7 Loyalty Binds Me

2.6 - Leather Binds Me:

The Doctor is strapped to the pilot chair, gagged and in a straight-jacket as he tries desperately to warn his co-stars how dangerous the wrath of the guinea pig is.

Ben insists that he is such a history expert that he has no inclination to use the TARDIS to solve mysteries. He's so clever he already knows the answers.

Adam asks if The Black Adder is true and Richard III DIDN'T murder two child princes in the Tower of London. Ben insists that The Black Adder is not canon and to prove it pilots the TARDIS back to London, 1483 in the region of the old St Paul's Cathedral.

The fact they arrive there is a testament to the fact Ben Chatham is a far clever and able main character than that screwy Doctor bloke.

Ben insists that they all are dressed in suitably grim medieval clothes so as to avoid dumbfounding the highly superstitious, medieval, retard, grass-munching populace.

Leaving the Doctor in the TARDIS screaming that he is the god of all guinea pigs and he brings you... cabbage, the trio step into a narrow street full of horse-dung, litter, dead cats and sewage being tipped out of windows. Rose is horrified, believing that they haven't left 2007, but Ben points out that London smells better back here.

Bedraggled women staggering around in brown shawls and haggard, men staring suspiciously from sunken eyes watch the travelers head for the cathedral, but by now the travelers are more than used to such reactions as they get them wherever they go.

Ben flashes the guards at St Paul's, who promptly allow the trio to enter and to witness the Duke of Buckingham (played uselessly by the actor who plays Chris Finch in The Office) announcing that the sons of the late King Edward 1V are bastards.

Richard III (played by David Sylvian) asks if Buckingham has discovered that the Woodville marriage is not legitimate and Buckingham retorts, "Yeah, that too! And they eat all the jelly, the scamps!"

Buckhingham offers the crown to the protector - the Duke of Gloucester, who humbly steps forward to accept the crown while doing a little victory dance and rubbing her hands with glee.

Rose is shocked as she always thought Richard III had a hunchback. Is The Black Adder truly canonical after all?!

Concerned, the trio leave and once more brave the streets of London. Here they meet with an aged fortune teller 'Stupid Nellie' who insists on reading Ben's chest. She looks into his beautiful eyes and his delicate hand and asks 'Fancy a quick one behind the privvies?'

Rose breaks the old woman's neck for daring touch her lover and the trio continue on their merry way.

Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor has got free of his restraints and programs the TARDIS to take him to Guinea Pig Prime, a viscous world of lettuce, drugs and hamster feces.

Unfortunately, the TARDIS simply lands inside the grounds of the Tower of London. The Doctor bursts out of the time machine and tries to kill two boys playing leap frog as he is convinced they are guinea pigs who are armed and dangerous.

Luckily the whole gang are surrounded by guards, arrested and thrown into a dungeon in less time than it took you to read that sentence.

The dungeon also happens to have a prisoner the Doctor insists is not only a guinea pig but also the Duke of Clarence's son and the prisoner agrees that Richard is well meaning but being manipulated by those around him. Mainly because Ben threatens to sacrifice him to the Dark Gods if he doesn't say so.

They escape the cell. Somehow.

But Rose is captured by comic relief stooges Lovell and Catsby, working for the Duke of Buckingham who of course mistake her for the foreign princess Billie of Piper, who Buckingham has always wanted to marry. As she dragged before him, Buckingham has the irresistible urge to exposit all his evil plans to her.

Buckingham reveals that he has persuaded Richard to seize the throne so that he can then rebel and use the bad feeling generated to overthrow his master and offer the throne to Henry Tudor - thus becoming Tudor's Chancellor. Or something like that. Buckingham also plans to murder the Princes and foster rumours that Richard is to blame. As you do.

As Richard's coronation is occurring in a few days, Ben, Adam and the increasingly-loopy Doctor (who has crushed their fellow prisoner in the belief he is an evil hamster), decide to... do stuff. That doesn't change history, of course.

While the Doctor creates a diversion by screaming at passers by that he is the Punisher of Guinea Pigs, sent by Rassilon to wipe the furry, fluffy-cheeked bastards from the face of time, Ben effortlessly rescues Rose and knocks Adam unconscious when he tries to take credit for it.

However, all this masculine posturing by Ben has allowed Tyrell, another of Buckingham's endless supply of stooges, have smothered the Princes with a live chicken.

Embarrassed, Ben pilots the TARDIS to Richard's bathroom and explains the situation, forewarning the king of Buckingham's rebellion. Richard III thus crushes said rebellion like a guinea pig underfoot.

Realizing that he might have changed history (Ben admits he's not so clear about the course of human progress pre-Beatlemania), Chatham also warns him about Bosworth field but Richard won't listen - "If fight I must them fight I will" he nobly states. "And if you think I could win a battle and then get decapitated by my own grand nephew, you need your head examined. Piss off. Nice chest, by the way."

Ben storms off back to the TARDIS in a right mood.

The End.