The Woman Who Sold the World (comic story)

Summary
Capital city of planet Loam, just before the end of the world. Two elderly ladies discuss the end of this world as giant red armored beings fly over their cities. One lady, who the other calls Sweetleaf, claims she was just a child during the last war. The other wears a battle helmet and is called Sugarpea by Sweetleaf. Sugarpea claims it is her fault their world is coming to an end. Sugarpea sent out a distress signal in a Calamity Lamp. She fears in this day and age no one answers distress signals. Using a rope to tie Martha to and sending her out to the lamp in space, from the TARDIS, the Doctor waits at the door as the protective field protects Martha from being in outer space. Sweetleaf tells the other woman, that Famelia Bovinia both 12 seats on a first class Diaspora Pod and had two going spare. Sugarpea is trying to get her chair to fly again. Sugarpea has kept secrets for 40 years from their entire world. The Doctor pinpoints the planet the lamp came from and he and Martha are soon exiting the TARDIS in a dark place. Martha asks, “And that’s our job description, is it, save the world?” The Doctor tells her, “Save the world, eat the pies, ride into the sunset on a white charger…” Sugarpea breaks the handle on her flying chair. Despite that, she gets it operating. The Doctor assumes Loam is a planet that speaks very highly of him. As the Doctor sonic screwdrivers himself and Martha out of their dark room, Martha asks what he would do without the sonic screwdriver. He tells her he’d spend a lot of time kicking in doors, which would be quite butch Martha figures. He will remember that the next time they are on balsa world. Martha hears someone singing; the Doctor thinks it sounds like Leonard Cohen with a belly ache. They break into the next room where a curly haired male child plays with electric see through blocks. Sugarpea tells Sweetleaf the chair was created by artist Digliano a portrait painter. Martha wonders if the TARDIS translator is working as the child is speaking gibberish to them…mostly. The Doctor explains if there is no English equivalent to what he is saying, then they are going to hear it as gibberish. As they understand a few words, they wonder if he was put here to protect him from something. Sugarpea and Sweetleaf fly over a crowd, who discuss how the Baroness should die in pain for what she has done. Down below the Baroness Hellyer (Sugarpea) and Sweetleaf (who are in the flying chair) are the old, the ones who got left behind, the prisoners, the buskers, homeless, and…the ones she killed. These are people still in the city streets. In the strange room, the boy tells Martha his name---Kipe, and he tells her to be quiet as he’s trying to deal with some tricky Scappered Howws. From the Parliament Building, the two flying women wave to the Prime Minister and his aide Chalmers. The Doctor has gone off to investigate a tunnel. Hellyer calls the invading red giant robotic figures High Goliax. She tells Sweetleaf to have one of her peppermints. The Doctor looks through a round window….and realizes he’s looking out the eye of one of the High Goliax robots. As he calls to Martha, the child gets distracted and angry. Kipe’s dad has told him not to talk to strangers and that if anyone ever comes into the room, he should just eject them…and he does…Martha falls through a rounded trap door hole in the floor! The robot seems startled as Martha comes flying out his mouth, the Doctor calling after her. Martha falls through the air toward death below, “Doctoooorr!!!” Sugarpea and Sweetleaf catch Martha. Inside the giant robot, the High Goliax, the little boy calls his dad, Mr. Kingfish, who arrives with his secretary. The portals lead to space and there are many in the Goliax. The Doctor is in a pyramid spaceship---the Krib, the biggest bank in the universe and Kingfish is the manager and it is a few million light years away from Loam. The attack on Loam is a planet clearance, clearing property for sale. A debt unpaid, the planet is collateral for a big loan. Sugarpea took out the loan as she tells Martha. Sweetleaf wonders why she cannot sit in the middle of the air car. Kingfish takes the Doctor to the Open Floor where a robot puts metal bands on the Doctor’s ankles, free reigns which are controlled by the Accumulator, the central computer. The children are protected when they play the mumbo game –but they are destroying planets as they play as the pilots. Sticking Jimmy into the skull of a 100 foot gargoyle and having him slaughter a world is not the Doctor’s idea of a Blue Peter suggestion for a rainy day. As the Doctor tries to get to talk to Kingfish, a woman tells him he’s 118th in the queue. Musicians play in the meantime. The Doctor tries to cut in line and meets a long haired Asian man named Mandrake from I.T., one of the programmers for the Speculator and he was the 85th in line. He points out Caster, who’s been in line for three months. The Speculator is singing Home Home all morning and he wishes the Doctor would put a stop to it. The Doctor comments it sounded to him like Scott Walker singing Joy Division. Martha and her two flying pals arrive at the Museum of Politics. Inside, is a coal fired Brassneck, a supposedly peace making machine. Mandrake tells the Doctor the Speculator is down in vaults while the Accumulator does the heavy work upstairs. He takes the Doctor to it and they find organic processors—people and inside another room, the Doctor finds brain-like objects. The Doctor introduces himself but the singing gets so loud it starts to make him scream!

Mandrake has on earmuffs and pulls the Doctor out. The Doctor realizes the songs are slave songs, call and response, chain gang songs. The organic processors are people singing to stop themselves dying of boredom. Sweetleaf and Martha find the tributes to Sugarpea are not tributes but accuse her of causing the end of the world. Sugarpea takes the blame and Brassneck, locks Martha and Sweetleaf in the museum and leaves them. Since TARDIS translates alien language, the reason Mandrake and others only just heard the songs is that the TARDIS is now translating the alien slaves’ alien languages! The Doctor wants to put Free Reins on the tentacles on the computer, wanting to switch total control to the Speculator from the Accumulator. Sweetleaf looks for Sugarpea’s autobiography, hoping there is an answer in it to find out what Sugarpea is up to. The book is called Hex Life. A metallic bug machine is Martha’s way to smash out of the museum and it is a travel machine. She and Sweetleaf go after Sugarpea. The Doctor’s plan works and the lines upstairs start moving. The brain computers start moving about and go upstairs, the people storm Kingfish’s office. The Doctor gets there first. Martha and Sweetleaf arrive at the Parliament Building where Sugarpea makes Brassneck grab the Prime Minister up in its hand, smashing down the doors first.

Sweetleaf tells Martha that Sugarpea must use a loophole in the contract with Krib. A loophole called Odious Debt, force the Prime Minister to resign and make herself dictator of Loam and form an unlawful government. The loan will becomes her personal debt and she will hand herself over to the Krib, nullifying the contract and freeing Loam. Punishment: death penalty. Martha wonders if they are trying to stop Sugarpea from saving the world. As the Doctor argues with Kingfish, Martha grabs onto Brassneck and rides inside the Goliax. They enter the mouth and near a girl child, who playing the “game”. The Doctor threatens to break down the portals if Kingfish won’t open them. Martha arrives and reunites with him. Sugarpea enacts her plan and has her own plans for her own execution: Brassneck pounds his fist down on her and kills her. The leg creatures attack, breaking into Kingfish’s office. He plans to try to shut them down using manual free rein ratchets. As they flee, the Doctor tells the girl to hide behind the cushions and he will leave her toy teddy Mr. Slaughter on the eject button. The Doctor tells Mandrake to get the parents to start evacuating their kids out and also he wishes him good luck in finding a new job. Mandrake thanks him for wrecking his old one. Brassneck takes the Doctor, Martha, and itself out a portal to Loam. The minds of the Goliax come out and the Doctor tells everyone on Loam to just let them find their way home, they were the minds. The legs are nerves severed when the minds were ripped from the Goliax Skulls centuries ago. Kingfish has one two metal claws and attacks the Doctor, explaining the Krib took the Goliax and the Speculator as a job lot at the world’s end auction on Yam Yam ages ago. Kingfish’s son Kipe is using the Goliax now and uses it to step a giant foot on Kingfish. Mandrake gets Kipe out of the room. Martha questions the Doctor’s definition of a happy ending: giants swallow their own brains, a little boy stamps on his own father, and the old PM is executed by her brass facsimile. The minds restored in the Goliax, one of them lifts the Doctor and Martha to its throat, where it has the TARDIS. The pair of them conjectures that Sugarpea must have programmed the Brassneck with all those things she wanted to say to Sweetleaf but never did. Brassneck and Sweetleaf meet. The Doctor agrees with Martha about Sugarpea, “After all, Sugarpea was a politician. She’d have to get the last word…” Loam smokes as the war/attack ends, with new immigrants of many giant Goliax, who are not really giant robots after all.

Characters
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Continuity
to be added