Cursed Among Sequels (The Mervyn Stone Mysteries, #3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Cursed Among Sequels by Nev Fountain

  THANKS TO

  FOREWORD

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Extract from the Vixens from the Void Programme Guide

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  First published in November 2010

  by Big Finish Productions Ltd, PO Box 1127, Maidenhead, SL6 3LW

  www.bigfinish.com

  Project Editor: Xanna Eve Chown

  Managing Editor: Jason Haigh-Ellery

  With thanks to: Matthew Griffiths and Lisa Miles

  Copyright © Nev Fountain 2010

  The right of Nev Fountain to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any forms by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information retrieval system, without prior permission, in writing, from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  THE MERVYN STONE MYSTERIES III

  Cursed Among Sequels

  by Nev Fountain

  THANKS TO

  Nicola Bryant, for her support and her love and her devotion. It is reciprocated in spades. Thanks for allowing me to write through Christmas, and for sitting up in the early hours saying ‘I don’t think this bit works.’ That’s a real dream girl, that is. Big Finish Towers.

  Jason Haigh-Ellery, for taking me to his expensive club and saying ’Yes please, three books by the summer of 2010.’ David Richardson, Nick Briggs, Alex Mallinson, Xanna Eve Chown, Paul Wilson and Toby Robinson, for being so lovely all the way through this project’s gestation. Jonathan Morris and James Goss, for their help, their comments and their ‘squee’ noises. Ian Fountain, for his extensive knowledge of cars and tube trains. Gareth Edwards, Bill Dare, Caroline Norris and Richard Webb for allowing me, an annoying writer, to swan round the sets of their busy television shoots. Tom Jamieson, Ann Kelly, Alan P Jack, Steve Berry, John Banks, David Tennant, Peter Ware, Steve O’Brien and Ally Ross for their help. Simon Brett for his encouragement and inspiration. Sheila Bryant for the use of her dining room table. Iona, Jill and Jackie Fountain, for taking me to see Cornwall, Bob and Sue Mynett, for showing me more of its wonders, and the Falmouth Docks choir, for their voices, and Christmas time in Cornwall. Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat and everyone at Cardiff, for making all that toast.

  FOREWORD

  Ah yes, Vixens from the Void. Now you ARE talking real television.

  It’s been written off by the usual right-on bed-wetters, and those TV Cream dorks. But this almost-forgotten masterpiece claims a space, forever, in my TV Gold. From a time when we were actually allowed Vixens on the television, and everything wasn’t just a void, it was wobbly sets, wobbly women, Tara Miles and ta-ra clothes.

  Now this was a show with real heart and false eyelashes. And who cares if the sets looked like the inside of Boy George’s head? And who cared if the hairstyles were able to be seen from space, and the make-up could have caused a slick that would shock BP? And the costumes? They may have looked daft on the outside, but as any teenage boy at the time would have told you, when it came to Arkadia’s brassiere it was what was inside that counted…

  When I was a wee boy with more asteroids on my face than the whole Vixen Empire, I watched it every week, and I had my posters and my customised duvet to prove it. Not that my duvet was officially customised, mind, but the glimpses of Vanity Mycroft’s twin planets were enough to engage any young man’s warped drive…

  11 MILLION viewers and an impact like a 240-volt charge in the Groolias. Earthlings, they do not make TV shows like Vixens from the Void anymore. Note to telly bosses everywhere: Bring it back, you bunch of ‘Ken A Wilders’…!

  Ally Ross, 2010

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book takes place in a weird alternative wibbly-wobbly reality where, because Doctor Who is the most successful show in Britain, another old sci-fi show—Vixens from the Void—is revived. There are Doctor Who fans that already think that because Doctor Who is the most successful show in Britain, they’re already living in that weird alternative wibbly-wobbly reality. Because there is a blurring of reality and fiction in this book, allow me to put on my anal fan hat (not a thing you can buy at Argos) and file the ‘fiction’ from the ‘non-fiction’. Product Lazarus UK isn’t real. There is a jolly little radio station which happens to be in Truro, but it is not inhabited by the likes of Louise Felcham or any of the characters in this book, all of which are completely made up. Nick Briggs and Steve O’Brien are real, so they tell me, and I’m extremely grateful for their permission to be included in this book. SFX magazine is also real, and again, I’m grateful for the editor’s permission for its inclusion. Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat are real, thank God, as is the TV series produced in Cardiff, without whom the galaxy would be a much poorer place, and to whom this book is dedicated. Vixens from the Void isn’t real. But then again, neither is Doctor Who, and it certainly didn’t stop me believing in any of it.

  ‘Progress is a continuing effort to make…things…as good as they used to be.’
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  Bill Vaughan

  ‘There’s no point just trying to recreate the past exactly. If you do you’re bound to fail.’

  Mervyn Stone

  Extract from the Vixens from the Void Programme Guide, originally printed in the fanzine Into the Void #55.

  EXPIRATION POINT (Serial 5C)

  Transmitted: 13 September 1990

  Recorded: Studio: BBC Television Centre 14-16 Feb 1990

  Location: Clay pit,St Austell/ Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, Cornwall, 5-10 March 1990

  Medula: Tara Miles

  Arkadia/Byzantia: Vanity Mycroft

  Tania: Suzy Lu

  Velhellan: Jennifer McLaird

  Elysia: Samantha Carbury

  Excelsior: Maggie Styles

  Vizor: Roger Barker

  Gorg: Kim Maynard

  Styrax Sentinels: William Smurfett and Danny Porter

  Styrax Voice: Arthur Stokes

  Production Design: Seb Crook

  Writer: Ken A. Wilder (aka Mervyn Stone)

  Script Editor: Mervyn Stone

  Director: Ken Roche

  Producer: Nicholas Everett

  Synopsis:

  A lone Styrax sentinel crashes on the planet SCARGOS MINOR. Landing on the planet, the Vixens track it down and capture it, to discover that it has broken its programming and escaped. It is fleeing from the ‘expiration point’—the time in a Styrax’s existence when it voluntarily scraps itself in favour of a new, more advanced model. Realising that the Styrax may contain valuable tactical information, they decide to take it back to the empire. Then a fully-armed Styrax patrol arrives to ensure that the lone Styrax complies with its ‘expiration point’…

  The Styrax sentinel is taken back to Vixos, but the information it contains turns out to be worse than useless. It has been faked by the Styrax command, planted to lead the Vixens into a trap. The Styrax sentinel saves the Vixens, but at the cost of its own existence.

  Notes:

  It is possible to argue that more production problems beset this episode than any other. The headaches began for script editor Mervyn Stone when the assigned writer, Dermot Costello, came to London to discuss the script. Costello was detained by police on suspicion of smuggling explosives onto the mainland.

  The ‘explosives’ turned out to be an alarm clock attached to a lump of Plasticine (Dermot claimed he used the Plasticine to ‘cushion the bell because the ring was too shrill’). Even though he was quickly released and got to his London hotel with no further delay, Dermot demanded an apology from the British government and went on a hunger strike inside his hotel room until he got one.

  The ‘script’ which Costello eventually sent to the production office turned out to be 60 sheets of the hotel’s headed paper, on which was written: Tiocfaidh ár lá.

  Feeling that this was an elaborate ploy by Dermot to avoid writing his script, but knowing that the BBC would never sue Dermot because of the political implications, Mervyn once again took up the writing chores, penning an episode in three days under the pseudonym of ‘Ken. A. Wilder’. Stone’s frustration with Dermot seemed apparent at the time. It was pointed out by Darren Cardew (Into the Void #7) that ‘Ken A. Wilder’ is an anagram of ‘Idle Wanker’.

  The pseudonym was essential as the Vixens script editor had written pretty much all of the last two seasons, and the BBC frowned on such practice. Such was the corporation’s alarm over how many scripts Stone was writing, the BBC’s Head of Series and Serials demanded a meeting with ‘Ken A. Wilder’, ostensibly to discuss the finer points of the script, although many suspected the meeting was to ascertain that ‘Ken’ really existed.

  With no one else knowing the script well enough to pretend to be ‘Ken’, Stone went to the meeting himself, electing to don a false moustache and a fake Irish accent. Fortunately, the Head of Series and Serials had barely made Stone’s acquaintance during the last four years and the ruse worked. Mervyn has since joked that because Dermot was an IRA sympathiser, he should have been used to his words being voiced by someone else.

  The episode required a large element of location work, and producer Nicholas Everett elected to film in St Austell in Cornwall. Disaster struck the production almost immediately when snow and hail disrupted shooting and the make-up department got stranded in their rented farmhouse. Stone was forced to pen lines for the Vixens suggesting that the Styrax patrol ship landing had prompted ‘freak weather conditions’ that caused the Vixens’ hair to look badly tousled. Stone himself escaped serious injury during a storm when an arc light nearly fell on him.

  Director Ken Roche antagonised much of the crew with his eccentric style of filming, and Everett had to function as a peacemaker. Roche chose to ignore much of the script’s stage directions, much to Stone’s exasperation.

  The problems were compounded when Everett fell off a boat en route to Pendennis Castle. He became dangerously ill with double pneumonia, and Stone elected to become de facto producer for the shoot. This brought tensions to a head with the now deeply distressed Roche, who had taken to hiding in the boot of his own car.

  Roche’s decision to burn the full-sized Styrax shuttle prop on location horrified Stone. The two eventually came to blows on the last day of filming and had to be separated by Gorg actor Kim Maynard. The fire spread to a nearby field and incinerated a flock of sheep. A local farmer was paid compensation as a result, which meant that the budget skyrocketed.

  Nevertheless, despite its problems ‘Expiration Point’ is seen as one of the most popular Vixens scripts among fans, coming top in that year’s VAS poll and sixth overall in the 1995 poll conducted by Vixens from the Void Magazine and published in its final issue.

  CHAPTER ONE

  >CLICK<

  [SIGH]

  Oh God.

  I’m still here.

  I’m still in Cornwall.

  Oh God.

  I thought it was a terrible dream.

  Oh…

  God.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mervyn Stone woke up.

  The first thing he noticed was the badger’s head in his bed.

  It wasn’t a visitation from the Cornish Mafia. Mervyn imagined they were more subtle in their methods; they probably attached threatening letters to pasties and chucked them through windows or something like that.

  No, the badger’s head had fallen on him, for the third day in a row. It had somehow removed itself from the hook on the wall in the night, and come the morning he’d woken up to find the furred face snarling up at him from his crotch, white pointy teeth bared and ready to attack. It reminded him of the first time Vanity Mycroft suddenly decided she was going to perform fellatio on him, whether he wanted it or not. That was in Cornwall too.

  He wished there was some fellatio on offer now, badger-related or otherwise. At least it would have taken up five minutes or so. It would be something to do. There was nothing here any self-respecting writer could do to pass the time. There were no trendy coffee shops to sit and pretend to write in while watching women go by. No dubious internet sites to wallow in. No mobile phone coverage. No pay-per-view channels on the television in his room. Even Channel Five was a fuzzy incoherent blob, mocking him. He felt like he was stranded back in the 1980s.

  Which in a funny way, he was.

  *

  He had been stuck in the 80s ever since 1985. That was when he started work on a BBC1 science fiction show called Vixens from the Void.

  It was a cheery little space soap opera with wobbly spaceships and even wobblier actresses, with a not-so-subtle dominatrix subtext. Each episode featured huge-breasted women wearing very few clothes ordering about huge-breasted men wearing even fewer clothes. It was a piece of disposable nonsense, but it was a piece of disposable sci-fi nonsense, so of course it was never disposed of. Ordinary Earth-based dramas such as Triangle and Howards’ Way could slip away peacefully in their beds, awaiting the calm oblivion of UK Gold, but space stuff like Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 and Vixens from the Void was chucked into
bath chairs and wheeled around the grounds, prodded with sticks and asked questions about the past. So even though everything else he’d ever written had been long forgotten, Vixens hadn’t.

  It was the reason why Mervyn found himself, more than 20 years later, hollow-voiced and hollow-eyed, constantly telling crowds of smelly people in jackets covered with badges what his favourite episode was, how he felt when the series was cancelled, and how he invented the monsters.

  It was also the reason why he was now in Cornwall.

  He was in a place the maps said was a village, but which any sane person would have said was a bus stop with houses. Not that there were any buses. There was one minibus a day out of the ‘village’, which took the residents somewhere slightly larger to go shopping. Mervyn hadn’t driven in years and he didn’t own a car any more so he felt isolated and stranded.

  Still, he was a writer (it said so on his passport), and writers work well in baroque isolation. So everyone said. Mervyn never found this the case. One thing that got the steam coming out of his ears would be girlfriends who unplugged the telly and hid the radio in the mistaken belief that he would churn out the pages of his scripts faster and they could then go out to restaurants and see movies. But on the other hand, he mused, if people kept saying that isolation was good for writing then it must be true. So, like a complete idiot, he’d brought along his laptop in the hope that it would breathe some life into his corpse of a novel.

  It had been three days now, and his laptop hadn’t even left its little leather pouch. It served as a coaster for mugs of tea and as a doorstop for the bathroom. He’d done nothing else since he’d arrived but watch the late-night cop shows on Channel Five through a storm of static. It was like trying to contact sailors in the North Sea with short-wave radio; sometimes the picture would vanish completely, providing Mervyn with a gripping radio play where he could guess from audio clues as to who was beating up whom. Sometimes, the cops would look almost normal, just juddering slightly like sufferers of Parkinson’s; sometimes they’d morph and stretch into twitching multi-coloured monsters, hissing and spitting at each other as they investigated their homicides. Mervyn suspected that all conspiracy theory nutters watched late-night Channel Five in Cornwall. Where else would they get the idea that the royal family were secretly eight-foot-tall lizards?