32 - Cyborg

4.12 - Si Borg

Ben Chatham has been pegged to an electrified washing line stretched across the TARDIS control room while Donna Noble works off some PMT by beating him with hot pokers. She cheerfully explains it's not actually her time of the month, she just needed an excuse and starts to flay the skin off his smoothe chest.

The Doctor however, is more concerned about looking through classified ads for the hope that someone in Fullerton might have a second-hand time vector generator to sell or perhaps swap for some rare baseball cards. He is sick to death of Earth in the ethnographic UNIT era and longs for some gravel quarry planetoids in the larger Magellanic Clouds. Donna points out at least they haven't ended up in Cardiff and that the Doctor should count his blessings. Then she forces a red hot poker up Ben's arse, causing him to scream.

"Don't worry, it's incredibly difficult to kill someone inside a TARDIS," the Doctor mutters as he does the sudoku with his eyes closed. "Especially when the engines are running."

"But I think I can manage it!" says Donna hopefully and gets out a cat o nine tails marinated in salt water mixed with lemon juice.

Luckily for Ben and unluckily for the rest of human kind, the TARDIS suddenly starts to malfunction, shuddering and swirling like a cheap special effect involving a crumpled tinfoil reflection as Murray Gold plays the Bad Wolf tune on a yamaha organ using only his buttocks.

The Doctor is unconcerned, musing it's probably just some Time Lord technology interfering with the TARDIS, creating the only force in the universe that can prevent the TARDIS's course: the Plot Contrivance of Rassilon. There is the distant sound of a penny dropping and the Doctor becomes incredibly concerned.

"That's impossible! Well, not so much 'impossible', more sort of 'wierd'. It must mean that the Bastard has returned from the grave! That old trooper, always puts insane blood vendettas before realism. God, I've missed him... You know what this means, Donna, we can finally fix the TARDIS?"

"Aint he your mortal enemy?"

"Well, an ex, but yeah. Still, we can just give him Benji there to play with. The Bastard has this thing about doll collecting, and young teflon nipples over there is halfway to being an Auton anyway. You and me, Donna, good things are gonna happen! First stop, Metabelis Three! Not scared of spiders are you, Donna?"

The TARDIS crash lands in Rubberglove Farm, a witness protection centre for old and unwanted horses who have incredibly large gambling debts to the Mafiosi, like Shergar and Pharlap and Rooting King. The horses are being given their daily supplies of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines by the adorably cute Abby Simpson and her hulking, moronic Austrian bodybuilder stepbrother Karl "Get Du De Charphar" Gascoolerosessix.

The Doctor is so excited about meeting his old pal the Bastard again (and finally escaping the mudball known as Sol 3) he's not even upset to find himself in fucking Wiltshire on a rainy Monday morning. AGAIN. Indeed, he is positively happy as Abby (Alysson Hannigan) and Karl load rocket launchers and fire their payloads at the TARDIS crew, screaming that trespassers will have their internal organs ventilated with extreme prejudice.

Finally, the Doctor uses one of Ben's neglected shirts and waves it on a stick to act as a white flag and after being stripsearched, Abby allows the Doctor and Donna to enter the farm while Ben is lashed to a tree by Karl and pistol-whipped during a completely unnecessary interrogation where the phrase "Eat durt, moota-ferkah!" is used with disturbing regularity.

Abby explains that Rubberglove Farm is constantly on guard against strange an unknown threats - diabolic cults, alien invasions, time breaks, the Hilton sisters filming another episode of The Simple Life... As such, she apologizes for mistaking the TARDIS crew as part of the "We're Not Aliens In Disguise, Honest" Corporation whose main headquaters is a rented garage at the Fullerton Research Centre. Indeed, the subsiduary company the Mysterious Excavation And Power Supply Enterprises are trying to buy out the research centre. Unfortunately, after the arbitrator was decapitated by the Head of the research centre, MEAPS have instead been trying to buy Rubberglove Farm.

The Doctor and Donna are horrified to discover that the nasty research scientists are going to evict the friends of their good pal, Damian Satan, and the Doctor determines to either save Satan personally or at least rescue his organization from total bankruptcy.

"Can't you do both?" Donna asks.

The Doctor scratches his ear. "Yeah. Might do. Maybe."

Abby insists that they cannot trust Satan or his company, who engage in underhanded pressurising.

"Pressurising?" Donna frowns. "Is that even a word?!"

Abby explains Karl is certain that MEAPS are trying to force them both from the farm by killing some of the horses in their care. The Doctor laughs this off, pointing out not only that their horses are very, very old nags who take twice their bodyweights in hard drugs every day and this quite likely to shuffle off this mortal coil; but also the idea that an international conglomerate would waste time killing horses when they could just stage a home invasion is laughable.

Abby admits that, when it's put like that, she does feel a little stupid but the Doctor points out she's been pretty stressed of late and maybe she might like to accompany him and Donna on a day trip to the Eye of Orion. Abby is tempted, but she could never bring herself to abandon Karl.

Karl meanwhile is rather baffled at the way his interrogration is going - Ben is now begging to know if Karl is a Cambridge graduate, and explains he's been looking his whole life for a young, dark-haired Cambridge graduate.

"The last one was eaten by a giant otter, and the one before that turned out to be a figment of my imagination, and all the rest end up being killed by devil-worshipping industrialists, but I'm confident my next relationship will work out," Ben explains, his face pressed up against the bark of the tree. "Hey, you got any porn with horses in it? Are you attracted to me yet?"

"No," Karl grunts, and applies some lubricant to a Black & Decker cordless drill.

The Doctor, Donna and Abby go for a brisk jog several miles to the research centre, as Donna complains they could have had a hearty country breakfast first. The Doctor shouts over his shoulder that she's starting to sound as bone-idle, lollygagging and apathetic as Ben.

Donna slaps the Doctor stupid, who admits (once he regains the power of speech) that he was probably being a bit rude without realizing it again.

Outside the company the trio meet up to five other extras who the Mill digitally enhance to a rioting mob of 67 000 carrying lots of placards advertising the latest Doctor Who merchandise and new timeslots of "Touchwood", "The Sarah Jane Misadventures", "The K9 Exploitation", "Sparrow & Nightingale: Cute Geeks Save the World" and "Rose Tyler: Chav Defense".

At this point, Anthony Stewart Head takes a moment to remind the boys and girls at home that even if they use their pause controls while looking for the buzzword for Season Five, they will find no references to any kind of spin off involving Ben Chatham in sub-Misomer Murder-eqsue escapades.

"And do you know why, boys and girls? That's right. Because Ben Chatham is a total fucking cunt who no one likes!"

The Doctor meanwhile buys a bulk order of soap off eBay, throws the soap away and uses the box to address the crowd and tells them to clear off. The company is not responsible for all the chaos and misery in the world - that's all because of Ben Chatham, the Smoothe Scumbag of Cambridge legend!

Soon the Doctor is whipping up the hordes into a frenzy, Nuremberg Rally-style. The hoardes of agricultural workers, environmental protestors, alien reptile perverts and pretty much every extra in the season starts to chant "DEATH TO CHATHAM! DEATH TO CHATHAM! DEATH TO CHATHAM!"

The police arrive, ready to clear the demonstrators with batons, but the Doctor convinces them to turn their mindless agression onto Ben Chatham, and starts giving graphic instructions to bash Ben to the ground and kick him to death, and tapdance on his smoothe chest and use his internal organs in a slap-up game of cricket.

Suddenly the Doctor pales and whispers to Donna: "I'm not being cruel and cowardly again, am I?" he asks.

"Nah, go for it," his moral compass cheers.

"Thanks!" the Doctor replies and starts giving even more graphic descriptions of splitting open Ben Chatham's spine and sending tame rats to gnaw at his optic nerve. Indeed, this scene was so graphic it was cut from broadcast, used as DVD extra, withdrawn and then mentioned on Doctor Who Confidental. It's a hard clip to find on youtube, but seriously, it's worth finding.

Back at the farm, Ben starts to pass out from blood loss and, intrigued that Karl is so violent, concludes that he must be in the pocket of Damian Satan's ungodly organization. Finally, exhausted from all the torture, Karl goes to collect a gallon of baby oil to apply to Ben so his body will react more entertainingly to recieving 4000 volts of direct current.

Ben is then released by a strange hooded figure who then reveals it is carrying a Jupiter Mining Core bazookoid and opens fire on the horses, blowing them to slimy wet red hunks of meat.

Karl returns and immediately concludes that Ben is really the horse killer and skewers him through the smoothe chest with a pitchfork and impales him on the tree. Karl then sees the hooded, bazookoid-carrying figure and smiles warmly. "Deelun yoo busdhard," he booms and he and figure do groovy handshakes. Meanwhile, the light fades from Ben's eyes as he chokes on his own blood.

As the barbarian horde sweeps towards Rubberglove farm, Damian Satan appears and gratefully offers some Chinese takeaway as a gift, leading the Doctor and Donna inside the base. The Doctor sadly notes he was hoping to scale the perimeter fence and sneak in through the side door, but Satan explains if he did that he'd end up in the Clinical Bland Hospital-like Corridor factory and maybe never quite escape...

Meanwhile, the mortally-wounded Ben Chatham has been strung up by his testicles, doused with boiling oil and is alarmed to discover the crowd consists of people he once fantasized were in love with him - from Operation Helter-Skelter to Jake Simmonds, and he's not even supposed to BE in this reality! Ben's sense of reality starts to fail him as a rabid hamster ravages his smoothe chest.

Back in the Research Centre, the Doctor and Donna enter a luxury office where they discover what appears to be an android facsimile of Martha Jones, but quickly discover that this is some screwy android containing the consciousness of WOMAN, the Will Operating Manipulator And Naughtifier, the megalomaniacal computer that attempted to conquer the world but was pathetic enough to be beaten by Ben Chatham!

"O DOC2R!!!1!1 WTF DONA!1!!1! OMG LOL WEVE B3N AXPECTNG U!" the Sparabot booms as they enter. "OMG LOL I KNAW OUR LITLA DELAYNG TACTIC WUD ONLEY B A TEMPORARY POSTPONAM3NT!!!!1!1 OMG WTF LOL PLZ COME IN!!111!11 OMG! HELO AGANE DOC2R!1!1! OMG WTF LOL LONG TIEM NO SE!!!!1 OMG LOL U MIGHT FIND M3 RATH3R UPGRAEDD SHAL WE SAY SINC3 OUR LAST METNG!1!!11!!1 OMG WTF IMM TEH BOS!1!!!!1 WTF LOL TEH COMPUT3R!!11! WTF"

Donna stares at the android and headbutts it.

"NOT IMPRAS3D!!!1!11 LOL" the Sparthabot jeers. "NOT AXACTLEY A LMB K3BAB R U DONA???!?! OMG!"

"Oi!" Donna says, and fly-kicks Sparthabot in the head.

"O DOC2R U RILLY SHUDNT B SO CHURLISH!!!!1 LOL!" the Sparthabot continues remorselessly. "ANYWAY ITS AL VERY SIMPLE U SE!!!11! WTF IVE DON3 MAH BIT AS TH3Y SAY!!1!!11 OMG WTF TEH BOS RILLY SI TEH BOS OR AT LEAST WIL B AFTER 2MOROW!!!1!1!! WTF THAN I TAEK A BAK S3AT!!1!1 LOL ITS SO MUCH EASEIR THES TIEM ROUND WIT TEH INTERNET AND SO FORTH!1!!!11!! 2MOROW ON3 COMPUTER SYSTEM TAEKS OVAR TEH 3NTIER PLAENT!11!11!11 OMG WTF LOL AT LAST THES PATHATIC CHAOTIC WORLD WIL HAEV SOMA ORDER EFICEINCY AND UNIFORMITY PLAECD ON IT!!111! LOL"

"Talk English you stupid bint," Donna snaps. "I can't understand a fucking word you're saying!"

The Doctor yawns and idly asks if the Sparthabot was the one that used the Time Lord technology, because he needs it if he is ever to get his time machine to escape Naughties Wiltshire.

Damian Satan suddenly throws off his cloak as black as a black cat in a coal cellar in midnight inside a pint of guiness with the white bits missing to reveal...

Julian Clarey!

The Doctor groans and hold his head in his hands as Julian explains his completely pointless and nonsensical disguise as Damian Satan was just a bit of naughty fun, since he finds kinky sex with human beings almost as fascinating as the Doctor does.

"Its intriguing. The Doctor understands me if you can't. I've been called many things but as I love pissing about with destiny, meddling with history, and selling delicious table wines of death and destruction, the Wine Peddler will suffice!"

"WHY IS EVERYONE A FUCKING ALCOHOLIC?!" Donna demands, and punches a fist through the wall. She then explains that unless this baffling reunion scene is fully explained to her satisfaction, she will get angry.

The Doctor groans and explains the identity of Julian Clarey:

"I used to go to high school with this guy."

"But that makes him a Time Lord! I thought you were the only one left!"

The Wine Peddler is horrified. "What? No, it was me and the Doctor! We hid from the Temporal Difference of Opinion in the shadow realms with the Eternals! Oh, Doctor, you haven't been going round pretending I didn't survive, did you?"

"Why the hell not?!" the Doctor demands. "You're so crap, it'd be a bigger embarrassment to the celestial reputation of Gallifrey than just me surviving! You're a clueless, pathetic little alcoholic bastard! You have been screwed like a Vietnamese whore by the Dustbins, the Ice Cream Vendors of Mars, John Kronos the sci-fi writer, the Vardans... even the Sleeze Brothers for fuck's sake! GET IT THROUGH YOU'RE HEAD, YOU MADMAN, YOU'RE A USELESS FAILURE SO JUST DIE!"

However, the Wine Peddler has been in denial for longer than humanity has walked upright and immediately assumes that this is all just a friendly joke on the part of the Doctor, who clearly loves him dearly and is envious for his pudding-bowl haircut and incredibly strong kidneys. Instead, he explains he has teamed up with Sparthabot to engage in a James Bond-esque bid for Global Domination.

"And you've been doing that with GM crops and roadworks?" Donna exclaims, unable to believe how pathetic a pay off this is for the last eleven episodes of the season.

"No, that was just to pay the bills, really," the Wine Peddler explains. "I was just passing time until the foot soldiers of the New Order arrive and regulate, enhance and dare I even say give a handjob to the destiny of the human race! It's been a fascinating journey!"

"You're easily pleased," the Doctor snorts.

"Who are these footsoldiers then?" asks Donna in a game attempt to sustain interest in this stricken Titanic of a plot sinking into an ocean of fanwank.

The Wine Peddler gestures camply at the leather-clad bondage freak standing in the corner, doing interpretive dance...

"The Boord?" the Doctor boggles. "You get the most boring television enemy in history, unseen since 1963, to help you conquer the world? A surreal bunch of leather freaks is going to succeed where the mighty Dustbins, the invincible Cybermen and the annoying Sychophants could not?"

"Yeah," says the Wine Peddler sulkily.

"GET REAL!!!!" the Doctor screams at him.

Returning back to the farm, it transpires that the hooded figure was infact another member of the Boord Race who prepare the Quite Unnecessarily Painful Death Machine! Ben, now with most of his bones broken and every internal organ punctured, is dragged by the mob towards a metal chair covered in superglue and barbed wire, wired up to an electric fire so the seater is both burned and electrocuted.

As Ben screams and sobs, a cage full of rats is lowered and his head is jammed inside as the mob forms an orderly queue to take turns jabbing sharp objects up through the seat of the chair and into Ben's peachy blubberbut.

"Darn varee," Karl grunts as he fits Ben's arms into miniature guilotines. "Ve vill confess this all to thar polees. You vill be murdered, but it vill be first degree murder frahm Caimbridge. Appreciate der irony, ja?"

Ben screams and fouls himself in the last ditch attempt to scare off his assailants, but to no avail. He is, and forgive me if my language is excessively technical on this point, completely fucked.

- to be concluded...