Saturday, December 5, 2009

8th Doctor - The Girl Who Never Was (i)

Serial 9L – The Girl Who Never Was A Virgin
An Alternative Program Guide by Ewen Campion-Clarke
Twenty-First Entry in the EC Unauthorized Guide O' Nostalgia of An Age Yet To Occur

D O C T O R W H O

Serial 9L – The Girl Who Never Was A Virgin -


Part One –

Through time and space, through a million nowheres, past a billion whirling, unnamed starlights, across the darkness that holds the mysteries of science and of life, travels the TARDIS at fantastic speed, Doctor Who’s magical spaceship as, with a rush of wind the spinning police box whirls and flashes to reappear in Cardiff.

Get used to it, Whovians, this is where it all goes horribly wrong.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor checks with Charley that she isn’t just teasing him but really, properly, honest-to-God wants to leave, but she feels they’ve already talked enough and offers one last shag before they arrive at her requested destination: Beauvais in France on 5 October, 1930 at five minutes past two in the morning.

"Hang on," the Doctor notes, "if you’re from 1930 how come we met on the Titanic which sailed in 1912?!"

"It wasn’t the REAL Titanic, Doctor, it was a theme night cruise that got ever so slightly out of control. Remember?"

"Oh yes. So it was. Forget I said anything."

As they get dressed, Charley explains she’s not going home because her sisters crimp her lifestyle. Instead, she’ll find herself a new identity and just watch the world pass by, moving around from town
to town like a tramp or a wandering prostitute, kind of like "The Lives And Loves of A She-Devil" only more sexy and less moral.

Outside, Charley is surprised to discover the Doctor has taken them instead to Cardiff on New Year’s Eve, 2006. After a few minutes of noticing that the skyline has far too much glass and chrome for untamed 1930s French countryside and people are using mobile telephones, the Doctor and Charley begin to suspect they’ve arrived in the wrong
year.

Charley accuses the Doctor of bringing her here deliberately because he wanted to trick her into staying with him as deep down he is totally obsessed with her. The Doctor protests his innocence, but she feels reassured that he couldn’t bear to leave her. The Time Lord angrily points out that their time machine is completely unreliable at the best of times, so they’ve probably been knocked off course. He tells Charley that he can prove it and runs inside to discover... the TARDIS is in complete working order.

Thus he slams the doors and prepares to take off, ditching Charley forever when he sees, on the scanner, her turning off and striding into the nearest wine bar. Unable to believe that SHE is the one doing the dumping in this relationship, the Doctor thumps the console with his mallet and electrocutes himself.

Charley strides into the Maiden Singapore wine bar and instantly gets herself noticed by all the patrons. Mainly because she’s stark naked.

She sits at the bar beside an Aboriginal teenage boy with dyed hair, flares and a lemon T-shirt saying LUST DENTIST, who reacts with astonishment as she makes him sit in her lap. Shaking nervously he buys her a drink, a cocktail called "A Screaming Orgasm With John Barrowman" and explains he is called Nigella Jay Verkoff, but she can call him "The Big N".

Nigel is oddly vague about certain details and Charley resigns herself to another bout of the intergalactic mystery thing she’s become so used to. Clearly taken by her charms, Nigel invites her to accompany him back to his 'swinging bachelor pad' on a fifty-foot yacht in the harbor he calls the SS Hung Like A Baboon. However, when pressed, Nigel admits he doesn’t actually own a yacht.

"We could do it in the back of my car, though?" he offers hopefully.

Pausing only to write an insulting note for the stunned barmaid to hand over to the Doctor who will no doubt turn up any minute begging for her to come back to him, Charley and Nigel leave the establishment to do sass like the hoopy froods they are at heart.

From the TARDIS doorway, the Doctor watches this crude and transparent attempt to make his jealous and worst of all... worst of all... it’s actually WORKING! Wielding the twelve-pound lump hammer he was using on the console earlier, the Doctor runs after them, screaming.

He finally reaches a strange custom-made Ferrari with doors that slide back like guillotines, every surface lined with imitation leopard skin fur, a mini bar, TV and the snarling face of Nigel spray-painted on the bonnet (over which has been graffiti-ed the words DONKEY MOLESTER). The Doctor is more concerned at what Charley and Nigel are getting up to in the back seat.

The Doctor jumps out in front of the car, demanding to know what they’re going and accusing the man of abducting his girlfriend. Charley introduces the Doctor to Nigel, and then tells him to fuck off. Again.

Suddenly Detective Sergeant John Ho arrives with a gun and a pile of plastic explosives! "BLOODY HELL!" everyone screams in unison. "IT’S THE CHINESE DETECTIVE!"

It seems that Nigel’s relatives have grown so sick of him that they have decided to kill him for the insurance money, so as Ho attaches two pounds of explosive to the chassis, the Doctor and Charley realize they are caught in another sticky situation!

Thinking quickly, Charley snatches some handcuffs from the Doctor’s coat and cuffs them together. It turns out she didn’t have a plan beyond some kinky sex in their last few minutes of life, so the Doctor has to leap into the fray. He explains to Ho that he is a smuggler hunted by Interpol from Mumbai to Mummerset to Casablanca and that Charley is a police officer.

They all stare at the naked blonde teen handcuffed to him.

"Plain clothes branch," the Doctor explains with a shrug. The point is, if Ho blows up another cop his career is ruined. Assuming you call eight episodes of racial prejudice, hatred and yellow peril stereotypes 'a career' in the first place. The Chinese Detective finds this all so terribly, terribly believable and thus throws himself into the river without another word.

The Doctor realizes that he’s lost the keys to the handcuffs and drags Charley back to the TARDIS to free them and categorically NOT because he wants her peachy buttocks in his life any more. Left behind and incredibly frustrated, Nigel pulls his pants on and drives off to his REAL girlfriend as they have important things to do tonight (which, even more frustratingly) don’t involve sex.

The Doctor and Charley reach the safety of the TARDIS and use the sonic screwdriver to free themselves. As they do so, the Doctor insists he programmed the TARDIS to take her home, but there was some freaky time voodoo shit happening. Charley laughs, assuming the Doctor is making this up to prove his masculinity.

"All right you slut," the Doctor snaps, slamming down switches on the console, "we’ll head straight there in person, prove I’m telling the truth, and then you can go rot in Cardiff..."

"One last lap of glory for the team while we’re in transit?"

"Is that yet ANOTHER euphemism for sex?"

"Yes."

The Doctor grins at her. "Why the hell not?"

They jump each other as the TARDIS dematerializes, reappearing in what appears to be a big, empty dirigible floating aimlessly in the sky above the Bermuda Triangle. When the Doctor and Charley emerge, breathless and rumpled, Charley finds a dented piano and can’t resist sprawling across it provocatively.

The back-breaking sex session means the Doctor is lucid enough to notice this airship is decades old and deserted yet somehow flying in circles without any crew or fuel. The Time Lord puts this down to good old fashioned British workmanship and decides to say no more about it.

That is, until Charley cries out from a sudden pain in her arse which has turned transparent after sitting on the piano – the Doctor is horrified that he can see right through to the bone, but this strange X-ray bottom effect soon fades. It seems to be an allergic reaction to all the dust around the place.

The Doctor remembers that this self-same zeppelin is the one causing the time distortion in the first place, and ergo the dust in the place is actually a temporally-corrosive yeast infection found in the heart of the Time Vortex. Prolonged exposure risks the TARDIS becoming infected and rotting away like the Liberator in that episode of "Blake’s 7" that Terry Nation actually bothered to write.

More importantly, this means they are completely screwed.

The Doctor stamps his foot at the injustice of it all, and his foot sinks right through the wooden floor boards. Charley suggests using some of the bondage gear from the TARDIS to free him, since everything in the airship will be contaminated. The Doctor thinks this is a surprisingly insightful and helpful suggestion from his companion... who runs into the TARDIS laughing evilly and moments later the police box fades away, leaving him trapped and alone.

The Doctor stares at the place the TARDIS stood for a full minute before he can think of anything to say. And when he does, it’s just "BITCH!!!" shouted at an inordinately loud volume.

No sooner has the Doctor cursed himself on ever teaching Charley how to pilot the TARDIS, there is the sound of an approaching stealth airplane, then a spear-mounted cable is fired into the wooden room part of the zeppelin, allowing Nigel Verkoff and a stern blonde woman in a glittery silver cat suit to fly-fox aboard, followed by the Three Stooges who are in Verkoff’s employ.

The Doctor dryly asks Nigel how he blackmailed this pentagenarian into being his girlfriend and wonders if he’s checked for an Adam’s apple yet. The woman opens her cat suit to flash the Doctor and prove she is all woman.

"Whom is it who has the pleasure of showing her tits to me?" asks the Doctor after admiring the view for a reasonable amount of time.

"My name is Charlotte Pollard," the blonde replies.

The Doctor boggles. "Get away!" he marvels...


Part Two – Daze of Future Past

Inside the TARDIS, it is mayhem. The whole ship is shaking and alarms are going off, while "Ever Fallen In Love?" by the Buzzcocks blares out of the speakers - wherever they are. Lights flash all around the room, as Charley throws herself around the console, setting coordinates.

She hasn’t REALLY abandoned the Doctor to his doom, and intends to return in a few minutes in order to teach him down damn horrible his life is without her and why she is the best companion ever, and not his superstitious belief he’ll sometime get it together with some Billie-Piper-lookalike from a council estate!

The screeches through the time vortex and fetches up... back on the dirigible the R103, in the year 1930 where the ship was filled with starched aristocrats, celebrities and would-be masters of the air. As Charley emerges, she sees a familiar-looking Aborigine getting everyone to sing along to Men at Work’s "Land Down Under" at the top of their voices, lightening the morgue-like atmosphere with what they all assume to be a rather odd convict song.

Suddenly the atmosphere is destroyed as Charley instinctively dances naked atop the piano and mimes playing the flute solo. And she gets every damned note right, too!

The Aborigine introduces himself as Nigel Verkoff and he has fallen completely and utterly in lust with her, despite never having seen her before in his life. With the lack of any other women on the airship, Charley decides to cuddle up to him as he explains he’s actually from the 21st century, but borrowed his neighbor’s homemade time machine in the hope he could pull "some Goodnight Sweetheart fraud" on history or failing that, just plain pull.

Just then, a young seaman named Simons calls to Nigel and tells him the Captain wants to see his bimbo urgently. He is furious to see a woman on the bridge, especially one that’s a naked stowaway not already having an affair with him. Nigel suggests he just chill out as the airship hurtles into the lightning storms of the Bermuda Triangle...

As they plunge into a realm where the laws of physics are suspended and the supernatural and extraterrestrial merge in pure chaos, Charley is far more interested in Crewman Simons’ lithe physique. Particularly the way he’s put on weight around his nipples and let his hair grow long.

The sea beneath them glows an unearthly white, and sea serpents writhe amongst the skeletal remains of ghost ships and the souls of the damned shriek at the cruelty of their fate, Charley pushes Simons into a cupboard as slow, mechanical-sounding voices crackle over the radio telling them to "brace themselves" for "immediate penetration". Charley has been deeply aroused by the voice and says they’ve all been saved!

She’s even more delighted to reveal Simons is actually a girl who, like Charley, is a finishing girl nymphomaniac who left her "daggy" parents to go off on a sexual adventure halfway across the world, which was quite a popular pass time for girls in 1930s.

The crew are mesmerized by this hardcore lesbian sex, and suddenly start talking in monotone mechanical voices. Charley realizes some other force has used this perversion to brainwash the crew of the R103 for their own nefarious purposes.

Then she and "Simons" go back to heavy petting.

The R103 finally emerges from the Bermuda Triangle to fly across a scorched Earth where the sky is burning and the sea boils. Suddenly the airship is buzzed by twelve flying mopeds, each piloted by a Cyberman – the enemy Charley most loathes, as their species-wide quest for sexual gratification rivals her own!

The Cybermen swarm across the ship and Charley, Nigel and "Simons" flee to the lounge in order to escape into the TARDIS – but Charley has neglected to engage the handbrake and the police box fades away just as they reach it. As Charley and "Simons" swear like troopers given a sudden and violent anal probing, Nigel realizes there is an incredibly simply way out of this!

He just has to think of it.

Thus, he gets "Simons" to play a cover version of "Tainted Love" to help him think, but this delay proves fatal as the Cybermen arrive in force. Inspiration strikes: they simply escape in Nigel’s borrowed time machine!

"Simons" watches on in horror as Charley and Nigel run into a customized portable toilet which then dematerializes! And moments later, a police box arrives with Charley and a short bloke in a hat and question mark sweater, who promptly leaves right away.

Charley explains to "Simons" that she and Nigel had a deeply unhappy three-week relationship which made facing certain death in Cyber-territory better than staying with him and his loser mates.

Charley tells the baffled Cybermen she wishes to speak to their Cyberleader, as she knows dark secrets about the Cybermen’s Pokémon fetish after her encounter with them in the Garazone System. She refuses to speak to them further and will only talk to their boss, but the Cybermen grab her and attempt to molest the information out of her. And fail!

Finally, the Cybermen take Charley to meet their true leader, the Cyber-Director. Charley is therefore dragged before a strange modern art installation of plastic cups, wires, hoops and a disembodied brain that talks in fluent Spanish.

The Cyber-Director explains that an invasion squad attempting to steal the light-bending technology from Philadelphia ended up lost in the Bermuda Triangle and managed to escape, only to find themselves on the solar-flare-ravaged Earth of the year 500, 000. With absolutely nothing and no one to screw, the Cybermen are desperate for sex. Once they have their wicked ways with the crew of the R103, they will travel back through the Bermuda Triangle to the 1930s and begin their sexual domination of the human race, changing recorded history in the process.

"Oh, of course, because plans like that NEVER fail!" Charley sneers.

Meanwhile, Nigel and "Simons" note strange dust is starting to form across the airship – which, as I’ve already wasted enough brainspace describing – the temporal infection, which has managed to be carried here by Charley on her shapely behind!

This ontological paradox of the airship being infected by a virus it will always have been infected with causes the Cyber-Director to start foaming at the voice box and making "moo!" noises. Meanwhile, the Cybermen fondling Charley are growing stained and rotten as they realize their iron wills are not immune!

The Cybermen, it appears, are supremely fucked – that is until the Cyberleader, in between vomiting up its guts, announces he heard this brilliant trick from the Dustbin Umpire audio series also available from Big Finish at an incredibly reasonable price – they download the consciousness of the Cybermen into a suitable vessel, someone whose sexual desires and techniques are superior to all others.

"I knew my libido would get me in trouble one of these days," Charley sighs as a buzzing probe emerges from the Cyber-Director and approaches the helpless Edwardian Adulteress...


Part Three – No Control

Back in 2006, the Doctor is confronted by Nigel and his girlfriend, who claims to be Charlotte Pollard. God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. It wasn’t even three pages ago. What is wrong with you people? Don’t you have long-term memories or something?

ANYWAY, the Doctor has spent three or four lifetimes with Charley Pollard, mostly naked, and he knows Charley Pollard when he sees her and this blonde may be the right height, eye colour and have only one chin, but she is NO Charley Pollard. As proved when she slaps him round the face for being so impertinent rather than talking dirty.

Nigel explains he picked up 'Mistress Pollard' while cruising for chicks on the outskirts of the Bermuda Triangle. "It’s just a hobby," he says defensively as everyone stares at him. He found this woman clinging to an inflatable sex doll, suffering total amnesia. As this proved to be his big turn on, Nigel immediately made her his official girlfriend and they’ve been together ever since.

The Doctor points out that for someone with 'total' amnesia, Mistress Pollard seems pretty sure of her real name. Nigel quickly explains that she had it tattooed on her ass and that is the END of the story – but the Doctor now knows that whoever Mistress Pollard is, it isn’t Charley. She has a gecko tattooed on her ass and nothing else...

Nigel tells the three stooges to look for anything not nailed down they can sell on the Antiques Roadshow and suddenly everyone is ignoring the Time Lord. Annoyed, he throws some handy mousetraps he was holding onto the Stooges, maiming them badly. Mistress Pollard laughs and admits that she’s starting to warm to the Doctor, which makes Nigel incredibly annoyed.

The Doctor assures him he has no interest in Mistress Pollard’s booty and it’s only the mystery that concerns him: like how the hell Nigel can somehow appear throughout time and space looking desperately for sex and how he and Mistress Pollard have not aged a day since they met back in 1930 when this airship was launched?

"What are you?" Nigel snaps. "Media Watch? Stop hassling me about plot holes YOU haven’t worked out the answer to, Time Pussy!"

Since Nigel refuses to explain the plot this early in the story, the Doctor announces there is no use for him and so whacks him over the head with a monkey wrench. Nigel pratt-falls into the piano, revealing it actually contains strange BBC props that are the shorthand for alien technology in this increasingly complicated age.

The Doctor and Mistress Pollard examine this for clues as Curly decides to take sexual advantage of the unconscious Nigel while pretending to use the 'mouth-to-mouth resuscitation technique', which immediately brings splutters of protest from the Big N, who insists he was never confused and if the Stooges ever reveal this on the internet, they will wish they had never been born!

The Doctor realizes the alien gubbins inside the piano is a cloaking device to turn things completely invisible and decides to nick it simply because it’s there to be nicked. But there is the sudden and incredibly distinctive sound of Malcolm Clarke’s "March of the Cybermen" music (available from all good bit torrent sharers), the sound of ultrasonic blasters, and the Three Stooges dying in agony!

Someone else is aboard the R103 and they’re in a MEEEAAN mood!

The others hurry around the corner and find the Stooges lying dead, caught in one last self-destructive goon-fest in front of the gents toilet aboard the airship. The Doctor deduces that whatever infinite evil that killed the Three Stooges is inside the toilet and Nigel suggests the immortal Time Lord be the one to step inside and see what’s happening, rather than such puny mortals as the others.

The Doctor double-dares Nigel who foolishly accepts to prove to Mistress Pollard he is no weakling, and strides into the darkened lavatory to find the room filled with empty soda cans, pizza boxes, egg cartons and used pornographic magazines.

Suddenly there is a metallic grinding sound coming from all around them, followed by loud, regular stomping sounds, like metal footsteps as huge metal monsters emerge from the shadows. The Doctor is not particularly surprised, as the male graphic on the toilet door had little handlebars added to it.

The Cybermen announce "You will undress!" and order everyone to surrender their virginity and when Nigel insists that HE is the dominant partner in any sexual relationship, they ignore him and begin restraining their prisoners with studded leather straps. Mistress Pollard advises Nigel not to antagonize them as they’re clearly not going to use a safety word.

Nigel demands to know if these cybernetic perverts are always hanging around the Doctor, who admits that their presence here is as much of a surprise to him as it is to Nigel – mistakenly assuming Nigel to have seen the cover for the CD and recognize stock Cyber music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Cybermen insist that dialogue with organics has no value and they should just get down to the sex.

The Doctor suggests to Nigel and Mistress Pollard that they run like fuck, but their incredibly passionate escape attempt is hampered when they find the toilet door has closed and the handle snapped off – this is why the Cybermen have been confined to the toilets for the ages, growing rusty and decrepit.

Their controller, a bit of bric-a-brac installed in the sink, has broken down and without their planner, the Cybermen haven’t the faintest idea what to do. Threatened with being rogerred to death, the Doctor is ordered to use his magic sonic doodad to reactivate the Cyber-Director so they can finally work out a way of escaping this toilet for the first time in decades. However, even when the Doctor gets it working, it is unable to do anything but croon "Land Down Under" to itself before throwing up.

Suddenly, the TARDIS rematerializes in the urinal and the Doctor and Mistress Pollard dive inside, leaving Nigel behind to face the Cybermen with only wits and bravery and animal magnetism. So they’re leaving him to die, basically.

While Nigel is backing away in terror from the Cybermen who declare that he will undress for them, the Doctor is surprised and disappointed to find Charley not aboard, so he won’t be able to slap her silly. Checking the console, the Doctor discovers Charley piloted back to the 1930s but forgot to engage the handbrake, so the time machine drifted back to 2006. Mistress Pollard thinks the Doctor is lying to himself that she is not the one and only Charlotte Pollard.

"What is WRONG with you Pollards?!" the Doctor screams angrily. "Why don’t you just accept that me the immortal alien time traveler might NOT be completely mistaken about things? Fine, let’s prove it!"

The TARDIS takes off, causing a shock wave to ripple through the rusted and weakened superstructure of the R103, causing it to disintegrate. Just like the Liberator in that episode of "Blake’s 7" that Terry Nation actually bothered to write. Nigel somehow survives the collapse and is last seen swearing very loudly as he plummets towards the ocean...

Meanwhile, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to where it last left Charley and arrives on the earlier version of the R103, currently buzzing around in the year 500, 002, showing the first signs of the corrosion that will ultimately destroy it in the year 2006.

On the computer monitor fixed to the console, the Doctor and Mistress Pollard see "Simons" being threatened by a Cyberman. The Time Lord cheerfully explains that "Simons" is a younger version of "Mistress Pollard". Somehow she loses her memory and ends up on Earth in 2006 where she is found by Nigel Verkoff, and they mistakenly believe she is Charlotte Pollard and begin a relationship as they try to work out what happened to her. Then they find the decaying R103, meet the Doctor and experience the events of the last episode.

"Is that absolutely clear now?" the Doctor asks.

Mistress Pollard goes cross-eyed and passes out.

The Doctor sighs and strides out of the TARDIS, clapping his hands and telling people that he has this all under control. The Cyber-Director is destined to be completely screwed and sing Men at Work songs for the rest of its run time, while the surviving Cybermen will be left so utterly useless they’ll unintentionally lock themselves in the gents for the next odd year.

Just then the surviving Cybermen storm the room, lead by their new Director – Charley Pollard, dressed in a fetishistic bondage gear with lots of silver coolant tubes and flashing lights and speaking in a slow, monotonous voice.

"I am their Director. You will dress like me. I am improved. My mind is clear. Soon my body will be augmented for even more rigorous sexual ecstasy. I will not have long to wait. Cyber-conversion is your salvation. The Karma Sutra is simplicity to the Cybermen. And then I shall take you all one by one. You will be the first," she says, pointing to "Simons."

Then she points at the Doctor. "And YOU will be the next!"

The Doctor folds his arms. "Well you can just rot in a black star, bimbo! I’m nobody’s SECOND choice!"


Part Four – The Girl Who Never Was A Virgin

The Doctor is convinced that Charley is just pretending to be possessed by the consciousness of the Cyber-Director and is just bluffing to get some more sex slaves under her control. "I mean, it wouldn’t be the FIRST time," the Doctor shrugs.

Charley denounces the Doctor as an enemy of the Cyber race and gives orders for him to be disemboweled, and it is at this point the Time Lord starts to wonder if, for the first time in her life, she’s NOT faking...

As the Cybermen close in around the Doctor, he whips out a cheese stick he found on the R103 he just left – a piece of price Stilton left in open air for several years, it’s absolutely LETHAL... especially to the Cybermen, who are severely cheese-allergic thanks to one drunken script editing session back in 1975.

Charley points out that the smell of the cheese is already making the Time Lord’s eyes water and soon he will be forced to drop it, and that it is only a matter of time before the Cybermen triumph.

The Doctor, breathing through his mouth, admits he must however reluctantly bow to their logic, but no one’s bothering to steer the runaway zeppelin which is now hurtling straight back into the Bermuda Triangle. "Where it is destined to arrive seventy-seven years after it left. Maybe we should draw a diagram or something, cause this really DOES make sense if you pay attention..."

The airship plunges into temporal hell and everyone starts panicking, including the Cybermen, making this plot-line even MORE surreal than when it started out! "Simons" and the other passengers decide it’s every man for themselves and try to jump ship... forgetting they’re in an AIRship and thus plunging to their eternal doom at the heart of the Sargasso Sea of TIME!!

The Doctor watches this mass slaughter and shrugs that at least this is one dangling plot thread resolved, so there’s SOMETHING to take comfort in amongst all this carnage. Still, idiots as stupid as them to forget they were flying deserve what they get in his opinion.

As the R103 flies out of the Triangle once more, Charley turns on the Doctor. "J’ACCUSE! You thought you could save Charlotte Pollard by over-writing the Cyber-Director protocols imprinted on her brain!"

"Actually," the Doctor replies, "I was kind of thinking I might leave you like that – it’s a lot easier than trying to talk you out of staying with me. Almost worked with Evelyn, after all..."

"Charlotte Pollard’s brain will be dead within the hour," Charley says bluntly. "The control signal causes the deterioration of unaugmented brains. Her synapses wither as I speak."

"Fair enough. Though, why the hell did you download yourself into Charley’s brain when you couldn’t last more than two hours?"

"A human brain may be incapable of sustaining the Cyber-Planner’s consciousness, but a Time Lord’s brain can!"

"Ah. Shit." The Doctor looks aghast. "You know, that would almost certainly be the end of everything... if I didn’t have that malfunctioning cloaking macguffin hidden in the piano and my super-nifty sonic screwdriver. So the question is... any of tin bastards feeling lucky?"

The Cybermen scream en masse and flee to the toilet, trapping themselves for the rest of the story, or until the previous episode, depending on how you listen to it. God, you’re all so horribly linear, aren’t you? Peasants!

The Doctor zaps the piano and shouts, "I am the Doctor... AND YOU WILL OBEY ME! YOU ARE CHARLOTTE E BAH GUM POLLARD! DO NOT RESIST!"

Charley’s consciousness returns and she snogs the Doctor in relief. Unfortunately, the transmission has had an unexpected side-effect – they’ve unwittingly brainwashed "Simons" into thinking she’s Charlotte Pollard as well!

"Two of them!" the Doctor exclaims. "This could either ruin my life forever or give me the best threesomes in this multiverse. Wow, talk about salvation and damnation being the same thing... was this what old Steve King was referring to mayhap? OH, THE RAPTURE!"

The Doctor bundles the pair of them into the TARDIS and takes off as the R103 continues to circle the Bermuda Triangle.

Moments later, the police box reappears in Cardiff as "Simons" is booted out of the door by the Doctor who is screaming incessantly that he cannot cope with Charley in stereo. "Simons" stumbles off to her unhealthy destiny of becoming Nigel’s girlfriend. The Doctor meanwhile ducks back inside and set the TARDIS in motion as Charley notices "Mistress Pollard" lying on the floor beneath the console.

"Uh, Doctor, why is there an unconscious blonde behind the console?"

"That’s not important right now, Charley. While young Simons’s now back in 2006 to live through this whole story again, and older Simons there needs to be dropped off in 2007 resume her life, there is one little itsy bitsy teeny weeny problem."

"Which is?"

"How do I put this? Um, OK. Everyone who DOESN’T have a lethal Cyber computer signal in their brain destroying their memories take one step forward... not so fast, Charley!"

"You mean... I’m going to die?"

"Well, not unless I do something INCREDIBLY clever. And, I’ll be honest with you, Charley, you do kind of earn some kind of recompense for me knocking you up, dragging you through universes and inflicting Lizard Boy on you. So I will save your life. One last time."

"Well, go on then!"

"Hmmm? Oh yeah. Right. We need to starve the neural parasite, remove the memories it’s feeding off. With me so far?"

"You wipe my memory of today and my life is saved?"

"Very, VERY close. I need to make you forget... but MORE than just a few hours," the Doctor explains, swinging a fob watch in front of Charley’s blue eyes. Not the last week, not the last month but EVERYTHING that might prompt you to remember today. Like, for example, your entire time aboard the TARDIS."

"But I don’t want to forget about you!" Charley protests. "You’re without doubt the best sex I’ve ever had and I speak with fucking authority on that point!"

"You’ve got to forget me. Forget Venice. Forget Orson Welles. Forget C’Rizz... well, the last one should be easy enough. Forget it all. Forget."

"Some things are too good to be forgotten!"

"What?" asks the Doctor, chuffed. "Was I really that good? No, wait! Stop distracting me and by hypnotized, god damn!"

Charley realizes something. "Hey, I don’t have any kind of neural parasite! You’re just trying to erase my memory of all the dark secrets of Gallifrey and in particular your disturbing sexual fetishes!"

"Brain parasites, disturbing sexual fetishes, what’s the difference? You could blackmail the universe either way! Now just look at the watch going backwards and forwards and backwards... and forwards... and... for... forget... forget..."

The Doctor’s eyes roll up in his head and falls backwards into the pilot’s seat, having managed to hypnotize himself to wipe his own memory. Charley rolls her eyes as the TARDIS lurches to a halt at its next destination:

Cardiff in the year 500, 002!

Bored waiting for the Doctor and "Mistress Pollard" to recover consciousness, Charley saunters down the ramp and out the doors to find herself surrounded by Cybermen! She’s managed to land in the middle of the Cyber-Base established in the far future! Talk about bad karma!

Thinking quickly, she adopts a mechanical monotone with an Irish accent. Her bizzare Solenoid Robot impression convinces the Cybermen she is still the Cyber-Director, before her rust-STD infects the surrounding Cyber ship, which immediately starts to rot away and dissolve into slime.

Amazed at her own ability to get out of a deadly situation simply by her compulsive nymphomania, Charley heads back to the TARDIS – only to realize she’s forgotten the handbrake... AGAIN... and the police box vanishes before she can enter. She is stranded, alone, in the year 500, 002 on a planet scorched lifeless by solar flares, inside a rotting Cyber Base about to be annihilated.

Charley tries to think of some witty epitaph in the seconds left before the entire building explodes in flames.

The best she can manage is: "Well, fuck me!"

The base completely disintegrates...


It’s the first morning of 2007 and, as Nigel tries to explain to the coast guard what the hell he was doing in the middle of the ocean covered in rust and curious bodily fluids screaming about Cybermen, the TARDIS materializes outside the Millennium Centre, just as it did in part one. The groggy Mistress Pollard stumbles out, looking for a decent New Year’s Day party to crash.

In the console room, the Doctor groggily regains consciousness to find himself alone. "Huh? What the? Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’ve lost my memory again! I hate it when that happens... wait. I remember losing my memory before. That’s a good sign. What’s the last thing I remember? Lizard Boy turning into Felicity Kendall. Then dying. Glad I remembered that, I’ll have a good laugh about that later. Then Charley wanted to ditch me. And then she thought I wanted her to stay so I went back inside to prove I wasn’t... then I woke up."

The Doctor unsteadily gets to his feet and checks the monitor. "I must have slept all night! Charley didn’t wait! She thinks I came here deliberately to keep her in my pants! She’ll be plain insufferable from now on! Oh well, I better go and find her," he mutters, leaving the TARDIS and heading for the wine bar. "Like she’d ever actually LEAVE!"

The Doctor seems confused and his head is spinning, but there is no sign of Charley at the Maiden Singapore, but the barmaid still has the note the blonde tart left after she jumped her latest sugar daddy. Horrified, the Doctor takes the note and reads the crude, childlike scrawl...

"Dear Doctor,
It’s been such a long love affair for both of us. I never, ever wanted it to end, but end it has. We both know that. A long time ago now, I said you were the hottest man I’d ever met. You’re that still. You’re the best lay I’ve ever had too. But we’ve chanced our luck once too often, I think, so I’m bailing out. I’m going to disappear. There’s no freedom like being dead. I can go anywhere, be anyone I want, sleep with anything that takes my fancy. Just like a Time Lord really. I’ll call myself something exotic, like 'Charley Church'. No, 'Charlotte Church'. Yeah, that works... Don’t look for me, please. But remember me. I’ll always remember the feel of you between my thighs.
With undying lust,
The Girl Who Never Was A Virgin"

Furious, the Doctor crumples up the letter and throws it in the bin. He storms out of the wine bar, bitching that the "ungrateful nympho" will always think he was a useless pansy and he’ll never be able to prove she meant less than nothing to him.

Then it strikes him.

He’s finally free of Charley Pollard.

"DAMN IT, I JUST LOVE CLOSURE!!!"

Bursting into the TARDIS, the Doctor races up to the console and sets the time machine in motion, laughing like Dylan Moran on cheap ecstasy. Then he twigs the blonde teenage girl sitting in the pilot’s chair, listening to the Scissor Sisters on her iPod.

Aghast, the Doctor screams, "Who are you?!?"

"What?" calls the girl in a Northern accent, over her music.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY TARDIS?!"

"What?"

"ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETHING?!?"

"What?!?"

"TAKE OUT THE DAMN EAR-PHONES AND ANSWER ME!!!!"

The girl shrugs. "What?"

And with a rising sense of préjà vu, the story is to be continued...

---------
Next Time...
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"People of Red Rocket Rising, my fellow citizens. Our long night is over! I've been contacted by a benevolent people. They too have known great trials, but they have overcome them and made it their mission to help others do the same. They have offered us refuge, and passage to the nearest human worlds. They have the resources, and the patience and compassion, to evacuate every one of us. My fellow citizens, my friends, rescue is at hand! So if can you put AWAY the nooses and stop baying for my blood, it would be a great help..."
"All right, I’ll say it. This is official not what I thought my first alien world be like. I thought there’d be less bodies in the street for a start."
"'Fewer' bodies. Not 'less'."
"Whatever. You cunt."
"WELCOME TO MY COMMAND DECK. NOTE HOW CLEAN AND TIDY IT IS!
"Too late, they’ve cut us off! Quick, before they see us, run towards them, wave your arms and scream! I’ll catch up with you after they’ve finished kicking you to death. Go, go, go!"
"THE DOCTOR IS AN ENEMY OF THE DUSTBINS! THE DIRTY, DIRTY BASTARD!"
"I was there at their birth! I fought against them in countless wars! Just not THIS one, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting the hell out of here before we all get nuked by the Time Lords..."
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...Lymph of the Dustbins...
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