User:DoctorQuoi/sandboxVNADamagedGoods

prologue:

Christmas night, in a London council estate called "The Quadrant" by the locals, four year-old Bev Tyler hears her mother Winnie Tyler and a man talking in the living room. Her mother leaves the apartment with the man, something she never does because she never leaves the children alone. Bev follows her out into the cold, rainy night. She hides and watches. She spots a short man wearing a linen suit, also hiding opposite from her. They look directly at each other but he disappears into the night. Bev notices the man her mother was with drive off so she runs back to the apartment before she's caught. The next day, Bev and her siblings have a festive Christmas with their mother despite thinking they couldn't afford all the nice things she got them but deep down Bev can't shake the feeling something is wrong. She ignores it, but its consequences run deeper than she realizes.

Ten years later a man called the "Capper" lights himself on fire in the quandrant, frightening Mrs. Hearn. He is rushed to hospital and dies there.

Harry Harvey, a closeted homosexual man whose wife passed away two years ago, lurks around parks looking to hook up with someone as it is a usual spot at night for people looking to have same-sex intercourse. He shares a flat in the Quadrant with a man named David, also homosexual, although he is unaware of Harry Harvey's orientation despite being homosexual himself. Tonight he is looking for a quick encounter and spotting a young man, follows him to a graveyard thinking he has gotten lucky when the young man turns out to be a burglar and holds Harvey at knife-point. However, a body emerges from the grave beside them, sprouting tendrils having many tiny legs like a millipede and kills his would-be mugger and strips the corpse while Harvey flees the scene. He returns to his flat in the Quadrant and stitches the large slash he unknowingly received in the struggle, passing out in a pool of his own blood, afraid to call the police for fear of having his homosexuality publicly exposed.

The Doctor, Roz and Chris are vacationing in New York. Roz is happy to see the Doctor finally relaxed and care-free, unlike his usual, more cunning and manipulative self. When the waitress brings them their bill, the Doctor smells cocaine on her lip and suddenly drags Chris and Roz back to the TARDIS, realizing he has forgotten something terribly wrong. They arrive at the Quadrant. Bev, having nothing better to do during summer vacation, is on her way to meet friends when she sees the Doctor and the two in a cafe across the road and immediately recognizes him. Despite her awkward attempts to spy on him, the Doctor invites her over for a chat. She obliges, despite suspecting his perverted intentions since she is a teenage girl. The Doctor, pretending to not know her, tries to have her remember the night they met but she cannot, or is suppressing the memories. Just then her mother calls them and reveals that she has been expecting the Doctor, Roz and Chris and that their flat in the Quadrant is ready, to the surprise of the three, completely unaware that they had even signed up for the rental list.

The Doctor tries to make a plan of attack, saying they need to get to know all the residents as any one of them could be linked to their investigation of the cocaine, the full extent why though of which the Doctor hasn't yet revealed and even he himself seems not fully sure. The morning after their arrival, however, the number 11 flat previously owned by the Capper, who was a drug dealer and supplier, is fire-bombed by some unknown assailants in a car. The Doctor uses the situation to his advantage and has Chris and Roz try and find out as much as possible as well as get friendly with the residents and he does the same. He talks to Mrs. Hearn about Bev's mother Winnie Tyler to try and reveal or confirm some information but to no avail. David, meanwhile, notices and takes an attraction to Chris and tries to chat him up during the evacuation of the building from the fire. Harvey also had noticed Chris earlier but thought he had no chance. The police arrive and question everyone and the Doctor manages to gain the trust of the suspicious block members (themselves weary of police as police represent the system that treats them so cruelly in the first place) by denying having any of knowledge of the event, pretending to be just as stymied. When he, Roz and Chris reconvene that evening, he points out that when they all met Gabriel, Winnie's other son and Bev's youngest brother, they all perceived him to look slightly different. This is because Gabriel posses something called, according to the Doctor, "Glamour", an ability low level psychics posses. People are naturally attracted to and want to act friendly towards people with Glamour as they see and put parts of themselves into the person. The Doctor reveals that Chris and Roz, despite meeting the same boy (Gabriel) both saw slightly different versions, with Roz saying he possessed slightly darker skin (her own skin colour) while Chris says his hair was lighter and slightly blonder than the colour Roz describes (more akin to his own skin and hair colour).

Mrs. Jericho attends to her son who is dying and has been comatose for three months in hospital. She thinks back to her horrible teenage years and how she ended up accruing a charge on her criminal record, despite being an quiet, shy and innocent girl, when the girl who used to bully her, Sally Hunt, dared her to steal a sweater from a store, an act in which she was caught and charges were pressed. She reveals the strange voice in her head which compels her to addictively shop for clothes, after which at home she performs a little ceremony whereby she cuts, tears and slashes the clothes in order to gain sexual release/orgasm. She then returns them to the store and because she is married to a very wealthy and important man, the shops never refuse her. Meanwhile the Doctor, Roz and Chris investigate the burnt-down apartment once the police had left and make a shocking discovery. Jack Leather, who runs a prostitution ring, is visited by the Capper in his apartment in the Quadrant, whose body/corpse is actually being used and piloted by an alien ship-like entity (unbeknownst to an unsuspecting Jack, who had a feeling the Capper wasn't really dead), and they make a deal.

Gabriel Tyler uses his ability to convince his mother to let him go explore the city. Harry Harvey and David get into a fight as David thinks he should see a doctor as he looks very sick. Harry angrily tells David to leave and David heads out to give him some space. Harry is blackmailed by Gabriel (who will reveal his homosexuality if he doesn't cooperate) into driving him to a destination he wants to go to, a destination which seems to be psychically attracting his attention, a hospital up north. Gabriel walks around the complex a few times before he is suddenly chased by Mrs. Jericho, who upon seeing him, believes him to be her sick son Steven and chases Gabriel. She almost catches him, however, he gets back to Harry's car in time and makes him drive him home to the Quadrant. He lets Mr. Harvey go and says that they will do it again tomorrow. Mrs. Jericho, considering suicide as she has fallen into a crazed state, calls her husband but hangs up. He sends his assistant to go retrieve her, fearful of what she might do to herself.

Refrences

-low level psychic power; Glamour

-tribophysics

-Gabriel has read The Wind in the Willows

-the doctor and roz read a copy of the daily mirror

-hammer horror films are mentioned

-tribophysics allows things to transport themselves between dimensions; the doctor desribes its name as literally meaning "the science of interfacing surfaces in relative motion." It's essentially a way to slide between dimensions to transport oneself to other locations in an instant.

-David watches australian tv show neighbours

-gabriel likes to watch the tv show Why Don't You

Notes

Gabriel likes the program 'Why Don't You..?". The full name of the program is Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead? Russel T Davies, the author of this novel and producer of the revived series from 2005 onwards was the director and producer of this very program in the late 80s and early 90s.

Continuity

-roz mentions Yemaya 4 and Dione-Kisumu

-roz asks the Doctor to confirm whether he once lived on earth himself for a time. The Doctor does confirm this, saying he was exiled here. The Second Doctor was forced to regenerate by the Timelords into the Third Doctor and was forced to live on Earth for many years, in which he worked for UNIT. (TV: The War Games, Spearhead from Space, et al.)

-the doctor mentions he once built a weapon in Shoreditch that could fry a Dalek at 10 paces.

-The Time Ripple Detector in Little Caldwell is mentioned.