upgrade'."

"You wouldn't spike me! You're too mean! Besides, there's nothing in any universe I couldn't take – or haven't taken already!"

"You wait, buster. When I'm finished with you, you'll think a spiritual enema was a birthday present!"

"Go on, then! I not having a shag-sack insult me. Zap me with all your energy, I'll take it and run a mile. In the meantime, Zig-Zag-Gay-Ass, you can stuff your mystical energies up your arse and fuck off while you're doing it! Scrubber!"

"Up yours!"

"Little tart! You love it really!"

And so, the two most annoying beings in Doctor Who float away, onwards ever onwards...


In the next universe but twenty-seven, the TARDIS explodes out of the Stargate into the ruins of the Tomb of Rassilon, bounces off the far wall and then dematerializes again – presumably heading for Cardiff.

The TARDIS reappears in a dark, metal chamber, and the Doctor is promptly kicked out for being a crap and reckless driver. The Time Lord makes it clear to his companions that if they keep this crap up, the next time he threatens to desert them to certain death, he'll mean it.

The Doctor crosses to the only door to the chamber and opens it to see what's on the other side. Unfortunately, he finds out.

The good news is: they're definitely back in their own Universe.

The bad news is: the Doctor has just seen Lavros on the toilet.

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