My attemt at writing a season seventeen Doctor Who story. If you're familiar with season seventeen, then you'll get what I was trying to achieve. The problem was not having Douglas Adams as my story editior. It is a work in progress, or rather i haven't finished it yet/can't be bothered/not had time - delete where applicable.
Anyway, here's the first couple of chapters. - CHAPTER ONE: PROLOGUE
Jackie Morgan was a farmer. He was just finishing a hard day’s work
ploughing the north field and was looking forward to sitting down in
front of the big fireplace in his kitchen with a mug of hot tea and a big
slice of his daughter’s home made steak pie. He stopped the tractor
and jumped down from the cabin. He looked up and smiled happily.
The sky was ablaze with colour. Reds, blues, purples and oranges all vied for attention as the Sun finally decided to call it a day and went off to bother people on the other side of the world. Jackie grabbed his jacket from the back of the seat and locked the cabin door. Whistling a tune he had heard that morning on the radio, he set off for home. He reached the large hawthorn that hedged that field from the next and climbed over the rickety wooden stile. He walked along the edge of the field until he found the well trodden path through the tall ears of corn that he always made every season. It wasn’t really necessary, there was a footpath that ran adjacent to the field and which ran right up to the farm, but he always preferred to walk through his field. It gave him enormous satisfaction to stride through the swaying crop in the knowledge that he had planted each and every seed. Actually, he had a machine to do the actual planting for him, but at least he had driven the tractor pulling it. It was a matter of pride that there was only one path – his path – through the field and that there was nothing else to spoil the golden spectacle before him.
It came as a considerable shock then, when he stumbled out into an enormous circle of flattened corn a couple of hundred yards in. It was an even bigger shock when he looked up and saw what had made it.
CHAPTER TWO: EXTRACT FROM BARRY ROWLAND – THE TRUTH AT LAST?
My name is Barry Rowland, I’m thirty four years old and I live in the village of Holt, which is in North Wales. I suppose it all started because I went out for my brother’s stag do and got very drunk.
I have two brothers. Chris. Married with two boys; and Martin, who isn’t. Martin is the eldest and is the black sheep of the family. He is a freelance writer, although nobody has ever seen anything he is supposed to have written. He lives with me in a one bedroom flat above a chip shop. He was supposed to get married a couple of weeks ago to Carol, who works behind the perfume counter at Boots. He stood her up.
So it was at the perfume counter that I found myself spending most of the following day, trying to convince Carol that the reason Martin had failed to turn up at the registry office, was that he had hurt his hand at home and had to spend several hours in casualty. After much cajoling, I finally got her to agree to speak to him without the assistance of her brother and his baseball bat. The application of a large bandage to Martin’s right hand completed the deception and after a couple of drinks she agreed to marry him. Again.
Which brings me to around eleven thirty on the following Friday night.
We had started out in the Red Dragon, downed several pints and then moved on to the Gredington. After a few more pints, followed swiftly by a couple of cocktails and something blue that made my mouth feel numb, we left. It started to rain. I couldn’t feel it, the numbness that had started with my mouth had quickly spread throughout my body, eventually reaching my brain which had by this point stopped functioning the way it was supposed to and had decided to take a short holiday somewhere warm.
So, there I was standing in the rain oblivious to almost everything. I felt a rumbling in the pit of my stomach that steadily grew into a boiling, churning feeling that told me that the blue stuff I had knocked back so happily half an hour before was about to make my lips feel as numb on it’s way out as it did going in. With a noise that sounded a bit like “Rrrrrrurrrghlerrgh”, I deposited the contents of my stomach onto the pavement outside the pub.
“S’funny,” said Martin, “I don’t remember you eating that.”
“Rrrrruuuurrrgle,” I replied.
“So, little brother, what d’you want to do now? A club? Or we could get a takeaway.”
Strangely enough, now that everything I had taken in was lying on the pavement, the idea of a greasy chow mein appealed to me so, linking arms and singing loudly, we set off up the hill to the chippy.
When we got there, the chip shop was full of drunken people all ordering Chinese food. With a loud “Woo hoo”, Martin joined a group of his friends who were near the front of the queue.
“What d’you want Barry?” Martin was sitting on the counter.
“Er, I’ll have a chicken char siu.” I was feeling a little queasy so I told Martin that I was going outside for some air.
“Ahhh, ickle Barryboo can’t take his ale!!”
I hated it when he called me that. It was something my Gran christened me when I was six months old and coming from someone who had saliva dripping down his chin from the smell of the food, it irritated me even more.
“Sod off.”
It wasn’t much of a rejoinder, but then I wasn’t in much of a state to think of anything wittily sarcastic.
I went outside and leant against the wall.
It was a nice little village when you actually stopped and thought about it. You knew people. Not in the nosy ’know their business’ kind of way, more like you just knew them. Take Harry Edwards for example. He runs the best chippy in Wales and I’m not just saying that ‘cos he’s my landlord, but I have never tasted Cod in batter like it anywhere else.
I’ve known Harry since I was a kid. He and my Dad go fishing every Sunday. Then there’s Vernons the Butcher. Smashing sausages.
The list goes on. I knew them all.
Especially Jackie Morgan, who ran Clover Leaf Farm. I used to play with his son when I was younger. Then, as I got older, I played with his daughter. He was my dad’s best friend and drinking partner and was a regular fixture in my parent’s front room on Saturdays to watch Grandstand. He was the nicest, kindest man you could ever hope to meet. Okay, so he liked a drink or three, but I’d never ever seen him raise his voice to anyone let alone a fist. Nothing bothered him, so seeing the look on his face as he came round the corner of the chippy made me worry.
He was as white as a sheet and he was looking around him like something had really put the wind up him. I put my hand out and grabbed his arm.
“Hey Mr. Morgan. What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” He pulled away, wide eyed. “Mr. Morgan?” I was really worried.
Morgan stared at me as if he had only just realised I was there. “Oh, it’s you Barry lad,” he panted, “I thought...” He looked around furtively. “Did you see it too?”
“See what? The ghost?” Apparently the ‘Greddy’ was haunted by a little old lady who - if you believed in that sort of thing - had done her husband in some forty-odd years ago.
“No lad. It wasn’t a ghost. Did you see it?”
I was really worried. This wasn’t the Jackie Morgan I knew. The Jackie Morgan who had delivered calves and lambs and countless other animals on his farm in all weather. The Jackie Morgan who could drink any man under the table and still get up at the crack of dawn to go to work.
Now he was a like a different man. As if someone had replaced him with an exact replica, but without the qualities that made him who he was.
“Mr. Morgan,” I said, slowly and deliberately. “What was it that you saw?”
He grabbed my upper arms tightly and leaned in close, his breath hot against my cheek. “Aliens!” He whispered.
****
So, I allowed Jackie Morgan to convince me to go with him to the scene of the crime, as it were.
Reluctantly, I might add. The alcohol travelling through my veins appeared to have reached the parts of my brain that dealt with reason and stupidity and somehow switched them around. It is for that reason and that alone I agreed to do what turned out to be the most stupid and dangerous thing that I have ever done in my life.
And I took my brother with me.
That was the second most dangerous and stupid thing that I have ever done.
Martin moaned most of the way. “I’m starving Our Barry. I didn’t get my sweet and sour.”
“I know. That’s the sixth time you’ve told me.” As I stepped round another steaming cow-pat, I could see Jackie Morgan some way ahead of us. Striding through his cornfield and heading for the place he told us he saw aliens. I still couldn’t believe that I was doing this. I mean I had smelt the whisky on his breath. It was obvious he had had a skin full. Yet I allowed myself to follow the old lush.
Our Martin was along for a laugh and ten minutes in to our trip, he realised that it would have been a better laugh had he stayed behind in the chippy.
“I’d ordered pork balls.” He put a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a can of lager. Opening it quickly, he took a long swig. “...aaaghhnnd crispy seaweed” he belched.
Jackie Morgan was gaining ground. He had started running and shouting, waving his arms over his head. I started jogging after him. Martin, trying not to spill his beer followed as quickly as he could.
I ran into a clearing and saw Jackie run to the centre of a huge flattened circle of corn. Then he stopped.
I don’t mean he stopped running, I mean Jackie Morgan literally stopped.
As if he was frozen to the spot; mid-stride, just jogging along. His head half turned towards me as if he was about to speak.
I tried to turn towards Martin and found that I couldn’t. I was frozen to the spot too.
I must have blacked out for a second because the very next thing I knew, I was in exactly the same place, running along. Only now there was a bloody great big, blue, Police Box in front of me.
And like the great big drunken idiot I am, I ran straight into it.
This came as a big surprise to me, but an even bigger one to the two people who were coming out of the Police Box at the time.
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Written by stevetroster (1588 comments posted) 21st May 2007 | Reads well, but I hadn't realised that Doctor Who leant this far towards comedy.
Who was the Doctor for season 17?
Best wishes
steve. | Barry Rowland saves the World
Written by Kremmen (5 comments posted) 22nd May 2007 | Thanks for the comment Steve. It's appreciated. Yes, Doctor Who leant that far towards comedy. Season 17 starred Tom Baker towards the end of his time as the Doctor. The series was script edited by Douglas Adams at this point and each broadcast programme showed his influence. Catch Destiny of the Daleks, Nightmare of Eden and The Horns of Nimon for examples of this.
Cheers,
Paul.  |
Written by stevetroster (1588 comments posted) 22nd May 2007 | | Having now read the prologue (not the best idea to read the prologue after the first few chapters!) I think that I'd rather dive straight in. |
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