Colonel Snathe, a Sontaran, gets a status report from his second in command Lerox. Executions such as Crewman Xtal continue. Xtal was lashed to solar stacks in 1000 kph winds and took six minutes to die on Serac as a storm hits for 11 days, across the polar wastes. It was the morning after silverfire, the ice that burns. Snathe wants info from the aquatic drills. He wants to know when they can drill the ocean floor. He commands the mining rig, Betrothal of Sontar. Inuk, wide eyed, gray eyed aliens in loin cloths and wraps ---and one is shot by a flame stick of Snathe, who berates Lerox for not taking part. Lerox believes barbarians kill for pleasure, soldiers kill only the enemy. An aerial probe has sighted an alien artifact on the Noord Eisig shelf. Snathe sends out Skaag and Krege to get it. The Doctor and Rose are on the ice caps, the Doctor bragging he’s not cold, he once had to swim the English Channel totally starkers. Rose wonders if he was escaping the Nazis but he tells her he just lost a bet with Oliver Reed. When the Sontaran probe device grabs up the Tardis, the Doctor tells Rose to call him Fred from here on in. One hits the Doctor, threatening to scatter his entrails to the Katabatic Winds. The Doctor says, "Funny, innit, how no good ever comes of a greeting with the word entrails in it." The Sontaran calls him a Rutan dog. The two Sontarans think Rose and the Doctor are Rutans. Rose and the Doctor are taken in flying hovercrafts. Rose asks about them, commenting that it looks like someone cloned the Mitchell brothers. Lerox interrupts Snathe’s meditating and notices something strange in the quarters but is hit when he asks about it. Snathe, when he hits Lerox, mentions Lerox’s brood was incinerated at birth. In chains and a neck brace, the Doctor mentions Stockholm Syndrome to his silent guard. Snathe comes to him. Snathe has an energizer which delivers raw plasma to the probic vent. It is how they feed. He threatens the Doctor with it as the Doctor mocks him. Lerox has Rose unchained. Rose tells him she and the Doctor just came to see the aurora. He asks her if she is some sort of livestock. He goes through her stuff including a picture of Mickey and she, one of the 9th Doctor wearing a small pink bowler that says Kiss Me Quick and possibly a picture of her mum. He has Rose’s lipstick. Skagg and four other Sontarans are hunting Inuk and follow them into a cave. They light some torches and scream as claws attack them. The guard frees the Doctor’s limbs and the Doctor jokes about cribbage, a game of go fish, conkers, backgammon and thumb war! He is taken to the TARDIS and when Snathe tells the guard, "Leave us," the Doctor jokes that the Colonel meant for the Doctor to leave. Shirtless and scary, and holding a sword, Snathe attacks the Doctor as the Doctor worries if Rose is okay. Snathe attacks, "I know you, enemy of Sontar! Your time ship has betrayed your identity! In the name of the Empire, I will taste glory again…and my trophy will be the severed head of thee Doctor!"…

The Doctor stops Snathe’s attack by recognizing the sign burned onto his chest, the Sigil of Thanatos, the greatest super weapon ever created. He tells Snathe he can help find the super weapon. Lerox tells Rose that among a clone species some have recessive unmilitary genes, an underclass. Rose mentions that they don’t seem as if they use deodorant. Corporal Stakk attacks Lerox, mentioning the heating is down, garbage is stacked up, and they have not had the chance to charge their vents up in a week. Lerox downs him and he is dragged away. Officers who lack the thirst for blood are despised. The Doctor reconfigures the probes, telling Snathe that it always seemed important with fairy lights to know if they are rigged in series or parallel. Snathe has not slept, and is bleeding. The Doctor finds a vast anomalous energy source 100 kilometres away at the base of the Ventrux Massif. Snathe puts a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder and the Doctor says, "Steady Snathe, no tongues." Lerox believes Rose to be safest with him. He takes her to investigate Snathe’s quarters while Snathe announces he and the Doctor are leaving on a reconnaissance. In Snathe’s room, they find blood sacrifices, mostly skulls of the alien natives and a blood symbol of the weapon on the wall. As the Doctor and Snathe fly past an alien, it drops the head of a slain Sontaran. Lerox tells Rose they searched the area the Doctor and Snathe are heading to weeks ago and found nothing. Rose tells Lerox that if this crazy Snathe is on the verge of finding a super weapon, they are all stuffed but anyway, he’s with the Doctor, so she insists they go after them. As underling Syke warns Lerox that Sergeant Skagg’s team has not returned and that another Silivefire storm is forecast, Lerox warns Syke not to question his orders. The two, with Rose and another Sontaran leave in a hovercraft. Snathe wants to conquer even the Sontarans it seems. He nose dives into a large geodesic dome shape under solid ice, blasting the ice first with the hovercrafts weapon suite. The Doctor finds the probe while Snathe asks him if he wants to be the first to share his triumph by being the first to die! The Doctor responds to Snathe’s death fetish by saying, "Yeah, not really the turn that frown upsidedown type, are you?" As Snathe goes on about death being the only constant, the Doctor finds skulls…possibly of SSontarans and claims death has been here. The Doctor warned him about static electricity and not to touch anything unless he had a comb. Snathe touches something and sets off an intruder alert that states they will be cleansed. The Doctor says, "That SO isn’t going to mean a moist towelette, is it?" Inuk natives or things that look like them surround them. The Doctor tries to make contact but one has a trail of black stuff bubbling from his mouth…and it forms a huge crustacean like monster with body armor and at least five sets of claws -- which rushes at them while the Doctor says, "Er, Snathe, I think Death’s just popped back for another visit…"

To a Sontaran, combat is joy, war is poetry, and victory is everything. For Snathe this is not a good day to die. As the monster attacks, the Doctor says, "Stuff this for a game of soldiers," admitting he doesn’t understand that expression. But he likes it. Snathe tells him because it is meaningless prattle. The Doctor has a million of them. Snathe beats off some of the monster and he and the Doctor run for the probe. They escape on it, as the Doctor says Betrothal is a sissy name for a Sontaran. Snathe tells him it means to bury the hatchet between the eyes of your enemy. As Rose and Lerox hurry to the site, the Doctor tells Snathe that the Inuk are antibodies generated by Thantos -- and they are herding the Doctor and Snathe further into the caverns. The pair arrive as Thantos, the World Bane. Snathe warns the Doctor to stop the insults or he will rip out the Doctor’s tongue. The Doctor claims to have seen world killing devices before. The Doctor checks the tracker on the probe using his glasses and the tracker says something is coming. Rose and Lerox arrive. Rose is still calling the Doctor Fred so he tells her she can drop the name thing. Snathe will kill Lerox. Snathe climbs up the machine which probes him and tentacles come out of it and enter his vent behind his neck. Thantos interfaces with Snathe on a physical and mental level. Thantos targets Sontar. It is a judgement engine and sees no future for the Sontaran race. The device thinks of Snathe as a genetic cul de sac, an evolutionary dead end, a clone of countless generations of clones. Snathe rips the tentacles off himself, declaring he will not become the executioner of his own planet. He shoots wildly at Lerox but hits both of the Sontarns with Lerox instead. Snathe calls Rose the Doctor’s piglet, grabbing her from behind in order to try to force the Doctor to tell him how to end this. Lerox jumps in and frees Rose and is grazed by Snathe’s pain stick. Lerox tells Rose it would have been a good death. Snathe has run off into the caverns to destroy it and bury everyone. The Doctor faces Thantos and calls on it to judge Lerox’s action, self sacrifice. He tells it to chew on that before it passes sentence. In the caverns, more monster claws and mouths of the device take Snathe. The Doctor has saved Sontar and Lerox’s sacrifice was the cause, the thing does not destroy Sontar. The second silver fire storm is the fiercest. The Doctor tells Lerox that Lerox and his crew could become a new direction for the Sontaran race. Lerox will not return to his homeworld. The Doctor suggest renaming the rig to the Hope of Sontar. Rose won’t forget what Lerox did for her. As the TARDIS vanishes, Corporal Slygg asks Lerox what his report will say of the still unlocated Snathe. Lerox will tell the truth: Snathe was a victim of his own obsessions…Snathe found his betrothal..he’s bound to the plaanet Serac forever now. The last frame is of Snathe, half eaten, emaciated, and in the sand…is he dead?

Time Placement: After The Christmas Invasion.

Thursday: Mickey is walking with two mates from work. They ask about Rose and tell Mickey that she's just mucking with his mind. Gina from the flower shop is gagging for Mickey, they tell him. They ask Mickey where she's living now and he tells them Northampton. Mickey is tired and wished he gone home right after work. Mickey goes home, undresses, and is machine brushing his teeth when the Tenth Doctor walks into the bathroom and says, "Hello Mickey!" He breaks his teeth with the thing as he's surprised.

The Doctor mentions Mickey's got lovely teeth and works to get them all back into Mickey's mouth. He tells Mickey that he and Rose just escaped from some angry Lombards and needed a rest. The Doctor walked out of the TARDIS suggesting a bite of toast to eat, then a trip to Oxybeguramosa. The TARDIS slammed shut and vworp-ed away with Rose inside. It jumped a time track. He forgot to lock the time settings and Rose will turn up in a few days…just a couple of seconds for her. The Doctor was aboutt to knock on Jackie's door to wait there but she was busy…with a man nameed Alan and some vienetta. Mickey asks where the Doctor's gonna sleep. The Doctor has his jacket off already and tells him he don't like sleeping when there's something to do…he's going to make Mickey the omelette of his life.

Friday: After work, the Doctor asks about Mickey's day as he and Mickey play video games against each other. The Doctor tells Mickey the second Elizabethan Age is going on out there and it is Friday night. Mickey wonders how the Doctor won the game…it is a shoot em up and he won without firinng a single shot. The Doctor says, "There's always another way." Mickey tries the telly and gets a tv show with a woman who sees a clone of her Arthur…who has a green hand. This seems like Eastenders…and the Doctor made a few adjustments for a beetter signal and the side effect is that he's getting programmes from ten years ahead! Mickey asks, "Can't you do anything the normal way?" Mickey declines the offer for tea cause he claims it will be alien tea with radiation in it and anti matter sugar.

Saturday: Karl is sick so football is off but the Doctor will take is place so football is on again. The Doctor's messed with Mickey's stereo equipment. Mickey will say the Doctor is John from Southampton but the Doctor introduces himself to as the Doctor to Chris and the others. The others include Big Robbo and Little Robbo. The Doctor's changed into shorts and cleats and a brown t shirt. Later, the Doctor helps Mickey's friend beat the trivia machine. Mickey tells him HE beat the machine, not the both of them. The Doctor tells him he's beaten better machines than that one. Mickey tells a friend in the bar/pub that he preferred it when the Doctor was anti social. The friend asks how they met and Mickey goes over possible answers. He just turned up one day and everything was different. The Doctor is asked what he does and he tells them this and that, nothing ordinary but life doesn't have to be ordinary, whoever or whatever you are.

That night: the Doctor is on a computer while Mickey was reminding him he was going to clear out. Gina comes in for a whole night with Mickey. Mickey is thinking only of Rose. The Doctor comes out for a bit of wire. Gina tells Mickey not to be rude to the Doctor and invites him to sit down with them and drink cola. The Doctor will also accept Pepsi. The Doctor tells Gina the flower shop is not worth her time, there is a whole bigger world out there and it's her's if she wants it. Gina leaves, thanking him and calls him amazing. The Doctor tells her he is semi amazing, being modest. Gina is going to fill out the application form, saying, "Tonight, Cat, I'm going to be KT Tunstall." Mickey gets mad; the Doctor tells him his heart is elsewhere, the Doctor claims to have rescued him. Mickey wanted to work it out for himself. He wants to live his own life for five minutes. On the Telly, the Doctor gets a Bandrigan fleet, raiders, cyborgs programmed to fly forever and strip any planet and kill all its people. He picked up a faint signal on VH1 Classic Smooth on Mickey's satellite dish. The Doctor inverted a time cone round Earth, masked it from the sensors of the aliens, and they left the area. Mickey chews him out, what if people don't always want to be impressed. Mickey asks him what if people don't always need the Doctor, what if people don't want rescuing or having their lives invaded by him. The Doctor has no answer for him.

Sunday: The TARDIS appears and Rose steps out and asks what the name of the planet was he just said, "Oxy—what?" Rose asks who's first to visit, Mum or Mickey. The Doctor tells her he has hours of tinkering on some funny sound he heard in the TARDIS. He tells Rose to go have a proper Sunday, read the papers, watch Eastenders…she doesn't always need him hanging around.. "Make him happy." He tells her as she leaves, not really hearing him. Rose rings Mickey's doorbell and Mickey runs to the door and opens it. Rose hugs him and Mickey's thinking is "Okay, Doctor, you win. Finally I'm impressed." With a big smile on his face, too.

Time Placement: The end of this story seems been written to acts as a lead into the beginning of New Earth.

Southwest, London, today (May 24th, 2006): Long haired Craig Phillips and a girl pal named Trudy talk about fantasy worlds and heroes as they walk outside. A cowboy riding a dinosaur passes them by chasing Ninjas on Unicorns! Craig is sure London never used to be like this, what with Clown Police on patrol. Craig thinks there is a perfectly simple explanation; all they need is someone clever to come along and explain it all. The TARDIS appears. There are faces on trees. Rose and the Doctor exit, Rose expecting this to be China so they could see the Great Wall. Rose claims things like boys’ faces in trees don’t happen in London, not even in Zone 4, and she goes on to make exceptions such as Mental Christmas Trees and shop dummies with attitudes. When Rose asks who would do that to people, the Doctor answers, "I can think of several people who’d happily fit the bill, Cept they’re all dead." A Viking barbarian with a ray blaster comes yelling, "Halt in the name of Stegnor the Conqueror!" The Doctor tackles him, Rose hits him with a branch. The Doctor is told it was lasered off by the blaster…it might be an arm or a leg. The Viking has three girrls with chains on. They free the girls who were trying to get supplies from the supermarket. Ever since a Mr. Flynn, they were scared to set foot out of the library. Before they can explain further, an earthquake hits and opens a crack in the ground. A girl falls in, saying she’s going to die. The Doctor, with help from the girls and Rose, pulls the third one out, "Not today." The crack vanishes. The Doctor is hurt on his hand and realizes from this small wound, that it was not a hallucination, mind control, or a hologram. The girls, named Tanya, Helen, and Anna take Rose and the Doctor back to the library where they meet the man who used to run it, Laurie. They also meet Cathryn Lloyd who used to teach at the school down the road. Everyone in town vanished one day. There were more than ten of them but things happened to them. Three lads were here but they were gone and then there were three trees on Kelsey Road that look like the boys. The new pair tell them that Flynn tried to leave. He passed into a boundary, a sort of heat haze that stops them from leaving — it covers a square mile. Flynn walked through it and dissolved, screaming for hours after he was gone. Cath tells the Doctor that Craig and Trudy walk through town without anything happening to them. Craig and Trudy discuss when heroes kill, are they heroes? Trudy brings up the Revenger who uses laser eyes to kill bad guys. Craig brings up the hero called Shield of Truth, who would beat Revenger because he values life more than Revenger. These two appear and fight in the streets. Cath, The Doctor and Rose looks for the two teens. Shield of Truth throws a car at the Revenger and it hits a wall, a brick flies off and a piece hits Cath’s head. As the Doctor and Rose move her to safety, Rose asks if this is Geek World. Rose asks how the Doctor knows the Revenger is the Revenger. He says, "Amazing what you can pick up after 900 years." Rose wants to know the real reason. The Doctor has a complete run of the Revenger series in the TARDIS. The Revenger’s greatest weakness is sonic vibration, does something to his battle armour. He needs to stop him with something far louder. Cath asks if the Doctor is always like this. Rose responds as the Doctor dashes off to an ice cream truck and amplified its sound using the sonic screwdriver, "What. Half finishing his sentences and dashing off to do something mad? We call those weekdays." The Doctor gets himself a double fudge whippy but extends it to either Trudy or Craig. Trudy doesn’t trust the Doctor. She tells him the Doctor needs to be removed for his own safety. Craig seems to respond to Trudy’s orders and a dark cloud moves overhead and a storm. Cath tries to stop Craig, trying to tell him to get a grip. Trudy says it is Cath’s fault, and why did she have to tell him. Cath doesn’t seem to understand. Craig yells at her that she is a teacher, just one of many who do not care about the teenagers. He says, "What if you didn’t exist?" He makes Cath vanish…and since Rose is holding onto Cath, Rose vanishes also. The Doctor yells at Craig, grabbing him up but Craig doesn’t seem to know what he just did. Trudy tells the Doctor, "It’s his power, anything he wants, any question he needs answered. We can’t stop him, we just have to go with him…to the end of the world because he wants to finish it all…"  

Trudy calms Craig down, and he seems upset that he made his teacher vanish. When the Doctor wants to use the sonic screwdriver to check the resonance, Trudy gets angry and makes Craig make a statue come to life to hold the Doctor. The Doctor’s noticed the flag did not blow in the wind and guesses this is not the real world. Rose finds herself and Cath in a place that looks like Wimbledon. They meet an older lady, Tanya Baldwin, a geography teacher from the same school Cath teaches at. She tells them Craig vanished at the same time as others…she didn’t vanish and this woman has no idea who Cath is! They are on the PTA committee together, Cath tells her. Rose has the psychic paper and she plans to use it pose as Craig’s counselor at Craig’s parents’ house. While Trudy gets ice cream for the Doctor and Craig, the Doctor asks him about her. He feels as if he’s known her for years but he can’t remember her being at school with him. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver and his wits to figure Trudy is not human, not even real. This world, she tells him, is made up of Craig’s dreams, where she can be real. The world they are in is unstable. Trudy asks Craig to wish them home and safe. Craig shuns them, the outside world is dull and hurts, nobody wants him. He puts Trudy and the Doctor in a zoo cage on wheels. Craig’s mum tells Rose and Cath that Craig vanished three weeks and five days ago. He was delivered a parcel and then in his room with it, he vanished. Rose wonders why Cath knew exactly where Craig lived and how her head wound is. Cath ignores her questions. Mrs. Phillips brings out the box…it has sigils over it, Cath recognizes them from a school lesson module on tribal markings as part of the art exam. Rose finds no hinges, no catches. There is an instruction manual and it talks about opening up a world of opportunities, a virtual world. Craig is pulling the cage riding on a statue of a horse and rider. The Doctor tells Craig it is all right that his best friend is an imaginary construct, some of the nicest people he’s ever met have been imaginary constructs. Trudy tells the Doctor that the three boys, Les Barnett, Dave Holland, and Phil Callan made Craig’s life hell at school. Craig covers the cage. At Craig’s home, Rose sees pictures of the teen as a boy and notices no friends. Craig was solitary, sensitive, and a victim of bullies. Mrs Phillips stumbles over her words as she tells them that Craig didn’t know anyone named Trudy. He’s never had a friend named Trudy. Craig has put the Doctor and Trudy in an arena. Mrs Phillips tells the two women that there was a Trudy — Craig’s imaginary friend…and she gives Rose a diary to read that says My Diary. Craig’s imagination hurt him. All sorts of monsters attack the Doctor and Trudy in the arena: a robo warrior, a dragon, an amphibian creatures, a minotaur, a zombie, a flying bat creature, and a werewolf that is dressed like a pirate with a patch over one eye. Rose reads the diary entry from June 15 about a giant robot and a dragon. Then August 12th — Trudy made him lie to mum about his bruises. They were caused by her: Trudy would make him burn himself or throw himself down stairs. Cath claims she has seen this before but it usually involves the death of a loved one, a sibling. Mrs Phillips tells them that Craig had a sister, his twin and she died from complications. To replace the sister, he made up Trudy. She blamed him for his sister’s death. They took him to a therapist and it took years to make him forget her, his imaginary sister. The Doctor figures the virtual world devices are usually safe, entertainment for families and are quantum devices of massive power and complexity. The devices are only supposed to be used for short times but Craig’s been doing this all day every day for a month. As the creatures close in, the Doctor takes a sword and puts a helmet on; telling Trudy to grab a weapon, they are going to have to fight for their lives. He faces the werewolf as Trudy picks up a sword, raises it on high, and advances on the Doctor’s turned back, "Yeah, good idea, Doctor, my life’s very important to me, I won’t let anyone put it at risk… including you!"  

The battle puts Trudy off the Doctor and he calls the amphibian a girl as he yells as his arm was cut off. It grows back. A dinosaur and a six armed insect alien enter the fight. The Doctor’s frequency is off but he thinks he can control the box. He puts the make believe monsters in cages. Trudy is in one also. The Doctor calls Craig, Craig-y boy and tells him he didn’t kill Rose and Ms. Lloyd, just expelled them from the game. He knows Trudy wants to become a real person if that happened to her: a Pinocchio in a skirt. Cath presses buttons to get them back to where they last were in the game, unsure she is sending them to that exact spot. Rose tells her they had to try…the Doctor would do it for her. The Doctor gets he and Craig into a developer’s menu. They look at his future: Hammersmith Bridge, 2034, homeless, drunk. This is only if Craig wimps out after one possible future. Another future: Craig in late 20s, sells lies for money in a telesales office, hates his job, dreams of being a carpenter. Craig asks to see a better one and they see a tombstone. He doesn’t live, he just stops. The worst one. The Doctor says, "Where there’s life, there’s…" Four years ahead, his band, Shattered Glass play live on TV and make it to number 22 and get on Top of the Pops. A different 2034, he’s a carpenter and plays in the park with his children. They see the real world. Craig thinks it is imaginary because in his mind, his mum never loved him, blamed him for his sister’s death. That is what Trudy told Craig but the Doctor doesn’t believe that is true. They return to the street and face a giant and free Trudy, who rips out trees. The Doctor warns the others back inside the library. The Doctor is not sure they can stop her but he tells Craig he has to face up to her and face up to his past. He knows there is a life out there for him, so Craig wishes to remember everything about Trudy. Trudy tells him she died for him 14 years ago and now he will take her out of this fake world. Craig reaches out his hand to her, telling her she is not his sister, but she is his guilt. He accepts that. He tells her to go to hell and she blasts away. Craig’s lack of self worth made Trudy. Whatever she thought, she wasn’t a ghost or a spirit, or his twin hidden inside his body. Rose and Cath appear, the Doctor hugging Rose, "You’re just in time for Armageddon." Rose says, "Great, I leave you alone for an hour and you destroy the whole world. Again." The Doctor says, "Everyone needs a hobby." They can’t use the TARDIS, it was dragged here by the box and is trapped too. The Box is about to reboot and delete the place and everyone in it. The instruction booklet that is with the two women is in an alien language and the two girls both read it. Rose can read it because of the TARDIS translation connection to her but Cath — the guide and Cath are one and the same. When Craig first arrived, he asked for someone to explain all this to him…and made Cath, the box rewrote the guide andd made it a teacher, Cath! She is a Cyrelleod from Happytimez Intergalactical. They make these device boxes. This one was supposed to be a gift for the exiled King of New Fraxonia. . A mistake in the post happened: Mr Phillips lived two doors down. The alien was sent to find out what happened and hotlinked to the game matrix just as the boy asked what to do. It got trapped in the game as his teacher. One wrong equation and they will all become meaningless data. They reboot and everyone ends up outside and in the real world during an afternoon or morning sunlight . The three bullies are also out now and running away from Craig. Mrs Phillips thanks Rose and hugs Craig. Craig asks his mum for a guitar. The Doctor thinks the alien returned to her employers and burned the core out so it could not be triggered again. Soon…Rose and the Doctor walk to the TARDIS at night. Rose tells him that she and Lloyd figured out that Trudy was just a ghost in the machine but the Doctor claims she was just a voice in Craig’s head. As they Vworp Vworp away in the TARDIS, Trudy’s face appears in the sky, eyes closed, looking peaceful.

Valente, a black man and Secondus see a green fire in the sky. At first, Secondus thinks it a fire the Silures set. The pair are in a Legion protecting the Roman Empire. Valente rushes to see it and a green light envelopes him. Two decades into the new century, a man named Giovanni lectures on how the old things of the old world drag down humanity from moving into the future. A green light attacks him in front of his friend, Altea. It is a few years after the Great War (WW1) as Rose and the Doctor ride a tram in Milan. Rose wanted an ice cream and meant Brighton Pier. The Doctor finds Marco's that makes a terrific ice cream. They see a poster about a group called the Futurists, artists and architects who want to embrace the machine age and leave history behind. Kraftwerk wouldn't have happened without them. Eventually, he tells Rose they became Mussolini's fascists. A stampede of Italians running from green lights arrives. Altea is there and tells them the glow took Giovanni. A futuristic city is rising up among the older ones. The Doctor helps an old lady and tells Rose to get the people to the older buildings. A piece of rubble hits Altea in the head so Rose helps her. A building rises up underneath Rose and Altea. Rose tells the other woman, "I bet the Doctor's got all the anwsers." The Doctor walking alone to investigate says, "I am utterly utterly clueless." He wonders how a Nimbly nightmare can come up in the middle of one of Italy's oldest cities. Altea tells Rose her name and adds her last name: Orsi. When Altea tells Rose she loves Giovanni, Rose recalls that there was a boy at school she fancied. He was into Pantera and power metal stuff. She bought all their cds. She can't listen to them now but she still kind of likes Planet Caravan. The Doctor goes into one small building, the lecture hall. He finds Valente on the stage, unconscious. Rose and Altea arrive and see him, Rose calling Valente the Rock. The instant city is already looking crumbly and mangy. The Doctor helps Valente toward the TARDIS, happy that the TARDIS didn't take a ride upward on a building. The birds have stopped singing. Rose guesses it was because the four of them sort of swam into the time wave. Rose is proud of her own way of thinking about what has happened. Inside TARDIS, the Doctor gets no radio signals anywhere so he sets it listening for something else. They hear five heartbeats, just their own. Rose wonders if everyone died but the Doctor says, "No, it's much much worse. According to the TARDIS sensors, the Earth has been dead…for centuries." Rose, The Doctor, and their two extra passengers exit the TARDIS and are in Wales, Caerleon, 20 miles from Cardiff. The TARDIS did something similar to opening a tree and reading the rings in it to see how old it is. It found out Valente, who they know as Hajor, since that is the only word Valente spoke thus far, is from late third century, give of take a few months. He really figures he has to sort out the TARDIS calibration circuits. The Doctor hopes to find out why Giovanni was exchanged for Valente/Hajor and also to find out what wiped out the human race in 1925. Altea asks Rose if the Doctor knows everything. He answers, "NO idea what caused the overnight passing of the Ligrion Horde or why the Chnara Crystalline Fields always reverberate at a perfect C sharp. And is it excuse me while I kiss the sky or escuse me while I kiss this guy in Purple Haze?" A Roman legion halts them. The Doctor asks if this is the way to Caerleon, which their lot call Isca. Barbarian attackers jump down from trees. A Roman leader says, "Slay the Silurians." One soldier hits the confused Doctor from behind with a spear but Rose jumps on that person's back. The Romans take the girls and retreat while the attackers slay many. The attackers seem to all have tattoos and one has Wolverine like hair. This one tells another called Aeron about Valente being a Roman. Aeron was about to kill Valente. Olwyn, the seeming leader helps the Doctor up and stops his men from killing Valente, when the Doctor vouches for him. Back at their huts, Olwyn tells the Doctor that Romans have massed nearby and are stealing the local women. The boss Roman, Massimo, has a new wizard that has come back in time to their time. Rose asks her captors about their chariot. When they arrive at Caerleon it looks like the city that rose up. Valente tells the Doctor his name and that he was an auxiliary. As he and Giovanni passed each other as they were exchanged in some impossible place, his thoughts touched Giovanni's. Giovanni has consorted with demons called the Hajor, who have given him the means to rule and ruin Rome. Valente tells them he serves the ideals of a better world of justice and democracy. Olywen tells the Doctor he has the support of the entire Silurian Liberation Front…all five men. He alsso tells the Doctor that Derek is a Pict but they don't like to talk about it. Other local people have become so used to the Roman presence that they forgot the Romans are invaders. They want to keep the spirit of Caratacus alive. Caratacus gave the Romans a bloody nose over 200 years ago. Rose and Altea are thrown into a cell with other kidnapped women. The women there tells them that the new wizard of the Legate build the new buildings they saw. The wizard is going to attack Rome itself. Giovanni was obsessed by the futurist architect Sant'elia, the designer of the buildings. Rose tries to cheer Altea up, "Bet you the Doctor's planning some brilliant scheme t get us out of here." Just then the hear Valente says, "Forward, Silurian Dogs!" Rose adds, "Or maybe not…" As they move to the room where the Legate is, Secondus finds them and is happy to see Valente, telling him he has been gone for months. The Legate hears the Doctor's warning but talks to Giovanni who's last name he gives as Lucio. The rebels attack the two men but the two vanish in a green lightning…and with the pair, tthe Doctor, Valente, and two of the rebels (including Aeron) also vanish. They are on some walkway in a blue/green sky of giant jelly fish like monsters. The Doctor was not expecting anything like this. Giovanni says, "Welcome gentlemen, to the realm of the Hajor, the new Lords of Time!" Valente asks the Doctor where they are while the Romans and rebels in the real world argue. The Doctor guesses they are either in an alien dimension or a performance of the Starlight Express. Aeron thinks the place is Annwn, the other world where women are made of flowers and blokes get turned into pigs. The Doctor states that sounds like fun but that's not where they are. The Hajor knew the Doctor to be a time lord and they know him in particular. Giovanni tells the Doctor the Hajor are more a concept than a race, they exist to smooth out paradoxes created by time travelers. They needed Giovanni so they took him and put Valente in his place to keep balance. The Doctor insults the Hajor by telling them, "You're the time stream equivalent of the blokes with shovels who follow the elephants in the Disneyland Parade? Course that means I'm the elephant…" ; The fall of the Time Lords led to this. This is one of times nexus points. Giovanni will unite all factions and restore order by force. Altea poses as a slave trader and they let her out and her entourage of slave girls including Rose. Rose's paper worked to this end. Valente attacks Giovanni and gets zapped and the Doctor says Valente is dead. The Doctor tells Massimo that he believed the leader was still Massimo, symbol of the Roman Empire. The Doctor laments over Valente but wonders why the Hajor did that: it was a really human response. Secondus asks Darius about the escape of the Doctor's women…Secondus realizing that Darius was fooled by reading the psychic paper…Dariuss cannot read! Valente died for justice and honor, integrity. The Doctor asks Giovanni the 8th Edict of Futurist philosophy: time and space died yesterday. Using Giovanni's own device for showing the time stream, he views the cities crumbling to dust, and the fact that he killed the whole human race. Rose is confronted by soldiers and she leads the women to fight. She tells Mererid to do it for Bodicea whom Mererid seems not to know of. Rose tells her and the other women to think of the soldiers as tarts who copped off with their boyfriends and spilled the last bottle of WKD. The soldiers trap the women in a dead end. In 500 years from Giovanni's time, the kill power will reach 21st century standards. He views this on the device. There is one big war where everyone dies. Even as Giovanni was being used by the Hajor, his love for Altea manipulated them to protect her. As they view the soldier about to kill Altea, the Doctor talks Giovanni into saving her. The Doctor thinks the Hajor have a slightly more frowny beak action, meaning they are not happy with him. The dimension they are in is what is left of the Hajor world. Giovanni distracts the soldier Secondus who has Altea but Rose knocks his sword away. Secondus seems to stab Giovanni by mistake. The Time War devastated the Hajor dimension. The Doctor is truly sorry for that. Valente wakes up, the Doctor lied that he was dead. The Doctor held back the pain and the energy but he tells Valente it is only a matter of time before he dies from it. He is also linked to the Hajor. Using the energy inside him, Valente fires it back at the Hajor. He banishes them. Aeron, the body of Valente, and the Doctor are blasted back to Rose in Roman times. Rose tells them that Giovanni is dead. Massimo tells all that Valente, whom Secondus is cradling, is deserving of full dignity in passing that is only afforded to a full citizen. He will move East now. The Doctor takes Altea and the body of Giovanni back to their own time. The Doctor tells her to remember that Giovanni saved her and humanity and to not remember his dark ideas. He tells her another war is coming. He tells her more dark people and ideas are coming. He tells her to make sure she is not a part of that darkness.

3000 AD-ish the Doctor claims that he and Rose are on a Magellan Class Star Cruiser with big engines (which he loves). Readings have lead he and Rose here, reading that indicate a temporal dilation effect aka a weird time thing. Time spillage is nasty so he has to have a word with the driver. He uses sonic screwdriver setting 41-B to open the ISO Lock. Clifford Banksy Banks, a duck billed alien humanoid shoots foam on the Doctor’s face. As he and Sticks Rooster take them deeper into the ship’s interior, the Doctor realizes this is the band Pakafroon Wabster. Banks is on bass, Sticks the drummer; keyboardist is Fluke and vocal duties include Reef Holloway. When the Doctor figures the band is on year 300, Rose says, “Oh God, it’s Fleetwood Mac!” The Doctor and Rose pretend to be from their label. Jacey, the tour manager meets them as well as the founding father Wabster. Wabster was supposed to have died years ago in a rollerblading incident. He’s been dug up and animatronically re animated. After meeting him, Rose needs to sit down and finds out Reef is a pedal immersion addict, he must bath his feet every four or five hours or terrible things happen. Rose tells him he reminds her of her mum. Jacey tells the Doctor they cannot slow down, they must make it to Malphapalooze for one last attempt to save their careers. Banks asks what in the name of Capt Beaky was that explosion that occurs. Part of the ship has been blown apart?the Engine Part. Rose finds holes in all the spacesuits. Fluke is fed up with dirty Banks and fires him?frying him with a gun. At the same time, the shiip flies off course into an asteroid belt. The Doctor has met some idiots in his life but he thinks this lot takes the cake and the tin too. Someone reprogrammed the navigation computer to play Tetris, Jacey thinks it is Reef but the Doctor believes it is sabotage. It would take hours to reconfigure it but the Doctor says fortunately he’s a genius and does it in seconds. Fluke holds a gun on Rose and threatens the Doctor to make sure he gets them to the gig on time. The Doctor steers the ship away from an asteroid that was very close to hitting them or them hitting it. Wabster jumps Fluke and saves Rose but gets fried himself. He also electrified Fluke. All the fire extinguishers are empty and the place is on fire. They plan to abandon ship. Reef wants to wait a few more minutes so the Doctor abandons him, saying Reef made his choice. There is only one remaining escape pod that requires a Cypher ID. The Doctor figures the saboteur will not step forward so he jettisons the only pod using a big red button. They will run for the TARDIS?the Doctor can get past the vacuum to the TARDIS, he can survive in a vacuum for a couple of minutes, asks her not to ask him how, it’s just a knack he’s got. Suddenly more of the ship gives way into space and Lacey, Sticks, and Rose are pulled out of the hole in the ship into space?tthe Doctor clinging onto a step ladder handhold. Then the whole ship explodes!

Rose and the Doctor arrive on the ship and feel they’ve already done these parts before. Rose asks if this is Groundhog Day. The time spillage has caused a chronic hysteresis (MEGLOS) snagged in a time loop. After falling into space and coldness, Rose and the Doctor were back in the TARDIS. The Doctor gets out of the way of the duck bill shooting foam at him. They are doomed to go around in circles like a stuck record unless they can break the cycle. The Doctor tries what he thinks is coriander but it is Sticks’ biryani. The Doctor warns them that someone in the room is a murderer but he has to amend it to someone in this room will be a murderer. The engines explode and the Doctor falls into Lacey. Banks asks what in the name of Lt. Pigeon was that. The Doctor returns Fluke’s fallen gun. They find the holes in the spacesuits and Fluke blames Bank’s disgusting Joss sticks. He can’t shoot it because the Doctor removed the power pack. Someone has spiked Fluke’s curry with a psychosis agent and that tastes like coriander. The Doctor tweaks Wabster’s programming to send him to the engine room. He powers down the warp induction thrusters. The Doctor reprograms the navigation computer faster than before and there is no more time spillage and no more chronic hysteresis. Whatever happens now happens for the final time. The Doctor thinks everything that can go wrong has gone wrong and ?there’s an explosion. The Doctor puts ouut the fire with Reef’s foot bath water, telling him no one’s allowed to die this time.As Reef worries about chilly feet, the Doctor reveals he has the key to the escape pod?he lifted it from the real killer?Jacey. Jacey tells thethem she had to put up with smells, dirt, and whines turning them into a success. Sticks finds that the Doctor and Rose not being from the label is a surprise twist. Rose tells him to get a sense of perspective. Jacey has a gun. The band was going to get dropped but now if they die in tragic circumstances they can become a legend. There is a major back catalog campaign, box sets, tribute concerts, the Pakafroon Wabster Anthology, digitally re-mastered Stickers on old albums. The Doctor asks, “What do you want, boys? You could become the next Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain?or you can grow old disgracefully, get bald and fat and spendd the rest of your lives going to parties with supermodels young enough to be your grand daughter?” Wabster tells him he does not want to be a great dead rock star and attacks Jacey, burning her up and himself too. However, thanks to the Doctor’s tinkering, Wabster recovers quickly, the electrostatic jolt stimulated the neural pathways and rebooted him. He seems to be fully human again, back from the grave. The Doctor tells the band they have been stuck in the time loop for a couple of centuries at least, stuck in a rut, time to find a new groove now. He puts them all in the pod to escape while he and Rose run for the TARDIS?planning for the Doctor to holdd his breath again and go out?but the Doctor exits the TARDIS, having gone back aa couple of minutes?now there are two of him. He will meet her here in a moment.. As the pod escapes, the ship blows up, Rose asks if they will go through all this again. The Doctor thinks this was a goodnight Vienna this time, no more repeat performances. He wonders if they will get a thank you in the sleeve notes of the band’s album?

Tramping through the TARDIS, Rose passes a plant room, some bins, and the clothing room. It sounds as if The Doctor is watching the telly with Mickey. An alien talks about Triz, a Salamandrel who has to be reunited with his long lost tail. There is also an Arachnon marriage in trouble; Roger has a problem with Sue. His girlfriend is trying to eat him. Rose walks through the TARDIS doors into a the Venexxa Skank show, an alien stage show on TV with thousands of aliens around. Mickey is brought in with TV artwork on his green t shirt. Rose thinks they are being manipulated by some kind of alien scheme but Mickey won’t be shouted down. The Doctor told him what Rose agreed to on planet Iagnos. Using the holo imager, they look back?Rose was stuck in a cell for three ddays. The Doctor was held up. Acolytes told her they would feed her to the green eyed monster and it would eat her soul from the inside. Phalia, a mercenary from Amazastia was enlisted to help him rescue Rose, his just good friend. Her Valkeryies use stun rays on the alien monks and high priest to rescue the Doctor’s platonic acquaintance. In the TARDIS, Phalia asks if there is a sauna, they always massage their bodies in scented oils after victory in battle. Phalia’s scientists have been mystified as to why their planet has only been populated by stunningly attractive women of 18 to 20 years of age. She has appreciated intensive sessions in biological exploration. Rose name checks Xena, sluttier princess as well as Sarah Jane Smith and Madame De Pompadour. The Doctor asks Mickey to show the Amazastians the rest of the TARDIS. The Doctor calls Rose jealous in his manic way and then promises her they will dump Mickey on Earth and it will just be the two of them again. The alien audience agrees with Mickey and one alien wants him to slap her. The hostess brings out Mickey’s secret…Phalia. When the Doctor set the course for Earth, Mickey says, something went wrong. Loose TARDIS energy sent Rose into a time coma, the Doctor told him she would be out for months. The Amazastians were stuck on Earth and Mickey offered Phalia his spare room. Rose wants to find the Doctor but he comes in onto the stage dressed in a white sweat jacket and white sweat pants and sneakers with sunglasses on his head. He says he thinks if they can all sort out their problems on a tv talk show, the world would be a better place. He’s been living on the Powell Estate for three months. A big coat in summer would have attracted the local narcotic officers. Hostess Venexxa brings out Jackie! Rose whines but Jackie tells her to shut up and stop thinking it is all about her. Two buses there and back to the clinic Jackie had Rose that way. Jackie and the Doctor tell Rose that he and Jackie are in love. In flashback, we see Jackie and the Doctor watching TV (a show about a man who was decked by his own deckchair). And Jackie dressed as a fairy, feeling at home in a bar (in a pub from QUEER AS FOLK). Jackie also fights for a dress in a store. Jackie and the Doctor kiss on the lips. This makes an alien worm thing come out of Rose’s ear so Mickey can zap it with a big ray cannon gun. The Iagnon acolytes put it in her ear so that it could devour her essence. It loves to eat jealous emotions so it overfed itself and expelled itself. It gets jealous of the Doctor, insulting him in a way, jealous of his eyes, his cleanness and his lack of having to sit in people’s ears. It eats its own tail and swallows itself, eating itself into oblivion. The aliens are not aliens, but actors that the Doctor found in Edinburgh, destitute mime artists forced to walk against the wind for money. He had tried ways to make Rose jealous: Mickey with a girlfriend, the Amazastians... He had to go to plan Z – Jackie’s idea: having him snog Jackie. Jackie wonders if those alien monks put more than one of those monsters in Rose’s ear. The Doctor says, “Erm, yeah, maybe?” Jackie jumps the Doctor and kisses him some more, on the floor.

Sandhurst Military Academy, Camberley: during a Passing Out ceremony parade, two young men are talking when they are not supposed to be. One has a book coming out that he names as "I Rocked Iraq"� by publishers McRyan and Nabb. The Brigadier tries to stop them with words and they begin to mock him and call him Colonel, even though he is retired. They continue so the Brig turns and grabs them by the ears and is about to knock more sense into them when a strange whirlwind whisks him away from where he stood. Flashback: an old man, smells of coal dust and aniseed, he's travelled in time; 8 years old at his grandpapa's house. The Brig is in an alien world, hailed by statue like, bird like, crow like beings. The Doctor once said, "Stone the crows,"�when he arrived. He tells this to the Brig, who says, "I don't even have to ask, do I. Hello, Doctor!" The Doctor hugs him, "Come "˜ere, big fella, it's been too long."�The Doctor has a court jester's hat on as he and the Brig intro themselves to the aliens. The Brig is warkeeper elect. He can order them to make the Doctor dance on hot coals as court jester. Dragons attack and start killing crow aliens using fire and napalm or something like it. Hawk Leader carries the Doctor and the Brig off. Trolls, orcs, and ogres at the gates; trebuchets chucking phoenix eggs, centaurs and goblins massing on the flanks…a heavy battle beloow them with axes, swords, and spears. The Doctor uses sound military strategy (the Brig comments, "And from you…"�) to have his archers readyy and his shieldmen to take the first fire. The Doctor calls one of the dragons Smaug. His aid brings down the dragons, who shoot one fireball a minute. Hawk leader can mentally communicate with his archers and shieldmen. The Doctor says, "I only hope I made pincushions of those fantastic creatures for the right reasons…cos if not, I'll get angry and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."� The Doctor only landed half an hour ago. Captured, Tardis impounded, escape, captured again, threatened with bone crushing torture, brain scanned…and then the Brig turned up. They are brought to the Warkeeper where the TARDIS is chained up and a female elf seems to serve him. The Doctor figures the warkeeper is old as the stars. The Brig recalls his grandpapa dying. The War Keeper tells the Brig that he is in the Slough of the Disunited Planets. They've made war here since the suns were cold. The Doctor says the Disunited Planets are legendary: they made a radioactive hell of an entire galaxy. Any sane space traveller avoids the place. The WarKeeper's dying slowly has caused him to lose influence over the creatures and they shall soon overrun the Keep. The Hawks are loyal but blocks of stone. When the Doctor arrived, "WE"� reached into his mind to find the Brig to be the greatest leader the Doctor's even encountered. The Brig says he's touched. The Brig takes out his gun and puts it to his own head…it's only a gun for showw, he whispers to the Doctor. The Warkeeper tells his Hawk Leader to bring forth Captain Yates. Michael Yates, prospective MEP for Upper Wardleswick… represents Wardleswick Immigration Concern. He came from the right area and this Yates is the right age and right name…but noot UNIT's former Captain Yates. This one has a boat in Folkestone Harbour, the Kentish Spirit. He's also said things about Poles which made him unpopular with the Metropolitan Elite. As the WarKeeper nears death, the Hawks are frozen, having been dependent on him. The elf girl tells the Brig she is the slave and bets the Brig to kill him before he recovers. He is not someone who does executions so he denies her this. The trolls break in!

The Doctor tells the elf girl and Mike to get back; he and Tiger Lethbridge Stewart have plenty to give the trolls. A siren sounds and the trolls run away! The War Keeper wakes up. The trio leave the Keep and head into fog and fall down a hill. The Brig jokes he will need a hip replacement. They see a wounded green goblin who has a knife. Yates wants to kill it but the Brig stops him. The Doctor touches the goblin's bracelet and the being vanishes. The Brig detects the Doctor's been in a war. A woman named Tilly comes and sends a rope down (which she fetches from her meat wagon). She called the Brig handsome (the Doctor comments, "Someone's pulled."�). The Doctor asks how Doris is. Brig flashback to a woman. The Meat Wagon is on treads and as they ride, the Brig falls asleep. At Tilly's field station, they meet Gilly and Milly and eat plenty of "honest vittles."� Tilly is talking on a phone to the elf girl who is telling them about the weakest of the trio: Yates, who is already going on how he fights for the PC Brigade. The elf girl is named Lilly and a Hawk catches her at this. Tilly pulls Yates off and out while Milly and Gilly turn into winged demon like orcs ready to eat the Doctor and the Brig. The Doc figures they reconstituted their molecules like atomic tofu. He wonder where the molecules came from in the first place. The aliens are alien carrion feeders, taking what they find on battlefields and what they find are genetic mush. All the fallen on the battlefield are clone, recycled. Hawks arrive and open fire on Milly and Gilly, who fly out the tent top. Ungrateful, the Doctor calls the Hawks, who go quiet suddenly, idiots. Tilly is putting the crown on Yates, the War Keeper looking dead. The Doc and Brig ride Hawks toward the Keep. Every day the WarKeeper churns out armies of creatures from his mountain. The Brig tells the Doctor he is seventy-odd and cannot keep up with his new Yoof-Speak. The Doctor explains it is not DND but RND (Research and Development). The whole planet is a lab where the rats invent. They invent weapons and techniques while the warkeeper stores the info and exports  it someplace else. There's a nod to the song lyrics, "War, hawah, good God, what is it good for."� Inside the Keep Tilly tells the Doctor he's too late, Yates's living brain will take them to another world…to his war…to Upper Wardleswick. The three orcs, the Hawks, and the crowned, controlled Yates appear there before civilians!

Breaking news comes from the Wardleswick Incident including a news report that troops just back from Basra have been called in. A former Wardleswick resident turned X factor contestant is going to give his reaction (he’s got green hair, ear rings, and an eyebrow ring). Michael Yates arrived, declared himself Warkeeper and that he will avenge the carnage down the road at Hastings of nearly a thousand years ago. He will make war on France. One girl thinks the flying hawks might be angels of death and the other says, “What-everrr.” They’ve come fifty billion miles through hyperspace. The demons take Ram, someone Mike plays golf with and he orders them not to eat him. There’s also a man in a hoodie and the other Mike Yates (older and possibly ex-UNIT Mike Yates), on the council and an environmentalist and a vegetarian. A sniper shoots the crown off Mike so the Doctor (in his blue suit) takes it and puts it on and tries to get the Hawks to do head, shoulder, knees and toes. One demon rips it off the Doctor’s head, it can only be used by a brain that’s simple and unsophisticated---to which the Doctor says, “OH. Human.” The Hawks bring in the sniper…the Brig, who refuses the demon offer to serve them and command the Hawks for them. One demon takes a gun and shoots the Brig…not the real one. An army of Brig clones (the Doctor says, “Splendid Chaps, all of him!”) attacks. The Doctor used the War Keeper’s clone factories to turn out a new model. The Doctor brought them all to Earth using the TARDIS. A demon puts the crown on Mike and dissipates the clones. The Hawks, cloned also, vanish. Tanks arrive. The Doctor goes to the pub where the real Brigadier is. Demons arrive and threaten to take him hostage while he watches cricket. When he pulls a pistol, the demons take on female human form to fool him into not shooting. The gun is just for show anyhow. He flashes back to his being put out to pasture. The Brig is going to fight them but he catches the crown as the Doctor throws it to him. The Doctor is impressed, “They could use you in Australia right now.” The Brig sends the “ladies” to blazes and a whirlwind takes them away. The Doctor says the species the demon girls are from are harpies from the Detritus Belt around the Infernal Moon of Bravo 11 Zebra, informally known as Blazes. The Brig says, “Well, it was the first thing…hang on, you’re just making that up!” The troops yaaay the Brig and the Doctor calls him the man of the hour. Later, police take Mike away for questioning and one female police woman calls him sunshine. The Doctor shakes hands with the Brig who tells the Doctor, “I suppose so. You’d better go and fight that good fight, but mind you don’t get caught in the crossfire.” The Doctor salutes respect to the Brig and leaves, vanishing. The Brig smiles and says, “Til next time, Doctor.”

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.

A blond young man reads the paper on a double decker bus. He ponders that weirdo types always sit next to him on the bus and how he can avoid them. Someone, turning out to be the Doctor wearing an aerial antenna on his head to confuse the bio scanner tracker of alien assassins from the future, is the next one to bother him. The Doctor asks to use his cell phone to call 27th Century Mars where Martha is. The man sitting on the bus lends him the cell phone. All the while the reader can see the thoughts of this man, who believes the Doctor is a nutter, a sci fi fan who probably lives with his mother. The cover of the Evening Standard he is reading has a story about the mayor vanishing. A flask the Doctor shows this man has soup in it made from the DNA of the Mayor of London. Time assassins from the future are chasing the soup to extinguish the Mayor’s entire lineage. The Doctor fixes the phone to call Martha. Detective Inspector Moloch, an alien body guard for the Mayor, is with her outside the Science Compound on Mars. They wear helmets and spacesuits. After the Doctor vanished in a makeshift, poorly constructed time machine made by the President’s people, squids showed up so she, DI Moloch and President Lithops raced outside. The Doctor lured the assassins away from the Mayor by creating a decoy Mayor DNA soup, rewiring a Freeview Box and buying an Oyster Card. The Doctor is the only one who could use the machine without becoming as fatally mutated as the assassins. They have to go back in to bring the Doctor back. Lithops says he has a bout of asthma brought on by almost having never existed. Moloch claims where he goes, the President must go. Two assassins in a Lada follow the bus. Moloch makes an attack on the base and blasts mutant assassins down with his ray guns. One of the time assassins, who are green and sport cephalopod (spelled caphalapod) beards, is waiting at the Doctor’s next bus stop. The female bus driver does not have time for jokes and the alien is stalled for a bit. Martha reverses the controls on the time machine as Moloch takes care of the mutants—he, at first, though there was just one but there were two. The man on the bus does not see the Doctor vanish. The Doctor tells Lithops that his scientists are just as dangerous as the assassins. They have taken stolen or scavenged items and made a time machine that is death trap. If anyone travels in it, their genetic code is scrambled, and eventually they will die. The Doctor rigged it to start a terminal overload and when it explodes the assassins in London will have their connections terminated and they will vanish. As it explodes, Martha and the Doctor head for the TARDIS. One of the assassins sits down next to the blond man and asks where the Mayor of London is. He pulls a gun on the man, all unnoticed by the man himself. The time assassin then vanishes. The man thinks he will start riding his bike to work…

September 12, 1915: adventurers in snow banter with each other: a biologist named Dr. Clark, James Wordie, and apparent leader Mr. Frank Wild. There is also a photographer named Jimmy—who thinks he sees something in the snow. Tentacles come out of the snow and grab Clark, who believes it is trying to communicate with him. Martha, outside TARDIS, admits to the Doctor she was wrong: the Antarctic is beautiful and she wants to leave. The atmospheric density jacket he’s given her should keep her warm. He has a soft drink and popcorn as they wait for the start of and eventually watch the aurora australis, light emitted by particles excited by energetic charged particles travelling along magnetic field lines into the earth’s upper atmosphere. He puts on his glasses and sees a hole in it as if something’s broken through. He uses the psychic paper to pretend to be Dr. John Smith from the Society. The Doctor sees the downed Clark’s hand to be translucent. Jimmy uses his box brownie camera to take a picture of Martha. It is a Kodak Brownie number 0. Jimmy introduces himself as James (Francis) Hurley. When they are questioned, Martha tells them the name of their ship is HMS Fantastic. They go to the ship, the Endurance, ship of Ernest Shackleton’s ship. Shackleton failed to get to the South Pole twice. This was the Imperial Trans Antarctic attempt, an attempt to cross via the South Pole. He fails at this too but the Doctor does not want to reveal that due to the web of time. Shackleton thinks the Doctor is a spy from someone else such as Amundsen or Mawson. The psychic paper does not work on Shackleton. Rosie once took Shackleton to the Palladium to see a mentalist and those illusions didn’t work on him either. Locked up in the hold with Jimmy as company, the Doctor finds a jar with something egg like in it and glowing. Mr Wild has a bit of blood covered alien tentacle in his hand. Jimmy tells Martha they are here to know they’ve been somewhere that no one else has been. Martha compares that to her and the Doctor, they are the same but they do not take prisoners or photographs. Shackleton’s driven, determined, that is why the paper won’t work on him. A possessed Clark attacks Shackleton and Wild in a dark room. Clark has seen them and their minds. The ice, he says, wants them. Clark gets outside and climbs the rigging as something attacks the ship. Jimmy lets the Doctor and Martha out. As a huge alien thing, octopus-T-Rex-like rises up out of the ice with tentacles grabbing Jimmy, on the rigging, Clark wants to get a good view of their deaths…

It opens with an entry from the diary of James Francis Hurley, Sept 19th, 1915. The Doctor tells Shackleton that bullets won’t hurt the thing. Shackleton orders Wordie and Wild to man the harpoons. Martha notices the thing is made of ice while the Doctor tells her inside is a beating heart beneath the crystalline life form and there are veins. Shackleton orders McEllroy and Macklin with him as the harpoons hardly bother the thing. Shackleton points a revolver at it. He scares the monster away. The Doctor explains his sonic screwdriver to Macklin, “suitable for medical readings, blowing up mad computers and well, putting screws into things.” Clark is being changing into something inhuman. His blood stream is carrying something malign that is rewriting his DNA. The Doctor tells Shackleton he is a practical man and won’t put the Doctor and Martha back into the hold because the Doctor is good in a fight and can make a mean omelette. Jimmy tells Martha that Shackleton always wanted to be the first to reach the South Pole, the first to reach the other side of the Antarctic. When the Doctor talks about the fact that he is here to improve the food, Jimmy tells him that in a week they may have to eat the dogs! Wordie tells Shackleton that Clark is going to die. Morning brings no light. An expedition goes out to hunt the monster. The Doctor whispers to Martha he is very worried: everyone in the Endurance Expedition is supposed to survive. That fact made Shackleton a hero. Everyone lived. Martha asks him if that is the reason he is going along with the hunt: to get history back on track. They view penguins running from something. The monster comes up under the group, knocking one sled cart over. Martha finds a strange glowing shard and the Doctor touches it and glows and seems translucent to an alien ice creature that is humanoid shaped. It thinks they must study the Doctor further and orders the Mind Core to terminate the experiment. The beast blows up and samples are taken. With the storm worsening, they have to set up camp on an ice ridge, waiting for the snow to clear. The Doctor felt the minds of the aliens. They killed the creature. The Doctor opens a shard of the creature and finds a rubbery, blubbery bit inside. It was once a whale. In a nutshell, they changed it to something more ice-like. Clark is trying to fight off something the aliens want him to do and tries to leave. Frank Wild finds Clark trying to leave. When Wild points a gun at him, Clark spits an icy breath as him and gives him a bit of frostbite. Robert Clark leads the pursuing group, including the Doctor and Martha to a cave. In front of it, three of the aliens emerge from the ground. The middle one says, “The Skith receive you all with pleasssure!”

The Skith fire ice knives into the hands of the men with guns. The Doctor tells Shackleton to stand down to save his men’s lives and Shackleton listens to him. On a flying upside-down top, the aliens bring them into an ice cave called Oppressor One. The Doctor jokes that their new home will need some nice curtains and get the central heating fixed…gets spruced up a bit. Martha mentions their spaceship looks grown like crystals in a dish. The Doctor explains it is rift technology, old science and that the ship made a hole. The possessed Clark explains the Mindcore which is the home of the aliens’ greatest minds, collects, advises, and monitors. The Doctor mentions “we” had something like this back home but then the aliens ask about his home he lies. He tells them Cheltenham. The aliens take Martha and the others for study and the Doctor threatens the aliens if the others and Martha are ever hurt. One alien puts a hand over the Doctor’s mouth for him to be quiet. Shackleton is quiet; James admits to Martha he’s scared as the humans are in a large cavern. Here, there is a giant octopus in a stone, ice tank, a squid in another, and a giant dinosaur like sea monster in a third. In the center is a giant sized half human, half pig trapped in ice. The Doctor wakes up upside-down with an ice cream headache from hell. In with him, is a fire being. It explain they are explorers, scientists, pursuers of truth. They experiment, cultivate specimens. When asked about himself, the Doctor lies again: son of a butcher and a baker, gluten intolerant, and a vegetarian. He says mealtimes were a nightmare. The fire like being starts to torture the Doctor to get the truth. In the larger cavern, the aliens explain to Martha how they were experimenting with a whale and introducing Skith DNA to it, when it escaped and made contact with Clark and the field morphing, started to change him as well. The alien tells Martha he likes her and her inquisitive mind. He explains they are of the four galaxies and collectors prime of the crystal sea. They are the first to see Earth. The giant pig monster man is a Byndalk and it breaks free. Skith One destroys it at the suggestion of the Mind Core. It was the last of its species and the aliens claim to feel bad about it. The Doctor’s mind shows the alien torturing him images: a Gelth (possibly something else) or a shadowy creature like a witch or ghost; a Daemon, three Daleks, Sutek, a robot mummy, and a Sontaran. Some of these are known to the alien torturing him and these some have been encountered by the Skith. The Doctor claims he’s a writer of fiction and a quiet, stay at home lad. As Martha is taken to a stone table to be studied, Shackleton reminds Clark of how he gave him hell in front of the whole crew and irritates Clark so Clark can fight back. As Clark moves to the control console before the aliens he punched down can regroup, the MindCore calls to him to finish changing. He uses a switch to terminate the aliens and they ice blast apart. The fire creature with the Doctor has the TARDIS, found and retrieved by the MindCore. They figure the Doctor is alien. The alien explains they prize knowledge above all else. That alone had value in an uncertain universe. Their race credo: if you are not the first, you are nothing. Their Ownworld can see Oppressor One and know the Doctor has beaten them to the “prize”. This means they have failed and the alien says, “And the Skith do not like to fail!” From its hands, it zaps the Doctor in an ice ray, firing at his head…

The Mindcore reports to Ownworld about what has happened. Their expedition has failed, another expedition has arrived before them and therefore any knowledge already gathered deemed useless. The Skithship Oppressor One has taken flight. Martha and the others escape during the Byndalk giant’s escape. It was being made into a hybrid. The Doctor is nearly frozen to death but Martha gets him down, “Why are you always doing this to me?” He tells her the Byndalk homeworld was frozen and they are extinct. Clark tells them the expedition leader is Control Annex and he began Maximum Conversion, the final phase. The Skith cannot allow other races to acquire the same knowledge as themselves so when they are finished gathering info and samples, they use their ship to freeze everything. Any remaining sentients are turned in Skithself, then either recovered or commanded to destroy each other. All that is left are ruins and snow. The SKith have made other races wither: the Viskili, the Byndalk, and the Mammox. There is also a frog faced alien race seen destroyed by these alien Skith. The Doctor has programmed his sonic screwdriver with coordinates for the Endurance. All Martha has to do is point it at the console and click. He orders her to go, “This is our life, Martha Jones. This is what we do.” The Doctor tells her to keep Clark inside the TARDIS, the inside exists outside of time so he shouldn’t change. The Doctor goes to the Mindcore and tells them to tell him where the Annex is and he’ll let them off the hook, send them someplace nice. They attack him. He jumps onto a flying ice chunk and flees from them. One of their shots hits him. The Doctor arrives at Oppressor One, taking the Skithself into himself. Annex, the red creature of crystal like that looks like fire asks him if he is a Daxamite or a Dominator. He tells it a Time Lord, which its never heard of. Clark comes outside the TARDIS and becomes almost fully Skith and he’s starting not to mind. He attacks Martha. Shackleton attacks Annex and saves the Doctor from it. He’s sorry as he throws it off a cliff. A large Skith, from a huge light area from their Ownworld, tells them the Doctor, now blue and invaded by SKith life, cannot be returned to normal. Shackleton and the Doctor press the Control Annex at one time. This stops Clark from attacking Martha and James, who came to help Martha. The Doctor and Shackleton have opened a rift in space and the Oppressor One departs. The Doctor and Shackleton are on the Oppressor’s remains headed for the sun. The Ownworld SKith tells the pair it sees them and that they do not forget. Skith Mindcore retreats to its Ownworld, the Doctor returning to normal. Clark returns to normal as well, asking why he is soaked. The iceberg the Doctor is on begins to melt. Shackleton will become the first man to visit the sun. He and Shackleton laugh at this. The TARDIS starts to appear so the Doctor says, “Oh no, she didn’t!” Martha reversed the settings on the screwdriver. “Doesn’t anyone listen to a word I say?” The Doctor asks as he runs into the TARDIS with Shackleton. James writes in his diary. James wanted to say yes to Martha’s invitation to take them someplace. After the TARDIS leaves, the expedition will focus on survival, head to Paulet Island, 250 miles west. James will leave all evidence of the SKith behind but he takes a picture of Martha with him, something he will remember for the rest of his life.

A warning is given out from research base Truro (a false warning) telling all to stay away and not approach: there is a galactic plague. Valis, high arbiter of the darkness arrives, in a cloak. He is given permission to land by Kraarn of the Kraagaaron. Valis claims to have come a couple of parsecs. At the conference, Kraarn (a skeleton faced alien), along with Bolog (a frog man), and Zargath (a yellow-ish reptile man with a light on an antena) claim to have been defeated by the Doctor. A fortnight ago, Valis appropriated the Crystal of Consciousness and was placing the crystal in his psychic web, the 8th Doctor and Izzy (or perhaps it is Sam) strapped to tables. The Doctor already had substituted the crystal with an identical piece of Perspex. This blows up, makes the Doctor and Izzy (or Sam) free, and stops Valis. Bolog had the whole Reptilios invasion fleet concealed on the Dark Side of the Moon until the Fourth Doctor sent them into orbit around the sun using a banana. K9 is there to verify that bananas are good and Romana One is there in a long flowing white robe. Zargath had his imperial militia at the Powell Estate for five minutes when the 9th Doctor made it rain using his sonic screwdriver, the things being allergic to water. Rose calls it brilliant but the Doctor says, “No, not brilliant, Rose---Fantastic!” In the background, a woman drops her shopping bags and a few vandals are spraying painting the walls. One of the things the wall says, “What are you doing here?” What looks like a Mogaran but possibly something else---a being named Plink, wears a metal mask with a tube coming from the nose and mouth claims the Sixth Doctor (the alien doesn’t know the Doctor can change shape so thinks the Doctor is a master of disguise). This alien claims every time he’s battled the Doctor, the Doctor had a different face and more stupid clothes. The Sixth Doctor fires a tv control unit at the aliens and this ties them together in a laser rope, while the Doctor says something that Frobisher feels he needs a dictionary to understand. The conference feel that together they can defeat the Doctor and they chant Death to the Doctor! Kraarn has a short power point demonstration to show them how they can defeat the Doctor. First, he claims they invade Mercury. Then…he’s fried by what appears to be a freak electrical surge. The others try to figure out why anyone would want to kill Kraarn (he’s one of the most evil beings in the galaxy, he’s laid waste to whole solar systems, and enslaved entire species). Kraarn seems to have a hole above his butt. Valis concludes the Doctor is here. The heavy set alien is called the Mentor just like…someone else (maybe they are thinking of the Master or possibly the Mentors of Sil and Kiv’s race or maybe like Maya’s father from Space: 1999---whom Mentor resembles). At one point, the Third Doctor and Jo faced him but it was the Brigadier who pointed a gun at Mentor. The Third Doctor called Mentor a second rate imposter. Valis tells Mentor he is just gas suspended carbon particles, smoke in a cloak. Bolog asks Questor (a black and white colored alien who looks like a cross between Patrick Troughton and Abbie Hoffman) when the Doctor defeated him. He tells Bolog they go way back, one of the early Doctors. He bumped into him in the living jungle of Tropicalus. On this world, a jungle tentacles grabbed up Questor while the First Doctor gloated about their battle of wits, or rather battle of Questor’s half wits. Stephen and Dodo, in the same outfits they wore before and during the Celestial Toymaker encounter, looks on. In a control room, Plink and Zargath find a skeleton at a console, webs, and a small spider. Zargath picks up six life traces on the base using the Metabolic Interferometer. They conclude the Doctor must be one of them. Valis and Mentor hear a Thwub Thwub and think it was the Doctor. Questor had left Bolog alone but Bolog accidentally shoots Questor in the face, thinking he was the Doctor. Mentor tries to find the zipper on Bolog’s unconvincing rubber monster outfit, thinking he’s the Doctor. Zargath makes Mentor release Bolog and Zargath then shoots Valis but the explosion of gas kills himself and Valis. The other three point guns at each other. Mentor tries to hypnotize Bolog, “I am the Mentor and you will obey…” They hear a VWORP VWORP and this distracts Plink. All three shoot each other and kill each other. The Doctor and Martha emerge from the TARDIS and find alien body parts and bodies. The Doctor thinks it was some sort of electrical accident. He puts on his glasses and uses the sonic screwdriver to see that the wiring is centuries old and a freak power surge must have happened. The Doctor says, “I’m so sorry. If only we had gotten here sooner, I might have been able to save them…”

Cora is on a planet where three red moons have risen. In a gothic woods, she runs from a beast that seems to call her name and she passes out. The TARDIS appears and the Doctor exits, asking who is responsible for the energy beam that snagged the TARDIS…it could have been lethal to anything less robust than the TARDIS. He wonders as he talks why it is only cucumbers that are cool, why isn’t it as “tempestuous as a tomato” or “ardent as an asparagus.” Martha, who is with him, says, “Meanwhile, back at the point…” The Doctor will give whoever did this to the TARDIS a stern talking to. Given the world’s relative age, there shouldn’t be trees…it should be more like Death Valley than Dartmoor. He licks a tree to determine it is homemade…terraformed. Martha finds Cora and with a round red ring on her neck, like a bite without a puncture wound. Cora wakes up; the Doctor telling her he is more an astro physic but Martha is more the physic…a doctor. The Doctor says his spider sense is tingling. A cloaked figure watches the trio and a voice of a tall figure tells someone named Viktor to follow them. It is new blood…just what the doctor ordered. They go to the Magister’s Arms pub, the pub of Cora’s father Gideon, who thanks them for bringing her home. The Doctor and Martha smell oranges and burnt toast. The Doctor finds Cestus Oak burning, which only grows on a dozen or so worlds. The wood smoke keeps the beast at bay. The Doctor asks Gideon for a bag of pickled onion monster munch. Widow Margaret tells them the beast wants Cora. Gideon tells the Doctor that the beast is the hound of the Thane…someone who takes no food or drink and the Thane stood watch over them all from before Gideon’s dad’s dad was a nipper. There was a time when the Thane would visit the village on occasion, smile and ask how they were. A year ago it all changed . The Thane stopped coming, folks started vanishing, snatched by the beast. Some were found dead, some were not. There seems to be no more villages; the valley is their home. Martha whispers to the Doctor that the victims have acute anemia, high fever, bite marks but no puncture wounds, and secondary infections. They need treatment. Martha mentions the townspeople all seem a bit Stepford, minds snapping back to a docile state. As the pair talk, the cloaked figure smashes in through the window, grabs Martha, and knocks the Doctor down. Martha takes the hood off the red eyed creature…a cyborg, which the Doctor remarks at, “Great Schwarzenegger’s Ghost!” The thing is Viktor. The Thane orders it to return…and it leaves with Martha. Gideon tells the Dotor that it will take Martha to the Keep…to the Thane…NEXT: The Man in the High Castle.

Martha yells as the robot carries her on his back. She tells it she’s been intimidated by pig people, Daleks, Judoon…and then she gets it to put her down so she tears out its wires and stops it. She’s worked casualty at the Royal Hope on Saturday Night. She finds a fire-like lit up tower, looking like the insides of an old radio. Martha meets the Thane. She had to change 572 light bulbs. She tells him the Doctor will soon be here to give him a piece of his mind and the Thane answers, “Oh, I do hope so.” He wants scientists to be here. Another robot grabs her from behind. Martha sees his biopsy device, it is dirty and she assumes the villagers are sick from it, getting septicemia, blood poisoning from it. The Thane tells her he is their protector. He wonders if she is correct. The Doctor tells Gideon is he leaves him now, he’ll just be Billy No Mates on a nature ramble. As Gideon feels fear, the Doctor tries to tell him his fear is like something lurking in the wardrobe or hiding under the bed...irrational. He realizes it’s not helping. The Keep is forbidden and the Doctor tells him it must be a telepathic dampening field. As the Doctor prompts him, Gideon faces up to it and will act like a man. The Doctor enters, calling it Disney Land Transylvania. “Hello, Avon calling.” Cora wants to lead more villagers to the Thane, to help her father. The Doctor finds pictures on the walls of the Keep that are all men, “So this is either a household into musical theatre and throw cushions or…these are all images of the same man!” One who lives forever. The Doctor tells Gideon he’s met a few idiots who tried to live forever. Behind one door they open are bodies in tubes, embryos some of them. As the Doctor rushes in to stop the Thane, calling him Bela, Martha tries to tell him to wait. The Thane orders Viktor to get the Doctor. The Doctor uses Cestus Oak and fire to stop Viktor. The Doctor identifies a Neuropathic Generator, a way of pacifying a civilian population. These were banned by the Xenhasi Treaty a thousand years ago. Martha makes the Doctor drop the sonic screwdriver. Thane uses a sword to prevent the Doctor from attacking again but the Doctor smashes it with a bunch of test tubes. This allows him to get a sword and the two have a sword fight. The Doctor ends it by disarming the Thane and using his own sword to destroy the Thane’s machine. Gideon turns into a leopard creature. As Cora and the others turn into monsters (one of them is a Medusa, one a Hydra like thing with seven heads), Martha tells the Doctor, “I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. The Thane’s not the monster…it’s everyone else. It’s all of them, Doctor, the entire village!”

To be continued...