26 - Cavaliers

With borderline fundamentalist thanks to Jared "No Nickname" Hansen for this incredibly detailed guide.

And his flintlock pistol.

4.6 - Have A Leer!

The Doctor decides that it's about time he made this whole 'stuck on contemporary Earth' start working for him. And, after finishing watching old episodes of Prisoner: Cell Block H on the scanner, Donna asks for some Pop Tarts, the Doctor realizes he could knick Captain Jack's vortex manipulator and use that to repair the TARDIS. After, Donna confirms, they get some Pop Tarts.

The Doctor sets the coordinates for the Torchwood Hub by setting the TARDIS to locate the largest cluster of bissexual life forms in Wales, only for one of those damned inconvenient freak cosmic time storms. The TARDIS arrives in the middle of a field, and the Doctor brightly notes that at least they've escaped 2009.

Unfortunately, they have arrived in Cardiff during the English Civil War. As Donna darkly observes that once again, the TARDIS has freakishly malfunctioned when she asks to get Pop Tarts, the Doctor wonders why on Earth the English referred to one of their longest and bloodiest internal conflicts as "civil".

Donna, discovers that the TARDIS manual is propping up the hatstand and quickly discovers that there is a simple procedure which will restart the time machine, restore it to full function, AND set it on a preprogrammed course to locate the nearest source of Pop Tarts. "How very convenient!" she notes with no suspicion whatsoever, and crosses over to the Doctor, who has looked up "civil" in sixteen different dictionaries and wonders why humanity couldn't be REALLY wierd and call it "the English Polite War".

Donna shows him the TARDIS manual and the Doctor muses over the solution: "kick the shit out of an indolent blond youth". Blowing out his cheeks, the Doctor wonders aloud where he could possibly come by a lazy prat with immaculate blond locks in 16th Century Wales of all places. He then opens the doors which smack into Ben Chatham's head.

"Oh, no again," the Doctor quotes his former script editor while Donna demands to know if Ben was the one stopping them from getting her Pop Tarts? The Doctor however, rushes off to wash his hands as he realizes the pink draft excluder they freed from the door was Ben's cauterized love truncheon.

But Ben isn't in the mood to worry about, being delirious with joy partly at being at such a wonderous period of history (and mostly from copious blood-loss after having his knob cut off) and enthuses about the possibilities. "The English Civil War, Doctor!" he cries "We could go and meet Cromwell! And pretend to be soothsayers! Oh, and you could put on a funny German accent! And we could get involved with all sorts of crazy plots about saving the Monarchy! And PIRATES!.. for some reason..."

Donna rolls his eyes. "We've done that hundred of times, ain't we?"

Donna demands to know how the hell Ben survived being in the Time Vortex for a full bank holiday and only half a knob. Ben laughs this off, in such a wonderfully delirious state that he is and cries that he is INVINCIBLE, and that the entire universe knows that!

To test this theory the Doctor and Donna pull out cricket bats and beat him while quoting memorable catchphrases from Shaun of the Dead.

Ben, strangely, thinks that this a wonderful game and laughs uproariously in the face of their hatred.

The Doctor soon realises that Ben is in fact regressing to a childhood state of innocence, due to the Time Winds re-writing his genetic structure in a chronologically recursive paradigm. Ben literally has the mind of a child, and soon the rest of his body will share the same fate!

DOCTOR: Aw. I can't just hurt someone with the mind of a child.
DONNA: I can!
DOCTOR: Really?
DONNA: Hell, yeah! No problem!
DOCTOR: Well, alonzee, Donna Noble! It's not like he's a real person, is it?

After Donna's arms get tired, the Doctor decides that maybe Ben's various defects aren't hereditary as they seem to be and maybe, just maybe, if they left a young Chatham here in the past he would grow again to be a decent person. Donna is massively sceptical, pointing out this is getting a bit Boom Town!ish.

The Doctor reprimands her - things are not a bit Boom Town!ish. They just happen to be enjoying a character-based adventure mainly in the TARDIS as it is parked in Cardiff in some cretinously predictable point in history, planning to rewind the life stream of a complete fuckwit in the niave hope it's nurture, not nature.

At this point, Donna folds her arms and nods. The Doctor grimaces and admits she might be onto something.

Deciding they need a walk, the Doctor and Donna skip away into the Welsh countryside. But the TARDIS' Mass Narratorial Coinicidence Drive has over compensated and they are in fact in the grounds of Mick Jagger's mansion, stolen from the ex-Rolling Stone when he refusesd to let Doctor Who film there after Tom Baker and Philip Hinchcliffe's numerous attempts trying to destroy it in the late 1970s.

Donna knocks on the door and in less time than it takes to describe this scene for The Doctor Who Reference Guide, finds the house is owned by Lord Henry Ohhaye-Boyo III, a proud and upstanding Welsh Royalist Welshman, who is currently hiding Charles II, information he accidentally relates to the two anachronistically dressed English people upon first opening the door. As he sheepishly explains, "I'm still getting used to the whole 'secret agent' thing, you know."

The Doctor scratches his ear and wanders around in circles showing off the set as he argues about historical inaccuracies. "Come off it! Charles II was fully-grown by this stage! The only reason he wasn't actively fighting in the war was because he had an elder brother who was originally going to inherit the throne, but was disowned by his git of a father after Cromwell kicked his arse in battle!"

With the sound of Troughton era classics sizzling in the BBC furnace Damian Satan appears and exclaims that the Doctor is, in fact, right!

"Am I? Bloody good for me then!" the Doctor grins like an idiot.

Charles II, of course, fled with his mother to France before the Civil War ended in Cromwell's favour. Logically Lord Henry must have been given a decoy child to guard; who only someone as criminally out of the loop as a Welshman could seriously think was the Crown Prince. Lord Henry shrugs and admits that this is probably true, but that if something happened to the genuine Charles the decoy could well become king anyway, as all it takes now is "any old fucker with a peerage card"

"I think I might know just the fellah," Donna notes.

The Doctor exclaims that Lord Henry may as well look after a complete mental defective like Ben, now three years old and crapping on the road naked as he often did at age thirty. Lord Henry says that this is indeed true, and in celebration of the agreement Satan eats the decoy Charles as a 'nice snack' and vanishes with the sound of The Fat Boys covering Wipeout. He then reappears with some Pop Tarts which make Donna ridiculously happy, since she was bored stupid by all this exceedingly dull history.

The Doctor arrives with Ben attached to a toddler harness, and discovers that the smoothe neophyte is munching on a cabbage white butterfly!

The Time Lord snatches the dying lepidoptera out of Ben's mouth and smacks him on the nose with a rolled up copy of Sharpe Fucks Napoleon Quarterly, and snaps that if the next trip in the TARDIS leads him to an apocalyptic futurescape then he will demonstrate to Ben EXACTLY why the Zarbi refer to him in their ancient legends as "The Killer Death Machine On Wheels That You Cross At Your Peril!"

The Doctor and the bouncy, hyper Donna board the TARDIS and travel approximately eight hours into the future. Immediately that scary alien monster outfit from Spaced lurches in through the door, screaming "ALL CHAVS MUST DIE!", before falling flat on its face and swearing loudly.

The Doctor rips off the monster's head and finds a young teenager inside. He blinks and informs the audience that he's used to ripping off HUMAN heads and finding ALIENS inside, not the other way round. At that moment an albino in tweed staggers in and in a moving monologue delivered directly to camera in a nasal monotone, that Cardiff City is now a maze of bland, hospital-like corridors that is now 21 st century Cardiff City.

In a rush of iambic pentameter, Spoon tells them that the entire planet has been ruled for The Chath'haam for centuries and that it is a hellish, dystopic society (just in case that wasn't obvious) and that the creature that tried to capture the Doctor was a Kavalee… one of an army of clones of Ed Kavalee, an Australian actor the Emperor of Chath'haam saw in the award-winning film Meat Pie and decided was so smoothe he deserved to join him in ruling the world.

These comments are interspersed with massively perplexing complaints from Chamber about how he "couldn't fucking believe" that they "aren't in the next episode" and "if Graham Harper were directing that one, it'd be a different story" because he "understands talent, unlike the rest of you fucking philistines!"

For one horrible moment, it looks like Donna has suddenly fallen in love with Spoon and wants to become a rebel leader in a future that never was because of the past that cannot be... but luckily, she just wants to know if he has a Pop Tart in his baggy 1970s flares.

"A Pop Tart?" Spoon echoes, he and Chamber's faces are masks of confusion.

"Is this going to be some sort of Billie Piper joke?" asks his companion, annoyed.

"Well, you can just shut up, man," Spoon shouts. "You can just about fucking well shut up! Cause if you've got anything horrid to say about Billie Piper, you can just about bloomin' well say it to me first!! All right?! You're talking about the Pop Tart I love!"

"Yeah, and me! I love her too!" Chamber agrees. "I've got a hankering to beat the living shit out of you for that!"

The Doctor awkwardly explains that he thinks Billie Piper is incredibly sweet and beautiful, and as a feminist himself, he too just wants to protect this wonderful woman from the harshness of the real world and the hatemail she recieves from Outpost Gallifrey, but the duo think he's being high and mighty and fancies the panties off her just like the rest of them.

This huge digression allows a bunch of extras in even more ridiculous monster costumes to arrive, capture the group in a force field and drag the quarter out of the time machine, and an edit later has them outside to the Millennium Centre Palace where they are met by Kavalee Prime, munching on a generous serving of KFC, and Emperor Chath'haam the CLXIIIrd, which, due to centuries of inbreeding, is a hideously disfigured creature floating in a gigantic jar of pickled brine and finest French absinthe (Victoria Beckham).

The Chath'haam gurgles through the brine in a completely incoherent manner, leaving Kavalee Prime to translate, however he in turn has his mouth filled with high quality flame-grilled chicken and is only slightly more understandable. The result is the single most piss-poor villain confrontation ever, thankfully cut short when the prisoners are dismissed to their cells.

Donna is taken to a 50-foot tall disused mining shaft, filled to the brim with a sea of rats. She is then covered in a burlap burqa, smeared with rancid cheese, and kicked in. The Kavalees sincerely apologise if the process is uncomfortable, but she should have known the penalty for being found in possession of oestrogen in The Emperor's palace.

Meanwhile the Doctor, Spoon and Chamber are taken to the male's prison, where they are stripped down and forced into velvet posing pouches and covered in baby oil. "You will become SMOOTHE!" cry the Kavalees. They are also forced to watch videos about the superiority of the Upper classes of Britain and fed alcohol through IV drips.

"Somehow I don't think it'd be unfair to class this experience as 'gay'", notes Chamber. This causes the Kavalees to cry "Chav" and cattle-prod him into submission.

"Ooh, that looks fun! Can I have a go!" asks Spoon, wanting to have a go at electrocuting Chamber, but the Kavalees misunderstand and give him the same treatment, and will continue to do so until they enjoy it!

Donna, however, has survived the Rat Pit clawing her way out of burqa, biting her way through numerous rats, improvising weaponry from female bones, and climbing to the top of the shaft on the resultant mound of dead rats. She then uses her feisty hands, to feistily punch out the Kavalees with maximum feist. Because she's feisty. And she's not going to hide it ANY MORE!

She then runs to the palatial epicentre, where Kavalee Prime is putting off his weekly conjugals with The Emperor in favour of watching re-runs of 60s Batman while eating Dick Smith's Bush Foods. Donna throws a toaster into the Emperor's vat and destroys it, boiling the water it sits in and frying it. Kavalee Prime reluctantly wonders what's cooking, but daren't look away from the thrilling cliff-hanger ending of King Tut suspending Batgirl over a vat of mildly warm marmalade, secretly wishing that Louie the Lilac would come to his room and seduce him...

The Doctor, Chamber, and Spoon are now so smoothe that they cry when they aren't recognised on the street. However, Kavalee 16 informs them of the final test to be completely assimilated… they must listen to and enjoy the music of Tin Machine. As a mix up in the editing suite caused Weird Al Yankovich's "Star Wars - The Saga Begins", instantly breaking their condition.

In instantaneous chorus, the trio shout "FREEDOM!" and run for their lives in a dialogue free sequence that will be posted on youtube for generations.

They soon find Donna, who has decided to beat up various Kavalees for want of anything better to do. The Doctor then says that they will need someone to substitute for Charles II if they are to change history back to a slightly less retarded form.

"Any old fucker with an equity card will suffice to placate morons who like The Roundheads," says the Doctor and a caption starts flashing:

NOT SO FUNNY NOW,

IS IT, MR. GATTISS?

The Doctor and Donna grab Kavalee Prime and haul-arse to the TARDIS, but luckily the Mass Narratorial Coinicidence Drive means it is conveniently parked right in front of them. The TARDIS with its usual special effects glory in such a traditional manner I can't believe I've wasted all this time describing it...

"Just our sodding luck!" screams Chamber in frustration "We just leaves us here to be beaten up by that frigging bloke who stands in the background in Thank God You're Here!"

"Oh, come on, it isn't that bad," Spoon reassures him "He's got a lovely vocal range. I mean, Bargearse, The Olden Days, that spoof where he did all the voices in the Doctor Who skit..."

"Oooh, BIG consolation, Rupert," Chamber sneers.

"Lighten up! This is just a divergent and now redundant parallel universe, so, in effect, none of this has or is really happening at all?"

"Oh? Really? Then I guess you won't mind what I do with this icepick?"

"Well, I wouldn't go-ARRRRGH!"

The TARDIS materialises at the coronation of Charles II, or "Ben Chatham" as he is actually known, and the Doctor and Donna jump out of the TARDIS with John Woo-style dual pistols and blow Ben Chatham away in front of the assorted nobility before screaming loudly that Ed Kavalee is the real king.

At the looks of stunned horror in the crowd, the Doctor realises that he didn't really think this plan through. This is confirmed when Ed Kavalee, being from a tangent universe, begins to glow neon-green and melt, his queries about the finger foods fading into a death rattle and the skies begin to rain fire over 16 th Century London.

"Bollocks," the Doctor sighs crestfallen.

"Doctor, what's happening?"

"Well… I might… and this is a big might, Donna… I might… maybe, just maybe I have… erm, destroyed the Universe!"

"WHAT?!"

Grabbing Ben's still-breathing body and running to the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that it's okay, he's destroyed the Universe before. As he says, generally what happens is he ends up in a really puzzling, angst-ridden one-room adventure with limited budget and then it's all back to normal.

"Hmm. Sort like a stage play?" suggests Donna and the Doctor gurns in a thoughtful manner.

Meanwhile, a portable toilet appears on the blasted heath and Chamber emerges with a jam jar, explaining to the heavily-bandaged Spoon "if it's good enough for Joseph Stalin, it's good enough for you". He opens the jar and releases a butterfly and the whole of creation is saved.

"You know, Chamber," Spoon sighs, "I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and for you, I see skies of blue, clouds of white, bright blessed days, dark sacred nights, I hear babies cry, I watch them grow cause theyll learn much more than you'll never know, and I think to myself..."

"Yeah?"

"...what a fucked up universe. Got any Pop Tarts?"

The End