WHAT Gay Agenda?!

In order to balance an entire blog's worth of Ben's shameful homophobia, mysogeny, and all round spinelessness it was decided to enforce a positive message for all the gay folk out there - and this is dedicated to Auntie Robbie and Auntie Rosie who I knew, as a child, were not actually related. And good for them.

And so, to balance out all that gratuitous Chatham the Scumbag action, I give you some gratuitious girl-on-girl action involving Cora Destrii of the Dreilyn and Rose Marion Tyler of the Powell Estate instead.

Plot?

Who needs a plot?

The Zranti Beast Comic Strip

The Youth of Australia # 17, guest starring Ben Chatham the Pointless Useless Witless Spineless Scumbag.

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Second-Hand Testimonials Ostensibly from Outpost Gallifrey (Authenticity Highly Suspect!)

"Pretty impressive too, IMHO." – Hashish Addict

"I can't stop laughing. Plus 99% of this forum would rather have YOA's comic to Sparacus' script." - Johnstone666

"Nice... Perfect!" – Cameron J Mason

"That's a good comic, yeah. And he did some of the shots I was going to do! Damn and blast! All in all, it's a bit too mocking for my tastes... a very good adaptation. Although he did skip hastily over the Foxes Glacier Mint scene, which I think we can all agree, is the finest piece of fiction ever commited to paper. For shame." – Zork Lord

"Wonderful!!! It made me grin from ear to ear. And not just because one of my posts got quoted on Page 6! Top notch work, YOA - keep it up!Love the final page. This is the sort of scene we need to see Chatham in far more often, IMO. Once again, it speaks volumes about Chatham's character by showing the effect he has on those he meets, and enhances the story by providing a more conclusive and dramatically rewarding ending. It's an enjoyable, meaty climax which rewards repeated readings, and makes the previous six pages all the better for it. Congrats to YOA for bringing this story so vividly to life, and fleshing out what was originally a very uninspiring script." - Wilf

"YOA's writing > Sparacus'. Fact." - LeeRatBag

"I love the comic strip! The panel with Chris being menaced is one of the things that show how limited sparacus's brief synopsis style of writing is. Roll on more pages! I feel there should have had more obvious product placement, with the Fox's Glacier mint packet in full view, but you do seem to be doing this properly, rather than taking the piss (well, not too much), so maybe it's not such a bad thing." - Bernie Fishnotes

"On a lighter note, I love your Zranti Beast comic. 'Could this be the feeling humans call... guilt?' " – Miles Reid

"I think I can say, entirely without bias, that YOA's comic strip is canon." - Notyoa

"An enhancement of the original work, combined with a gentle mocking -- yes, that works. I am pleased. " - Baroque

"Excellent work YOA - apart from the 'Chatham the scumbag' line, as the 'scumbag' term is inappropriate . Love to see more. Fine work YOA. However Ben would never urinate in a garden. YAY - Excellent work. Page 4 is superb - I love the Zranti Beast. YOA's comic strip was very very good. However my original story is the canon one as it is written by the Ben Chatham originator. The Mona Lisa is canon because it is painted by the same artist who did the sketches. Since I am the original Ben Chatham artist then it is up to me which bits of YOA's strip are canon." – Sparacus himself

36 - The Zranti Beast

THE PANTY BREAST

Having been driven through the floor by the psychotic Karl Simpson, Ben Chatham is assumed dead.

However, having received eye-witness reports of a dead-ringer for Britney Spears being kidnapped by an anachronistic Gestapo Reichsfurher in the middle of Hampstead Heath, Dr Owen Harper is, predictably, the first one on the spot.Needless to say, he's more than a little disappointed to discover that the bruised, crippled and scantily-clad damsel in distress is none other than the single-most irritating prat in the world trapped in a hot chick's body. While Owen desperately searches for a suitable length of gaffer tape, Ben...

Screw it, explaining the continuity will take far too long. Suffice it to say, the story proper begins with Ben Chatham relaxing in her Cambridge apartment. Or rather, a voluminous cardboard box with "Cambrige Appartment" scrawled on the side in childish handwriting.Ben Chatham drinks rainwater from a cracked mug with 'absinthe' written on the side, struggling to read a heavily stained Telegraph from June 4, 1992, when her mobile rings. After a struggle, she pulls it out from under many soiled pictures of Jonas Armstrong and David Bowie.She is surprised that she still has credit for her phone - she is even more surprised to hear the voice of Chris Jennings, an old friend from university.

"Hello? Is Ben there? I'm in a spot of trouble..."

"This is Ben."

"Erm... you sound sort of different."

Ben gives a smouldering look as she remembers her infliction with a most inferior form. "Look I turned into a woman and I would seriously appreciate you not making a fuss about it, OK?"

"Okaaaaaaaaaaay... yeah, well, I was wondering you could come around. I've still got the same house. Yeah, I still haven't moved out of the Uni accommodation. It's frigging great here! But, yeah, I wanted you to come around because I know about your experience with the... extraterrestrial."

Ben concentrates hard, thinking of a good excuse to avoid spending time with another human being...

"Fuck off."

"Please!" says Chris, his voice now tense "It's really quite important that you come around now! Right now!" There is a hiss of wild, crackling electricity down the line and a sinister, evil laugh. Ben assumes that Chris is being immature and throwing some sort of rowdy party, which is all the more reason not to go. She takes this one board with her next response.

"Fuck you, Chris."

"Ben!" cries Chris, his voice clearly cracking "I'm just five minutes away! I can see your box from my window! Please!" The noise of the party begins to drown out Chris's words, as the electronica reaches new heights, and there are the noises of sizzling meat, and snapping bones.

"I never liked you, you know, Chris. I bet this is a wind-up. Oh wait, I forgot: fuck you and the horse you rode in on!"

Ben hangs up, ignoring the shameful last minute entreaties from Chris: "Arrrgh, no!", "My flesh!", "Please for the love of all that is-ARRRRRGHHHH!" and so forth. Ben goes back to her 'sofa' made from urine/newspaper mache in an unusual bout of creativity.

Later that night, a gigantic flaming monster not unlike the one from Lord of the Rings walks into a MacDonalds, hoping for some Earth-style sustenance. After a quarter-of-an-hour of waiting in line, the creature finally reaches the counter.

"Hello, sir, may I take your order?"

"Soon! First you must explain to me this Earth concept of... 'mc'" murmers the pyroan gravely.

"...what?"

"You offer me 'Mc' chicken burgers.... but also chicken sandwiches. There are 'mc' shakes... but then there are just 'shakes'. You offer me 'mc' with some meals, but not with others. Yet regardless the pricing does not seem to accomodate the 'mc'. Is this something that you earth-dwellers take for granted? Do you mockingly refer to your high radiation levels, by offering a square root of the value of inherent energy in your dishes? Is that all this is? A joke?"

The clerk glances at her manager. There is no help there. "Erm.. yeah."

"Very well!" proclaims the alien. "In that case, Earth-creature, I shall feed myself on... A BACON AND EGG McMUFFIN!!!"

Thunder rolls ominously in the background, as the clerk finds herself trembling pitifully. "I'm sorry...erm..."

"SORRY?!" it roars, its breath singes the clerk's incredibly goofy novelty hat.

"That's part of the breakfast menu..." squeaks the terrified clerk "... which is only available nine to eleven and dear god please don't kill me... "

It is at this moment that the alien creature declares that human beings, by idiotically dictating the times of day whereupon certain sustenance can be entertained have stripped themselves of all independant thought and freedom, becoming slaves to their own petty infatuations and constructs, and eventually nothing but mere machines of their own making.

As such, they are UNWORTHY OF THE GIFT OF LIFE!!!

Most people would say that this is an awful lot of crap to read into the menu-system of a shitty franchise restaurant, but Lawrence Miles at least shouts out "Right on, man!" as the monster burns down the store, along with everyone else inside.

After the roof collapses on the fire-beast's head, giving him a minor concussion, and he realises that he's still very, very hungry, he decides to give up on the genocide and instead find out what it is these humanoids call 'Sub-way'.


The next day, Ben is trying to solicit one of the many university students as a prositute, but, as always, is having incredible problems due to constantly referencing her past as a bloke.

While completely failing to seduce a bespectacled Astronomy major for a pound, Ben hears that Chris Jennings was brutally murdered in his apartment last night? And Sally Bennet got an iPhone!

Ben is left alone, feeling a bizarre and entirely new feeling. Her cool mental processes, or the ones that are still functioning anyway, try desperately to pin down the curious sensation. When she does, it seems to be a small but vocal array of neurons chanting "You murdering wanker, you murdering wanker" over and over. Ben recalls seeing something similar on Wikipedia one time...

"I can't be feeling that "guilt" crap, can I?" Ben considers. "It's either that or... some horrible woman hormonal thing... ew. Yuck. I hope it IS guilt. Lots of guilt. I am a naughty, naughty girl. I must make amends. Uh... amends, amends... how can I make amends? I'm so lip-smackingly perfect! Oh, wait, I remember. Chris is dead. I'll check out his flat and hunt down the son of the bitch that killed him! It's the Christian thing to do!"

Ben wanders around for four days and nights, lost thanks to her own stupidity before stumbling across a crime scene. All the important homicide specialists, forensic pathologists, criminal psychologists and amateur slueths have been and gone - even Operation Helter-Skelter! By now, the only police presence is a Saxon-supported job creation scheme for people on the dole to be paid thruppence to wear a police helmet and scare off riffraff.

Ben strides up to the guard and tries to bluff her way into the crime scene but half way through her lengthy explanation about the secret government agencies she dare not name but Cambridge police cross at their, the guard looks at her and grimaces. "Oh, that is so embarrassing. I need a drink."

Ben looks baffled as the guard wanders off, and then realizes she actually IS experiencing some strange female biological cycle and her ragged underwear is now drenched in blood. Mistaking it for her usual incontinence, Ben shrugs and throws the soiled garments on the floor before inviting herself into the crime scene.

Inside, Ben finds the microwaved corpse of Chris Jennings, and notes its actually giving her the munchies. Looking through the evidence bags left behind after Touchwood Three made an appearance and accidentally unleashed a five-dimensional alien soduku game that turns humans into violent, skin-shedding zombies, causing forensics to be lost in the narratorial ether.

Delighted at what appears to be a lifetime's supply of meth amphetamines, Ben starts munching them... and discovers that they are just Fox Glacier Mints. Nevertheless, her absinthe-pickled brain reacts violently to the icy minty flavor and she smiles idiotically before falling over.

At that point a woman enters the flat and discovers what appears to be a half-naked Britney Spears lying unconscious in a pool of menstral blood. The woman quietly backs out of the room and runs off.Ben sits bolt upright, her sugar-sparking synapses concluding that the woman must be the one that murdered Chris Jennings - criminals always return to the scene of the crime and the strange extra-dimensional howls and crackling electricity could easily be mistaken for some vulgar chav harlot!

Ben stumbles out of the share house and sees the woman running off - no doubt to report to the cunning, civilized and certifiably insane managing director of the local furniture showroom, who is secretly in league with Welsh druids, the CIA and a strange conspiracy for half-human monsters to replace Corrination Street actors!

Such a thought makes her giddy and she heads back into the flat for a quick nap. She finds a whiteboard covered in equations, schematics, formulae, logistics, a few games of Hangman, a quick sketch of Adam Rickitt with arrows tattooed on his smoothe chest, and the phone number of someone called "Maria Hotlips Jackson".

Ben wipes the board clean and writes four simple words: ALL CHAVS MUST DIE! with a little love heart above the I. Smiling happily, she decides to crash out on the mysterious metallic couch covered in lights and switches that actually just happens to be a space transmitter.

Ben punches some buttons in the hope the couch will become more comfortable and play a Bowie compilation album, only for it to start playing Chris' Nobel Prize acceptance speech he had been rehearsing.

In the accurate belief that no one in the world had ever tried to microwave a potato in the Antares Galaxy, Chris has developed a microwave transmitter able of sending lethal radiation faster than the speed of light which will fry anything that gets in the path. Of course, there is the downside that there is no way of telling if the transmitter works, and even if it does, random objects in another galaxy are now being vaporized for no apparent reason, which might upset the natives.

However, as Chris notes, "There's no room for sentiment when you're a mad scientist!"

Just then, Ben is awoken by a distinctive crunch crunch noise, getting closer and closer. Ben then notices the smell of burning flesh, the screams of the dead and dying, and the sound of fires burning out of control.

Craning her neck, Ben peers out the window and sees a giantic flame monster of purple energy striding down the street towards the lab, causing explosions and killing hundreds every second.

"Oh," she says quietly. "Another pepthaline fire beast," she muses, remembering that bonfire night she dreamt about once in a longwinded and terribly unconvincing manner (see Bathfarter)

At that moment, the woman returns, frantic. She screams that the creature has been summoned to Earth by Chris' demented transmitter and is now on the rampage. The only way to stop it is to lure the creature into the house and transmit it into another galaxy ASAP!

"Why are you telling me this?" asks Ben.

"Just making it clear in my head," the woman explains. "I'm Tara by the way, what's your name?"

"Ben - Ben Chatham."

"Nice to meet you, Ben Chatham, now run for your... wait a minute! You're the Ben Chatham Chris was desperately trying to contact as that thing scorched the flesh from his bones! You let him die, you complete insane bitch!"

Ben tries to run for it, but after weeks of malnutrition her smoothe limbs are pale and useless and she immediately collapses. Tara picks up a handy buzz saw, switches it on and strides towards the helpless transsexual twit!

Just then, the fire beast smashes through the house, causing the walls and roof to explode in flame and leave the whole place a burned out wreck. Tara and Ben look up in surprise as the creature roars...

"DIDN'T YOU KILL MY BRUVVA?!"

"Aw, come on!" Ben protests. "That was a dream!"

"OH, THAT MAKES IT BETTER, DOES IT? YOU CRUEL BASTARD!!"

Ben turns desperately to Tara and begs her to save him. Her. You know what I mean.

"NOTHING CAN STOP ONE OF US!" the creature booms. "ONLY THE LEGENDARY PANTY BREAST OF FATAL DEATH COULD EVER STOP OUR INDESTRUCTIBLE FURY - AND SINCE NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA WHAT A PANTY BREAST IS, YOU'RE WELL AND TRULY FUCKED!"

The creature steps closer, one blistering foot of energy stepping on Ben's soiled panties. The creature groans in disgust. "OH, GOD, THAT IS HORRIBLE! DEAR GOD, IT'S STILL WARM!"

As Tara and Ben watch on in disbelief, the extraterrestrial fire monster hops on one leg trying to peel the underwear stuck to its foot. However, at that point, the monster overbalances and falls straight onto Ben - specifically her left nipple.

"ARRRRRRRRRRRGH! MY FUCKING EYE! OH GOD! OH GOD, GOD IT HURTS, OH GOD, THE PAIN!" the creature rolls over, light spewing from its injured head. "TRUST ME TO GET THE HARD ONE! OH, GOD, HONESTLY! HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THIS? I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE IT! I JUST CANNOT BE-------"

With a puff of sulphor, the monster vanishes from the material universe.

"Well, what do you know?" Ben marvels as she brushes soot off herself. "It turns out girls have some kind of use against alien monsters after all. I sure never saw that coming, did you, Tara?"

Tara stares at Ben in disbelief.

"I know you've just lost Chris and I'm actually gay... well, a gay transsexual, so actually, I'm straight... Anyway, do you want to sleep with me tonight? I was thinking of taking up squatter's rights on this place."

Ben looks around the smouldering ruins.

"Maybe it needs a lick of paint. And a well stocked bar full of finest French absinthe, a stereo system of Bowie and ABBA, and some tasteful throwrugs..."

Tara shakes her head and switches off the buzzsaw. "You're not even worth beheading," she sighs and strides out into the night.

"Stupid bitch," Ben mutters to herself as she gets comfortable on the microwave transmitter once more. "Probably her time of the month or something."

THE END

35 - The Sun Goblet of Sacrosan

THE ONE OMLETTE THAT'S SACROSANCT

Captured by the psychoitc Karl Simpson, Ben Chatham reasonably expects her second incarnation is about to be violently cut short in a brutal, drawn-out orgy of pain, blood, death and torment.

When she's stripped naked, it just looks like a variation on the theme. When she's given a dressing gown, it's mildly surprising. When she's given a sofa of reasonable comfort to sit on, it's outright odd. And when she is given a bowl of green olives, bottles of absinthe and a CD player with Webern on it, Ben is out and out baffled.

However, Ben being Ben, she simply downs all the absinthe until everything goes hazy and misty. She thinks about her unwilling sex change and is too busy feeling sorry for herself to realize Karl has set up a huge, Monty-Python-style 100 tonne weight hanging precariously above the sofa.

Ben is mildly unsurprised when the Green Absinthe Fairy from "Euro Trip" appears in front of her, blinks and mutters, "This is MAJOR LEAGUE fucked up!" and then flies off to find something more interesting.

Just as Karl cuts the rope holding the weight, a strange CGI vortex engulfs Ben and then regurgitates her on the hard flagstone floors of what looks like Cardiff Castle with some tinfoil scattered over the place.

Ben looks around with drunken worry. "You know, this kind of thing wasn't normal last time I checked," she muses as an inscrutable figure in the robes of a Chinese Mandarin (or an immortal Celestial Toymaker) glides into the room and sits at a simple, unfussy throne that in no way suggests feelings of inadequacy or desires for penis enlargements whatsoever.

"Welcome," said the bearded Chinese man politely.

"Are you my conscience?" asks Ben, completely pissed out of her head.

"No. I am not your conscience."

"My inner femininity?"

"No. Not that either."

"My sense of self-preservation and super ego?"

"No, I am..."

"Got it! You're my intellect."

"Nonsense, if I were you're intellect I would be in the form of a heap of molten ferret droppings!"

"You're my inner molten ferret droppings?" Ben asks.

"No, I am not! I am Fu Manchu!"

"So you're my inner Yellow Peril Evil Chinamen Stereotype?"

"No. I am a magician."

"Called Fu Manchu?"

"Yes."

"You didn't like, just happen to arrive on Earth in prehistoric times and create lots of legends about oriental criminal geniuses that infected human culture aeons after you then, then?"

"No."

"Oh. That makes a change. Are you into black magic?"

"I am a benign magician."

"Nine of you? Man, I must really be out of it, I can only see one of you..."

"I mean," Fu Manchu complains, "I am a magician who only wants the best for his people! I'm not a bad magician! You're thinking of Lokar the bad magician! He has cast a spell on my city which has brought pestilence and death!"

"So? Don't you have a binding spell?" Ben mumbles, falling asleep. "Don't you magicians watch TV?"

"TV?"

"Where am I, anyway? Looks like Cardiff..."

"It is not Cardiff!" Fu Manchu snaps. "It is the planet Ayseedeeseebeeheffgee!"

"LOOKS like Cardiff..."

"IT IS NOT FUCKING CARDIFF! You are in my strange, mystical castle on an alien planet!"

"Looks like a normal, un-mystical castle in Cardiff..."

"WELL, IT ISN'T!"

"Kay. Whatever."

"I have brought you here for a special task."

"Huh? Who are you again?"

Fu Manchu growls. "I'm the Good Magician, you retard! My enemy has cursed this city and everyone in it is at risk!"

Ben opens an eye. "So, why not just leave the city then?"

"WHEN I WANT YOUR OPINION, I'LL FUCKING KICK IT OUT OF YOU FIRST!!!" Fu Manchu coughs self-consciously and smoothes down his robes. "But, come now. Let us not be unpleasant. I often enter a sacred trance..."

"Why's it sacred?"

"... What?"

"Why's the trance sacred?"

"It just IS, all right? Anyway, I saw the God of time and space in his TARDIS box, small to the unbeliever but capable of carrying an infinite number of souls! And I saw his most bravest of assistants on the planet Earth, and so I have brought YOU to me! You, Rose Tyler, will save my world!"

"Mnoro."

"What?"

"Notro."

"WHAT?!"

"I'm NOT ROSE!"

"WHAT?!?"

"I'm Benjamin Chatham."

"Who?"

"I'm the Doctor's bravest assistant."

Fu Manchu pulls out a copy of a Doctor Who funfax and looks through it. "Benjamin Chatham? No... Sally Sparrow, Rose Tyler, Adam Mitchell, Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Jacqueline Tyler, Donna Noble, Martha Jones. No Ben Chatham there."

"That sucks."

"But my spell was to summon a blonde female pop singer who travelled through time and space with the Last of the Time Lords."

"That's me."

"BUT I DON'T WANT YOU! I WANT ROSE!"

"Like that chav slut could help you!"

"Yes, she could, that's the point!"

"Well, the bitch is in another dimension. Get used to it."

"So... you're the only hope for our civilization."

Ben rolls over. "Looks like. But I still don't understand one thing."

Fu Manchu sighs, dispirited. "What?"

"Why is the room spinning?"

"Because you're completely pissed."

"Ooooh!" Ben says and then loses consciousness.

Ben is later awoken by a genie-like figure repeatedly whacking her in the face with a sabre. Fu Manchu paces up and down, brooding.

"Well, since I've used up all my magic, you'll have to do."

"I demand you to stop this idiot whacking me over the head!" Ben shouts, furious.

"I hardly think you are in a position to make demands," Fu Manchu sneers.

"I demand to know why you have brought me here!"

"What part of 'hardly in a position to make demands' did you miss?"

"I demand absinthe and Joe Absolom."

Fu Manchu laughs sardonically for a moment and then grabs Ben's head and smashes it against the wall. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" he roars, bashing her skull against the brickwork with each syllable.

"Now," he continues an hour later. "The one thing that can defeat Lokar and save half a dozen lives is the legendary One Omlette That's Sacrosanct. Its magical powers allow whoever wears it to command anyone or anything to do their bidding. And, you know, anyone or anything has to DO it. Otherwise it'd just be really unimpressive. Rather like you, Ben Chatham. Isn't that a boy's name? Never mind. You will travel with a group of my roadies to find the mystical artefact, passing through the enchanted woods, the valley of the damned, and the elephant's graveyard from where no market researcher has EVER returned!"

"So you know where it is?" asks Ben.

"No," Fu Manchu admits. "Haven't the foggiest. But no one ever survives the trip to the elephant's graveyard so I just assume that's where it is. No better place for it, really. In fact, the voyage is so mind-blowingly dangerous not even Lokar has tried to get it. Lucky, really or we would all be totally screwed. Few would ever dare to start such a journey and even those brave, fearless heroes were merely talking big to impress chicks down at the red light district. So, Ben, that is what you will do."

"You want me to face certain death?"

"Yes."

"To get you an omlette?"

"Yes."

"An omlette of mystical superpowers?"

"Yes."

"Which you're not actually 100% sure is really there?"

"Yes."

Ben thinks for a moment. "And the survey said... FUCK OFF!"

"But if you're a companion of the Doctor, surely you must be brave enough and strong enough to help me?"

"No fucking way."

"Either you do it or I never send you home!" Fu Manchu shouts, once again proving not so inscrutable.

"Maybe I don't want to go home, Ching Chang Chong!" Ben sneers. "Now I'm stuck in this horrible, hideous and unsmoothe body, my life is ruins! Ben Chatham is now a hero lost to the people at the mercy of the chav scum!"

"OK, I'll turn you into a man," Fu Manchu offers.

"What? You'll turn me back?"

"Yes."

"Brilliant! Do it!"

"AFTER you bring me the One Omlette That's Sacrosanct!"

"Bugger."

[Uh-oh, running out of space! I'll cut to the chase]

Ben refuses to participate in the suicide mission on the grounds that her dressing gown is rather expensive and objects at the idea of travelling in it. Fu Manchu, however, offers Ben replacement clothes and since he's a wizard, Ben's ridiculously ostentateous requests for kinky Ancient Egyptian slave outfits and a posse of young men to wear them, their slim faces enganced with tribal make up is instantly granted.

Realizing she'll never talk her way out of this, Ben sets her mobile to 'vibrate' and drops it down her pants in the hope she gets a wrong number before her horrible disemboweling. Ben joins Aneka, her female guide, and generally feels depressed that none of the sexy men would be attracted to her horrible Britney Spears body.

As the suicide squad walk out through the city, Ben notes a distinct lack of any supernatural occurences, plagues or anything else. In fact, if Ben had two working brain cells, she'd suspect that Fu Manchu was talking bull shit.

Aneka, bored, decides to read Fu Manchu's autobiography, "F.U., Manchu!", and learns that before he became invovled in a pyramid selling scheme of Amway Products, Fu Manchu was nothing more than a humble horse-trader who nevertheless had a degree and was obviously slumming it until a better job came along.

Then, Fu Manchu organized a rave party in the mountains that left him rambling about star gods, and 'maginal powers' of telepathy and remote possession.

"Maginal?" Ben echoes. "Don't you mean, 'magical'?"

"Must be a misprint... oh, wait, I read it wrong. He actually has 'vaginal powers'. Hence the name he made for himself."

"Which was?"

"The Mighty Pussy of Fu Manchu. I had wondered about that..."

"Can't talk, too busy admiring the slim young warriors as the sun glimmers on their well-toned limbs."

By the time the group have reached the enchanted woods, Ben has managed to explain her tortured history to Aneka, who is now delighted at the fact she will most likely be dead soon - nothing can be worse than spending time with this transsexual alcoholic snob. She starts jumping up and down screaming, "Hey! Hydro Hogs! Tasty people to eat! COME AND GEEEEEEET US!" into the darkness around them.

"Ah! Fury creatures! Or is it, "furry"? Damn it, this autobiography is either full of misprints or Freudian slits! Er, slips."

Ben runs camply out of the woods as Aneka and the rest of the warriors are greatfully torn limb from limb by the strange gorilla-gram creatures that live there. But as Ben escapes the forest she is confronted by a gigantic, scorpion monster with a long electrocuticing tail. Ben immediately climbs a tree, screaming for the monster to let her live. Luckily, the monster is so stupid it acidentally knocks over the tree Ben is climbing, which then falls on top of the scorpion creature, crushing its tail into its dead and 'stinging' the monster to death.

Ben is very concerned - not only are there splinters in her legs and no one to sensitively remove them and hug him, he also seems to be stuck on an alien planet full of villains from The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers!

It is then she discovers that the uprooted tree has revealed, underneath it, a plate with an omlette on it. Delighted, Ben takes out her mobile and tries to text the Doctor to brag... only to realize she doesn't actually know the Doctor's number! And her phone is a distinctly ordinary one and so being on a world not part of the Archangel Network means she can't call ANYONE to help.

Ben soils herself in a panic attack and to calm herself and eats the omlette.

Just then, two dragons implode into existence breathing fire and charge towards Ben... who then projectile vomits on the dragons.

Remember kids, if you accidentally uproot a tree and find an omlette in the soil, best don't eat it.

The dragons are blinded as Ben is Exorcist-sick and sprays them with semi-digested absinthe that kills them.

It starts to rain, making Ben's body go all slippery and damp because the story's so utterly boring and unengaging trying to get some crap erotic descriptions of a wet, topless Britney Spears can only be an improvement. Anyway, Ben gets bored and heads back to the cursed city of hell and destruction for no other reason than she's a complete moron.

Back at the palace, Fu Manchu is dancing and laughing like a madman when Ben arrives.

Fu Manchu explains through diabolical laughter and acting, that the whole scheme was a trap! Lokar was never invovled and it was just a ruse to trick Ben into finding the One Omlette That's Sacrosanct, and also all the beasts and dragons Ben faced were deliberately placed there to trick Ben into ringing the Doctor for help and thus luring him to Ayseedeeseebeeheffgee! Fu Manchu explains normally he would have simply taken over Ben's mind to directly control her, but it seems Ben is a natural blonde and thus has no mind to control.

Fu Manchu eagerly awaits the arrival of the TARDIS, having used his vaginal powers and eBay account to get his hands on a Interface Cross Dimensional Exorsister Translucer Interface Beamer Device that will either sieze control of the time machine and its occupant or else help Fu Manchu get some washboard abs and pectorals you could crack eggs on.

At this point, Ben reveals she never actually rang the Doctor.

Which means he isn't coming to Ayseedeeseebeeheffgee.

Which means this has been a total waste of time.

"Can I still have the sex change operation?" Ben asks hopefully.

Fu Manchu is furious, and when he discovers Ben ATE the all-powerful egg-based meal of mass destruction, he goes nuts and starts reprogramming the Interface Cross Dimensional Exorsister Translucer Interface Beamer Device to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Ben screams.

Unfortunately, Fu Manchu has recalibrated the Interface Cross Dimensional Exorsister Translucer Interface Beamer Device and thus made it A Totally Random Lightning Conductor, which is REALLY bad luck since the one piece of magic Fu Manchu has not already mastered was the ironically very-simple 'Anti-Random-Electrocution Spell', and thus is fried to a crisp in a cheap negative effect.

Just then a huge, floating head made of ethereal blue light appears. "I am Dai Lucifer," the head announces in its Welsh accented voice. "Or, to use my non-offensive English name, Lokar. Now I am the most powerful of the demon magicians on Ayseedeeseebeeheffgee! And now I have the One Omlette That's Sacrosanct, I shall rule the cosmos assuming I can be bothered."

"But... I ate the omlette."

"And then you threw it up! And I recomposed it from the remains!"

"That is single most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my entire fucking life!"

Lokar bursts into diabolical laughter and wields the power of the omlette, but unfortunately forgot it had been marinating in absinthe and its magical powers instead caused him to dissolve in an even cheaper negative effect than the one that destroyed Fu Manchu.

Ben is suddenly transported by the CGI tornado back to the sofa in Wiltshire.

"And so say all of us!" she says in her ditzy blonde way.

Before a 100 tonne weight drops onto the sofa, driving her straight through the floor as Karl laughs with a childish giggling voice.

The End.

Season 4 Covers

Rural England, 2009. Desperately tyring to find something, anything more interesting than a lecture on Gothic architecture at Norwich Cathedral, the Doctor and Donna discover, to their surprise, that a non-stop sex rampage is about to engulf a forgettable seaside town which is stalked every night by the sinister Craig Ferguson, failed and bitter Scottish comedian determined to get revenge on a world that always assumed he was Robbie Coltrane at a low ebb.

As the Doctor and Donna try to enjoy a Bilurian orgy of peace between the stupid apes and the sexy lizards, it becomes clear that stark disaster is going to strike this rather romantic little interlude. For a strange, smoothe-chested degenerate is in town...

...and Ben Chatham will leave no survivors!

Donna's craving for Pop Tarts doesn't seem particularly dangerous or catastrophic, but when combined with the uselessness of Ben Chatham, trigger a chain of circumstances that fragments the law that holds the universe together. From the dark wilderness of Cardiff during the English Polite War to a nightmare hell of 2009 Emperor of Chath'haam to a complete lack of universe altogether.

Once again, Ben Chatham's idiocy has risked the safety of conterminous time... and only two unemployed Australian handymen who just happen to have access to a time/space translocation podule and a disturbing admiration of Billie Piper can help the Doctor and Donna save the day.

But can even Doctor Spoon and Arco Chamber prevent the catharsis of spurious morality?


Searching desperately for a way to escape rural England and his incredibly irritating stalker bitch, Ben Chatham, the Doctor and Donna turn desperately to Damian Satan, the Chief Executive Officer of the Mysterious Excavations And Power Supply Enterprizes, a subsiduary of the We're Not Aliens Honest Corporation, whose path has been blighted by a certain smoothe archaeologist.

As events hurtle towards a brain-splintering climax, the dark truth behind Earth's civilization will be revealed, Ben Chatham faces his final destiny, the TARDIS crew changes forever and the Doctor finds himself caught in an alliance of three of his oldest enemies... just three not-very-good ones.

Is there any way out of this holocaust or are our worst fears confirmed and...

THIS STORY ARC IS FUCKED!

34 - The Living Picture

THE LIVING BITCH-WHORE

Life has not been easy for Ben Chatham of late.

After discovering the most exciting, thrilling and dangerous times in his whole miserable life was just an alcohol-induced hallucination, his attempt to hook up with the Doctor has left him abandoned in Wiltshire, 2009, in a body identical to that of pop icon Britney Spears. Worse, while attempting to ingratiate him/herself with David Bowie, the music legend proceeded to shoot Ben through the heart and claim it was a suicide attempt.

Ben narrowly survived the gunshot wound and, mistaken for the real Britney Spears, was sent to the Limes Clinic to prevent further suicide attempts. However, Ben quickly convinced the doctors there that she was not suicidal and would have been released if she hadn't also explained she wasn't actually Britney Spears but a young smoothe-chested archaeologist in a duplicate body accidentally created by messing around with ancient Elian technology.

Ben was declared "dangerously psychotic" and put under maximum sedation. Then the real Britney Spears arrived. Using Ben's testimony to prove she wilfully, deliberately and with complete malice of forethought used xenotech to transform herself into a duplicate of Spears, that counts a breach of image copyright. Not only was Ben officially a loon-bag, she lost every penny she owned, along with her tatty collection of Bowie CDs, and her Cambridge flat.

Ben turned desperately to her parents for help, and they were initially very supportive... until Ben convinced them she was really their son in a new body, at which point they laughed in her face and emigrated, leaving Chatham to a life of misery and medication between performances of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's musical about Little Richard - "Cosi Van Tutte Fruity: This Time It's Personal".

A year later, budget cuts allowed her to be forced back into the community with no money, job, possessions, friends or even people who knew who she was. In a rash moment, Ben wasted all the allowance she was on a Rufus Wainright album, and was left wandering the streets of Wiltshire, destitute and prostitue - except no one was willing to sleep with a Britney Spears lookalike who claims she was once a man.

One day, almost two years after the Doctor told Ben "you will never see me or the TARDIS ever again!!", Ben is delighted to hear the sound of the police box's wheezing and groaning temporal drives and weakly scampers down a road, only to discover to her horror she missed him and the TARDIS has left.

Standing near where the TARDIS stood is a slightly sad Abby Simpson, who has been travelling with the Doctor for ages and has asked for a week off to meet up with her family and ensure that they're all right.

Abby is, to say the least, taken aback when a half-naked Britney Spears staggers out of an alleyway hugging an empty bottle of absinthe and sobbing, "Come back, Doctor! You know you can't ever survive without me! My knoweldge of pre-Christian burial grounds has saved your ass like a million times!"

Using her uncanny powers of deduction, Abby realizes that Britney is in fact the regenerated form of Ben Chatham and laughs in her face. Ben's eyes fill with tears until Abby feels guilty and suggests she comes with Abby to her parent's house, Ahsley Manor named after the slightly cuter Olsen twin.

Ben is disgusted to learn Abby is only offering to put her up for the weekend and not pander to every one of the archaeologist's sordid whims and generally be a slave, but by now even Ben has realized she's not going to get a better offer and agrees.

The duo head to the ruins of Rubberglove Farm with its skeletons of unwanted horses, and get into the suspiciously pristine sports car parked outside. Ben insists Abby open the car windows and allow the summer breeze to blow through her blonde hair. Abby points out that it's autumn, and Ben sulks and puts on her "Want One" album by Rufus Wainwright on the car stereo.

Abby smiles sweetly at Ben, removes the album, throws it out the car window and reverses over it twice before driving off as a rave remix of The A-Team theme tune blares out of the speakers. "You gotta get used to the kindness of strangers," she reminds me. "And rule number one is that strangers aren't always kind."

After a travelogue montage identical to the one in The Shining, the car pulls up on the gravel drive. Abby explains that before they go in, she better discuss things with Ben. "There's something I haven't told you. I'm sure how to say things... look, my parents don't exactly enjoy snobby transsexuals boring them to death about archaeology and drinking all the booze."

Ben is confused: "Don't exactly enjoy snobby transsexuals boring them to death about archaeology and drinking all the booze?" she repeats uneasily.

"They're normal. Sorry I didn't tell you before."

"Well, you could have said something!" Ben screams at her before remembering the alternative is sleeping in a wheelie bin and quickly backtracks, "But I, uh, understand. So, you want me to be there with you for support when you tell them that I am the great Ben Chatham trapped in the body of some chav slut?"

"No, Ben, you don't understand," says Abby with a frown. "They have no idea who Ben Chatham is and even if they did, they wouldn't care - and they certainly wouldn't approve of me going out with a snobby arsehole like you."

"Don't you respect me?" Ben gasps. "Are you disrespecting me?!"

Abby thinks for a moment. "Yeah, yeah I am. Wanna make something of it?"

"No, no," says Ben quickly. "I know how you feel, Abby. I often went out with girls to please my own ridiculously closed-minded parents."

"That's an idea!" Abby brightens. "I'll tell them you're my girlfriend!"

"WHAT?!" Ben turns her head to one side, the tears welling up. "I'm gay, not a lesbian you silly bint!"

"Look, you're in a woman's body, so you craving guys makes you straight," Abby points out, making poor Ben cross-eyed working it out. "Look, you can have a separate room if you want?"

Ben sighs with dissapointment. "I'll begrudgingly accept the situation. I guess you do look good on my arm."

"And you look good on mine," Abby smiles. "But if you say that again, I'll make sure your tampons are dipped in chili sauce before you use them."

Ben's eyes widen in horror and the two of them enter the house.

There they meet Abby's loving parents, Richard and Judy, in the drawing room. Ben is totally taken aback when Abby's parents are not driven into violent hysteria when their obviously straight daughter turns up with Britney Spears as her partner. "What is wrong with you people?" she finally asks them.

"Sorry?" Judy asks and Abby elbows Ben in the stomach.

"I said, could I have a drop of brandy please?" Ben adds through gritted teeth and has a drop, followed by another, then drains the bottle in three seconds flat as the stuned Simpson family watch on in silence.

Abby awkwardly suggests they have dinner and are joined by Karl the Nazi-fetishing torturer who is interested when Abby's date is revealed to be called Ben Chatham. "I knew a Ben Charthum warnce," he muses. "A totul wankar. I much enjoyed flaying him alive. I vish I could meet him again, and finish orf da job. I so hate leafing verk unfinished, don't you?"

Showing the woozy cunning that can only come from downing a bottle of brandy in three seconds, Ben nods thoughtfully and does not give away the fact she is that same total wanker Karl very nearly tortured for death.

Karl and Abby's brother David join the others at the table and chat as dinner is served. "So Benita dear, I hear you're an archaeologist?" Judy asks.

"How udd," Karl muses. "Dat otter Ben Charthum I knew and tarmented, he vas an archaeologist as vell."

"Well, er, I'm like wanting to join the team working on the Silbury restoration," Ben says, trying to return to the topic.

"But they finished the restoration ages ago," Richard points out, frowning. "You must remember, they found all that alien technology and the remains of a Freema Agyeman android! Made all the newspapers, with all that ludditism and sex invaders..."

"Ja, it happened de day dat Ben Charthum so mysteriously dissapeared," Karl agrees.

"At least I've got a proper job!" Ben snaps. "I'm not looking after a few saggy old horses, which you then allowed to get blown up by Boord invaders, am I? And it's time you got yourself a girlfriend, Karl! Wandering around torturing young men, I bet you're queer aren't you!"

"Looking after der Shurgar and Pharlap VAS a proper job!" Karl says, hurt. "I vish people like you vould accept that Rubberglove Farm was helping the vorld in so many different and varied vays!"

"Yeah, well, I've got a degree! Can you beat that, Adolf?!"

Through a fixed grin at her parents, Abby hisses, "Ixnay! IXNAY!"

"And you can shut up as well," Ben rounds on her 'girlfriend'. "You're just one of those namby-pamby girl types! You're to be seen and slept with, definitely not heard." Ben turns to Abby's parents. "Just ignore her! But then, I bet you do already, don't you?"

David blinks. "No, but I think ignoring you might be an idea worth pursuing..."

"HAVE YOU ANY FUCKING IDEA WHO I AM?!" Ben demands.

"Britney Spears?" David offers with a shrug.

Before she can reveal her true identity and give Karl an excuse to warm up some pokers, Ben finally realizes that she has managed to make the entire household ill at ease and quietly sits back down. "Well. No. I'm not Britney Spears. But I get that a lot. Never mind me."

Ben realizes that Abby is glaring at her and quickly makes a feint for the chili sauce before Abby can grab it.

Karl looks at David and shakes his head. "Whoeffer thought dat a young girl exploring her sexuality vould lead to such obvious brain damage?" he asks sadly.

The conversation requires quite a bit of rebuilding after this, and it doesn't get any better when Richard brings up the topic of politics and Ben starts shouting that immigration must be restricted to keep the chav population down.

"Benita, dear," says Abby (who, under the table and out of view is jabbing forks into Ben's bare legs) "you seem to think we wish to hear you prejudices. Keep that pretty mouth of your closed and the diseased bigotry you call your opinions to yourself."

"Vell, I can certainly see who vears da pants in your relationships, Abby," Karl observes. "Mind you, dat otter Ben Chatham said very zimilar things. Dis is almost ooncanny, don't you think, Daffid?"

"Don't ask me, Skippy, I just live here," David shrugs.

Finally, Ben gets so appallingly drunk Abby gets Mima the maid to help carry Ben upstairs to her room. Ben realizes not only is she being manhandled by lower class servant, but a lower class servant GIRL! "YOU FUCKING POLE BITCH!" Ben screams when she learns Mima's nationality, before Abby bitchslaps her unconscious and throws Ben into the spare room.

Mima looks at Ben and tells Abby, "You could do better."

"Don't I know it," Abby sighs and they head downstairs to enjoy dinner. However, Abby's mobile starts beeping as Ben sends text message after text message to her.

"'THOSE PICTURE ON TEH STARECAES!!1111 OMG LOL THEIR SI SOMETHNG OD ABOUT THEM!!!1!!11 OMG WTF LOL DA EY3S SEM PEIRCNG AND ALMOST ALIEV!!111 WTF IMM FR3AKNG OUT!!!!1! OMG WTF LOL H3LP M3!1!!1 WTF'" Abby reads aloud, mystefied.

Sending Ben the message 'ITS JUST B/C UR A 2TAL PISS H3AD SO GO 2 SLEP U WHNGNG BITCH!1!111!1! OMG WTF' Abby then shrugs and switches off the phone.

Ben does not go to sleep but smashes up the bedroom trying to find some cognac to get wasted on. Finally a strange figure in a long black cloak unlocks the door and tells Ben that unless she keeps the noise down then there will be consequences and repurcussions that might just involve Ben being found lying face-down in a pool of her own blood. "Capische?" the cloaked wraith hisses before striding onto the landing and disappearing into one of the paintings hanging by the staircase.

Ben wonders if she's hallucinating and tests it by smashing an antique vase into lots of sharp pieces and then empties them into her panties. As her eyes water, Ben concludes she probably isn't hallucinating and she decides to text Touchwood, but their advanced technology detects it is Ben ringing up and so leaves her an insulting answering machine message:

"Hello, Ben! This is Doctor Owen Harper, and we all want you to know we think you're a loathesome little twerp and Captain Jack Harkness has given orders to the police that you be assasinated if you ring this number again. We hope in the meantime you rot in your own cum, you filthy little wanker."

Ben hangs up with a sigh.

At a loss, Ben tries to text the police, but to no avail. When she tries to actually ring the police (after hours of struggling to remember what their number is), fobs Ben off by telling them that if anyone is still alive in the morning they might send an officer around to conduct a search and some interviews. Maybe. If they're not busy. And have nothing more interesting to do.

Ben runs out of her room and then falls down the stairs and lands in a heap beside a door, having managed to fall out of her outfit altogether and showing off her no-longer-smoothe chest.

The Simpson family stare at the drunken, underwear-free slag struggling to stand up and then turn to ask Abby, "You're sure she's not Britney Spears?"

Ben incoherently rambles about the paintings and, after a while, the family realize what the fuck she's on about and then laugh at the idea. Ben is so upset that they don't believe him, she starts to cry. "My beautiful dark dreamscape eyes are filling with tears! Don't you care, Abby?!"

"Not really," Abby sighs, bored.

David sees this and whispers loudly to Karl, "Isn't that the same pick up line that other Ben Chatham used on your while you removed his gonads with a corkscrew?"

"Ja, Daffid," Karl agrees. "Das is correct. I begin to vunder if this Benita is really gay after all. I bet she has never even eaten beaver."

"I'm not going to let you idiots get to me," Ben weeps and storms upstairs again. "I suggest you all get some coffee and sober up and then give me all your alcohol!"

Suddenly two dark, faceless figures appear behind Ben and hurl her over the bannister shouting, "We said KEEP THE NOISE DOWN!"

After she crashes to the floor, the figures head down the stairs and start whacking her with cricket bats before returning back into the pictures.

"Well, fancy that," Richard deadpans. "Living pictures. Whatever next?"

The battered, bruised and bleeding Ben demands Karl and David take the lead and remove the pictures, take them out the back to be burned. However, those paintings are antiques and some pissed hooker fag hag is not going to change their minds.

Abby notes she's seen adventures like this before - mainly watching Sapphire and Steel, but a few similar things happened while she was with the Doctor. She's fairly certain that if they burn the paintings, they will truly release whatever exists inside them and that's a bad idea.

Since none of the creatures have hurt them, the Simpson family decide to call it quits and head for bed, Karl suspiciously noting that Abby is treating Ben with such contempt you could almost think it was that irritating blond twat in a different body and ominous music plays as Karl... goes to bed.

Ben shouts after Abby, "Why don't you call the Doctor and seek his advice! Like a girly twit like you could ever know anything useful or interesting! Now me, I'll do something intelligent and compassionate and heroic like, er. I know. I'll burn the house down."

Ben picks up the chili sauce she collected earlier and douses the paintings in it. While she looks for some matches in the insane belief that chili sauce burns better than petrol, the paintings go blank and five figures materialize - a Telouse Lautrec image of Tom Baker, Nude Descending a Staircase, Winston Churchill, the Mona Lisa and Giacamo Cassanova.

"At last," Nude Descending a Staircase breathes. "Someone has smeared chili sauce over these pictures, allowing us to escape from the Time Lord prison!"

"How come chili sauce unlocked our prison?" asks the Mona Lisa.

"Guess no one ever expected the prison to be attacked by chili sauce," Winston Churchill muses.

"Should we revert into our true forms of silver-clad blond haired humans with no tan and fake contact lenses?" Tom Baker suggests.

"Nah, it's way camp," Cassanova muses. "Let's just beat up Britney Spears instead!"

"I'm not Britney Spears!" Ben protests as the group close in on her.

"A likely story," the Mona Lisa sneers.

Upstairs, Abby is reading her blog for any info she might have of the painting creatures and remembers one of the Doctor's wacky after-dinner anecdotes about a race of intergalactic superrace of indestructible known as Tears for Fears, who were universally famous for their song Mad World being used in the Donnie Darko sountrack. After encountering the Doctor he went 'Family of Blood on their silver spacesuit-clad asses' (whatever that means) and imprisoned them in inanimate objects.

Tears for Fears prepare to drain Ben's cellular energy, but chicken out at the last minute for fear of all the booze and drugs they know Britney's been consuming in front of the press ever since she became famous.

Just then Abby leaps off the balcony, backflips and lands facing the aliens and then throws a bucket of sour cream over the paintings. The chili sauce and the sour cream cancel each other out, and the quintet turn into a swirl of energy that dissipates into the walls around them.

"What the fuck happened there?" Ben demands, crossing her legs for decency's sake.
"Those aliens can be imprisoned in inanimate objects, so I was trying to trap them in you," Abby explains. "Since you're the most inanimate object I know. Guess they must be trapped in the walls, the brick, the very fabric of the building. Which means we'll have to make sure we don't knock the house down for the foreseeable future..."

Ben is incredulous: "You worked all that out by yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you just ring the Doctor for advice?" Ben demands.

"Is there any solution you know of that doesn't involve texting professionals to sort it out for you? You know using your own skills or wits to save yourself?"

"Yeah, right," Ben snorts. "Texting totally appeals to stereotypical cutting edge younger viewers who watch Skins!" she shrugs.

"Eh? What viewers?" says Abby, baffled, neatly plastering a hole in the fourth wall.

"The Doctor's far better suited to supernatural problem, you should call on him in these sort of emergencies!" Ben protested.

"I've been known to solve things on my own bat!"

"What could a little girl like you do?" Ben ridicules.

"I defeated the matter-phasing aliens and saved your skinny ass, didn't I?" Abby reminds her.

"Touche," Ben grumbles. "But frankly, your family are a bunch of arseholes! This is so unfair! It's because I'm gay, isn't it?"

Abby rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever Daffyd."

"Fine!" Ben screams. "You're just like all the rest, Abby! You're straight, you fail to pander to my every need, you don't follow me around doing everything I says, or refuse to do that in ASDA... You're being totally unreasonable, wanting me to conceal my identity while your revolting family tolerate homosexual pride! What kind of girlfriend are you?!?"

"Er, I'm not actually in love with you, Ben, I just felt sorry for you because you're a loser with no life and no friends whose pathetic excuse for a job vanished when you had a sex change!"

"I am presenting myself sympathetically and that's all you do?"

"You're right," says Abby folding her arms.

"I am? I mean, I am!"

"You don't have to put up with having to behave like a human being just so you can have a roof over your head, nice food, a bed to sleep in. You should stick to your principles and leave to spend the rest of your life in a Wiltshire gutter. I'm being unfair, and you can go."

"What?" Ben exclaims. "No! You're dropping me for no reason! That makes me angry!"

"But I've got a reason," Abby grins.

"Which is?"

"Work it out yourself. Bye!"

Ben is left outside, in the dark as it starts to rain. Putting on her best smile, she tries to seduce Abby through the letter box. No, that ISN'T a euphemism, you dirty little bastard. "Look, Abby, I don't have to go just because your family were extremely unpleasant to me and you could have supported me more. You're blowing this out of proportion, girl, so stop being a wuss!"

After two hours with no reply, Ben finally accepts she's not going to be let back in.

"AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO ACT SO OBVIOUSLY GAY!" she shouts before trudging down the gravel driveway towards the town, sobbing bitterly as she realizes that her pure hatred for the female gender by default means she hates herself!

"Still, at least I'm not going to get killed off with plenty of blood and gore like more non-descript female characters I know," Ben consoles herself.

A dark shape steps out of the rain and blocks the path.

"Hi Benji," it growls. "I like ya new look, ja. Ve have unfeenished biznuss!"

As Karl's meaty hand reaches for her throat, Ben starts squealing like a pig...


The End
Or Is It?
No, Just Joking. It's The End.

Exclusive: The NEW Ben Chatham!!

STOP PRESS!!

"CAMBRIDGE DEGREES OF SEPARATION"

It was revealed today that Adam Rickitt will no longer be playing the most detested and despised Doctor Who-related character in the history of everything ever: Ben Chatham. Of course, he never actually played the role in the first place, but he wants to drag his career from a bizarre repeating meme on Outpost Gallifrey.

After three years of constantly being dragged into flamewars on the forum in his incredibly moronic, anti-social bipolar wanker, Adam Rickitt made this unsurprising announcement as he cleaned the toilets in a New Zealand branch of McDonalds as he awaited his big break:

"I am so fucking sick and tired of being connected with a pustulent sore inflicted on such a successful show. I don't give a pair of fetid dingoes kidneys if that cunt Ben Chatham even survives without having me used as some kind of biological template! If my face, voice, or even body hair is ever connected with the character ever again I will sue the BBC until civilization itself collapses! Now fuck off, I need to clean out the chicken nugget vats..."

It was decided by the Powers That Have No Clue How Television Works, to recast the role of Ben Chatham and use a new actor so totally clueless they would not notice or understand the fact their likeness was being used to portray a woman-hating bipolar homophobe - and for the last thirteen seconds, rumors have circulate about the new Chatham including...

• Lee Williams
• Joe Absolom
• Bruno Langley
• Rory Jennings
• The guy who played the Borad in Timelash
• Jonas Armstrong
• Jon Culshaw as any/all of the above
• Nigel Verkoff

The producers remained tight lipped (partially due to the Pulp Fiction-style sodomy mouth gags they wear for reasons it is best not to go into). They admit that the season finale of the Doctor Who Puts Up With Shit From Ben Chatham thirteen-part miniseries featured a cameo by new star and "if you haven't already notice you're a stupid fucking bastard who deserves to get nailed to the table with live cockroaches rammed up your arse".

Using our keen journalistic skills we just looked This Story Arc Is Fucked Up and discovered the ungodly truth about the new Ben Chatham taking over - and are pleased to confirmed that the actor taking over from Adam Rickitt is, like Rickitt, young, cute, blonde, doe-eyed, moronic, alcoholic, empty-headed and the less said about their singing career, the better. Plus, the new lead is held in low esteem by the public and lacks even the most miniscule of brain cells that they wouldn't understand the problem of being associated with Ben Chatham in the first place, let alone sue over it!

The third incarnation of Ben Chatham (after Adam Rickitt and a brief cameo by Matt Lucas before we decided we couldn't hate him that much) is...

BRITNEY SPEARS!

The latest enfleshment of absinthe soaked snobbery took over from Rickitt in the climatic scenes of This Story Arc Is Fucked Up, between the rip off of The Changes and the David Bowie cameo.

Having had the shit kicked out of him once to often, Ben Chatham used the awesome powers of the Groovy 1980s Lightning Globe to regenerate his body into a new form, but tragically was such a stupid git he made his new body look like Britney Spears instead of the desired result (a younger Adam Rickitt).

Britney herself was briefly sober enough during her thirteen-minute marriage to the pizza delivery boy today for her to give the following police statement while she was arrested for drunk and disorderly, driving under the influence, cradle snatching, public nudity, and being resposible for "Hit Me Baby, One More Time!":

"I'm like, so totally thrilled about being Doctor Who, cause that is so cool in British land at the moment and it's so cool to be, like, totally part of it. I haven't decided what scarf to wear or anything, but I'm so totally excited and want to find out why that blue phone box is in every scene. I mean, can phone boxes move by themselves? I don't think so! And apparently the role means lots of empty plastic liquid bottles are needed to make space ships, and I'm happy to drink as much as I need to keep them supplied with empty plastic liquid bottles. Apparently, this role causes deep psychological scarring issues, but my agent would never let me be part of something that would screw up. What exactly are "chavs", anyway? Oh fuck it, I forgot to wear panties again. I thought it was getting cold in here..."

Work has already begun on Britney's first full-length story as Benita "Ben" Chatham, entitled The Living Bitch-Whore, to be aired online at some point after 06 July, 2003. However, the new season of six incredibly predictable, earth-based adventures with UNIT and Touchwood arriving to save the day every single time, has hit complications after Britney fell pregnant after sleeping with the entire cast of The Living Bitch-Whore, causing the writing team to spend a full minute writing this ever-growing development into the series.

Thus, each installment will now end with a public appeal by the new star herself...

The Living Bitch-Whore will be uploaded to the blog as soon as we have nothing better to do.

33 - All Things Must Pass

4.13 - This Story Arc Is Fucked

The season finale begins as all season finales should: with Ben Chatham suffering the cruelest and most disgusting torture ever devised.

His face has been gnawed off by plague-carrying rats as drill bits pierce his skull. His smoothe torso has been scalded and peeled away by white hot barbed wire. His legs are cracked and rash-covered due to the allergic reaction of the UHU holding him to the seat. His peachy bubblebut is now nothing more than a collage of mincemeat and blood as an endless queue of villagers ram electric egg beaters between his legs and switch on. And his smoothe, delicate hands that haven't done a day's work in his life, are now in mini wooden stocks as they are pierced, burnt and removed in intriguingly different ways.

Worst of all, he's not had a drink for three minutes!

Meanwhile, the Doctor is extremely unimpressed at the sight of the Boord and challenges the Wine Peddler to explain what the hell he is doing.

"Oh, you are in no position to lecture me about interfering with humanity. All I am doing is helping them along to their destiny!"

"No, what you're doing is making an arse of yourself. You really think that a bunch of German bondage freaks can somehow stop the Great and Bountiful Human Empires!"

"Why not?" the Wine Peddler shrugs. "Sparthabot will coordinate this civilization!"

"She couldn't coordinate her outfit," Donna sneers. And headbuts Sparthabot again, for good measure, knocking her clean through the wall.

The Wine Peddler laughs camply. "Where did you find this one from? Anyway, you don't know about the incredible secret weapon we came up with!"

The Doctor doesn't even bother to change his expression. "A leather mask."

"Yes! When placed around the human head, it uses kinkytron energy to take over the brain and make them our slaves! We tried it out with a few of the villagers - and when the masks were removed, they were turned into insane, gibbering idiots."

The Doctor yawns. "Did this villagers happen to ALREADY be insane, gibbering idiots?"

"Might be," the Wine Peddler shrugs. "But no one will take the chance, and thus remain our slaves forever. You can't possibly stop me now, Doctor!"

"I could," the Time Lord shrugs. "Whether I can be bothered to is another matter."

Donna stomps forward. "Doctor, I don't care if this bloke was the biggest wanker at your school and seduced your sister! You're not going to let the human race get anal-raped by German S&M freaks to score point against Frankie Howard there! Right?"

The Doctor scowls uncomfortably. "Oh all right. But I want maximum kudos for this."

"All right, no slaps for a month."

The Doctor thinks for a moment. "Fair enough."

Meanwhile, the Wine Peddler delves into his desk and hauls out a plasma-screen TV - cutting edge for 1996, which is where he bought it. "All right, everyone, pull up a chair and watch the Root of Mankind begin!"

The Doctor waves and nods patronizingly at the Wine Peddler until he looks away and he and Donna run under the desk and find themselves in a TARDIS console room identical to the one the Doctor has used since that Big Finish audio with Daphne Ashbrook in it. The Wine Peddler is so occupied watching images of the Boord moonwalking out of MEAPS Enterprizes plants all over England, he doesn't notice his writing desk vanishing with a wheezing, groaning sound.

Meanwhile back at Rubberglove farm, the Boord formally known as Si Borg continues his campaign of equine extermination - Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, finally learns to say "No" to drugs moments before its head is blown clean off its shoulders by the Boord assassin's laser rifle.

Abby arrives back at the farm and finds the queue for tormenting Ben Chatham significantly reduced. She watches as Karl grabs Ben's mangled skull and booms, "Hey, Ben, I huff a sarprize for yoo. Two tickets to see Dafid Bowie live, next marnth, with backstage passes! But that is not your sarprize. This is."

Karl then punches Ben in the face and connects a red battery cable to Ben's tongue.

Just as Ben is about to be electrocuted, Si Borg runs out of horses to kill and he and the Boord legions storm the easily-forgettable, unsympathetic farming protestors, and shove kinky leather masks over their heads.

Suddenly, a horsebox materializes in the corner of the farm, saving Abby from a Boord warrior. The ramp drops down and the Doctor's head emerges. "Abby! Quick! Don't let them get you in a compromizing position!"

Abby pauses for a moment to look lustily at the Doctor in a moment you know was described by RTD in the tone meeting as "squee" and then runs inside, but this distraction has allowed Ben to haul his mutilated, almost zombie-like remains from the chair and, only pausing to pick up Karl's discarded tickets, drags himself into the Wine Peddler's TARDIS as it takes off.

Inside, the Doctor admits to Donna and Abby he doesn't actually have a plan, as he never in his wildest dreams ever thought he'd stumble across three more pathetic enemies than the Wine Peddler, WOMAN/Sparathabot and the Alien Boord. He then notices Ben bleeding in the corner and, disgusted, hits the Fast Return Switch and kicks Ben outside before taking off again.

Ben, half his flesh gnawed, burnt and scraped away, finds himself in the Wine Peddler's office and struggles to text Touchwood... but he is missing too many fingers to succeed! And too much of a drunken moron to remember how to DIAL, it seems that the world is doomed!

The Wine Peddler notices Ben and offers to supply him with some of his patended vinos of mass destruction, but even this Gallifreyan distiller is taken aback as the mortally wounded human croaks out his request:

"Finest... French... absinthe..."

"Hardcore," the Wine Peddler replies, impressed. "Respect!" he adds and smacks Ben on the shoulder in a gesture of solidarity that accidentally shatters Ben's collar bone.

Aboard the TARDIS, a brainstorming session is underway as the Doctor and Donna try to work out exactly who could possibly help them. After dismissing Captain Jack and Touchwood for fear they would join forces with the kinky alien Boord, and UNIT because they actually want some kind of limit to civilian casualties, it rapidly becomes obvious that all the other people that could help would lower their opinions of the Doctor and Donna that they couldn't sort it out themselves.

"If only there were some von Daniken space gods around that could help us out!" Abby wails, pouting cutely.

The Doctor's eyes widen and he realizes that Abby has come up with a bloody good way to tie up an integral story arc. Stealing some components from the Wine Peddler's TARDIS, the Doctor, Donna and Abby board the Doctor's time machine as the first one hurtles through time and space to return to its owner.

Unfortunately, the owner is in a bad way. Ben and the Wine Peddler are engaging in a game of Not the Nine O'Clock News Darts, which involves the players blindly grabbing three glasses from a table stocked with different alcoholic beverages and drinking them. The one who can get most pissed in fifteen minutes without throwing up is the winner. However, the Wine Peddler's Time Lord DNA cannot cope with all the triple vodkas, pints of mild, gin with ice and lemon, while Ben is using his breaks to drink more bottles of absinthe.

"What is WRONG with you?" the Wine Peddler slurs before falling over.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS reappears in New Atlantis, Milton Keynes. Immediately the native Elians flee in fear, until the Doctor emerges with a loudspeaker shouting "Don't panic! Ben Chatham is not here! You're safe! Nothing to worry about!"

Donna locates one of the bug-eyed Elians is Chairman Sugent and rugby tackles him.

Desperately, the Doctor explains that England is being overrun by oversexed bondage freaks and he is fresh out of ideas. Meanwhile, Abby goes through the motions of pointing at things and going, "That's an alien! That's a spaceship! That's a relative osmosis dampener!" but she is so damn cute, I forgive her her failings. She might be a Mary Sue, but at least she's a sweet Mary Sue.

Anyway, Sugent drums his freakishly long fingers against his lipless mouth. "Well," he muses. "There is one chance. You see, while we were shaping the destiny of mankind, we were worried that irresponsible greed and mindless technological advance would destroy the Earth, so we build a telepathic fail safe which would force humanity to en mass reject technology and concentrate on repairing the environment."

"Why hasn't it already kicked in?" Donna demands.

Sugent shrugs. "Well, we put the coin in, but nothing happened..."

"Never mind, I can fix anything," the Doctor says with his usual macho posturing as he suggestively waggles his sonic screwdriver in the camera lens. Subtext? What subtext? "Where is this failsafe?" he asks.

Sugent points to the battered Smeg fridge in the town square and the Doctor immediately runs over to it. "But you don't just kick it," he calls out after the trio. "It needs to be programmed properly... oh, fine. Don't listen to me. I just helped homo sapiens colonize Gondwana. I'm no one important. Stupid hominid bastards."

The Doctor rushes over to the fridge and examines it. It seems to be a perfectly ordinary refridgerator except for the inscription saying "Qui Me Tangit Turbat Mundum" where the brand logo should be.

"Whoever Touches Me Unbalances The World," the Doctor translates for any dumbasses in the audience who expect basic latin to be translated by the TARDIS telepathic circuits. He then starts violently kicking the fridge until Donna and Abby topple the thing over and smash it open with an axe. Coolant sprays everywhere.

"Right," the Doctor says happily. "THAT should sort everything out with no unwanted side effects. We better check up on the Wind Peddler."

As the trio return to the police box, Sugent stares at the wrecked fridge.

"WHY DOES NO ONE FUCKING LISTEN TO ME?" he screams at the heavens.

Meanwhile, the game of NTNON Darts has gone badly. Now completely pissed out of his skull and off his face, the Wine Peddler comes to the conclusion that the only way for him to win the game is to become human, since the apparently human Ben Chatham has a higher resistance to alcohol.

Working on this bent logic, the Wine Peddler plugs himself into a Chameleon Arch, but accidentally takes a bottle of Ol Janx Spirit with him, and the machinery malfunctions. Rather than transforming the Wine Peddler into a human being with a fake personality who just happens to be identical to his old body, the Wine Peddler is transformed into a giant bottle of Voxnic, which Ben stumbles across and then drinks dry before falling over.

Outside, the TARDIS emerges and the trio emerge. "You know," the Doctor muses, "as dues ex machinas go, this is pretty poor quality isn't it?"

"Like a hobnob when you've dunked in lukewarm tea for too long," Donna agrees.

"Exactly. What?"

"Well, it's nice at first, then it just turns to mush."

"Oh. Good metaphor," Abby opines.

Donna blushes. "Thanks. It's my first."

The Doctor, Abby and Donna stumble across the drunken, zombified remains of Ben Chatham hugging an empty industrial-sized bottle of Voxnic, and note with distate the useless layabout has gotten completely hammered yet again.

"Where's the Wine Peddler?" Donna asks.

The Doctor shrugs. "Dunno, don't care."

"But he's slipped away without any comeback!" Donna complains.

"He's still a natural born loser, what more comback do you need? I mean, two lonely survivors wandering the universe doesn't have the same ring to it, but I'll just keep saying I'm the Last of the Time Lords until the Rani shows up again..."

Donna shakes her head. "We've been building up to this for the whole season and he's pissed off in the first five minutes?!"

"This story arc is fucked," Abby agrees, politely using the story title in dialogue.

The Doctor pulls up a chair, using Ben as a makeshift footstool (and mixing in mud to all those open wounds), and decides to watch the total obliteration of the Boord, as the telepathic field makes humanity irresistable to alien influences, and finally agree to acknowledge life on other worlds and forget the whole racial intolerance thing. "Twenty-first century is when it all changes," Donna drawls.

The Doctor stares at her. "Is that supposed to sound like Captain Jack?" he asks.

"Yeah."

The Doctor returns to watching the screen. "Shithouse," he decides.

Ignoring the dying Ben Chatham's muffled sobs for medical attention, the trio watch the plasma TV as the Boord are wiped out as ordinary people all over England run out into the streets with hammers, spades and inflatable sex dolls - whatever they can get hold of - and, as if gripped by some force, kill the Boord en mass. Proving themselves the most pathetic monsters in Doctor Who, the amazingly ineffectual Boord are defeated in under a minute by spade-weilding rural folk.

"Right, under-used monsters killed off before they can shine, check," Abby notes.

However, the rampage doesn't stop and the mobs start to smash machinery and technology instead, and Abby picks up Ben and uses him to smash the plasma TV. She explains she has no idea why she did it, but a strange craving to smash up busses.

Donna sighs. "I suppose there isn't just the slightest chance that instead of making everyone open-minded, tolerant and hypnosis-proof, knackering that fridge hasn't just instead compelled them all to destroy all electrical possessions in a violent rage of anti-technology ludditism?"

The Doctor looks at Donna, then at out the window as the streets become filled with angry mobs intent on overturning vehicles, smashing electrical machinery and destroying buildings.

"Just the slightest chance," he decides after a while. "Maybe. Oh God, Peter Dickenson told me there would be days just like this..."

Ben tries to move things off his shattered back: "Doctor, the whole country is in the grip of this force..."

The Doctor glares down at him. "I know."

"OK, it's ended the Boord threat, but if it continues we''ll be thrown back into the stone age!"

"I know."

"All machinery is being destroyed!"

"I know!"

"Everyone is doing it!"

"I KNOW!"

"They're all at it in the courtyard!"

"Ooh er," says Abby helpfully.

Just then, the Sparthabot runs inside and bolts all the doors. "WUT SI HAPENNG??????!?? LOL" she screams. "THES SI MOST IR3GULAR!!11!11! OMG LOL I FIND IT STRANGA!!!!1111 WTF AVEN D3ATH HOLDS NO FEAR FOR TH3M!1!1111! OMG THES SI SUPREMELEY IENFICEINT!1!!1!!1 WTF"

It turns out the MEAPS hired goons have gone beserk, smashing equipment and fighting with invisible giraffes both armed and dangerous. As this rip off of Peter Dickinson's "The Changes" trilogy increases, the union reps are are thrown into a self-destructive orgy of self-hate.

"HOLEY SHIT!!1!!! OMG LOL" the Sparthabot exclaims. "THERE AL D3LATNG EACH OTHER IN A MAS MUTUAL SUICIED!!11! WTF LOL"

"Mutual suicide?" Abby groans. "That's called 'killing each other', actually."

"KINDLEY DO NOT INTERUPT NUMBNUTS!" the Sparthabot snarls, before miserably peering out the window. "WUT SI THIS?!!!!! WTF MAH PERF3CT RAEC OF SEX SLAEVS!1111!1!!!1!!!!!! LOL DESTROYNG ITSELF!!1!1!!11 OMG WTF LOL THES SI DOWNRIGHT INCONVENEINT!111111 OMG WTF!" The android sticks her head out the window and shouts, "KINDLEY GROW UP AND S2P BNG SO INSECURA!1!1!11!! OMG GAT BAK 2 WORK FOR ONC3 U TYPICAL AEP-DESC3NDAD MAELS!!1111 WTF"

Unfortunately, this man-hating heap of transistors has earned the ire of the rioting mob, who promptly charge the office with machine guns and start kicking down the door. Donna desperately suggests maybe Damian Satan could save them.

"Weren't you paying attention?" the Doctor snaps. "Satan was the Wine Peddler all along."

"Yeah, but that still don't make sense," Donna reminds him.

"Well, the guy was always cracked in the head. Mad Mortimus we called him at school, well, actually we didn't call him anything, just gave him wedgies, but still..."

The luddites break into the room and aim their machine guns at their former android employer, but the Doctor dives in front of the Sparthabot because on a level, he mistook her for Martha Jones, who he actually liked.

"Wait!" he shouts. "Those machine guns count as machinery! The clue is in the name!"

The mob look at their Uzi pistols, scream, drop them, and start to smash the guns apart instead, totally ignoring their prisoners as they run into the police box. By holding onto the Sparthabot's leg, Ben is hauled inside, losing another layer of skin in the process.

"Thank God that worked," the Doctor notes as he sets the time machine in motion. "That would have been a dreadful season cliffhanger."

As the TARDIS fades away, a huge fire starts in the research centre, and thanks to corporate cut backs, there are no sprinklers and the Sparthabot's computer empire is totally and utterly destroyed forever, no returns. Not even Faction Paradox could save this company from liquidation!

Aboard the time machine, the Doctor, Donna, Abby and the Sparthabot ignore the spreading pool of blood from Ben Chatham as he begins to shuffle off this mortal coil.

The Doctor decides to summarize events. "Right, so the Wine Peddler's unleashed a Boord invasion force, but now he's buggered off.."

"It was me," Ben wheezes. "I defeated him! It was all me! Ruffle my hair!"

"Seriously," Abby asks, "why do you think people queueing up to ruffle you hair anyway? Have you EVER known anyone do that in real life?"

"I live in hope," Ben sobs.

"NOT FOR LONG BUSTER!111! WTF LOL" says Sparthabot and grinds the heel of her boot through Ben's crotch until it pierces him and james in the grilled flooring of the control room.

Ow.

The Doctor ignores this as he runs around the control room in circles, talking at a hundred miles an hour. "Right, so this previously unmentioned alien artefact that has never even been hinted at before from Earth's prehistoric past planted by aliens has caused humans to turn on technology but a plus is that the Boord invaders have been destroyed by humans with machine guns and spades. Argh! This situation recognizes no logic whatsoever! Ergo, we've got to be totally illogical. Donna, Abby, think, what could be the most unlikely way out of this?"

"Uh, I dunno," Abby shrugs. "Maybe those aliens built a big off switch."

"YES!" the Doctor screams, running his hands through his hair. "That's it! And, where would be the last place we'd expect it to be?"

"Probably right here in Wiltshire," Donna suggests.

"BELLISIMO!" the Doctor shouts, bouncing up and down and reprograms the TARDIS computer to scan the countryside as Sparthabot hangs Ben on the hatstand and starts to use him as a punching bag.

"Oi! Tryna work!" Donna shouts over Ben's agonized screams of "YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME, I HAVE A FIRST FROM CAMBRIDGE!"

"Crikey, would you Adam and Eve it me old apples and pears!" the Doctor mockneys in amazement. "Not only is this telepathic field being rerouted through a relay with an off switch, it's coming from Silbury Hill!"

"Where?" asks Abby, confused.

"Dunno, never heard of it before, but it's in Wiltshire of all places! I mean, for crying out loud, what are the odds of an invisible force emanating from a totally superfluous locale within walking distance!"

"If... whatever is causing... this is inside that hill... you're stuffed," Ben wretches. "Look at the size of it!"

The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Well, we either begin a frantic search or let the catastrophic chain of events set mankind back hundreds of years."

Ben groans. "Oh well, All Things Must Pass."

"Bollocks!" Donna shouts, and kicks him. "What a piece of defeatest crap! You're just gonna accept this, are you? Why fight it if you're gonna die? You're whole life is a total waste of time, and "All Things Must Pass" just about sums that up!"

The TARDIS materializes outside the hill and Donna and Abby run around looking for a way in while the Doctor orders the Sparthabot to remove Ben from the hatstands before he gets any more blood on the TARDIS floor. As the android does so, the Doctor spots some abandoned archaeology equipment and nicks it.

"Doctor," Ben wheezes desperately. "I'm an archaeologist... I am... aware... that there is an old shaft... round the other side of the hilll... dates back to the 1930s... Argh! Currently being... re-excavated! I visited here... only a few weeks ago..."

The Doctor stares at him. "Dur! What do you thing all that equipment is for?"

Abby and Donna run back into view. "Hey, Doctor! We found an entrance!"

"What?" Ben gurgles.

"Yeah," Abby adds, "it's not that big a hill. We just ran around and followed the earth movements to the excavation sites!"

"I wanted to do that!" Ben sobs in pain, but everyone ignores him.

The Doctor grins. "Abby, you're priceless! Come on!"

Ben is left to rot where he falls, whimpering at the fact no one has praised him. "What about me?" he moans.

"O U?!!???! OMG WTF UR WORTHLAS BN CHATHM!" the Sparthabot explains, and punches him in the head with enough force to break every bone in his body, then drags him off by his once-luminous blonde hair.

The group reach the other side of the hill and enter the open shaft with a wooden workmen entrance. Ben screams in pain as he is roughly dragged inside, leaving his intestines stuck on a rock, so his digestive tract acts as a ball of thread in a greek maze of dark, musty shaft.

"Do you think he's dead?" Abby asks.

"Hope so," Donna replies. "Mind you, it could be a bit more horrible, with Cybermen dancing on his corpse wearing top hats!"

"Or on fire so everyone he's ever met can walk past him and not even piss on him?" Abby suggests happily.

"Or, we could get a bikie in a leather jacket to do the Charleston on Ben's grave every year," the Doctor muses before shaking his head. "No time for merriment. World to save. As usual."

As they move, the Sparthabot occasionally kicks Donna and Abby in the head and pretends its accidental. "Spartha," says Donna after the third time, "please do the world a favour and fucking shoot yourself!"

"HOW RUDE!!!11 WTF" is the Sparthabot's winning retort.

"Christ, are you a bloody five-year-old or something?" Abby demands.

The mismatched group follow through a stone doorway as exactly described by Peter Dickinson in "The Weathermongers" and find a 1980s glowing lightning ball crackling with purple goodness. A huge hologram of a tanned Elian dressed in a blond wig, flowing robes and brown clogs corporealizes at the heart.

"Ooh!" the Doctor grins. "One of George Adamski's Space Brothers! I won't have seen them until the ninetieth century!"

"BEHOLD, HUMANITY! AT LEAST, I ASSUME THAT'S WHO'S SEEING THIS. I HOPE I REMEMBERED TO OPEN THE HILL SO THE WHOLE PLANET CAN SEE THIS RECORDING. OTHERWISE THINGS MUST JUST GET A LITTLE BIT CONFUSING... ANYWAY, I AM MESSAR OF THE SILKY-SMOOTH ELIAN RACE. BIG US UP. GO ON. BIG UP. TO YOUR ANCESTORS, WE WERE THE GODS FROM THE STARS. WE WERE LIKE THE FRICKEN FONZ, THAT'S HOW COOL WE ARE. SINCE WE HAD NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAT WEEKEND, WE IMPARTED WISDOM AND GAVE YOU KNOWLEDGE. COURSE, YOU MIGHT HAVE USED THAT KNOWLEDGE TO BE ALL GREEDY AND IRRESPOSIBLE, SINCE WE NEVER ACTUALLY TOLD YOU WHAT TO DO WITH THE INFO..."

"Can we fast forward through this bit?" asks Abby hopefully.

"WELL, ANYWAY, WE PLANTED WITHIN THIS INCREDIBLY CONVENIENT AND OVERLOOKED MOUND OF NO SACRED IMPORTANCE WHATSOEVER, THIS GROOVY LIGHTNING BALL. NOW, IF YOU ARE SEEING THIS, YOU HAVE EITHER BROUGHT YOUR ENVIRONMENT TO THE POINT OF IRREPRABLE DESTRUCTION OR ELSE SOME PRATT KNOCKED OVER THE FRIDGE IN NEW ATLANTIS..."

The Doctor realizes everyone is looked pointedly at him.

"What?!" he demands.

"... AND THIS PROTECTIVE DEVICE WILL ENSURE THE HUMAN RACE WILL NOT SURRENDER ITSELF TO MACHINE RULE AND ENSURE THAT YOU BACK TO THE START."

The Doctor sucks his teeth and scratches his ear. "Well, looking on the BRIGHT side... it's not actually make anyone forget how to build technology, does it? So it'd be a massive inconvenience for a few decades, but you'd be up and running again pretty quickly."

"Decades?!?" Donna exclaims.

"So? I mean, it's not like it's beyond anyone's lifespan, is it? Except maybe his," the Doctor shrugs and the Sparthabot body-slams Ben.

"IN SHORT," the hologram continues, "BASICALLY, I'M JUST A RANDOM ALIEN WHO'S ALL ANTI-TECH USING RANDOM TECH TO STOP RANDOM HUMANS USING TECH RANDOMLY. IT'S JUST RANDOM, BASICALLY."

"Yeah," Donna grunts. "Random to the point of stupidness."

"SO, JUST IN CASE THIS IS A WHOLE MISUNDERSTANDING AND YOU DON'T NEED A STERN TELLING OFF... SORRY, BUT WE JUST ASS-FUCKED YOUR CIVILIZATION. OOPS."

"What a useless bunch of demigod aliens!" Abby shouts.

"IT'S OK. YOU'RE UPSET, I'M NOT TAKING OFFENSE."

"It makes... perfect sense... to me," Ben wheezes. "It's a... powerful eco-message... within an entertaining context... and a mystery going back to neoilithic times..."

"What powerful eco-message?" asks the Doctor, lost.

"There... is only... one... eco-message... one plain... and simple eco-message... POLLUTION IS BAD!" Ben screams suddenly. "DON'T FUCK UP THE PLANET!!!"

"What, 'Give a hoot, don't pollute!? Damn you're easy to impress, Ben Chatham," Abby complains, shaking her head. "This thing won't stop until every machine has been smashed!"

"ONLY ENGLAND THOUGH, IF THAT HELPS," the hologram offers.

Ben is concerned, since the thought of potential armageddon can be slightly worrying to those with nervous dispositions. "Oh no," he croaks, "what about my Bowie CDs! I shall never... listen to them... again!"

"ULL NAVAR LISTEN 2 THEM ANYWAY CULTURA BOY!!111!1 WTF LOL" the Sparthabot jeers. "UR DYNG RAMEMBR?!?!!!?11!!!11 OMG LOL"

"Oh, yes, so I am," Ben sighs in as refined a way as he can with his lungs punctured.

"Stop panicking you lot," the Doctor reminds them. "For I have this!"

He holds up a strange device glowing with disco power.

"The Tuning Fork of Rassilon!"

Instantly the alien machinery stops dead and a quick montage shows everyone going back to normal. Inside the Hill, the hologram is shaking its head in abject disbelief. "THAT IS JUST FUCKING STUPID! I MEAN, A FORK?! OH, COME ON!!"

"Hey, is it my fault your technology is so heartbreakingly pathetic?"

"YEAH, GUESS I'M RUINING MY OWN STREET CRED AS ONE COOL ALIEN CAT IF I LET THE FACT MY ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY IS INSTANTLY DISABLED BY A FORK PHASE ME EVEN FOR A MOMENT."

"Don't worry," the Doctor consoles the hologram. "We won't let on."

"OH WELL. HOWEVER, LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL HUMANITY!"

"Humanity can't actually see you," Donna reminds the hologram.

"OH. WELL, PASS THIS ON, WILL YOU? USE YOUR TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE YOUR ENVIRONMENT BUT NOT TO DESTROY THAT ENVIRONMENT OR CHANGE THE CLIMATE! AND KEEP IT RESTRICTED, MRS THATCHER, OR IT COULD BE THE START OF A NUCLEAR WAR!"

"Thank you, People's Poet, we'd never actually work that out for ourselves," Abby laughs as the hologram of the glam rock alien finally disperses.

The Doctor throws the lightning globe up into the air and catches it. "One problem - we now have a surpless of energy that needs to be used or it will go critical and take half the Earth with it. So, how to dispose of the surpless? We could create a parallel universe, I suppose. Nah, not enough time, and pretty fiddly to do. I know, we can make Christmas Eve last for a whole week? I suppose I could just channel it through a dimensional portal into the time vortex to dissipate harmlessly..."

Stumbling to his stumpy feet, Ben grabs the lightning globe off the Doctor.

"Oi!" Donna complains.

"I know what to do with it!" Ben gurgles. "I'm not going to die like this... killed by a bunch of girls..."

"Y NOT?!?!! WTF SEMS PRETY APROPRIAET 2 ME!!1! WTF LOL" the Sparthabot chips in.

"I'm going to use... the excess energy... to save me..."

The Doctor shakes his head, rubbing his eyes. "That is really not a good idea."

The delirious Ben ignores him. "Still... if Lee Williams can be... young... and strong... then so can I..."

"You're playing with fire, Ben..."

"Benjamin... James... or was Sebastian? No, pretty sure it was James..."

"Seriously, you're gonna regret this for the rest of your life..."

"Anyway, Ben Chatham... reborn!"

"OK, go ahead, just don't come crying to me, though."

With a crash of thunder, lightning emerges from the globe and strikes Ben Chatham in the smoothe chest, again and again. Energy suffuses his being, his body stiffening as the rejuvenation takes hold, every cell in his body changing as he screams in an incredibly pathetic and girly fashion as he suffers the unimaginable agony of the process.

Unless, you know, you've accidentally stubbed your toe, then it's not so unimaginable agony.

Quite imaginable in fact.

Actually, stubbing your toe hurts worse than that, but we all know was a total wuss Ben Chatham is, so never mind that now.

As the Doctor, Donna, Abby and the Sparthabot watch on, Ben Chatham's eyes burn with power, as the old retinas (useless from eons of self abuse) are seared clean, hair pushing its way out of a fresh scalp, bones being ripped apart by a fire, before rearranging as muscles knitted over and around them. Violent muscular sparms and convulsions run through him - arguably the most exercise he's had in years, as his spine stretches, then telescopes, then lengthens again before the bone structures and features of his face go into a mad convulsion and reshape themselves into new positions with immensely painful and satisfying-sounding snaps and crunches as Ben seems to fall into an unravelling vortex of colour, shape and light, plunging into oblivion as his skin tingles and itches as the very essence of his being shifts and changes, the vortex expanding in an instant to flood every pore, every atom of his so-called existence, then his excuse for a mind.

Strange thoughts and desires flood the writhing Ben Chatham's consciousness, battling with each other until they get turned on as they all get sweaty, while some pop off for a shower and resurface later much refreshed. A momentary alien feeling of love and friendship; the familiar impulses to kill and to destroy all chavs; a sudden appreciation of gymnastics, of the Mickey Mouse club; and an obscure desire to wear a school girl uniform. Blinded by the pressure in his head, the pain reaches an overwhelming crescendo.

The fiery blaze disperses, and the rejuvenated Ben Chatham falls unconscious to the ground in undignified heap next to the empty glass sphere.

The others exchange looks and burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.

"Well, then, all's well that ends well!" the Doctor crows. "Civilization saved, the Wine Peddler dealt with, the Boord destroyed, all the loose ends tied up!"

"AXCUES ME!111!11 WTF LOL" the Sparthabot rants. "MIGHT I REMIND U TAHT IM STIL AROUND!1!1!1!!! OMG U THRE SHUD S2P ACTNG SO IMATURE AND PAY ATENTION!11!!1! OMG"

The Doctor, Abby and Donna turn to face the Sparthabot and smile at her in a very VERY scary way.

We see a silhouette of Silbury Hill as we hear the sonic screwdriver buzzing, the Sparthabot scream "GROW UP!!!1!", a massive explosion and the sound of the English-speaking world rejoicing that the bitch is gone!

Fade to black.

...

Finally, Ben wakes up groggily, stark naked in the furthermost corner of the TARDIS control room as the Doctor and Donna plan a holiday trip to introduce Abby to the universe as she hangs the severed head of the Sparthabot on the wall to act as a dartboard.

Annoyed at the fact they're paying attention to a woman with no degree, Ben coughs very loudly. They all turn to the source of the noise and start giggling again. "Do you mind?" Ben asks, ignoring the strange new voice the amateur archaeologist now possesses. "Now, Doctor, since I have created a brand new physical form for myself, I think it's high time I went back the Cambridge rather than wasting frivolous time with you and Kebab face here."

"Oi!" Donna snaps.

"Besides, I have two tickets to see Bowie live, with backstage passes, next month. So, you three should propose a toast to me because of my incredible knowledge of the excavation work at Silbury. Go on. Raise your glasses to me. I'm better than you."

The Doctor stares at Ben. "You want to go and see Bowie?"

"Yes."

"You mean, seeing David Bowie far from the height of his powers somehow appeals more to you than travelling through time, space, death and reality in an alien spaceship that's bigger on the inside? You want to see that arrogant little ponce, whose real name was David Jones, perform Glass Spider rather than travel beyond the boundaries of the known continuum?!"

"This isn't very fair. Glass Spider is one of Bowie's most underrated 80s songs. Those lyrics work on several levels and can be read as a metaphor for growing up. The Glass Spider Tour isn't one that I remember fondly, and having viewed the recent DVD of it, in retrospect it was awfully Spinal Tap. However the song was superb. Not yuk heavy metal."

"What's wrong with heavy metal?" asks Abby, confused.

"It's not David Bowie, for a start," Ben sniffs.

"Excuse me," the Doctor growls with dangerous calm. "You want to abandon sailing the tides of time and exploring the universe to see David Robert Jones, an illegitimate Yorkshire git who changed his name to a lethally sharp knife just so people wouldn't mistake him for one of The Monkees? A cross-dressing, guitar-raping, cocaine-abusing mincing pratt who ruined 'Dancing in the Street' forever after he tried to out-camp Mick Jagger? You want to go and see him - not during a period of time when he was actually any good, but in 2009, when this paragon of rock spent thirty six thousand pounds on legal fees so he could sue a member of the audience for 'looking at him in a funny way' between guest appearances in 'Kath and Kim' and 'Roland the Rat: The Next Generation'?"

Ben avoids the issue. "I know I'm a very useful assistant to you because you're so busy..."

"YOU WANT TO SEE BOWIE RATHER THAN TRAVEL THROUGH TIME AND SPACE?!?" the Time Lord explodes.

"Yes!"

"FINE!" the Doctor roars, reprogramming the TARDIS.

"I know you'll be lost without me," Ben says smugly.

"You think I'm going to miss a drunken loser who would rather see David Bowie than go on the trip of a lifetime?" the Doctor roars.

"I know my role as your intermediary with Torchwood and UNIT is vital..."

"No it isn't!" the Doctor reminds us. "I've got the Brigadier and Captain Jack for that, I don't need an intermediary, and I certainly don't need to go running to them every time things get a bit hairy!"

"My knowledge of archaeology led you into Silbury Hill!" Ben protests.

"No, it didn't."

"Well, it would have if those two palsied harridans weren't stealing oxygen from more deserving people like me! I'm a major companion..."

"No, Rose was a major companion. You are a foot fungus! How could any "major companion" leave the TARDIS for Bowie of all people! For that nancy, mascara-wearing Nazi sympathizer, jumping from one bandwagon to another! I mean, Ozzy Osbourne I could have coped with, the frontsman of the band that SPAWNED heavy metal..."

"And he might bite Chatham's head off," Donna points out.

"It is absurd to place Ozzy Osbourne on the same level as Bowie," Ben snorts. "I've nothing against the guy but he's basically a run of the mill heavy metal type with an amusing personality wheras Bowie is a major cultural icon."

"Who is this Bowie, anyway?" asks Abby.

"SHUT UP!" Ben snaps. "Seeing Bowie will be great for me, as he is appropriately enough one of my musical heroes, and he has no doubt heard all the FABULOUS rumors circulating about me. And it will be a brilliant ratings draw. Yes, I think it will be an interesting and amusing experience that will really add to my characterisation, which is very important in my new body."

"So, you're not worried about it being crass, pointless, moronic waste of time then?" asks Abby, gnawing at her knuckles.

"No," Ben sneers, distasteful at being spoken to by a commoner.

"I don't think Bowie is going to happy to see you," Donna grunts. "Not the way you look now?"

"I still have luminous blonde locks, don't I?" Ben demands.

Donna and Abby giggle and nod.

"And rose petal lips?"

Donna and Abby giggle and nod.

"And a peachy bubblebut?"

Donna and Abby giggle and nod.

"And my smoothe chest?" Ben asks, before looking down and noticing that the chest is far from smoothe. Ben also proves how slow on the uptake he is as he notices that he is no longer a man, but a woman - albeit it a blonde one with rose petals lips and a peachy bubblebut - and has been strutting around the console room stark, bollock-less, naked for the whole scene without realizing it!

"No!" she queals in horror. "What the fuck happened to me?"

"Turns out you only needed a tiny bit of energy to fix your body," Abby explains happily, "and the rest of the energy got bored with nothing to do, so it... uh, made a few improvements."

"On the bright side, you don't have to hide being gay any more, since you're built for shagging blokes," Donna honks in his face.

Ben (or is that Benita) runs a hand through her long blonde hair, frantic. "But I can't meet Bowie like this! How is he going to ruffle my hair and thank me me for saving the world and tell me how special I am if I'm a useless, ovarie-carrying brood mare like the rest of this foul gender!"

The Doctor violently lands the TARDIS and rounds on the newly-discovered transsexual. "I've had enough of this, Ben Chatham. If you want to get anywhere in this universe, you don't need degrees from Cambridge or a freakish lack of body hair! You need intelligence, resourcefulness, compassion and an ability to be proactive if you want to save the day. Doing hardly anything that doesn't involve intelligence or thought won't get you heroic popularity!"

He crosses to Ben and jabs the graduate in the shoulder. "You, Ben Chatham are lame, unlikable, embarassing and pitible! You're a cold, arrogant, objectionable, supercilious, show-off, punchable little know-it-all gobshite scumbag! And anyone who says different is taking the piss! So, you can keep up your unnerving self-idolization as you ceaselessly salivate over your own impotence as you wander around stale and unexciting locales, but don't think I'm going to get involved in them EVER again! You DIDN'T save the world, you didn't do ANYTHING, so that is all the bloody credit you're ever going to get. I give up on you, Chatham. So go out there and enjoy the sound of Heroes and your backstage passes and start pickling your brand new liver, but you will never see me or the TARDIS ever again!!"

Ben is taken aback as the Doctor, Donna and Abby shove her out the TARDIS doors to emerge backstage at a Wiltshire outdoor concert. "But you can't let me wander around naked in public! They'll think I'm some kind of girl!"

"You are some kind of girl," Donna reminds her.

Ben looks around, frantic as the others re-enter the time machine. "Aren't you going stay to watch Boiwe kiss me and praise me for hours while we enmjoy hardcore gay sex between with his best hits playing over the background?"

"Oh no, we've got all of time and space to explore," the Doctor grins. "Can you imagine silver leaves waving above a pool of liquid gold containing singing fishes? Twin suns that circle and fall in a rainbow heaven, another world in another sky? And all of that will be the dullest part! Me, Donna and Abby are going to see wonders that no human has ever dreamt possible. You, however, will stay behind and regret it for the rest of your life!"

The police box doors slam in her face and the time machine loses substance and colour, its bleached, intangible form hurtling out of Earth's gravity well and into the depths of time and space.

Inside, the Doctor finishes setting coordinates. "Allonzee! Next stop, the Galea Galaxy, nice and interesting to get you used to time travel, eh, Abby?"

"Cool! Do we need spacesuits?"

"More sort of space anoraks..."

"You sure that's the last we've seen of Ben?" asks Donna worriedly.

"You betcha," the Doctor booms. "DNA profile logged, so from now on the TARDIS can only land where he isn't!"

"What do you think will happen to him?" asks Abby.

"Who cares?" the Doctor replies, resetting the console. "Now, promise me you two - no one refers to that bastard ever, ever again. Next stop, Freedom City!"

Back on Earth, Ben is having a temper tantrum at the spot the TARDIS stood. Curiously, as she adapts to her new body, some of her characteristics (like her incredibly pedantic speach patterns) start to fade, as if the new Ben Chatham is slowly but surely shaking off the old version...

"Fine!" she shouts a thin air. "It was ME who saved the day! The rest of you lot are complete redundant! You're only there to drink toasts to ME! To kiss ME! Applaud ME! And, you know, take ME to Bowie Concerts! You are MY worshippers, basically, you piles of offal! I am an intellectual GIANT in the body of a cute PUPPY, you loo-hoo-zer-hers!"

Ben strides up to a roadie who blinks in confusion, as if he recognizes her.

"I'm here to see Bowie personally so he can say, 'Hi, Ben, I'm so pleased that you could come to my show tonight! Thanks for saving the world! You really are special!' and then he can ruffle my hair and I can blush appreciatively."

The roadie blinks and shouts over his shoulder, "Hey, Dave, we got some mentally-handicapped young girl who's come to her first concert. You want to greet her, call her 'special' and ruffle her hair?"

"Yeah, why not?" replies Ziggy Stardust as he finishes his drink and leaves his dressing room with a dazzling smile.

"Hey," Ben complains. "I'm not some dumb mongoloid! How could my general demeanour make anyone think I'm two absinthes short of a Cambridge fraternity?!"

Bowie stares at the naked blonde girl in front of him and rolls his eyes. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Britney, piss off! You need help, girl! Talk about 'stupid blond twat who aint' all that!"

Ben, slow on the uptake as ever, realizes the body she now inhabits is identical to the one owned by Britney Spears, and his musical hero has mistaken Ben Chatham for that drunken, moronic, irresponsible noise polluter!

Easy mistake to make.

"Anyway, Brit, I'd appreciate your thoughts on a little something I've been working on," Bowie says and suddenly pulls out a gun and aims it between Ben's new breasts (technically where her heart should be). "DIE, SPEARS!" Bowie shouts and fires.

Ben takes the bullet and falls the ground, drenched in her new uncouth and vulgar blood and goes into shock. Bowie shoves the gun into Ben's jerking fingertips and turns to the roadie.

"Better tell security that Britney Spears has been on another nude bender and shot herself in alcoholic remorse," he says. "And if you'll excuse me missing you dying from blood loss, Brit, I have my 'Starman' number to do for my adoring fans."

Bowie and the roadie exit, leaving Ben Chatham to pass out from blood loss, trapped in the naked and badly injured body of a female American pop star more famous for her drinking binges than her songs.

What could possibly happen now?

BEN(ITA) CHATHAM WILL RETURN IN
"THE LIVING BITCHWHORE!"