4 The Love Generation

2.3 - Degenerate Love:

Determined to get some free love and mind-expanding drugs, Rose decides to jump Ben during a trip to the 1960s and hopefully this will not arouse the Doctor's suspicions. Or just arouse the Doctor.

Ben and Rose thus gang up on the Doctor and bully the amount of gel in his hair until he agrees to take them to the Melstock Festival of Love & Peace & Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in rural Berkshire in 1969 – one of the few pop festivals his second self and Jamie have not already gate-crashed in Season 6b.

In order to appear inconspicuous, Rose puts on a kaftan and hippie-chick beads. No one else is wearing anything like that at the festival, but Rose is determined. She also gets into the spirit by snogging the Doctor and offering to finger-paint his inside thigh.

The Doctor, now wearing a Jimi Hendrix afro and using his sonic screwdriver to light joints, emerges into the festival. There they meet Matt Vacant (played unconvincingly by James Blunt). This was back when he was young and still had his own testicles – but unlike Rose, Ben is not immediately attracted to this ugly hippie. If only Will Young were there...

Rose and Ben immediately ditch the Doctor to 'feel the love in the air'. Behind a bush. Sans clothing. With Rose staring into Ben's beautiful eyes and moving her hands over his smooth shoulders. You know, the usual.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is asking the aging concert organizer Floppy Jake (played unconvincingly by Bing Crosby) about whether there are any groupies around the place.

One such groupie has had her face smashed in and her mutilated body conveniently dumped next to where Rose and Ben are making out. They note the presence of the corpse and seven hours later, when they're finished, emerge from the bush and raise the alarm.

Floppy Jake considers ringing the police and telling them of a murder at the festival, but no one is willing to let the pigs around here or they'll start a riot. Heavy.

The Doctor sadly checks over the corpse, pitying the fact that, unlike other, more advanced life forms, the groupie won't regenerate into a younger, much hotter body.

Floppy Jake recognizes the body as Sue Spandex – Matt Vacant's publicity ploy to stop the tabloids realizing that he's gayer than Julian Clary!

The Doctor bursts out laughing at this stupid name and decides to get the autographs of the band Valhalla. They are putting in contact lenses to cover their normal, reptilian eyes.

Are they aliens? The Doctor decides not to mention it, as this IS an open-air rock festival and indeed half the audience think the band are bunch of yabbies with percussion instruments.

Still incredibly horny, Rose decides to jump Matt Vacant who is now single and emotionally vulnerable. Matt accepts her detailed resume and make her his new groupie. Ben is not even interviewed and he runs off sobbing uncontrollably.

Matt Vacant is a bit put out to discover his dressing room is full of mutilated corpses but Shaggy the roadie explains that the corpses belong to Valhalla, and their dressing room was already full of corpses and they asked to rent out his space.

Rose doesn't mind. The sightless eyes of corpses beneath piles of clothes is becoming her brand new turn-on.

Ben bursts in on the Doctor who promptly slaps him about until the young archaeologist can calmly exposit plot details. The Doctor decides that the increasing heap of mutilated corpses is probably down to Ben himself – he can be quite the devil worshipper when the mood takes him.

Meanwhile, Floppy Jake finds Rose backstage reciting The Age of Aquarius to the bass speakers, stoned out of her gourd.

The Doctor checks his address book and realizes that Valhalla are either alien reptiles called Cestrals or else are Norwegian. Either way, he suspects on absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this concert is just a ploy to gather thousands of hippie teenagers together to brainwash them using feedback sound from the speaker.

This plan appears to be lifted directly from the Hostess Fruit Pies comic add that happens to be sellotaped to the front of the Doctor's 500 planet address book.

There is only one flaw in the plan – Matt Vacant is clearly innocent. Then the Doctor remembers the pointless and brutal murders and decides to pin the wrap on Vacant while he stops this implausible scheme to conquer the Earth via mass hypnosis.

Ben points out that they met another alien menace doing the exact same thing last week, and the Time Lord replies that they should be thankful that it isn't another plot to steal the magnetic core of the Earth. That happens so often the Doctor only notices its absence.

Ben suggests they use the TARDIS in a looping-land dematerialization drive to interfere with the electric supply of the concert until it backfires and blows out all the wires - thus stopping the Cestrals' hypnotic music from reaching the crowd.

The Doctor suggests they just unplug the speakers.

It works. The Cestrals are so pissed off they rip off their flimsy disguises in front of the crowd who cheer that this is the best acid they've ever taken.

The Doctor shouts a bit of patriotic abuse and the hippies storm the stage, beat the Cestrals to death and teleport the corpses back to the Cestrals' mother-ship along with an insulting note and a box of milk chocolates. As a reward, the Doctor allows the flower children to use the Cestrals' scout ship to prevent the communist conspiracy.

The story ends with the Doctor leading the entire cast in a rousing rendition of God Save The Queen while Rose has a threesome with Floppy Jake and Matt Vacant.

The End.