21 Fields of Death

4.1 - The Joss-Sticks of Death!

The Doctor and his trusty companion Donna Noble discover something horrifically disturbing! The TARDIS computer has unwittingly caught a virus after downloading “Error Safe” to remove all the porn links from the Type Forty’s mainframe. It now seems the time machine is unable to travel anywhere beyond the outskirts of Britain in the year 2009.

The time machine fetches up in Wiltshire as the Doctor starts running round in circles, stir crazy at being stuck in one particular province in one particular time.

Donna meanwhile discovers a mutilated corpse in the bushes and immediately headbutts some sense into the Doctor. They discover that the corpse is totally unidentifiable and may not even be human, so decide to chalk this down to experience.

The Doctor and Donna head to the village pub in the hope they might bump into some shady poacher-type character who does a sideline in relative dimensional stabilizers. Donna points out this is a tad unlikely, but the Doctor notes that dodgy blokes in pubs can give you anything... sometimes even stuff you want that aren’t sexually transmitted diseases.

In the pub, the Doctor and Donna are accosted by a strange man with blond locks, a vacuous expression and a stench of absinthe. The strange man insists he is Ben Chatham, a long time companion of the Doctor, but the Time Lord insists they’ve never met before and calls Ben a psycho fan. Luckily, Donna insists they stay and finish their drinks, allowing Ben to explain his bizarre situation.

A chav-hating alcoholic bastard chucked out of university for attempting to seduce the Dean, Ben Chatham has vivid, absinthe-induced hallucinations in which he believes he is a valued and trusted companion of the Doctor, and Torchwood, and also an all-round magnificent celebrity loved by the upper class and worshipped by everyone else. At one point in the town of Weird Ness, the Doctor and Ben actually met in reality... whereupon the Doctor ran away.

“Oh, so THAT’S who you are!” the Doctor exclaims happily, before his face darkens. “What part of ‘no second chances’ don’t you get? Sod off and leave us alone!”

Ben insists that weird things are happening in the village, with hundreds of strange mutilated corpses being found in fields of crops. The pub’s clientele respond by stapling him to the wall and using him as a makeshift dart board.

As the Doctor takes first shot, Ben screams hysterically that the local Mysterious Excavations And Power Supply Enterprises, a subsiduary of “We're Not Aliens In Disguise, Honest” Corporation – the only international research and development of lethal chemicals corporation to base every last one of its 2145 offices in rural England – is the cause of the corpses and he has a suspicion that the corpses are in fact anti-GM crop protestors killed by the company!

Donna laughs out loud and gets a dart in Ben’s smoothe forehead. The Doctor asks the landlord and discovers the whole community is in fact right behind MEAPS since it’s obvious the only way to deal with mass hunger is to genetically modify food. “There’ll be chickens with sixteen drumsticks, veal the size of pizzas! Of course, if the modification goes wrong, it’d be like eating pesticide, but then you run the same risk going to Burger King! What’s the problem?”

However, the Doctor admits he’s curious and heads back to check the mysterious mutilated corpse site. There, armed guards from the MEAPS have fenced off the area in a very obvious and attention-grabbing way, and already the journalists from The Daily Son of A Bitch are writing up reams of article that the company is murdering protestors to hide their illegal activities.

The Doctor can’t believe a company would be so stupid that it’s determined for people to notice its activities, and notes the fact the corpses are being collected in industrial-sized plastic pooper-scoopers! This merits more investigation...

The Doctor returns to the pub as the locals painfully wrench darts out of Ben Chatham and prepare him for another game. The Doctor collects Donna as Ben points to the strange press reports to back up his incredibly moronic conspiracy theories.

The Doctor laughs in his face.

“The farmers want GM, the company gives GM, so everyone’s already happy. It’s not a conspiracy if everyone’s in on the plot, is it? Mind you, there are probably aliens involved... and they might just have the technology to help fix the TARDIS!”

The Doctor and Donna rush into the fields and meet a strange hooded figure with glowing red eyes and Murray Gold provides a doom-laden tribal drum beat in the background.

The figure reveals in a throaty, decayed voice it is in fact Damian Satan, Director of MEAPS and invites them to a press conference with complimentary GM bread, gravy and porcupine urine.

The Doctor asks to be penciled in, as there’s probably an alien invasion on, and Donna carefully asks if Satan’s single or perhaps in a non-serious, non-committed short term relationship.

Satan directs Donna to his myspace page and vanishes in a cloud of sulfur as weeds sprout from the ground where he stood.

“Nice chap,” the Doctor muses.

Ben Chatham runs into view, still stapled to a chunk of wall, screaming that death stalks the fields and Wiltshire just isn’t safe! He insists they must return to London, get drunk, listen to Bowie and ring the professionals to sort things out.

Donna calls him a wanker and she and the Doctor head off through the fields. The Doctor explains that he believes the mutilated corpses are in fact an alien equivalent of cowpats. When he finds some dried up pods, he realizes they are at the mercy of Xanto Worms!

“What are Xanto Worms?” asks Donna.

“You know that Outer Limits episode, The Zanti Misfits?”

“The one with those little cockroach people?”

“Yeah, well, the Xanto Worms aren’t like that at all. They’re more sort of giant prehistoric earthwormy things. Like in Dune. Now that, THAT is science fiction! I mean, I’m scared of giant caterpillars but those things were just beautiful...”

Ben Chatham chases after him, babbling that the company has clearly made an unholy alliance with alien forces. The Doctor angrily shouts “FINGER ON LIPS!” to shut him up.

The Doctor explains to Donna that Xanto Worms are friendly herbivores who float through space until they land on a planet, and then start fertilizing the soil. The GM crops are in fact all natural, but the GM stuff is a marketing ploy after “Your Food Comes From Alien Shit!” failed on three separate focus groups.

Ben bounces up and down, screaming at the top of his voice that aliens are evil, godless chav monsters that will wipe sophisticated white men with Oxford degrees from the face of Time itself!

Donna headbutts him unconscious, and the Doctor, determined to prove that aliens are really rather nice, lights up some joss sticks and starts singing “From Little Things Big Things Grow”.

Soon all the farmers and villagers have wandered into the muddy field as a huge alien creature rises up out of the ground and hisses happily.

ECLUSIVE SCRIPT EXTRACT

Donna: Quick, Doctor, see if you can get to play fetch.

The Xanto Worm moves in closer. The Doctor hold up a burning incense stick.

The Doctor: Want the stick? Want the stick? Go on, boy! Fetch!

Ben: Let me try.

Ben snatches the incense stick and waves it around like a retard.

Donna: He's mesmerising the thing.

The Doctor: Nah, he's ... Oh, my God, he's killing it!!

Ben: Am I? Brilliant!

Ben blushes then, foaming at the mouth, crabs a joss stick and stabs the alien with it.

END SCRIPT EXTRACT

Xanto Worms are addicted to burning incense, and Ben has unwittingly given it a fatal overdose.

The alien slumps dead – and with it die the chance for rural Wiltshire to enjoy prosperity and cheap food. The crowd of farmers turn ugly, but Ben is too busy dancing on the alien corpse singing, “I defeated the alien menace!” over and over again.

The angry farmers chase Ben with burning torches and pitchforks while the Doctor and Donna sadly return to the TARDIS. The Doctor feels a strange wave of soul destroying depression threaten to overwhelm him... so he eats a banana, which cheers him up.

The second before they take off, Ben charges through the TARDIS doors to escape the rioting mob outside. As the time machine dematerializes, Ben dusts himself off, insults the farmers as ‘ungrateful chavs’ and then demands the Doctor and Donna sing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” and ruffle his hair and generally flirt with him.

Silence.

Crickets chirp.

A tumbleweed rolls by.

A wolf howls in the distance.

Donna grabs Ben’s head and smashes it against the railings over and over and over again.

The End.