Teenage Kicks (short story)

Teenage Kicks
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace
Main setting:	Putney, 1980s
Key crew
Writer:	Paul Cornell
Release details
Printed in:	DWM 163
Release date:	12 July 1990
Cover date:	August 1990
DWM short stories
← Previous	Living in the Past
Next →	Pathfinders

Teenage Kicks was a short prose story published in DWM 163.

Plot

The Doctor takes Ace to a present-day London pub in autumn, landing the TARDIS in the pub basement. The Doctor busies himself on the pub's trivia machine before going over to talk to a woman sitting on her own with a bunch of carnations. He sends Ace over to engage a guy at the bar sitting on his own. The man's name is Liam O'erspace, who describes himself as "half-tough, half-confident". As they chat, they are interrupted by the arrival of Ace's former gang members - Jack (white fanboy), King (black confidence), and Queen (hard white girl), less Joker, who had since died of drugs. Ace had hung out with the gang for a while before returning to her Perivale gang. The gang know Liam quite well, a space visitor from Algol. A fight breaks out between Ace and the gang, and Ace, held at knifepoint by Queen, is about to be sacrificed for her psychic energy, enough to power Liam's signalling device and get him home. The Doctor's table suddenly erupts in a flash as the Doctor's table-mate produces a now melted gun from the carnation's ashes. Liam instantly recognises her as Arishma, his former lover, and likewise draws a gun. Before the two can kill each other, the Doctor intervenes, giving them both a choice. Liam accepts the chance of a new life away from the bad company he has fallen in with, returns with Arishma to Algol. The Doctor and Ace leave to the sound of sirens outside.

Later in the TARDIS the Doctor, talks with Ace about the impact of visitors to Earth and the destabilising effects it can have on global economies resulting from 'gambling' on known outcomes. Without their intervention, in the pub, Liam and Arishma would have spent decades keeping their distance, playing with the planet and friends, with no good coming of it.

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Liam O'erspace
• Arishma
• Jack
• King
• Queen

Referenced only

• Joker
• "A panda guy"

Worldbuilding

• The universe was created in a "conversation between Lou Reed and Lester Bangs."
• Ace got her nickname when she was part of the Putney gang.
• Queen calls Ace "Ms. Well Wicked Grange Hill" and "Ms. Johnny Chester Appreciation Society"
• Jack mentions "a panda guy" and "a bus to space".
• Algol is home to a humanoid race.
• The Doctor states that economies respond in odd ways when time travellers place bets on events when they already know the outcome; this happened in Berlin.

Notes

Colourised art from The Mark of Mandragora

• Illustrations by Cam Smith.
• The story was reprinted in The Mark of Mandragora with colourised illustrations.
• The title shares with a chapter title in PROSE: Love and War, published two years after this comic.
• Jack mentions "These guys are coming in all the time, word's all over the underground. That panda guy last year, he contacted some hippies and they put him on the bus to space" making this the very first mention of Panda and the Celestial Omnibus.

Continuity

• Ace is reminded of Fenric when the Doctor tells her to talk to Liam. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
• Ace briefly joined a gang to spite Midge. (TV: Survival)
• Johnny Chester is mentioned. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation, PROSE: Byzantium!)
• The Doctor orders a brandy, but doesn't drink it. He has had a mixed relationship with alcohol throughout his regenerations, often disliking it. (TV: The Gunfighters, The Impossible Astronaut et al.)