Neverland, by Alan Barnes

A Big Finish Productions Doctor Who Audio Drama released July 2002
[Part One]

MATRIX 2: (male) Humanian Era, Earth, October the fifth, 1930. Airship R101 crashes in
France. Humanian Era, Earth, January the thirtieth, 1933. Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor
of Germany. Humanian Era, Earth, December the tenth, 1936. Abdication of King Edward
the Eighth. Humanian Era, Earth, September the first, 1939. German forces invade Poland.
Humanian Era, Earth, May the twenty seventh, (continues under -)
MATRIX 1: (female) 3932. Zephron overthrows the Embodiment of Grace. Sensorian,
Central City, third quarter, 3950. Mavic Chen elected Guardian of the Solar System.
Sensorian, Kembal, first quarter, 4000. Representatives of Outer Galaxies meet with the
Daleks. (continues under -)
MATRIX 3: (male) Rassilon Era, Gallifrey, 5892.5. Files on Doomsday weapon stolen by,
by, by. Rassilon Era, Outer Planets, 6241.1. Chancellor Goth visits Terserus. Rassilon Era,
Etra Prime, 6776.7. President Romana vanishes on routine mission . Rassilon Era, Gallifrey,
6793.8. D-D-Dalek invasion force repelled by President Romana. R-R-Rassilon Era,
Interstitial Space, 679. (struggling) 6798.2. Dalek Time fleet captured in vortex and, and, and.
Dalek Time Fleet captured in can't remember! I can't remember! I can't remember!

CHARLEY: So that's it, Doctor? No more Daleks ever?

DOCTOR: That's it, Charley. Trapped in their own time pocket. Caught by the er
CHARLEY: Plungers?
DOCTOR: By the plungers, yes. Do you know, I don't think even Dalek ingenuity can get
them out of a paradox that tangled. A few million years in limbo, I suppose the Emperor
might swallow his pride, call on the Time Lords
CHARLEY: The Time Lords? Why? They'd never let the Daleks out.
DOCTOR: Oh, it's possible. The Dalek's total obliteration might cause terrible ructions in the
Web of Time. History turns on several of their machinations. But it's not our job to work that
one out, is it. And besides, President Romana has her own score to settle with the Daleks.
She'll let them stew for, well, twenty years at least. Now, things to do. Where exactly are we?
The Acteon Galaxy. I've not been round these parts since I was an old man, probably. See?
Spiral nebulae, asteroids made of mercury. A gas giant and a red dwarf. Boring. No, I've got
a much better idea.
CHARLEY: What's the whirling dervish impression in aid of?
(Controls being set.)
DOCTOR: Places to go, people to see. It's a surprise. You'll like it. Not a lot, but you'll like it.
Let's see. Sumaran Era, dateline 9235.3.
CHARLEY: Oh, don't mind me. I'll just stand here at the back, quiet as a mouse, looking
pretty and pouting. (louder) I said, I'll just stand here at the back, quiet as a mouse, looking
DOCTOR: Good idea.
CHARLEY: Do you know, Doctor, sometimes you get right on my wick. I'm going for a
bath. I may be some time.
DOCTOR: Hmm. Now, is that before or after the Megaluthian Slimeskimmers explored the
third planet? Think, think, think.
CHARLEY: And after my bath, I've invited some people round for tea. The Emperor
Caligula, Lucretia Borgia, the Mountain Mauler of Montana, and. Doctor.
(Runs back.)
CHARLEY: Doctor!
DOCTOR: Yeah, fine, whatever.
CHARLEY: No. Doctor, look! Up on the scanner. Just there, to the right. That dull grey box.
Is that a Tardis?
DOCTOR: Sorry, what?
CHARLEY: And there's another. And another. And another. Are they coming for the Daleks,
do you think?
DOCTOR: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Not yet. Not just yet!
CHARLEY: More of them. Well, it's best they go in mob-handed, I suppose.
DOCTOR: Just like before. Battle Tardises in an escort formation. Charley, I don't think it's
the Daleks the Time Lords are after. It's us.

UNDERCARDINAL: Time Station ready for flight.

ROMANA: Coordinator Vansell? Am I to assume that the Agency has located the Doctor?
VANSELL: Madam President. May the Star of Rassilon guide you, his wisdom inform you,
and his Sash be your protection in the vastness of your duties.
ROMANA: Yes, yes, yes. Can we just dispense with the pomp? Where is he?
VANSELL: The Type Forty time capsule known to have been misappropriated by the Doctor
is currently drifting in the Acteon Galaxy. Coordinates 7729 gamma 7 nineteenth span.
Tardises with full offensive capabilities are blocking all entrances to the vortex across five
million consecutive years. Doubtless the Doctor will be twisting like a slithery nematode, but
he shan't be wriggling off this hook this time.
ROMANA: You have a tortured way with metaphor, Coordinator. How soon can this Time
Station be within range?
VANSELL: A mere seven microspans, Madam President.
ROMANA: Then make it so. (sighs) Oh, Doctor. Of all the countless billions of people in the
whole of space and time, why did it have to be you?

(Still working controls.)

CHARLEY: So why the panic, Doctor? Surely the Time Lords won't harm you, of all people?
DOCTOR: On past form, I wouldn't like to bet on that. Excuse me. Thank you. Look,
Charley, another seven Tardises. What a reception.
CHARLEY: Should be flattered, really. I mean
DOCTOR: Shh, shh, shh. Listen. There's a message coming through.
(deep voice??) [OC] : Calling occupants of rogue time capsule. The High Council of
Gallifrey demands you power down your vessel and await further instructions. Repeat. Power
down your
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes. Power down your vessel, yada yada yada. Don't think we need to
hear any more, do we?
CHARLEY: You never know, it might be something important.
DOCTOR: Important? The Time Lords? Oh, no, no, no. It's bound to be something really
dreary. We, the dull men in big collars, have convened an enquiry into the matter of your
involvement in the recent Nimon assault on planet Earth, and expect you to submit evidence
of your actions in detail so stultifyingly unnecessary it'll make your head bleed. Well, I won't
do it.
CHARLEY: So there.
DOCTOR: Exactly. Now, let's see if there isn't a way past this little blockade.
CHARLEY: Doctor?
DOCTOR: Hmm?
CHARLEY: What's that Tardis doing? That one there.
DOCTOR: Oh, that one. Well, that halo effect is what you get, you see, when a battle Tardis
opens up its time warp silos just prior to the launch of a cluster of precision targeted time
torpedoes. Time torpedoes! They wouldn't dare.
(Whoosh!)
CHARLEY: I think they just have. Shouldn't we be taking, er, evasive action or something?
DOCTOR: Oh, no. No, no, no. Evasive action is exactly what they'll be expecting to take, so
that's exactly what we won't do.
CHARLEY: And so we're just going to sit here and get blasted across the spaceways? Oh,
good plan, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Charley, Charley, Charley. The Time Lords want us to take evasive action
because they know that the second the Tardis dematerialises in whatever direction, they'll be
ready to pluck us out of the vortex and reel us into who knows where. Twenty nine seconds
to impact. On the other hand, if the time torpedoes hit, we'll be frozen in a microsecond of
space time for several centuries. Long enough for the Time Lords to override Tardis's
entrance protocols and drag us out to who knows where. Eighteen seconds.
CHARLEY: Doctor, if they've got us where they want us whatever we do, can't we just avoid
all the unpleasantness of being hit by those really rather large and alarming missiles and just,
well, give ourselves up?
DOCTOR: Absolutely not. Nine seconds.
CHARLEY: Why?
DOCTOR: Because I'm the Doctor, and whatever happens, whatever the odds, I never ever,
never give up. Brace yourself, Charley.
(Whoosh.)
CHARLEY: Is that it?
DOCTOR: I don't understand. Oh yes, I do. Hear that? Some sort of time slippage crossing
the torpedo's trajectory. Sliding through space time, stealing whole seconds, chewing up
moments and regurgitating them infected back into the continuum. It snared the torpedoes
just before impact. Hang on, it's moving again. Charley. Charley, that lever, quick.
CHARLEY: What, this one here?
DOCTOR: That one there. Come on, the torpedoes are about to
(Whumph! Tardis engines. Distorted voices.)
CHARLEY: Waaa! Doctor, what's happening to us?
DOCTOR: The Tardis is riding the tail of the time slippage we experienced. The Time Lords
won't be able to predict our path. We just have to sit it out until we're washed up wherever the
phenomenon ends. Don't worry, Charley, it's perfectly nooo!
CHARLEY: Doctor!

CHARLEY: Oh! It's all over. Oh, Doctor, are you all right? Have you broken anything?
DOCTOR: No. Well, nothing a hot bath and a king size tub of liniment wouldn't cure.
CHARLEY: What happened back there?
DOCTOR: As I was saying. The Tardis was riding the tail of the time slippage we had
experienced. The Time Lords won't have been able to predict our route. Terribly jumbled
coordinates, you see, and that's why it feels like we've been tumble-dried. And now
CHARLEY: Yes?
DOCTOR: Now we've been beached up in the wake of the slippage. So let's just see where
and when we might be.
CHARLEY: I may be none the wiser, but I dare say I'm better informed.
DOCTOR: Vector stabilising. Ah. It's only a few hundred light years off course. Now, before
I was so rudely interrupted, I promised you a surprise. Tell me, Charley. How long have you
been travelling with me in the Tardis?
CHARLEY: It's not that easy to keep track, but, well, a good six months, I suppose.
DOCTOR: Which means? Something that's terribly overdue? Something extra special? Oh,
come on, Charley.
CHARLEY: I haven't got the faintest idea, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.
DOCTOR: It means that it really is way past time we. I mean, it must be around about. Oh
look, it's like this. Happy birthday, Charley.
CHARLEY: Happy birthday?
DOCTOR: Happy birthday! And what tends to happen on birthdays, hmm? Parties. Parties! I
love parties, don't you? And I happen to think that the best assistant in the universe deserves
the best party in the universe. So that's where we're going.
CHARLEY: I'm sorry, you've lost me. Could we start again?
DOCTOR: Sumaran Era, dateline 9235.3. The Jovian Fold. The Millennium Mardi Gras. You
see, the Jovians, lovely race of people, trust me, decided to celebrate the billionth span of
their civilisation with a party, lasting a thousand years, inside a very discreet little space time
fold, which quite coincidentally the Time Lords know absolutely nothing about. And just as
well. It's the party to end all parties and we don't want kill-joys in the kitchen. So the most
exclusive event in history, and guess who's got an invite? You have, Charley. You. You are
going to have a ball. I'm actually quite jealous.
CHARLEY: I'm going to this amazing shindig and you're not.
DOCTOR: Only one invite, I'm afraid. Well, I told you it was exclusive. And besides, you
don't want a neurotic nine hundred and fifty something cramping your style. Let your hair
down. Go wild. There's a suite booked at the best hotel in town. I'll pick you up in a year or
so.
CHARLEY: One year!
DOCTOR: It's not long, I know, but it was the best I could do at such short notice. Cheer up,
you'll love it. Promise.
CHARLEY: So, what will you be doing while I'm whooping it up in the back of beyond?
DOCTOR: Er, well, things. Nothing for you to worry about.
CHARLEY: You're going to see the Time Lords, aren't you.
DOCTOR: No. No, of course not. Why in the Seven Galaxies
CHARLEY: Oh, don't lie to me, Doctor. It's written all over your face.
DOCTOR: Is it? Charley. Don't turn away, Charley. It's for the best. I just. I have to go and
sort things out with President Romana, see what all this is about. It won't take long and then,
well, I'll come back and
CHARLEY: This is about me, isn't it? The break in the Web of Time caused by me surviving
the crash of the R101. It's nothing to do with the Nimon, or the Daleks. It's me and you know
it.
DOCTOR: I don't know it, Charley, but I'm very much afraid that that's what the Time Lords
might think.
CHARLEY: You think they'll put me back on the R101, don't you.
DOCTOR: I think that they might think that that was the simplest option, yes. But I won't
allow that to happen. I need to go to the Time Lords. Talk to them. Explain. I won't let
anyone hurt you, Charley, whatever it takes, at any cost.
CHARLEY: Happy birthday, he says. Happy birthday, Charley. Only it isn't my birthday, is
it? It isn't my birthday because I'm not supposed to have any more birthdays. No more cake,
no more candles, no more presents, not now, not ever. No more birthdays since
DOCTOR: Charley.
CHARLEY: Since I died. That's right, isn't it, Doctor? No more birthdays because I'm
supposed to be dead, all burned in the wreck of an airship. Born on the day the Titanic sank,
died on the R101. Poor tragic little Charlotte Pollard. Her life snuffed out before it had even
begun. That's how it is, isn't it, Doctor? And now you want to hide me away in some
knees-up at the end of the universe while you go and risk God knows what at the hands of the
Time Lords on my behalf. Why is that, Doctor? Why? It's not your problem. It's me who
wanted to see the world. It was me who stowed away on the R101. It was my choice, Doctor.
My own stupid fault. Should have stayed at home that day, but I didn't, and that's that.
DOCTOR: What if it isn't? What if it doesn't have to be like that?
CHARLEY: But it is like that. Oh, you. You know who you remind me of? You're Peter Pan,
the little boy who never grew up, who lived in Never Never Land and fought with pirates and
pixies. Nanny used to read me Peter Pan. I wanted to be Wendy, and now I am. Wendy
Darling having adventures in fairy land with the boy who never grew old. But you see,
Wendy grew up in the end. That's what's so sad. And poor Peter, poor little Peter left all on
his own.
DOCTOR: He didn't forget, Charley. He'd never forget. And he never left Wendy to face the
crocodiles alone.
CHARLEY: You are so sweet. So kind, so caring. Too good to be true, like a dream. And all
this is just a dream. These adventures we've had, these scrapes and japes in Neverland, with
monsters and ray guns and magic, oh, they've been wonderful. Better than my wildest
dreams. But you can't hide in dreams. Everyone wakes up in the end. It's time to stop
dreaming, Doctor. Time to grow up.
DOCTOR: Charley, I don't know. I won't give up, Charley. Not now. And after all this time,
please, Charley, let me help you. Let me face this for you. Whatever it takes, I'll put it right.
CHARLEY: Doctor, remember this switch? The one marked Fast Return? The one I used to
get us out of the Nimon problem? If I remember your description correctly, it sends the
Tardis back to its last spatio-temporal location.
DOCTOR: Charley, will you please just listen to. Fast Return? Don't touch that. Charley, no!
(Tardis engines.)
CHARLEY: Sorry, Doctor. It was my choice to get on board that airship. It's been a fantastic
ride, but now it's time to get off. There is no alternative.
DOCTOR: No! I can't stop it! We're going back.
CHARLEY: Back into the path of the time torpedoes. I'm going to meet the Time Lords!
(voice slows) Can't wait to see the other
DOCTOR: No!
(Big noises, whooshes, etc, then silence.)

(Sizzles of cutting device. A man, then a woman, are talking through intercoms, probably in
environment suits.)
KURST [OC]: Clear.
LEVITH [OC]: Check.
(Metal piece crashes to the floor.)
KURST [OC]: We're through. Resealing doors.
(Creak, door shuts. Footsteps.)
LEVITH [OC]: Temporary environment is stabilising. Relative time compression minus three
point six.
KURST [OC]: Safe enough.
(Hiss of unsealing helmets.)
KURST: Better. I hate these suits.
LEVITH: You're a fully trained Agency operative, Kurst. You seem unduly concerned with
your comfort. What has he done to the inside of this capsule?
KURST: Looks like an Ormelian brothel.
LEVITH: Like you'd know. Now where
KURST: Here, Levith. This him?
LEVITH: Dressed like a retrograde. Must be. How long has this capsule been frozen?
KURST: Only a few hundred years.
LEVITH: Seasoned traveller. Adjusts quickly. He's back with us, see?
DOCTOR: I tell you, Lord Byron, you're meddling with forces you don't understand.
LEVITH: He's ready for transport. Is that the Earth girl?
KURST: Yes.
LEVITH: Better bring the equipment in. Hook her up to the time space converter.
KURST: And the Doctor.
LEVITH: Yes. The Doctor. The Doctor has a date with the President herself.

DOCTOR: Mary. Mary, you must believe me. That man is not your brother. He. Oh. Oh, not
Switzerland, then. Some sort of chamber. Dark. Hello? Hello?
(Knocks on metal.)
DOCTOR: Metal. Triple bonded polysium with tinclavic relief, if I'm not much mistaken.
Unusual composition. Very unusual. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was specific to the hull
of one particular Gallifreyan vessel. A class seven supraorbital Time Station. Well, am I
right? Show yourselves!
(Door opens.)
DOCTOR: Oh, do you mind? Those lights really are terribly bright.
VANSELL: Class seven C actually, Doctor. But in all other respects you are of course
infuriatingly correct.
DOCTOR: Oh, now there's a voice I recognise. Come on, don't be shy. Step forward,
Celestial Intervention Agency Coordinator Vansellostophossius, if you please! Oh, I'm sorry.
I forget. You never were all that keen on the Ostophossius bit, were you? Terribly common.
Perfector Zorak came up with something rather better, if I remember rightly.
VANSELL: If you really think I will be in the least bit affected by any sordid reminiscences
relating to our time in the Academy all of six hundred years ago
DOCTOR: Nosebung. That was it. Nosebung. Or was it toast rack?
VANSELL: That wasn't me, Doctor, and well you know it.
DOCTOR: Yes, you're quite right, Vansell. I do apologise. No need to get sniffy. So what
does the Agency want?
VANSELL: Charlotte Elspeth Pollard. Human. Born Hampshire, England, on the fourteenth
of April 1912. Died Be or var is France
DOCTOR: Beauvais, actually.
VANSELL: Beauvais. Thank you. Died Beauvais, France, on the fifth of October 1930 aged
eighteen years five months and twenty one days.
DOCTOR: And?
VANSELL: And then traced to Deep Space Haulage craft Vanguard, 2503. Venice, Earth,
2294. The Republic of Malebolgia, Earth, 2003. New York, Earth again, 1938. London, oh
look, Earth, etc, etc, etc. And all despite having died in Beauvais, France on the fifth of
October 1930, in the wreck of a dirigible known as the R101. What an intriguing anomaly.
DOCTOR: On behalf of Charlotte Elspeth Pollard I do invoke the right clearly stated in the
Archetryx Convention to be tried by an independently assembled commission of the temporal
powers. Harm one hair on her head in malice, Vansell, and I'll hound you to the end of
reality.
ROMANA: And I'll gladly assist you, Doctor. But there's no chance of it coming to that.
DOCTOR: Romana! Or should that be Madam President? Whatever. Romana, will you
kindly tell Coordinator Nosebung here to stop sticking his snout in where it's not wanted.
ROMANA: It's not quite that simple, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Oh, I get it. Bad cop, good cop, good cop, bad. Have you prepared my
confession? Shall I sign it now?
VANSELL: Good cop, bad cop. This is an Earth colloquialism?
ROMANA: It usually is. Doctor, I give you my promise. I will not sanction any random
justice or injustice against your friend Charlotte Pollard.
DOCTOR: Friends call her Charley.
ROMANA: Charley, then. She's still in your Tardis, and safe.
VANSELL: At least, as safe as anyone, now.

CHARLEY: Oh. Oh, what? Where?

LEVITH: Disorientated? Not surprising. You just sit tight in your nice Earth chair.
CHARLEY: Who are you, and oh! Let me out of these straps! Where's the Doctor? What
have you done with the Doctor?
KURST: Thalia's bones, are all humans this noisy?
LEVITH: I've only met a few.
CHARLEY: Please, it's me you want. Wherever his is, whatever you've done to him, it's not
his fault. It's mine.
LEVITH: Don't you worry, Earth girl. (slowly and clearly) Your friend the Doctor is all right.
My name is Levith. This is
CHARLEY: I'm not sub-normal.
LEVITH: We represent the Celestial Intervention Agency. We're not going to do you any
harm. We need to prepare you for a small (pause) procedure. As long as you don't resist, it
won't hurt at all.

VANSELL: Doctor, tell us how you first escaped the time torpedoes.
DOCTOR: Er, well, you know. Improvisation, genius, a well-turned trouser, a rapier wit.
ROMANA: Doctor.
VANSELL: A wave of time distortion, hmm?
DOCTOR: Time distortion? Oh, you've brought me here to talk about time distortion. Well,
I'm your man. I've been warped and flipped and slipped and spun through more temporal
phenomena than a Mexonian Dragon has had hot dinners.
VANSELL: This particular type of time distortion. You have encountered it several times
recently, have you not?
DOCTOR: That sort of slippage? No. At least, I don't think so.
VANSELL: Then I suggest you pay closer attention to what's going on right beneath your,
your nose. We at the Agency have observed that very form of slippage many times over the
last few quarters. In many ways it behaves quite unlike any other form of causal disturbance
ever before detected. But one possible explanation has presented itself in one of the more
esoteric branches of academia.
ROMANA: The distortion fits a thesis which has been among the thinking circles for a long
time. One which has never been accepted into our Codex of Disciplines. Anti-time.
DOCTOR: The spider in the Web of Time. That old chestnut. Romana, anti-time has been
been around a lot longer than the Flat Galaxy Society, but it's given far less credence.
VANSELL: Officially.
DOCTOR: Now, how does it go? The Web of Time could not exist until the great Rassilon
built the Eye of Harmony, the hitching post of chronology, that which does not flux nor
wither nor change its state.
ROMANA: The Eye of Harmony created a universe of positive time, finite time. Gallifrey
anchored the continuity of the universe. But just as matter has its counterpart in anti-matter,
just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then, by all the immutable laws of the
universe, positive time, the Web of Time, must have its shadow.
DOCTOR: Anti-time, as intractable and destructive a force to causality as anti-matter is to
space. Something with no past, no present, no future. A perpetuity of meaningless chaos. A
now, with no beginning or end. Elegant. Brilliant. Thoroughly logical. And utter gibberish.
I've been trolling about the space time vortex for a lot longer than any of you. If there really
was another plane of cause and effect, don't you think that maybe, just maybe, after all these
centuries, I might have noticed?
ROMANA: (sigh) The Web of Time is stretched to breaking. Observe the screens. We see
time slippage in the Sensorian, Humanian, and Sumaran eras. The Fifty Years War of the
Cosnaks and the Yuri is now into its third century. In the ring system of the Theta Worlds,
stones and not reptiles are emerging as the dominant lifeform. Earth was barely stable until
this nexus, when the wrong President was elected into executive control of this major
landmass.
VANSELL: The Agency no longer has enough operatives to maintain continuity across the
universe.
(Door opens and closes.)
VANSELL: History is leaking like a sieve.
ROMANA: If we plot these slippages back, however, a remarkable pattern emerges. We see
the earliest major wave of distortion centred around the planet Earth in the 1930s, then deep
space 2503. Back to Earth in 2294, 2003, 1938, 1906 and so on. Each outbreak sees the
distortion expanding, sometimes trailing off, but most usually infecting history wherever it
goes.
DOCTOR: You talk like it's a virus.
ROMANA: Precisely.
DOCTOR: And you think Charley is the carrier.
ROMANA: Not exactly. But she might be Patient Zero. If the universe of anti-time was real,
Doctor, if it were an actual place, how do you suppose it might be accessed?
DOCTOR: I don't know. Some kind of gateway, a rip, a tear, a breach, a hole?
ROMANA: Go on.
DOCTOR: Charley?
VANSELL: In itself, the Earth girl's survival is not the problem. She was nothing. She would
amount to nothing. Her descendants would be nobodies. She's nothing special, Doctor. She
wouldn't go on to cure a disease or start a war or discover a planet. By rights, her survival
would be but the tiniest hiccup, easily made and easily mended. But her living was a rift. Her
very being a breach. Charlotte Pollard is a rip in the fabric of space time, a breach with
presence and physicality.
ROMANA: And it's through her we believe these distortions are flowing. A living conduit to
a dimension which should never have met ours.
VANSELL: Well, Doctor, have you nothing to say?
DOCTOR: (sotto) Charley, Charley. What have I done? I should have realised, I should have
seen it. Ramsey, of course, he could sense it as a Vortisaur. He wanted to feed from it. That's
why he became so unmanageable.
VANSELL: Doctor, please do pay attention. Time is short. Time, in fact, is running out. The
Matrix, as you know, is a vast repository housing the combined intelligences of all Time
Lords, past and present, living and dead. We have turned the entirety of the Matrix over to
remembering all of history as it should be recorded. So
(Whoosh)
MATRIX 3: I can't remember! I can't remember!
(Whoosh.)
VANSELL: But as you can hear, the Matrix is cracking under the strain. And if the Agency
can no longer determine the true course of recorded time, well. I think, Madam President, that
the Doctor should see for himself.
ROMANA: If he must.
VANSELL: The chamber in which you've been standing is not a cell, Doctor. It is in fact a
portal into the Matrix. An Eighth Door, if you will, over which you are currently positioned.
There is a projected future based on the likelihood of a continuing and incremental incursion
of these anti-time phenomena into our universe. As ever, you will have an actual presence in
the projection. But there's no substitute for being there, eh, Doctor? Tell us what you see.
DOCTOR: No, wait, I'm not ready!

(Sounds of burning and a baby crying.)

DOCTOR: Oh! Thank you very much, Vansell. So, where is this? A city, burning. And above
it a vast black Citadel, hulking over the landscape Hang on. Those stars look just like the
Kasterboran Borealis. And there, Mount Cadon, her peak obscured by smoke. Is, is this
Gallifrey?
RASSILON: That word has not been used here in many, many years.
DOCTOR: Oh, I didn't see you. Where did you spring from? You know, old man, your aspect
is terribly familiar, like, like I've always known I'm going to know you, except
RASSILON: Gallifrey, O Gallifrey. Her forests are cracked and dead. The silver leaves of the
Cadonwood trees withered and perished. The skies which once danced with lights purple and
green and brilliant yellow, now broil, heavy with the stinking exhalations of the charnel
house. Those of her people who are not beaten and cowed have grown cruel, their hearts
hardened to ice. This is the Empire of Zagreus.
DOCTOR: Zagreus, did you say? Zagreus?
RASSILON: There is no alternative.
DOCTOR: Zagreus lives inside your head. Zagreus lives among the dead. And something
else. Or someone. Think. Think, Doctor. Brain like a, like a spiral staircase. I was with
Charley, that's right. And?
(Big whoosh. The Doctor gasps. Lots of voices clamouring in the back ground.)
DOCTOR: I can't help thinking that I knew you from somewhere. Or maybe I will do. Hey,
where's he gone? Where am I now? The Panopticon? I don't approve of the decor, and
certainly not this nasty heads on spikes motif.
WOMAN: Get out of the way, will you, mad one? Talking to yourself like some simple
DOCTOR: Sorry, I
WOMAN: You are obstructing the view.
DOCTOR: What view? What?
WOMAN: Cretin.
(Big cheers.)
WOMAN: She's here! She's coming!
PROCLAIMER: Silence! Silence for your Imperiatrix.
DOCTOR: So who is she, this Imperiatrix?
WOMAN: Shh! Do you want to get us both executed?
DOCTOR: She seems, you know, familiar.
WOMAN: Shh!
ROMANA: My people, I am your Imperiatrix. Today you will bear witness to a judgement
on our enemies.
DOCTOR: Romana. No. No, it can't be.
ROMANA: We strive to attain unending glory for all our people, for the furtherment of our
civilisation, the one true society. Yet there are those who challenge our beliefs. Those who
follow different paths, other timelines. Such beliefs cannot be permitted.
(Cheers.)
ROMANA: I am to communicate with a representative of one such group. Observe the
viewscreen. Identify yourself to us.
EMPEROR [OC]: I am the Emperor of the Dalek race. Time Lady, I demand you authorise
our release.
ROMANA: You dare demand anything of us. Emperor Dalek, we are proud to declare that
you and your entire fleet of Daleks, you are our prisoners.
EMPEROR [OC]: No. The Dalek fleet is held in a time pocket here in the darkness of vortex.
But you need us. Your continuity cannot survive without us. Release us now!
ROMANA: You are an enemy of our people. Your request is denied. This creature and the
remaining battalions of its wretched race we hold outside the realms of space time. We now
have the ability to extinguish these Daleks in an instant, crush them within the bounds of their
prison. We have decided that this course must now be carried out.
(Cheers.)
DOCTOR: No, no! This isn't how we do things!
EMPEROR [OC]: Time Lady, you cannot exterminate the Dalek race.
ROMANA: Oh yes, I can.
EMPEROR [OC]: Please, have pity.
ROMANA: Pity? I don't think so.
(Big bang.)
ROMANA: So, does any one else care to disagree with me?
(Wild cheering.)
DOCTOR: This is terrible! Terrible! Romana! Romana, the Web of Time! What about the
Web of Time?
WOMAN: What's wrong with you?
MAN: He challenges our Imperiatrix! Traitor!
DOCTOR: This isn't how things should be.
WOMAN: Teach this traitor a lesson!
MAN: Kill him! Rip his hearts out!
DOCTOR: What? Please leave me.
MAN: Traitor. Kill him.
(Sounds of angry mob.)
DOCTOR: Please, no, I didn't. Aaargh!

VANSELL: I take it, Doctor, you found the projection uncongenial?

ROMANA: That's enough, Vansell. Matrix chamber, bring the Doctor up.
DOCTOR: Whoa! The architecture reconfigures itself?
ROMANA: Transcendentally.
DOCTOR: Very good. Very good.
ROMANA: I know what you saw.
DOCTOR: Do you?
ROMANA: The projection never changes. The Web of Time in shreds, Time collapsing in on
itself, the fall of Gallifrey, the corruption of the oldest civilisation. Chaos and anarchy loosed
upon us all. A new order, a twisted one.
DOCTOR: Yes, I saw it. I saw what might happen to Gallifrey, to her leaders. But if this
vision is supposed to make me recant, to make me see the folly of my choices in the past, to
approve the unmaking of a single life for the sake of order, Romana, I won't. The choice is
yours. Go back in time, erase my deeds, the last few months of my life, blast me from the
whole of history, even. Maybe I made a mistake, taking Charley with me, but I stand by my
mistakes. And by my promises, too. If you destroy Charley, rightly or wrongly, then I won't
let you do it with a clean conscience. There has to be another way. And while my hearts are
still beating I swear to you I'll find it.
ROMANA: I know that, Doctor. Even if I was prepared to sanction the intervention
necessary to avoid the breach being opened in the first place, it'd be too late. This distortion,
this disturbance, has grown too large to controlled. But what if there was another way.
DOCTOR: Then I'd take it.
ROMANA: It might be dangerous, and the chances of success very slight.
DOCTOR: Oh, you know me, Romana. I like long odds.
VANSELL: And you'd go along with anything to put things right, so long as no harm came to
Miss Pollard?
DOCTOR: I think so, yes.
ROMANA: Very well. Doctor, our only realistic approach is to follow the time distortion to
its source.
VANSELL: And destroy it. Lay waste to the scourge of anti-time at its root before it lays
waste to us. Always and forever.
DOCTOR: You want to cross over into a dimension which may or may not even exist and
wipe it out?
VANSELL: Oh, we have reason to believe the thinking is sound. There are records, Doctor.
Ancient records. But that's not important now. Will you join us? Will you help us?
ROMANA: Will you help me?
DOCTOR: Yes. Yes, you know I will. But how? How in the name of Rassilon are you going
to transport yourselves into this universe of anti. Ah.
VANSELL: Obvious, isn't it, Doctor. We'll be taking the same route as the time distortion.
Through the space time breach. Through Charlotte Elspeth Pollard.

KURST: That's the space time converter installed and operational. Though whether or not it's
fully compatible with this antique, well, who can say?
LEVITH: Then run through the data codes again, Kurst. We only have one chance to get this
right, and I don't plan on being squashed to a singularity thanks to a faulty plug. Now, girl.
CHARLEY: That's Charlotte, thank you.
LEVITH: Charlotte. Sorry. Tense. Pressure of work. This is the difficult bit. This device here
is what we call a sub-proton accelerator. A special machine which stimulates matter at the
atomic level?
CHARLEY: I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
LEVITH: Never mind. We're going to position these around you and soon, well, things will
start to happen. You may feel yourself changing.
CHARLEY: Changing? Changing how?
LEVITH: You're special, you see. Very special. There's more to you than meets the eye.
Charlotte, I don't know how to tell you what you are. If I told you you were a unique cosmic
phenomenon, a four-dimensional archway into a universe anathema to our own, you wouldn't
understand me, let alone believe it. Oh, be still!
CHARLEY: What do you think you're ow! Oh. If you see the Doctor afterwards, Levith, give
him my love. If you'd understand that, of course.
LEVITH: Activate.
(Growling sound gets louder.)
CHARLEY: Ow!
(Walking.)
DOCTOR: This is madness, Romana. If you're wrong
ROMANA: Then the process should make no difference to Charley. It's an acceleration of
matter, not all that different from a simple teleportation.
VANSELL: And how many times in all of your famous exploits have you had your atoms
split, broadcast and reassembled in the name of derring-do, Doctor, hmm?
DOCTOR: Lots, I suppose, but
ROMANA: But the point is, Doctor, you think we're right about her. You know what effect
it's going to have on her. But it doesn't have to be for long. She'll restabilise once we're
through, be her normal self again. And once we've discovered how to stem the flow of
anti-time, then there'll be no reason not to let her and you go. I'm sure that under the
circumstances, given your cooperation, Coordinator Vansell will be minded to turn a blind
eye to an error in the CIA's accounting?
VANSELL: The Agency might be persuaded, yes.
DOCTOR: Romana, I wasn't sure about it at first, but I'm warming to your style of
government.
ROMANA: I'll take that as a compliment, shall I? We're here.
(Door slides open.)
DOCTOR: Hmm. Don't have too many shipmates, do we? Just a skeleton crew. The
Undercardinal there and a cohort of guards. Keep the mission secret, huh? Wouldn't do to
spread alarm.
ROMANA: Oh, Doctor. Do be quiet and take a seat. Vansell, are your people prepared?
VANSELL: Confirming now. Levith? All is ready aboard the Doctor's Tardis?
LEVITH [OC]: Running smoothly, Coordinator Vansell.
DOCTOR: I want to speak to Charley.
VANSELL: Too late, Doctor. She's already in the acceleration field. That is correct, Levith?
LEVITH [OC]: Fully stabilised now. Ready on your command.
ROMANA: As the breach is opened, Vansell's people will download details of its precise
space time coordinates to us, here in the console chamber. The Time Station will then
dematerialise through those precise coordinates and, well, we'll see where we are when we
get there.
DOCTOR: If we get there.
ROMANA: Doctor, she will be all right.
DOCTOR: She'd better be.
ROMANA: (tannoy) Attention, crew of Time Station. Prepare for full dematerialisation.
(normal) Vansell, give the order.
VANSELL: Calling Doctor's Tardis. Begin sub-proton acceleration. Open the gateway.

LEVITH: Confirmed. Ready, Kurst?

KURST: Ready.
LEVITH: This is it. Begin full proton acceleration.
(Machine noise builds and Charley screams.)

DOCTOR: You're hurting her. Stop it! Stop it!

VANSELL: Levith, what's happening down there?
LEVITH [OC]: It's just fantastic. You can see the universe through her.
VANSELL: And the Gate of Zagreus opened before him, and all of the antiverse was
revealed to him, and its terrible beauty ached in his heart.
ROMANA: There, Doctor. Undercardinal? Commence dematerialisation.
UNDERCARDINAL: Yes, Madam President.
(Deeper, slower dematerialisation sound.)
ROMANA: So the adventure begins.

KURST: Amazing! It's just amazing!

(Bangs!)
LEVITH: Kurst, the console!
KURST: Something's wrong. It's too much for this heap.
LEVITH: The breach, it's changing back! It's
(Explosion. Screams that are stretched out.)

VANSELL: Your Tardis, Doctor! It's been sucked through.

DOCTOR: Abort the mission! Charley can't take it! Neither Time Ship can take it! In all
that's decent, Romana, abort!
ROMANA: Too late, Doctor. There's no alternative. The sequence has started, and it cannot
be stopped. (slowing) We're going in.

(Fluctuating Tardis engine sound fades then Charley's gasp grows louder.)
CHARLEY: Help me? Please, won't somebody help me?
LEVITH: That's enough, Charlotte. That could have been a smoother ride. Kurst. Kurst?
KURST: Levith? Aren't we dead yet?
LEVITH: On your feet. You, me and Charlotte, we've got work to do.
KURST: The girl?
LEVITH: She was reverting to her natural state as this Tardis was being dragged through.
KURST: She was?
LEVITH: When the ship began to break up, the power to the proton accelerator must have
shut down, and Charlotte here began to stabilise mid-flight. It's a miracle we didn't end up a
twisted mass of Earth girl and Tardis smeared across the vortex.
CHARLEY: Will you two stop blathering on and help me?
LEVITH: Untie her, Kurst. I have to check on the console.
(Beep beep boop with leather straps being unfastened.)
CHARLEY: Thank you.
LEVITH: Kurst, look at this!
KURST: Destination monitor. It's just going round and round and round.
LEVITH: Unable to settle. Unable to fix a space time location. You know what this means,
Kurst. We made it.
KURST: You mean?
LEVITH: Nowhere, no when. At least, no place we can describe by our mathematics. No x,
no y, no z, no n. Nowhere. Beyond those doors lies the universe of anti-time. Pressure
readings indicate one point one three Gs. Point nine five atmospheres. Air thick, but
breathable. I think we should investigate.
(Doors open.)
LEVITH: Come on. You too, Charlotte. Let's see what nothing looks like.

(Thunderstorm sound.)
KURST: Rassilon protect us.
CHARLEY: What's that you're doing?
LEVITH: Setting up a transtemporal beacon to guide the Time Station to us. If they made it
through the breach, of course.
CHARLEY: And if not?
LEVITH: Then get used to the view, because I don't think this Tardis will be going anywhere
for a very long time.

(Unhappy Tardis engines, with occasional explosions.)

DOCTOR: You're looking a little light green, Vansell. Unsteady on your space legs? You
should take something for that.
VANSELL: Oh, Doctor, do shut up.
(Engines quieten down to normal.)
ROMANA: We're through.
VANSELL: Scanner screens are dead. Undercardinal, please download a full survey of all
five deep flight readings into the central data pool.
UNDERCARDINAL: Downloading now, Coordinator.
DOCTOR: Oh, I see the temperature in the Time Station solarium dropped half a degree
during the crossing, Vansell. What a useful fact.
VANSELL: All information gathered by our sensors is of immediate and urgent value in a
situation as untried as this.
DOCTOR: Look around you. Are your arms and legs still there? Mine certainly are. I think.
ROMANA: Do you have a point, Doctor? Or are you simple baiting my Coordinator once
again.
DOCTOR: Romana, surely it's obvious. We have travelled into another universe, a dimension
utterly alien to our own. Your cameras, your scanners, your sensors are recording data
calibrated according to continuous constant time. But they can't measure the sheer anarchy of
this antiverse. It's anathema to our science. You see? Now you've flooded your data pool with
nonsense. It's gone and overflowed. Well done.
ROMANA: Well, so what do you suggest? How do we gather intelligence on the phenomena
of anti-time minus our sensors?
DOCTOR: We use our eyes, our ears, our tongues, our noses, our fingers and toes. Then we
put our heads together. Undercardinal, raise the shutters on the observation ports.
ROMANA: Just do it.
UNDERCARDINAL: Madam President.
(Shutters rise.)
VANSELL: There, Doctor. Space. Satisfied?
DOCTOR: Oh, far from it. A comet eating its own tail. Two nebulae locked together in an
accelerated dance. A star swallowing a star swallowing a star. Constant motion. You're
witnessing the life and death and life of an entire universe taking place in an ever-changing
instant.
ROMANA: That was always the theory, Doctor. Our academics put it in slightly less florid
terms.
DOCTOR: There. See it? There.
VANSELL: It's just a planetoid, Doctor. Some blackened rock hanging in the sky.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes. But what else? Come on.
ROMANA: Oh, of course.
VANSELL: Of course what?
ROMANA: The planetoid is static, Vansell! Don't you see? The only fixed point in this
maelstrom is there.
DOCTOR: Which suggests
ROMANA: That it doesn't belong here.
DOCTOR: A foreign body, just like us. Well, maybe. And if that's the case, whatever it is, it's
not being consumed. I don't see any other safe location for a field trip, do you?
ROMANA: Conceded.
VANSELL: I see.
DOCTOR: And let's not forget my Tardis was dragged through into this place. My Tardis,
containing Charley.
ROMANA: Our only way out of this universe. The realisation hadn't escaped me. And if that
planetoid is the only fixed point in the whole of anti-time
DOCTOR: Then we would be mad not to head there too. But more to the point, I dare say the
Tardis displacement field would have kicked in as she passed through into this place, and
she'd have materialised on the nearest solid ground, there.
VANSELL: Well, Doctor. It seems your deductive powers are indeed correct, but sadly
redundant. That is a trans-temporal beacon. Kurst and Levith, I'll be bound. Our sensors are
not entirely useless. And yes, it is indeed emanating from that particular planetoid you picked
out, as is the signature of a Tardis. Too scrambled to identify, but er
DOCTOR: I dare say the old girl took a fair old battering. She's getting on a bit, you know.
ROMANA: Then that's settled. To your posts, everyone. Undercardinal, set course for the
planetoid.

LEVITH: Hurry, Vansell. How long are we going to have to wait?

CHARLEY: Vansell? Your boss?
LEVITH: Our superior.
KURST [OC]: Levith! Levith, over here!
(Running feet.)
LEVITH: My stars. A forest!
CHARLEY: Oh, don't be silly. Those aren't trees, they're spikes. Metal spikes or something.
Thousands of them. I'm going to have a closer look. Last one there's a big old wimp.
LEVITH: Hey, stop! Well, come on, Kurst. That girl's our. Wait. Wait! Something's wrong.
KURST: What?
LEVITH: The beacon. It's malfunctioning. The pulses are out of sync. Oh, work.

ROMANA: Range, Undercardinal?

UNDERCARDINAL: Landfall in eight microspans, Madam President.
DOCTOR: Shh. Listen. Something's affecting the beacon down there. I know what that is.
ROMANA: Time distortion.

CHARLEY: Levith, I'm first! I'm over here! Fog coming down. Can't see where I'm. Oh, if
only the Doctor was here. He'd be bound to have Galileo's compass in his pocket or
something.
(She giggles, and it echoes.)
CHARLEY: What was that? Is there somebody there? I said, is there somebody there? Oh,
spooky. Haven't felt like this since I was
SENTRIS: Six.
CHARLEY: Ah! Nothing there. There is nothing there. Oh, you're a grown up now, so what
do you do? You stay calm, retrace your steps, find the others. Not sit here quivering at the
slightest sound just because it reminds you a bit of the time you were
(The voice is that of Charley, but several tones deeper than normal.)
SENTRIS: Six. You were six. Behind you, Charley. Don't be scared. Turn around. I won't
hurt you. After three. One, two
CHARLEY: This is madness. It's like I'm talking to myself.
SENTRIS: Three. There. That wasn't so hard, was it now?
CHARLEY: You're me. Or a ghost of me. What
SENTRIS: I'm not you, Charley. But I know everything about you. I know about when you
were six, about that time in Burnham Beeches. Such a long, lazy, late afternoon in the woods,
running and laughing with Nanny, your sisters. Then you ran on ahead and you hid in the
bracken, and you waited and waited, but they never came. And it got darker and darker, and
you called out for help, but they still never came. And the shadows got longer, so you called
and you whooped and you shouted and cried. Then you ran, but you only went deeper and
deeper into the woods, became more alone, and the shadows got longer and longer and
longer, touching your heels, and you fell in a clearing with no one in sight. You thought you
were lost, that you'd never be found, and the shadows would reach you and take you away.
Oh Charley, I've been on your trail for such a long time. Where you led, I followed. From
France, to Sebastian Grayle's Wycombe estate.
CHARLEY: Who are you?
SENTRIS: Me? I'm everyone who never was.
MALE: Everyone who's never been.
SENTRIS: Everyone who never lived.
CHARLEY: More of you!
MALE 2: Everyone who never died.
SENTRIS: And now, Charley, you're mine.
CHARLEY: Keep back. All of you. Please. Please! Please!

KURST: Did you hear that?

LEVITH: The girl. Come on!
(Running.)

CHARLEY: Please! I don't know what you want. I don't know what to do.
SENTRIS: Oh, Charley. You don't have to do anything. Just hold still and join us.
CHARLEY: Please!
KURST: There! She's there! Surrounded by ghosts?
LEVITH: Whatever they are, let's see how they like this.
(Energy weapons fire.)
SENTRIS: Time Lords.
LEVITH: Earth girl, Charley, while they're distracted. Run!
CHARLEY: You heard the woman, Charley. Get up and run!
SENTRIS: Take them!
LEVITH: Hold them off, Kurst. I'm going to get her.
KURST: Levith! Levith, wait. Stay back, ghosts.
CHARLEY: (breathless) Oh, I can't, I can't run any more.
LEVITH: Back! Run, girl. Faster! This way to the Tardis.
KURST: Levith, they're reforming. Cut them down and they just start reforming.
SENTRIS: Do you really think you can do us harm, Time Lord? Here, in our own home.
MALE 2: You made us, Time Lord.
SENTRIS: Here, we can unmake you.
KURST: What are you going to do to me?
SENTRIS: We know you, Kurstellionfasticson. A cousin of the Paytrex house. Underassassin
with the Celestial Intervention Agency, fast-tracked from the Chancellory Guard. You keep a
striped pig bear called Stasersnout, and feed him Promaise bars.
KURST: How do you
SENTRIS: Has yours been a good life, Kurstellionfasticson? Will it nourish us for long?
KURST: Don't touch me! Please, don't touch me! Nooooooo!
CHARLEY: They're gaining on us!
LEVITH: Not far now, Charley. Nearly at the beacon. A minute more and we'll be in the
Tardis.
CHARLEY: Levith, watch out! The ground's giving way!
LEVITH: Ah!
CHARLEY: It's all right, I've got you. Tell your mother I saved your life.
LEVITH: Oh. Oh no. No, no, no.
CHARLEY: What is it? What's wrong?
LEVITH: The beacon. The Tardis. They've gone! The ground cracked open and swallowed
them.

VANSELL: We've lost the beacon.

DOCTOR: What? Vansell, let me see. Nothing. Nothing?
VANSELL: Except the Tardis signature. Well, that's clearer now, no
DOCTOR: No, no, no, that's not right. I know my Tardis better than anybody.
ROMANA: Doctor, Vansell, if you please. We're entering the atmosphere. Undercardinal,
settle into a high orbit.
DOCTOR: Belay that, Undercardinal. Romana, there's a layer of mist obscuring the surface.
We cannot trust the instrumentation. We have to go lower. If the beacon is down, then
Charley might be in trouble. And if Charley is in trouble, then so are we.
VANSELL: An unnecessary risk, Madam President, founded as usual on baseless intuition
and a flagrant disregard for the possible dangers
DOCTOR: Oh, Vansell! There's no point in living if you can't live dangerously.
Undercardinal, if I could just
ROMANA: Doctor, no!
(Controls operated.)
DOCTOR: Sorry, slip of the fingers.
VANSELL: Level up! Level up!
DOCTOR: Too late now.

LEVITH: We're trapped.

MALE: This is nowhere, Time Lord.
SENTRIS: Here, there's nowhere to run.
LEVITH: You again. Where did you spring from?
MALE: We move as we like.
SENTRIS: Here we are free.
CHARLEY: We can always try leaping into the rift in the ground.
LEVITH: It's bottomless, Charley. Unless you're about to sprout wings
MALE: Come to us.
SENTRIS: Join us.
CHARLEY: Oh, Doctor, where are you?
(Tardis engines.)
MALE: What is this?
LEVITH: I don't believe it. The Time Station. They're coming!
CHARLEY: Coming straight for us by the look of it.
LEVITH: The wraiths, they're scattering.
CHARLEY: It's going to crash! Don't just stand there gawping, woman. Run!

ROMANA: Time Station steadying. Doctor, if you won't behave yourself, I will have you
restrained.
DOCTOR: Restrained? Me? Romana, I'm actually hurt. We've shared shackles everywhere
from E-Space. There! People running beside that crevasse. Is that Charley? Hang on, what's
that beyond, a forest?
VANSELL: Detecting mass in our path. Density conforms with registered alloys.
DOCTOR: A metal forest? No such thing. I warned you about these sensors, Vansell.
ROMANA: Pull up now!
DOCTOR: Don't worry, we'll scrape the tree tops at worst.
VANSELL: Impact imminent!
ROMANA: Doctor, I strongly advise you to get down!
(Big crash!)
DOCTOR: Oh, metal trees. My mistake.

(Time Station crash-landing.)

COMPUTER: Emergency. Time Station damaged. Hull integrity compromise. All units on
crisis alert. Emergency (voice runs down.)
ROMANA: Yes, yes, I think we get the point. (coughs) Power deck, report. Temporal
reactors, report.
DOCTOR: I know, it might be a good time to say sorry. Sorry, everyone.
ROMANA: Oh, spare me, Doctor. Catastrophe follows in your footsteps, just as it ever did.
But perhaps you could now concentrate your efforts on not making a disaster out of this
crisis? Thank you. Where's Vansell?
(Groans.)
DOCTOR: Over here. Vansell? Nosebung Vansell, it's the Doctor. That's right. You've taken
a bit of a knock. Nothing to worry about. (sotto) Probably.
VANSELL: Zagreus waits at the end of the world, for Zagreus is the end of the world. His
time is the end of Time, and his moment Time's undoing.
DOCTOR: You know, that's the third time today old Zagreus has come up. He seems ever so
well connected for a silly villain in a minor nursery rhyme.
ROMANA: Later, Doctor. If you'll allow me
(Slap!)
VANSELL: What? Where? What's happened here? Doctor, what have you done? Careless,
irresponsible, untrustworthy lackwit! You should have been removed from our history and
ROMANA: Quiet, Vansell.
(Faint tinkling sound.)
ROMANA: There's something in here with us. Something
SENTRIS: Unwanted, Madam President? (laughs) Welcome to the Land of the Lost.
VANSELL: Where did that come from?
DOCTOR: Charley? No, you're not Charley. Some kind of spectral entity that's taken
Charley's form.
SENTRIS: A ghost? Doctor, you don't believe in ghosts.
DOCTOR: You're alive, then?
SENTRIS: Not in your terms.
VANSELL: What is that thing?
DOCTOR: Isn't it obvious, Vansell? You are a creature of anti-time.
SENTRIS: A Neverperson, if you please.
DOCTOR: Do you know us? All of us?
SENTRIS: Intimately. I've visited your reality once or twice. But briefly, so as not to cause
catastrophe.
DOCTOR: And there are more of you?
SENTRIS: Oh yes, Doctor. Hundreds. Thousands. Some you may recognise from 1806. I do
apologise, but I needed some nourishment when I got there.
DOCTOR: I don't see any.
NEVERPERSON: Doctor.
DOCTOR: Lucy?
NEVERPERSON: Doctor;
DOCTOR: Lucy and Richard Martin. Of course. All that time energy must have attracted you
like a beacon. Oh, Lucy, I'm so sorry.
ROMANA: Keep away from them, all of you.
DOCTOR: Tell me, Neverperson, where do you come from? Is it here?
SENTRIS: An excellent question, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Somewhere else, then. What do you want from us?
SENTRIS: Why, Doctor, we only want a little of your time. Brothers, sisters, the vessel is
ours. This time rotor is cracked. Let us feast on it.
VANSELL: (sotto) What are they doing?
DOCTOR: (sotto) They're draining temporal energy from the rotor, from the ship.
Fascinating. They're becoming less translucent, more solid.
ROMANA: This Time Station is the property of the High Council of Gallifrey. I demand
you, you people, evacuate my craft.
DOCTOR: Careful, Romana. There's no need to antagonise them.
VANSELL: That's quite enough. You guards, ready stasers and fire!
(Energy weapons.)
SENTRIS: Oh, Vansell, don't be so silly. The thing that you seek lies not far from here.
VANSELL: What thing, anti-creature?
SENTRIS: The truth you came in search of, you foolish man. The truth about Zagreus.
VANSELL: You know about Zagreus?
DOCTOR: Everybody seems to today. Interesting, that.
ROMANA: Quiet, Doctor.
SENTRIS: There is a grotto in the hills not far away. There you will find the answers that you
seek. And the object of your quest. Leave us to feed on your vessel and go in search of the
thing you came here for.
VANSELL: Guards, lower your weapons and follow me.
ROMANA: Stop! You over-reach your authority, Vansell.
VANSELL: And there is a higher authority than yours, Madam President. Guard!
DOCTOR: (sotto) Romana, I have absolutely no idea what's going on here, but you can't
possibly consider abandoning the Time Station to these creatures. It's our only way out of this
place.
ROMANA: (sotto) Firstly, if you could be bothered to keep up with the latest developments
in our technology, you'd know that this ship has a limited ability to regenerate itself, given
time. And secondly, we do still have your Tardis, Doctor.
DOCTOR: (sotto) Wherever she is.
ROMANA: (sotto) And we have to find your friend. My mind is made up. (normal) Guards,
form an escort. Coordinator Vansell and myself have a great and important mission to carry
out.
VANSELL: We do.
ROMANA: Well, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Romana, this is madness.
SENTRIS: Go, Doctor. Go, all of you.
DOCTOR: Well, whatever this great secret is, I only hope it's worth it.
ROMANA: Doctor, it will be. Guards, follow me.
(Footsteps. Door opens.)
NEVERPERSON: Can we not gorge ourselves on the Time Lords? All that temporal energy
flowing through them.
SENTRIS: Not yet, brother. They cannot escape us. Not here, not now. First, we feast on
their machine, and once we're filled to bursting with their time, then we can consume them
all.

LEVITH: (breathless) Slow down, Charley.

CHARLEY: It's still in one piece. They might need help. Doctor!

DOCTOR: So come on, Romana, what exactly have we come here for?
ROMANA: The source of anti-time, Doctor. And we've found it.
DOCTOR: I know that. Please, please, what else?
CHARLEY: [OC]: Doctor! Ooo-ooo! Over here! Doctor!
DOCTOR: Charley! Romana, it's Charley! Charley, I'm coming.
(Runs off.)
VANSELL: Such devotion to his companion. How touching. You know that if that
Neverperson back there was correct, if the Books of Zagreus are proved to be true and what
we seek is indeed somewhere in this antiverse, then the Doctor will never approve.
ROMANA: The Doctor is full of surprises, Vansell. But his one abiding characteristic,
whichever body he wears, whatever gibberish he speaks, however erratically he acts, is his
unerring sense for what is right. I trust him absolutely, and I always have.
VANSELL: And if he pits himself against you? Against the Time Lords? Against the thing
we almost daren't believe might be here? Whom will you place your trust in then, Madam
President?

CHARLEY: Doctor! Oh, Doctor, I was so afraid I'd never see you again.
DOCTOR: You don't get rid of me that easily. I told you, Charley, whatever it takes, I won't
ever let you down. I promise. Now, come on. You have to meet Romana.
(Footsteps.)
DOCTOR: Romana? This is Charley, one of my best ever friends. Charley, this is Romana,
one of my best friends ever.
CHARLEY: Hello.
ROMANA: Hello.
DOCTOR: See? You're going to get along just famously. Now, who's this?
CHARLEY: Oh, this is Levith. She helped me, I suppose.
LEVITH: Commander Levith, CIA.
DOCTOR: Oh, never mind.
LEVITH: Coordinator, Madam President. You should know there are creatures here. We lost
Kurst when we met them. They've vanished now, but they're dangerous, and
ROMANA: Yes. The Neverpeople currently have control of the Time Station, Commander.
DOCTOR: Not the best news, is it? Charley, care for a walk? What are those spikes? I
wonder (voice tails off.)
VANSELL: What about the local terrain, Levith? What have you seen?
LEVITH: It's weird, Coordinator. There's a crevasse opened up and then there's this forest.
And the blow holes we passed on the way here
VANSELL: Blow holes?
LEVITH: Entrances or something, in the ridges and foothills.
VANSELL: Really?
CHARLEY: So, what do you make of this forest, Doctor?
DOCTOR: It's interesting. These spikes. There's something about them. Nothing natural. It's
almost like they've been manufactured then beaten out of shape, twisted out of recognition.
Even the dust on the earth. This is metal ore, see?
CHARLEY: Like iron filings?
DOCTOR: That's it, exactly. Exactly.
CHARLEY: Oh, I don't like the sound of that. Ow!
DOCTOR: What's wrong, Charley? Ow!
CHARLEY: Spots of rain.
DOCTOR: Acid rain.
CHARLEY + DOCTOR: Run!

ROMANA: Doctor! Charley! We have to take cover! Over here!

(The Doctor and Charley run up, both squealing ow, ow. Inside somewhere,)
ROMANA: Oh, do get a move on, Doctor.
DOCTOR: I know, I know. Ooo, that stuff stings. Where am I going to find a tailor to mend
this jacket in the whole of anti-time? I don't know.
ROMANA: Oh, Doctor.
CHARLEY: Is your Madam Icydrawers always so frosty?
DOCTOR: What, Romana? No, not at all. But there's something here. Something she's not
telling me. Something big. Vansell is in on it too, and that certainly bothers me. Tunnels.
CHARLEY: Blow holes, Levith said.
DOCTOR: No, too regular. Corridors, in fact, leading left and right and straight ahead. A
network forking off in all directions. There's light here too. Dim, dim light. Phosphorescence?
No, no, no, no, no.
CHARLEY: Is this a pattern on the walls? See, like big ellipses. There's something it reminds
me of, but I don't know what.
DOCTOR: More filings, more rust, more decay. This is a very odd place we've landed up in,
Charley.
LEVITH [OC]: Through here. Over here!
DOCTOR: Come on.

LEVITH: It's incredible.

ROMANA: Guard's spread out. And don't touch anything. Well, Vansell?
VANSELL: This is it.
ROMANA: Possibly.
DOCTOR [OC]: Come on, come on, let us through.
(Footsteps.)
DOCTOR: Well, I'm impressed. It's vast! Not so much a cavern, more a
ROMANA: Chamber, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Yes. Yes, that's it. A chamber. And what's this at the heart of it, hmm?
CHARLEY: Doctor, this doesn't make sense. We've not come deep enough underground to
be in a space like. Oh. We've not come deep enough underground to be in a space like this
because, because it's bigger on the inside than. Oh Doctor, don't you see what this is?
DOCTOR: Yes, Charley, I think I do. Metal spikes piercing the earth all around us, twisted
and blasted and crusted with rust and decay. Tunnels, corridors leading to huge chambers and
vaults, perhaps some even bigger than this. Everywhere pitted circles in the walls and now
here, at the core of the thing, a massive stalactite connecting a fluted ceiling to a broad
hexagonal dais. We're not on an asteroid, some natural satellite, are we, hmm? This entire
planetoid, this blasted lump of flotsam spinning in the chaos of anti-time, this coal fallen
from infinity's grate, the only fixed point in the whole of this swirling antiverse, it doesn't
belong here. It came from outside the bounds of the maelstrom. From
ROMANA: Our world, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Our world. Exactly. No stalactite, then. A console. The whole world the shattered
hulk of a fabulous machine, its dimensions ripped asunder, turned inside out, compacted,
mapped onto itself. This is the wreck of a Tardis.
LEVITH: I don't believe this.
DOCTOR: Romana, Vansell, you knew, didn't you? You've known all along. Oh, Romana.
ROMANA: The possibility was accounted for. I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't quite dare believe it
myself.
VANSELL: You see, Doctor, the question is not that this place is the remnant of an
abandoned Tardis. The question is not even how it came to be here. No, the question is, who
brought it here? Whose Tardis was this? Madam President, if you would permit me the
honour?
ROMANA: The stage is yours.
VANSELL: Guards, the neutron staff, quick. Now, Doctor. Let's see if we can shed a little
light on the mystery. Out of the way of the console.
(Creaking controls.)
VANSELL: The power receptors are still intact. Opening flux valves now.
(Power starts to build.)
DOCTOR: Amazing. I never imagined.
VANSELL: Just a spark of life, Doctor. One spark will be enough!
(Zap of the staff.)
CHARLEY: Oh! Above the console. There's something forming. A face in the air.
DOCTOR: We call it a hologram, Charley, and I know that face. It was in the Matrix. An old
man, eternally sad and infinitely wise. It can't be.
VANSELL: There to do battle with Zagreus the beast, never resting as long as history is
lasting, until either or both are laid to waste.
CHARLEY: It's going to speak.
ROMANA: On your knees, Doctor, Miss Pollard. On your knees, all of you.
RASSILON: It has been a time beyond measuring. Here, alone in the cold, adrift and aloof
from my people, my home. Once, my name was hailed and feared in equal measure by
friends and enemies alike. Know then that I am Conqueror of Yssgaroth, Overpriest of
Dronid, First Earl of Prydon, Patris of the Vortex, Ravager of the Void and President of
Gallifrey from the time of our Empire's great foundation! I am the Lord Rassilon. At last, my
children, you have returned to me.
DOCTOR: I don't understand. Rassilon died on Gallifrey millions of years ago. Romana, I've
been inside the Tomb.
ROMANA: Quiet, Doctor. There's more of the simulacrum.
RASSILON: A long time past, I helped end centuries of tyranny and bloodshed on my own
planet. Helped to usher in a great age of enlightenment, with faithful counsel from the wisest
of my Technomagi. I locked the space time continuum with the great Eye of Harmony. But,
in my declining years, I grew fearful that by constructing the one true Time, I might have
brought into being its very opposite. The menace of what I termed anti-time. A vile poison
which might yet spill out to contaminate and undo all I had sought to achieve filled me with
horror and dread. I resolved to journey into the strange, uncharted fringes of space time in
search of my nemesis. And here, in this weird unreality, I found the Neverworld of Zagreus,
the corpus of chaos and nowhen. I have battled this entity. It is dormant, docile now. My
Tardis shattered, my exit hole shut. I am trapped in this place. But I leave this message in the
hope that one day my Time Lords will find a way to rescue me. My body I have placed in a
Zero Cabinet nearby, my last breath suspended. If I live, my children, I should like you to
revive me and take me to Gallifrey. Take me home.

[Part Two]

CHARLEY: So, I take it that was someone important?

DOCTOR: That's putting it mildly, Charley. This is all wrong.
ROMANA: You may stand. Well, Doctor? Now you know.
DOCTOR: Congratulations, Romana. You've discovered Rassilon. What do you call
someone so powerful they rescue God?
ROMANA: There are no gods, Doctor. Rassilon least of all.
CHARLEY: I think I understand who Rassilon was, but how did this lot know to find him
here? And wasn't Zagreus a character in a children's rhyme or something? Oh, that's right. It
came up in Singapore, remember?
DOCTOR: Oh yes. Zagreus sits inside your head. Zagreus lives among the dead.
VANSELL: Zagreus sees you in your bed, and eats you when you're sleeping. Miss Pollard
asks good questions, Doctor.
DOCTOR: It's a nursery rhyme, Vansell. Tea time terror for Time tots. It doesn't mean
anything, does it.
CHARLEY: Ring a ring of roses.
DOCTOR: What?
CHARLEY: Oh, Doctor, you know. Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies. Atishoo,
atishoo, we all fall down. It's about the Black Death, isn't it? Sneezing was a symptom of
bubonic plague, and all fall down means, well, dying.
DOCTOR: Charley, you're right. So, how does the second verse go?
VANSELL: Zagreus at the end of days. Zagreus lies all other ways. Zagreus comes when
times amaze.
DOCTOR: And all of history is weeping. Yes, of course. It could almost be a metaphor.
VANSELL: For what's happening to the Web of Time, yes. Intriguing, then, that Zagreus
should figure in the literature of other worlds, as a parable on Sparbarus and Finian Four. As
an epic of the Jazuric speaking peoples.
DOCTOR: Well, don't quote that. The consonants alone could keep us here for weeks.
VANSELL: And can be found in the Black Library of an Earth sect, the Knights of Saint
John the Beheaded. But it is known to have existed as far back as the twelfth epoch, and
possibly beyond. Zagreus waits at the end of the world, for Zagreus is the end of the world.
His time is the end of Time, and his moment Time's undoing. Again, the parallel to the Web
is quite remarkable.
CHARLEY: So what happens to the hero?
VANSELL: He abandons his people. He builds a vast and mighty cosmic ship and goes in
search of the land of Zagreus. A land he knows only to exist in dreams. He set then his course
to a scar on the face of creation, where the stars lived and died in the churn of one night, and
decay was the only constant. Levith?
LEVITH: After many, many years, he's ready to give up his quest, when he imagines a huge
gate in the clouds. And the Gate of Zagreus opened before him, and all of the antiverse was
revealed to him, and its terrible beauty ached in his hearts.
DOCTOR: Hearts, plural? Really?
VANSELL: So through them he ventured, there to do battle with Zagreus, the beast, never
resting as long as history is lasting, until either or both are laid to waste.
DOCTOR: And they all lived happily ever after, I suppose. I accept there are a few
circumstantial connections to be made, but the evidence is hardly compelling, so what else?
ROMANA: The name of the hero, Doctor, is Assilon. Or sometimes Raslon. In some
traditions, simply Ra. These folk tales share one other element. Before the hero leaves home
in search of Zagreus, he orders all records of his quest destroyed for fear of undermining his
utopia. His people believe him dead.
DOCTOR: And you believed it, all of it?
VANSELL: It would explain why the idea of anti-time has always been discredited or
suppressed. An enduring legacy of Rassilon's lieutenants. But a possible congruence between
these tales and the heresy of anti-time's been noted for centuries.
ROMANA: Only recently have our students been brave enough to break with the Great
Curriculum, to open their eyes to newer fields, sharing their knowledge with other of the
Temporal Powers.
VANSELL: An undertaking which my Agency has been happy to assist. But imagine if the
great Rassilon were to be returned to us, he who began the intuitive revelation, who
established the Eye of Harmony and anchored the space time vortex. How much could we
achieve? How much further could the Time Lords go? Madam President, the proof lies inside
a Zero Cabinet somewhere within the bounds of this planet. Or Tardis. Whatever.
ROMANA: Agreed. We search, methodically, and find Rassilon's casket.
DOCTOR: If it exists.
SENTRIS: Oh, Doctor, of course the casket exists.
DOCTOR: You again. Have you been listening in?
CHARLEY: Doctor, have you met that, that thing with my face already?
DOCTOR: Oh, yes. And I know enough to be wary of it.
SENTRIS: Well, Coordinator? Have you found what you came here for?
VANSELL: Only in part. Do you know where the casket is, Neverperson?
SENTRIS: We do. We wish to make an accommodation with you for its return.
ROMANA: I'm sorry, I am to take it you want to negotiate terms?
SENTRIS: We know you, Time Lords. We know the effect that our limited excursions in to
your reality has had upon your continuity. We know, if you could, you would eliminate us
utterly. But your Time gives us being. Would you deny us our right to exist?
DOCTOR: A fair point. Romana?
ROMANA: Doctor, I can't. What their very existence might do to the Web of Time, it's
incalculable. You saw the Matrix projection.
DOCTOR: Who's to say that's not one of a billion alternatives? You, I mean, we, we Time
Lords are a pretty conservative bunch. The minds in the Matrix even more so. The slightest
tremor in their Web sets their sense jangling. Of course the Matrix is in turmoil.
VANSELL: As much as the sentiment sticks in my throat, Madam President, the Doctor's
right. The least we can do is hear their terms.
ROMANA: I will not be rushed, Vansell.
VANSELL: Sometimes, Madam President, I don't think you've the hearts for this job.
ROMANA: Is this insurrection, Coordinator? Take care. Take great care.
DOCTOR: Oh, come along, both of you.
VANSELL: I won't. We have held ourselves back too long, bound by caution, tradition and
deference. We're a joke! We maintain the universe. Oh, yes. We preserve it in amber, its
injustices uncorrected. Aggressors go unpunished in the name of mediation. Doctor, you
placed the Daleks, the Daleks, the most evil, ruthless, coldly calculating race to have ever
stained our history, in a time loop. We could crush them, now. Ensure that the torments they
visit upon every peoples they encounter never occur again. But will we? Will we? We could
work with our allies, the Monan Host, the Warpsmiths of Phaidon, humanity even, to build a
consensus for progress across all the galaxies. To be a radical force for the advancement of a
common good.
ROMANA: Have you quite finished?
VANSELL: I haven't begun. So come on, Madam President. The Daleks. What will you do?
Will you let them go eventually? Will you? Of course you will. You don't have the
imagination for anything else.
ROMANA: This is hardly the time or the place for such a debate.
VANSELL: Why not? Do we have to argue whether or not we should negotiate the return of
the architect of our race? A progressive, a hero who was unafraid to reach out to the unknown
to further not just the glory of his people, but the security of the people of the entire universe.
Our reality is falling apart, and yet you vacillate while the one man who might have the
wisdom and power to resolve this crisis is within your reach!
(Hand claps.)
DOCTOR: Good speech, Vansell. A post card from planet Nosebung. A nice place to visit,
but you wouldn't want to live there.
VANSELL: I'll not take criticism from a deposed President, a convicted criminal, a feckless
joyrider whose misplaced sentimentality caused the anti-time breach in the first place.
SENTRIS: Enough! These are our terms. We will return to you the casket containing your
hero, the great Rassilon. We will also return to you your Time Station. In exchange, we
require only that you undertake to establish a dialogue between the peoples of our realities.
We hope to abide by the laws of your universe, in exchange for limited freedom to trawl your
time stream for the energies which give us meaning. We anticipate, therefore, the
construction of a permanent gateway between our realities.
DOCTOR: What? Using Charley as your back door? That's not on.
CHARLEY: Definitely not. Well, don't I have a say in the matter?
SENTRIS: And so, as a show of good faith, we desire to retain one of your three leaders. The
Madam President, the Coordinator, or the Doctor, who shall remain here in our universe until
such an Accord can be reached.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes. But what about Charley?
VANSELL: What about Charley? What about her? The time she has now is stolen, pilfered
on her behalf by you, Doctor.
ROMANA: That is a very unkind reading of Miss Pollard's predicament.
VANSELL: But an accurate one. There is every reason to suppose that Rassilon himself may
yet find a solution to this conundrum. After all, we don't yet know how he entered this
antiverse in the first place. We accept your terms, Neverperson.
SENTRIS: You volunteer yourself to remain behind, Coordinator?
VANSELL: I do not. I nominate the Lady Romanadvroatrelundar, President of Gallifrey and
all its dominions. One President for our first President. A fair exchange. Levith, escort the
Lady Romana.
LEVITH: With pleasure, Coordinator.
DOCTOR: So this is what you wanted, Vansell. Staff a Time Station with your CIA
placemen, take your President into another universe and pull off a bloodless coup, returning
in glory as Rassilon's right hand man and chosen heir, perhaps. Do not take this man at his
word, Neverperson. He is more interested in his own political gain than the wellbeing of your
people.
SENTRIS: I do not agree, Doctor. We have been observing the Coordinator. He is a
principled and honest man who believes in his oath of office. We trust him. The casket awaits
you on the plain outside. You will all join me there.
(Tinkling sound.)
ROMANA: I'm disappointed in you, Vansell. I judged you loyal.
VANSELL: Oh, I am. To my planet, to my people, to Rassilon. But to you, my Lady? I don't
think so.
CHARLEY: Well, I think turncoats like you get what they deserve.
VANSELL: Levith, keep these three covered. And if Miss Pollard so much as squeaks again,
be sure to kill the Doctor. Now, we have just arranged a meeting. Let's go. Come on then,
move.

VANSELL: We're here, Neverpeople. Where are you?

(Tinkling sound.)
VANSELL: What, just you again? Where's the casket?
SENTRIS: Patience, Coordinator.
CHARLEY: Doctor, is she communicating with the others? You know, with telepathy or
something?
DOCTOR: Possibly, Charley. Very possibly. (sotto) Romana, whatever happens, don't give
up. Keep the faith. There's a way out of all this, I know there is.
ROMANA: Doctor, one day you'll fail to keep one of your promises. It'll come as a terrible
shock to you when it happens.
VANSELL: Stop gossiping, you two. We're waiting.
ROMANA: I'm ready. What do you want with me, Neverperson?
SENTRIS: You will cross to my position. The remainder will stay back.
ROMANA: Very well.
(Footsteps.)
ROMANA: Will this do?
SENTRIS: That will suffice.
VANSELL: Neverperson, where is it? Where's the casket?
SENTRIS: Why, beneath your feet, Coordinator.
(The ground gives way.)
SENTRIS: Here is your hero.
(Sizzling sound.)
VANSELL: My Lord Rassilon. I can sense your power already.
SENTRIS: We will take the Lady Romana now. Your passage will be unimpeded. We look
forward to meeting you again.
VANSELL: What? Oh, yes. Yes, of course.
(Tinkling sound.)
NEVERMAN: You come with us now, Lady.
NEVERWOMAN: To the places underneath.
NEVERMAN: Join us.
NEVERWOMAN: Nourish us.
ROMANA: Oh, don't overdo it. I'm not frightened of you.
DOCTOR: She's dissipating with them, being pulled through the crack in the ground.
(More ground gives way.)
DOCTOR: Charley, run!
CHARLEY: Doctor!
DOCTOR: It's all right. Nearly lost my footing on the edge, that's all. Oh, put your stasers
away, boys. I'll come quietly.
VANSELL: Why Doctor, I do believe you're losing your grip.
DOCTOR: Very funny, Vansell. Come on, help me up.
VANSELL: Now why would I want to do that? After all, Doctor, it's not worth living if you
can't live dangerously, is it?
DOCTOR: Please, Vansell, I can't hold on much longer!
(The Doctor falls.)
CHARLEY: Doctor!
VANSELL: Sorry? Who? Keep a tight hold of the girl. You guards take the casket. Gently!
The Time Station isn't far. We're going home. The great Lord Rassilon is going home.

ROMANA: You don't have to chivvy me along with ectoplasm or whatever it is you're
composed of. I am here of my own accord.
SENTRIS: You are here because we wanted you here, Madam President. Everything which
has transpired in this place has happened because we wished it.
ROMANA: And what do you mean by that? I am President of Gallifrey, and so far as I am
concerned, I am an honoured guest. What's that noise? Where are you taking me?
SENTRIS: To meet the rest of our people, Madam President. They have been so longing to
meet you. Indeed, there is talk of nothing else in our world. There are many questions they
wish to put to you.
ROMANA: What, like a diplomatic address?
SENTRIS: More in the sense of trial. Continue.

(Door opens.)
CHARLEY: Is this your Time Station, Vansell? You should get the cleaners in.
VANSELL: The damage is only superficial, and the power easily restored. See? Escort, bring
the casket through. That's right, just there. Careful!
CHARLEY: Why don't you just open the box, Vansell? Let's hear what your precious
Rassilon has got to say about your behaviour.
VANSELL: Quiet! The Lord Rassilon will be revived in controlled conditions on Gallifrey.
Till then there's no sense in risking his well-being.
CHARLEY: You've got no intention of making a treaty with the anti-time people, have you.
VANSELL: That will be for President Rassilon to decide. Me personally, I'd gladly see the
universe rid of their filthy scourge. Undercardinal, power report.
UNDERCARDINAL: Time rotor drained but artron fuel will have regenerated mass in
twenty microspans, Coordinator.
VANSELL: That's Acting President, if you please. Levith?
LEVITH: Yes, Coord. I mean, Acting President, sir.
VANSELL: I want a proton accelerator delivered from the engineering deck. Miss Pollard
needs to be readied for her little transfiguration. I want this Time Station ready to launch in
thirty microspans.

SENTRIS: Brothers, sisters, we have a visitor. The President Romana, ruler of the planet
Gallifrey.
ROMANA: Thank you. So many of you. Am I honoured?
SENTRIS: Two of our people are especially keen to meet you. Come on, come on.
RORVAN: (male) Hello.
TARIS: (female) Hello.
ROMANA: Er, hello. Sorry, I thought there was something you wanted to say to me?
RORVAN: Do you not know us, Madam President?
TARIS: Surely you remember? Oh, Romana, you must.
ROMANA: Sorry, no. I've never been inside this universe before. Well, no one has.
SENTRIS: Except for your hero, Lord Rassilon, of course.
ROMANA: Of course. But he didn't send me a postcard.
TARIS: Oh no, no, no. You really don't remember me, Romana? Oh, they said you'd grown
cold and heartless, but I didn't believe them. And now I know it's true. (weeps)
ROMANA: I'm sorry. I'm usually good with faces, but yours?
SENTRIS: Then let us put names to the faces. This girl's name is Taris. The boy is her
brother Rorvan.
ROMANA: No. Those names mean nothing to me.
TARIS: She doesn't remember, Rorvan!
RORVAN: How could you be so cruel?
ROMANA: Oh, come on. This is getting ridiculous.
SENTRIS: When you were a little girl, Lady Romana, no more than sixty years or so, your
family would spend most summers in a rambling house on the shores of Lake Abydos. You
used to go swimming with the singing fish. You collected zinc hawthorns from the molten
rushes near the water's edge.
ROMANA: I did. Yes. But how do you know? And just what has any of this got to do with
you lot anyway?
SENTRIS: Quiet. Did you go alone, Lady Romana?
ROMANA: Yes. I was an only child. I didn't have many friends. I was usually too worried
about my tri-bi physics marks.
SENTRIS: Oh, but you did have friends, my Lady.
TARIS: You had us.
ROMANA: Well, now you're just being silly. I know my own memories.
RORVAN: Then you remember the day we found the flurry birds nesting in the old pavilion.
The time the hermit at the far side of the Rabbas Burn chased us away with fire sigil.
TARIS: Oh say you do, Romana. Please?
ROMANA: No. No I do not. How can I?
TARIS: We were your friends for years.
SENTRIS: Enough, Taris. Don't hurt yourself any more. Tell me, my Lady. With your
investiture into the highest office, were you not made privy to all of Gallifrey's most closely
guarded secrets?
ROMANA: Well, obviously.
SENTRIS: The Jasquig Records, the War Perceptors, the Cavox Imperative.
ROMANA: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
SENTRIS: Plus, of course, the Oubliette of Eternity.
ROMANA: Yes.
SENTRIS: What is the Oubliette of Eternity, Madam President?
ROMANA: A disused chamber deep in the heart of our largest off-world station.
SENTRIS: The Headquarters of the Celestial Intervention Agency. Could you tell me,
Madam President, what this chamber was used for?
ROMANA: Dispersal. A barbaric punishment long since abolished. Is this relevant?
SENTRIS: Very. And what exactly did dispersal entail?
ROMANA: It was reserved for those found guilty only of the highest treason against
Gallifrey. Inside the chamber, offenders would be dissipated from history, their entire
timeline erased as if they had never (penny drops) existed.
SENTRIS: And where, do you suppose, did these dispersed people go?
ROMANA: Nowhere. I mean, they'd never existed. There was nowhere for them to go.
DOCTOR: Oh but there was, Romana. Here. They came here.
SENTRIS: Doctor. How good it is to see you.
DOCTOR: It makes sense, don't you see? A barren subdimension beyond the planes of our
reality where the usual rules don't apply.
ROMANA: You mean all of you, all these thousands of you, once you were Gallifreyans.
Time Lords, even.
SENTRIS: Banished from existence at the behest of the CIA. Bidulf here was a Chancellory
guard who got drunk on Malayan Head Juice and babbled details of President Pandax's
retinue. Savos beside him was the barman whose only crime was to listen to Bidulf's slurred
nonsense. Both were dispersed here, their lives deleted and forgotten. Rorvan and Taris were
caught accessing classified documents in a bid to discover how they were orphaned. They
discovered that their parents, Majus and Telsa, were student rebels, dispersed for unlicensed
and unsponsored researches into mutagenic breeding. Everyone here has a story to tell.
RORVAN: And you forgot all about us. If we'd never existed, what was there to remember?
But we remember. We remember you, Romana.
DOCTOR: Can I ask a question? You, the one with Charley's form. Who are you? Where did
you come from?
SENTRIS: I wear the shape of the space time breach as a badge, a symbol of our means of
escape. On Gallifrey, my name was Sentris.
DOCTOR: And what was your crime? What did you do?
SENTRIS: My offences were many and terrible, Doctor. I was a cold killer, a ruthless
murderer of innocents.
DOCTOR: Forgive me, but by the sounds of it you at least got something of what you
deserved.
SENTRIS: Oh, I was never sentenced, or caught even. I sent myself to the Oubliette of
Eternity, dispersed myself into this screaming tumult. I was the two hundred and seventeenth
Coordinator of the CIA. It seemed very rare to authorise a dispersal, but when you cannot
remember that the last person you had destroyed was ever alive at all, you go along with it.
One day I checked the records we kept in a Time protected vault. In just one year as the Head
of the Agency, I found that I had approved the non-execution of over two hundred
non-people. The shame was too much to bear. I destroyed myself and came here, to find
myself surrounded by my victims. They have despised me for an eternity, but I have
promised to make amends, to give them back their lives. This I shall do.
ROMANA: On behalf of the High Council of Time Lords, I tell you that I am desperately
sorry for what has happened to you. To you, Bidulf, and Savos. To you, Rorvan and Taris. To
all of you. And you, Sentris. I pity you, and I hope one day you will find peace. This was a
terrible chapter in Gallifrey's history, and if there is some way to give you something back,
then
SENTRIS: Was? This was a terrible chapter in Gallifrey's history? I pity you, Time Lady. I
pity the fact that our ranks swell by the day. That the number of us continues to grow by the
men who carry out their actions in your name, Madam President. In your sacred name.
DOCTOR: Are you saying that these dispersals continue, now?
SENTRIS: Yes, Doctor. Yes, I am.
ROMANA: Vansell!

VANSELL: Is the time rotor fully charged, Undercardinal?

UNDERCARDINAL: Temporal reactors fully fueled, Acting President, sir.
VANSELL: Good. Good. Great Lord Rassilon, I am but your humblest servant. I live to carry
out your every instruction. What? What's that? Yes. Yes, of course.
LEVITH: Don't fight the straps, Charley. Only one more transformation.
CHARLEY: Oh, so you say. Levith, we can't just abandon Romana or the Doctor, if he's still
alive. What you're doing is treason!
LEVITH: I'm carrying out my Acting President's instructions. And for what it's worth, I
happen to think that what he's doing is right. You wouldn't understand.
CHARLEY: Oh, I understand that your Acting President has flipped his lid. He's talking to
the casket now.
VANSELL: Is everything all right, Levith?
LEVITH: Nearly ready, sir.
VANSELL: Excellent. Dematerialisation in thirteen microspans. (voice distorts.)
CHARLEY: Anti-time. Did you hear that, Levith? Did you? Vansell's been infected with
anti-time.

SENTRIS: Rorvan, Taris, you may leave now. You know what you have to do.
RORVAN: Yes, Sentris.
TARIS: Goodbye, Romana. We miss you.
ROMANA: Goodbye. And I'm sorry. They've gone.
DOCTOR: Hmm. So tell me, Sentris, is there no way back to Gallifrey? Back through this
Oubliette?
SENTRIS: It isn't a doorway, Doctor, just a crude, cruel device. But when you opened the
breach, when you saved your friend Charley, oh, to swim in real time, Doctor. To exist, to be,
that small simple right denied us by you and all who follow Rassilon.
ROMANA: Rassilon? What do you have against Rassilon?
SENTRIS: Rassilon, ha! That paranoid despot. The Architect of the Web of Time. The worm
who denied free will to the people of the universe, chained them to his Eye, bound them to
one single reality, who decreed that any threat to his great empire's sanctity should be
dispersed from all Time.
ROMANA: What? Rassilon built the Oubliette? Then that means
DOCTOR: Oh yes. Rassilon created anti-time.
ROMANA: And he called it Zagreus. He realised what he'd done, and transported himself
here to, to. No, no, that can't be right, can it?
DOCTOR: No, it can't. Romana, don't you see? There's no such thing as Zagreus. There
never was.
ROMANA: No such? Is this true?
SENTRIS: Ah, the legend of Zagreus. What a fabulous invention. A marvellous conceit,
whispered in the ears of the gullible on a hundred worlds in a thousand different eras. An
enticement. And you, Madam President, have been well and truly snared.
DOCTOR: See? I knew it was too good to be true. Let's think now. Gallifrey has been sealed
off ever since the time distortions began to warp the weft of reality, yes?
ROMANA: Yes, but
DOCTOR: So how to persuade its masters to take a trip into anti-time? Why not invent a
legend, a myth which no Time Lord could possibly ignore. The survival of Rassilon, say.
Then everything is set for one small judicious intervention perhaps, to nudge the tale beneath
the noses of the CIA. And what a temptation that would have been. The possibility that
Rassilon himself might be alive. Of course Vansell swallowed it. Baited, hooked, and reeled
in. Am I right, or am I right, Sentris?
SENTRIS: Close enough, Doctor.
ROMANA: But to what end? Why?
DOCTOR: Well, surely that's obvious. If the legend of Zagreus is a myth, then Rassilon still
sleeps the sleep of the just in his Dark Tower, back in the Death Zone on Gallifrey.
ROMANA: So who was that man we saw in the hologram?
SENTRIS: A trick of the light, a mere phantasm, or simply a projection of the thing you most
desired. A man with the wisdom of all the ages. (voice distorts.) A hero from the mistiest
shores of our planet's history. (as Rassilon) Know then that I am conqueror Iskaroth,
Overpriest of Dronid, First Earl of Prydon, Patris of the Vortex.
DOCTOR: Very good. Very good. All of which begs one final question.
ROMANA: If that's not Rassilon in the casket
DOCTOR: What does it contain?
(Charley is still struggling. Vansell's voice has a bit of a crackle in it.)
VANSELL: We dematerialise in six microspans. Is the girl nearly ready, Commander?
LEVITH: Yes, Acting President. Are you, are you quite sure you're all right?
CHARLEY: Oh, listen to the sound of his voice, Levith. There's something wrong.
Something in the casket's corrupted him.
LEVITH: Don't make this harder on yourself, Miss Pollard. Charley. Don't make me pacify
you.
CHARLEY: Levith, please!
(Tinkling sound.)
CHARLEY: Neverpeople! They're here!
RORVAN: Acting President, may we witness the transfiguration?
TARIS: Will you share your knowledge with us?
VANSELL: Yes. Yes, of course. Of course. There's no need for alarm. Everything's going
according to plan.
CHARLEY: No!

DOCTOR: What are you planning, Sentris? You and your people.
SENTRIS: Anti-time cannot pass the transduction barriers which separate Gallifrey's
continuity from the remainder of space time. Your temporal locks are too strong.
ROMANA: Not one single atom can arrive on Gallifrey without authorisation, that's true, but
DOCTOR: The Presidential vessel, especially one carrying the head of the Celestial
Intervention Agency
ROMANA: Need give no warning of its arrival. Its signature will guarantee its conveyance
automatically. What is in that casket? Tell me!
DOCTOR: Oh I think we can make a pretty good guess, don't you? How about a critical mass
of raw and ravenous anti-time.
SENTRIS: The casket will detonate as the Time Station materialises inside the barriers. A
vast flood of anti-time will wash over the Capitol, swamping it, infecting it.
DOCTOR: The Web of Time is already stretched at the seams. Gallifrey is the last bastion of
positive Time. All that maintains the constance of the universe is Eye of Harmony, and if that
is contaminated
ROMANA: All things will flux, wither, and change their state.
DOCTOR: It will be as if the Time Lords had never existed. History will be a blank canvas.
A churning chaos of twisted, unregulated Time. The Empire of Zagreus.
SENTRIS: Freedom for all!
ROMANA: This cannot be allowed!

RORVAN: You know what to do, Vansell.

TARIS: Give the order.
RORVAN: Open the Gateway.
VANSELL: Yes. Yes. We must open the Gateway. Levith, begin proton acceleration.
CHARLEY: Don't listen to him, Levith. His mind's been corrupted.
LEVITH: I, I don't know.
VANSELL: Levith, I am your Acting President. These Neverpeople are our friends. In the
name of Rassilon himself, do it.
LEVITH: Yes. Yes, of course. (voice changes slightly) Of course I must.
CHARLEY: Not you too, Levith? No!
LEVITH: Activate.
(Power runs up and down, Charley screams.)
DOCTOR: I accept your grievance, Sentris, but this terrible revenge on the living cannot be
justified. I have to stop you, you do know that.
SENTRIS: The Time Station is ready to launch. It cannot be stopped. And you, Doctor, your
life has been rich, your stories are many, your history has been filled to bursting. You have
lived more life than we could ever dream possible. But now your time is up. The Lady
Romana, her absorption will be satisfying only as an act of rightful vengeance. Yours will be
an act of charity, a feast for our starving people. Brothers! Sisters! Consume them now!
NEVERPEOPLE: We want you. We need you. We want your souls.
(Charley's scream in the distance.)
SENTRIS: It's happening. The girl is changing.

RORVAN: The Gateway is open.

TARIS: Vansell, we proceed.
VANSELL: Undercardinal, are the breach coordinates locked?
UNDERCARDINAL: (anti-time infected) Downloading now, Acting President.
VANSELL: Then set course for Gallifrey.
RORVAN: At last.
TARIS: At last!
UNDERCARDINAL: Course set.
VANSELL: Begin dematerialisation.
(The time engines start.)
VANSELL: And so
RORVAN: We return.
TARIS: Return.
(The engines stutter.)
UNDERCARDINAL: Power failing, Acting President.
VANSELL: What?
UNDERCARDINAL: Station static. Temporal reactors disengaged.
RORVAN: What is the
TARIS: Meaning
RORVAN: Of this?

NEVERPEOPLE: (unintelligible. something about Time.)

SENTRIS: There is something wrong.
ROMANA: What's Sentris doing?
DOCTOR: Communicating with Neverpeople elsewhere. We saw it earlier, remember? A
problem with the Time Station, perhaps? You know, I think we've earned ourselves a last
minute reprieve.
ROMANA: Let's hope so.
DOCTOR: Everything all right, Sentris? Can we get along with being murdered now?
SENTRIS: A fault has developed aboard the
DOCTOR: Time Station. Has it? See, Romana, what did I tell you? And I suppose you want
us to fix it. Your luck is in, Sentris. The Lady Romana and I just happen to be fully qualified
quantum mechanics. No call out charge, very competitive rates, references on request.
SENTRIS: Silence! We require the use of your Tardis.
DOCTOR: My Tardis? Oh, so you've been keeping my Tardis, have you? Come on, come on,
where is she?
(Rumbling and cracking of rock.)
DOCTOR: Ah, there she is. Get off her, you lot. Do you mind? I suppose you've had quite a
good suck on her time rotor by now. She's a time and space machine, not a lolly pop.
SENTRIS: Your vessel is undamaged.
DOCTOR: Saving her for pudding, I suppose. There, there, old girl. I won't let the nasty
ghosts hurt you.
SENTRIS: You will transport yourselves to the Time Station and use your machine to
reinvigorate its temporal reactors.
DOCTOR: Well, I don't know. I might not have the jump leads. And if the fan belt's gone?
Romana, you wearing tights?
ROMANA: That's enough banter, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Is it? Oh. Well, Sentris, I suppose you'll be coming with us.
SENTRIS: I will. There will be no deviation from the actions I have outlined.
DOCTOR: I could refuse.
SENTRIS: Your President is quite dispensable. She could die.
ROMANA: Then do it. They'd kill us anyway.
DOCTOR: That's as maybe, but no one's dying on my account. Come on, Sentris.
(Tinkling sound.)
DOCTOR: Will you please not dissipate like that? Kindly wait till I've opened the door and
go through like a normal person.
ROMANA: Doctor, we're wasting time.
DOCTOR: I know. Good, isn't it?
(Unlocks door and opens it.)
DOCTOR: In you go, Romana. Bye, all.
(Door closes. Tardis dematerialises.)

DOCTOR: Mmm, this is tricky.

ROMANA: What's the matter, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Tardis doesn't like this, hopping about in space with no temporal ties. She's
blundering about in the dark and any second now
(Engines stutter and stop.)
DOCTOR: Told you.
SENTRIS: If the machine malfunctions, then the President dies.
DOCTOR: Just a hiccup. And I'll need the President under the console with me, Sentris,
unless you can make yourself corporeal long enough to pass me that astro-rectifier. You
can't? Well, then. Romana? Tool box is over beside the gramophone.
ROMANA: Tool box. Tool, tool box. Ah! Call this proper equipment? Your
multiquantiscope's only got one head.
DOCTOR: It only ever had one head.
ROMANA: (sotto) Doctor, you stalled the Tardis deliberately.
DOCTOR: I mean, how many heads does a multiquantiscope need? (sotto) I needed time to
think. Think. Think.
ROMANA: Well, one for uncoupling mergin nuts, obviously. (sotto) Don't worry, it's all in
hand. Just get us up to the Time Station.
DOCTOR: Mergin nuts? Oh, I use a ganymede driver on those. (sotto) Am I to take it you
have a plan?
ROMANA: A ganymede driver? Oh no, a multiquantiscope's what you need. Either that or a
demeter uncoupler. (sotto) Look, the Time Station can only get past Gallifrey's transduction
barriers because it broadcasts my personal authorisation as its key, correct?
DOCTOR: Well, a demeter uncoupler will do fine for a two gauge mergin nut, but anything
above that? No. (sotto) Of course. If we can change your authorisation code, the Time Station
will be locked out of the Capitol. Romana, that's brilliant!
ROMANA: (sotto) Don't get to be President of Gallifrey with a head full of turnips, you
know.
(Bang, sparks.)
ROMANA: Your zeus plugs are in a terrible state. And you've worn your neutron grips down
to nothing. (sotto) Signature's burned in, so I can't change the code from the Time Station, but
if I can get to the Eighth Door via the Matrix chamber
DOCTOR: Well, you know what they say. A neutron grip is as a neutron grip does. (sotto)
Yes, you can change the code from inside the Matrix.
ROMANA: (sotto) At least in theory. (normal) An electron crank? How quaint.
DOCTOR: What, you'd have me using one of those new-fangled ion grapples, I suppose?
(sotto) We just have to find a way to get you there. I think an utterly transparent ploy is called
for.
SENTRIS: Quickly, quickly.
DOCTOR: Oh, keep your halo on, Sentris. A good workman never blames his tools and
you'll find no fault with mine. Now.
(Console controls beep, and the engine starts.)
DOCTOR: Normal service has been resumed.
ROMANA: Oh, well done, Doctor.

CHARLEY: Oh. Oh. I never want to go through that again as long as I live.
VANSELL: But Miss Pollard, you'll have to. After all, we have to go through you to get back
into our universe.
CHARLEY: What? We haven't? We're not on? Oh, no. Can't you just leave me alone?
RORVAN: You are a precious and fragile thing.
TARIS: You will give us all our freedom back.
CHARLEY: What about my freedom? What about me?
VANSELL: Quiet, Miss Pollard. We have visitors.
(The Tardis materialises.)
CHARLEY: The Tardis! But
(Door opens.)
DOCTOR: Charley!
CHARLEY: I knew it. I knew you'd survive.
VANSELL: It's a very dreary habit, Doctor, cheating death. Someone will break that
disposition soon.
DOCTOR: Ah, Vansell. Enjoying your time as Despot in Waiting, are you? Vansell, what's
wrong with your
ROMANA: Levith, the Undercardinal, the whole crew, they're all the same.
CHARLEY: It's the casket, Doctor. Something in there's got to them.
DOCTOR: I imagine it did. Anti-time infection doesn't suit your pasty face, Vansell. If you
could only think straight, you'd see what you've enabled.
VANSELL: What I've
DOCTOR: It's not Rassilon in the casket, Vansell. Rassilon's dead. He was never there.
Instead, you've brought into our universe a heaving mass of pure anti-time, which is going to
flood the whole of Gallifrey and disintegrate the Web of Time.
VANSELL: I, I'm not. You lie, Doctor. What we are doing is for the good of all Gallifrey.
CHARLEY: Is this true, Doctor? Is that what they're up to?
DOCTOR: It is, Charley, but I think Vansell's too far gone to care.
SENTRIS: Enough, Doctor. You will attend to your duties.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes. You megalomaniacs, you're all the same. Rush, rush, rush. Never
put off today what you can put off tomorrow, I say.
ROMANA: Doctor, you're talking nonsense.
DOCTOR: More often than not. Well, the control panel shows a power drain across the
board, but like I told you before, these sensors aren't much use in this reality. Ah! Here, look.
Your flux curves are all out of synch.
ROMANA: Indubitably.
DOCTOR: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Don't like this. All right, Sentris, I can fix it. But I'm
going to need a bit of help.
ROMANA: Oh? What sort of help would that be, Doctor?
DOCTOR: You passed in Temporal Engineering, didn't you, Romana?
ROMANA: Oh, just a small triple alpha.
DOCTOR: I need a qualified person in the reactors to reset the flux pattern as I set the Time
Station's pulses into phase with the Tardis. Do you think you can do that?
ROMANA: It's a piece of cake, Doctor.
DOCTOR: No, it's a particularly fine display of lateral logic, but it'll get the Time Station
moving again. Sentris, are we agreed? Romana can do my dirty work down in the reactors.
SENTRIS: This is acceptable.
VANSELL: Don't be so sure, my friend. The Doctor is a cunning retrograde, and the Lady
Romana's no better. Send Levith as escort.
SENTRIS: No. Commander Levith will stay here, keeping the Doctor at staser point. You,
Vansell, will go with Romana.
VANSELL: Me? But I'm the Acting President. (energy fluctuations) Yes. Yes, I see that I
must. Of course yes.
SENTRIS: My comrades here will escort both you and the Lady Romana.
RORVAN: Oh, Romana.
TARIS: We're going on a little trip.
ROMANA: Rorvan and Taris. Splendid. Come along, then. You too, Vansell.
DOCTOR: One moment, Madam President. I want you to have this.
ROMANA: Your sonic screwdriver? But
DOCTOR: Oh, you may need it down there. Handy to have about, this old thing.
ROMANA: Yes, I remember.
DOCTOR: You will take good care of it?
ROMANA: I promise.
DOCTOR: Weren't you the one who told me not to make promises?
ROMANA: Only ones that can't be kept.
(Door opens.)
ROMANA: Goodbye, Doctor.
(Door closes.)
DOCTOR: Goodbye, Romana. Well then, best set our noses to the grindstone and please
don't wave that weapon in my face, Levith. You're blocking all my light.

ROMANA: Oh do hurry up, Vansell. We don't want to keep our unalive friends waiting.
VANSELL: Unalive?
ROMANA: You don't know? These Neverpeople are your victims. Time Lords blasted out of
history at the CIA's behest.
VANSELL: No, no.
RORVAN: He cannot hear you. You waste time, Madam President.
TARIS: And time is too precious to squander.
ROMANA: That's strange, coming from people who want to destroy Time itself.
RORVAN: Your time is a prison.
TARIS: You lock yourselves within it.
ROMANA: You don't believe that any more than I do, Taris. Your sense is so blunted by
anger that you deprive the universe of meaning. But you're right, I've only got a few more
microspans of purposeful existence remaining. I'm damned if I'm going to waste them trying
to persuade you that bitterness has warped your reason.
(Footsteps stop.)
ROMANA: We're here.
(Beep, door slides open. Sounds a bit like a furnace.)
ROMANA: The Temporal reactors. Are you coming, Vansell?
VANSELL: What? Yes. Yes, Romana.
ROMANA: Good.

DOCTOR: There. The console chamber is now fully aligned to the Tardises power rhythms.
There'll be no more difficulties this end. We just have to wait for Romana.
SENTRIS: Excellent. You will now assist the Undercardinal. Hurry. Undercardinal, connect
these delta leads to the radial socket on Lord Rassilon's casket.
UNDERCARDINAL: I will.
SENTRIS: Now, Doctor, take the other end of the delta leads and wire them into the third
panel on the control array.
DOCTOR: You ought to hire a handyman, Sentris. Oh no, you don't. Count me out. I'm not
doing this.
CHARLEY: What's she want you to do, Doctor? Ow, I can't see.
DOCTOR: You want someone to connect the casket to the Time Station's self-destruct
mechanism, then find another pair of hands.
SENTRIS: Oh, Doctor, don't be so prissy. Commander Levith, is your staser charged?
LEVITH: It is.
SENTRIS: I shall count to three. If the Doctor has not completed his task by the time I've
finished, I want you to raise your staser.
LEVITH: I understand.
SENTRIS: And blast yourself through the head. One. Two. Three.
DOCTOR: All right, Sentris, you've made your point.
(Rattle, power hum.)
DOCTOR: Happy now?
CHARLEY: What's that done?
DOCTOR: That has ensured that as soon as the Time Station materialises in Gallifrey's
internal ionosphere, the ship's self-destruct mechanism will begin a short countdown. It will
be completed the very nanosecond the casket opens.
SENTRIS: Spreading anti-time fallout over the maximum possible area, corrupting all of
Gallifrey before the Time Lords can marshal any kind of response.
CHARLEY: What, the Time Station will explode?
SENTRIS: Miss Pollard, when I first tracked your form across space time, I found your
na?vet? engaging. Now it begins to grate.
CHARLEY: That's charming, that is. Doctor, will you kindly tell this Sentris person to.
Doctor?
DOCTOR: (sotto) Come on, Romana. What's going on?

ROMANA: You like to feast on Time, Rorvan and Taris. Well, there you are. A cauldron of
pure chronoplasmic energy.
RORVAN: It is awesome.
TARIS: We hunger for it.
ROMANA: Mouth-watering, is it? Wouldn't get too close, if I were you. One inch past that
zybanium shield and even you will be atomised. Vansell, could I have your assistance?
(sotto) Correct me if I'm wrong, Acting President, but the casket's influence over you has
waned, hasn't it?
VANSELL: I don't know. There's something wrong.
ROMANA: Careful. While Rorvan and Taris are mesmerised by the Temporal reactors, let's
not give the game away. You've been infected by the anti-time in the casket. It's been
influencing you, affecting your behaviour, maybe for even longer than you think. But its hold
over you seems to decrease with distance. Are you listening to me?
VANSELL: Oh my Lady, I remember now. I think I've done some terrible things.
ROMANA: You have. And the purges you colluded in back on Gallifrey were only the
beginning, so I ask you just this once. Are you loyal? Come on, quick. The whole of reality
may hang on it.
VANSELL: Madam, I will serve you till the stars decay and the cosmos is naught but a dying
ember in eternity's fire/
ROMANA: Well, the next five minutes will do. I need a distraction, time to get to the Matrix
Chamber, change the authorisation code of this ship before it materialises and destroys the
Eye of Harmony. Now, if we can lower both these shutters simultaneously, our floaty friends
there will be trapped between the shutters and the reactors. And if I then raise the zybanium
shields, they'll be exposed to the reactor's cores. That should sort them out, at least long
enough for me to reach the next deck down. I need you to raise the other shutter there exactly
when I say. Got it?
VANSELL: I understand, my Lady.

TARIS: Are you not finished?

ROMANA: Nearly, Taris. Nearly. Are you ready, Vansell? After three. One, two, three.
(Shutter slides down.)
RORVAN [OC]: What is this?
TARIS [OC]: What is happening?
VANSELL [OC]: My shutter, it's jammed! I, I'm opening the zybanium shield, my Lady.
ROMANA: Vansell, you can't! The shutter on your side's not down. You'll be exposed to the
reactor cores.
VANSELL [OC]: I do this gladly.
RORVAN [OC]: No, Vansell! Do not open the shield!
(Rorvan and Taris scream.)
ROMANA: Vansell? Vansell, I (silence) I won't waste the time that you've bought me. I must
get to the Matrix chamber.

UNDERCARDINAL: Power surge in the Temporal reactors, Sentris. The Time Station is
back online.
SENTRIS: Good, Undercardinal. Prepare to oh! I sense that something is wrong. Rorvan and
Taris, they are gone from us.
DOCTOR: (sotto) Well done, Romana.
SENTRIS: And the Coordinator, too.
DOCTOR: Poor old Nosebung. Shame.
SENTRIS: Quiet, Doctor! Undercardinal, can you follow the President's biorhythmic trace?
UNDERCARDINAL: The Lady Romana is currently in the lower decks, heading for
SENTRIS: The Matrix chamber. Levith, seal the doors.
LEVITH: Confirmed.
COMPUTER: Sealing Matrix chamber. Closing all internal bulkheads.
COMPUTER: Sealing Matrix chamber. Closing all internal bulkheads.
(Slam!)
ROMANA: Oh, no. Too late! What am I going to do now? Ha! The sonic screwdriver. Thank
you, Doctor.
(Whirr, bulkhead opens.)
ROMANA: Handy to have about, this old thing. Now, I only hope this works. Into the Matrix
here I go.

(Jumble of voices.)
ROMANA: Ah! Oh, you might think with the infinite resources at their disposal, one of our
engineers would find a way to make entering the Matrix less disrupting. Hello? Hello? This is
President Romana. Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?
MATRIX: There is no alternative.
ROMANA: Data recorders. Hello? Hello? You must listen to me. It's of the utmost
importance. The Web of Time is endangered. You. Yes, you. I have to get a message to the
High Council, MATRIX 2: Zagreus comes. There is no alternative.
ROMANA: No! No, there is no such thing as Zagreus. I am your President. Don't you
remember me, any of you?
MATRIX: Zagreus comes. No past, no present, no future.
ROMANA: Somebody please just listen to me.
MATRIX: Can't remember. Can't remember. Can't remember.
ROMANA: This is hopeless. Oh, Doctor, this is hopeless.
MATRIX: Can't remember.

DOCTOR: There you go, Sentris. The Time Station is all yours.
SENTRIS: The Lady Romana made it to the Matrix chamber. I wonder why? Ah, of course.
She's going to try and change the Time Station's conveyance signature from inside the
Matrix, isn't she?
DOCTOR: Well, could be.
LEVITH: She cannot succeed, Doctor.
SENTRIS: See, the Commander knows. Even if the President was able to find anyone sane to
speak to within the Matrix
LEVITH: No amendments can be made to transduction permits during a state of emergency,
with no exemptions. This rule was only recently ratified at the behest of Celestial
Intervention Agency Coordinator Vansell.
SENTRIS: Every possible contingency has been considered and planned for. Well, Doctor?
Have you nothing to say?
DOCTOR: Well, at least Romana is safe in there, but otherwise? (sigh) Do you know, I
suddenly feel terribly old.
SENTRIS: You're beaten, Doctor, and you know it. Of course, there is one way you may yet
thwart our ambitions.
DOCTOR: You do like a good gloat, don't you, Sentris? Typical CIA.
SENTRIS: Oh, Doctor. Don't dismiss it out of hand. I can't believe you haven't thought of it
yet.
CHARLEY: Don't give up, Doctor. There's still a chance. I do know what she's talking about.
You see, I've been thinking too.
LEVITH: Sentris, the Time Station is ready for flight. Shall I begin proton acceleration on the
girl?
SENTRIS: Not just yet, Levith. This is too fascinating to miss.
CHARLEY: It's me, isn't it, Doctor? Everything depends on me. So long as I am alive, the
breach in space time has coordinates, and that's how they're going to travel through. But if
those coordinates weren't there, well, they'd all be stuck in this reality, wouldn't they?
DOCTOR: Charley, Charley, Charley. Don't even think about it.
SENTRIS: Well, why not, Doctor? Miss Pollard indeed has a point. Commander Levith,
place your staser on the ground at the Doctor's feet.
LEVITH: Sentris, are you sure?
SENTRIS: Oh, I'm sure.
(Clatter.)
SENTRIS: Go on, Doctor. Pick it up.
DOCTOR: This isn't a game, Sentris.
SENTRIS: No, it isn't. It's a matter of life and death. The girl's life against the death of the
Web of Time, which your entire civilisation was constructed to protect. Pick it up.
(Scrape.)
SENTRIS: There, that didn't hurt, did it?
CHARLEY: It's all right, Doctor. I'm not afraid. It's like I said in the Tardis. My time is up.
There is no alternative. Oh, Doctor, you rescued me from the R101. You gave me these last
few wonderful months. The things that I've seen, the places I've been. I've lived more than I
ever could dream of, and all thanks to you. And you're the sweetest, the kindest, most
wonderful man I've ever met. And I'm sorry it's come to this, and I'm sorry it has to end like
this, but if the Web of Time is destroyed then all the time I've had, everywhere I've been, all
those fabulous, fantastic things we've done, they won't ever have happened at all. Don't let
those times be taken away. Don't let it all go to waste. I know it's an awful, terrible thing, but
I want you to do it. Oh, Doctor, please do it before it's too late.
DOCTOR: Charley, I can't. You're my friend, and I love you. I can't look you in the eye and
shoot you no matter what.
CHARLEY: Doctor, I love you too, and this is no way to say goodbye, but please, please!
Oh, what's wrong with you! You've saved the universe before, so do it again, the only way
how.
SENTRIS: That's right, Doctor. It won't take much. A quick burst of staser fire and all these
troubles will be over. And if your conscience pricks a little, well, it'll all have been in the
noblest possible cause.
CHARLEY: Oh, shut up, Sentris! You think we're alike, don't you? That's why you took my
form. But we're not. We both died before our time, whether we should or we shouldn't. It just
doesn't matter. The difference is, I'm grateful for every second that I've had. Charlotte
Pollard, Edwardian Adventuress. We measure our lives in love, and I've loved every minute.
But you, and all the lost boys and girls in your Never Never Land, you're so fixated on what
you might have missed out on, you've forgotten what living was like. I could get angry too.
I'm so scared, you know, but we're born into love, not anger, and love never dies, however
brief our lives might be. Now, Doctor! Do it now!
DOCTOR: I can't, Charley. I can't! I'm sorry.
(Clatter.)
SENTRIS: Pick up the staser, Levith.
CHARLEY: No! No, no, no, no, no! I don't want it to be like this.
SENTRIS: And now, Levith, activate the breach. Open the Gateway!
LEVITH: Yes, Sentris.
CHARLEY: Goodbye, Doctor. I hope you know what you've done.
(Last syllable speeds up into a scream.)
SENTRIS: Fix and download the breach coordinates, Undercardinal. Well, Doctor? We have
very few hands. Just Levith, the Undercardinal and a handful of guards. Perhaps if you were
to shoot all of them, then maybe the final outcome could be averted. But you won't. All hail
the Doctor. The hero so squeamish he stood by while all that he loved was condemned to
extinction.
DOCTOR: Sentris, you're not just evil and vindictive, you're confused. Once you were so
sickened by killing that you blasted yourself into this state. I won't destroy my friend, and I
won't be ashamed of the fact. Can't you see what you're doing? You're going to unmake the
lives of innumerable billions if you carry this out. Don't they matter? Don't innocents count?
SENTRIS: The living? No. Don't judge me, Doctor. I am just looking after my own.
Something you've proved yourself quite incapable of. You see, once in a while, you have to
pick sides. And if you don't stand with your own kind, well, you're a traitor. So hang your
head, Doctor. You've betrayed the whole Web of Time because you can't bear to bloody your
hands. How does that feel? Undercardinal, is our course set for Gallifrey?
UNDERCARDINAL: Course computed, Sentris.
SENTRIS: Then commence the final dematerialisation.
(Time engines start.)
DOCTOR: The final dematerialisation. Yes, yes, it could work!
SENTRIS: Three point six microspans to planetfall. Doctor, where do you think you're
going? Levith!
(Staser fire. Tardis engines.)
LEVITH: He's gone!
SENTRIS: It doesn't matter. We materialise in just two point eight five microspans, and the
Doctor can do nothing to prevent it.

DOCTOR: Come on, come on, old girl. Nearly there. Nearly at the breach, and then. There,
that's it. Yes. Now, I can't pretend this next bit isn't going to hurt. I have to reconfigure your
superstructure and I can't do it gently, so brace yourself.
(Engines stutter.)
DOCTOR: What? You pick your moments, old girl, but not now, please! Don't jam on me
now.
RASSILON: My friend, the mechanism is not at fault.
DOCTOR: You! It is you. Really you. My Lord, I am truly humbled, but I beg of you, do not
intervene.
RASSILON: Oh, Doctor, you should know better than to even suggest it. I have simply
frozen us here. Perhaps in your Tardis, perhaps in your mind. Time marches on.
DOCTOR: It might not soon, if what you showed me in the Matrix, the past and the future
sacrificed to one single present, it could happen now unless. Well, unless I am allowed to do
what I mean to do.
RASSILON: Then this is surely the desperate hour. Tell me, Doctor. Tell me how all this has
come to pass.
DOCTOR: My God, I don't have the time.
RASSILON: You do now. You can humour an old dead man, can you not?
DOCTOR: Oh, ah, well, if you're sure, I. Where did it all begin? One night, on Earth I
suppose, high above the English Channel, I was aboard a magnificent airship, a vessel they
called the R101. There was a boy, a steward, running towards me, running from someone or
something, but it wasn't a boy at all. It was a girl. Charlotte. Charlotte Pollard. Friends called
her Charley, she said. She told me I was the oddest man she had ever met.

SENTRIS: The breach! The breach! We are going through!

DOCTOR: I honestly believed that Grayle was behind the time disruption, that with his
redemption I need worry no longer. I meant every word I said to Charley. I should have
known better.
RASSILON: Indeed. And what else do you have to tell me?
DOCTOR: I think the rest of the story can speak for itself, my Lord. Let's just say not long
after we left Singapore, Charley and I discovered our troubles were only just beginning. First
with the Daleks, and now? Now it's come to this. I have to stop the Neverpeople from
reaching Gallifrey, regardless of the consequences to myself.
RASSILON: And you mean those words too?
DOCTOR: Absolutely.
RASSILON: You have considered every alternative?
DOCTOR: I have.
RASSILON: Then I must let you continue.
DOCTOR: Thank you, my Lord. Before you go, might I just ask why you've er, well,
dropped in on me like this?
RASSILON: Doctor, I told you. I wanted to know what led you here, to this decision. But if
your mind is made up, I cannot intervene. That causes me sorrow.
DOCTOR: Sorrow?
RASSILON: I've watched you these many long years. I've seen you in all of your adventures,
seen the many things you have done in the service of your beliefs. Some I can hardly be seen
to approve of.
DOCTOR: Oh, well, you know, sometimes things don't work out quite the way you planned
them.
RASSILON: Indeed. But for the most part, Doctor, you have made me proud. You have
enriched the lives of more people in more worlds that I suspect you will ever know. You have
made a difference, and I've come here simply to tell you that, before everything is ended.
Before it is too late.
DOCTOR: My Lord, you honour me.
RASSILON: No, Doctor. You have honoured me. Farewell.
(The engines resume.)
DOCTOR: Eh? Is it just me, or did something very odd just? Doesn't matter now. Now,
where was I? Oh, yes.

UNDERCARDINAL: We have transgressed the breach, Sentris.

SENTRIS: Then we have succeeded! Raise the observation ports.
(Hiss, clang.)
SENTRIS: At last, at last we have returned! Gallifrey glittering beneath us shining like a
jewel, and about to be shattered. Begin the sequence, Levith.
LEVITH: Commencing countdown, Sentris.
COMPUTER: Time Station self-destruct sequence initiated. Sequence complete in point four
five microspans.
SENTRIS: O my Lord Rassilon, your yesterdays, are over. Tomorrow belongs to me!
(Engines stutter and rattle.)
SENTRIS: What is this?
UNDERCARDINAL: There's something around us, Sentris.
COMPUTER: Sequence complete in point four zero microspans.
SENTRIS: Where, where's Gallifrey gone?
DOCTOR [OC]: Tardis calling Time Station. Tardis calling Time Station. Sentris, can you
hear me?
SENTRIS: Doctor!
DOCTOR [OC]: It's that man again, Sentris. As you have observed, I have materialised my
Tardis around the Time Station. Yes, it's terribly tricky and no, it's really not a good idea.
Yes, she's bursting at the seams. But you didn't leave me any choice.
COMPUTER: Sequence complete in point three zero microspans.
DOCTOR [OC]: Point three zero microspans. Oh dear. It'll take longer than that to abort the
self-destruct.
SENTRIS: Doctor, if the Time Station detonates inside your Tardis, both you and it will be
utterly annihilated.
DOCTOR [OC]: Oh, Sentris, this Tardis is tough as old boots. She'll contain the material
inside your casket at least long enough for the Time Lords to deal with it. And Charley, well,
when she restabilises, she should be safe too, so you see there's only me to consider. And if
dying's the price I pay to save all of history, to save my friend, well, I've had fun all my lives.
I can't complain.
COMPUTER: Sequence complete in point one zero microspans.
SENTRIS: Disconnect the casket! Disconnect the casket!
DOCTOR [OC]: Too late, Sentris. This is how it ends. And I'm sorry, but you know what
they say. There is no alternative.
COMPUTER: Two, one, zero. Sequence complete.
(Crackle, sizzle, fizz!)
SENTRIS: No! No! Noooooooooo!
(Silence then KaBOOM! and a long drawn-out wail.)

ROMANA::Everything's normal. What's happening? What's going on?

MATRIX 2: Humanian era, Earth, October the fifth, 1930. Airship R101 crashes in France.
Charlotte Pollard escapes the flames.
ROMANA: They're recording these events in the Matrix. No, no, there must be some
mistake.
MATRIX 1: The vortex, indeterminate vectors. Charlotte Pollard's survival causes a
tremendous dimensional breach. Anti-time forces flood through.
ROMANA: This isn't right. This isn't how it was supposed to be.
MATRIX 3: Rassilon era, Gallifrey, 6978.3. Manipulated by anti-time incursions, President
Romana authorises a mission beyond the limits of the vortex, through the space time breach.
ROMANA: These things should never have happened.
MATRIX 1: The vortex, indeterminate vectors. Anti-time forces plot to destroy the Eye of
Harmony.
ROMANA: Unless. Oh, no.
MATRIX 3: Rassilon era, Gallifrey, 6798.5. Their efforts are foiled when the Time Lord
known only as the Doctor materialises his Tardis around the casket of anti-time intended to
destroy the Eye.
MATRIX: We remember this history. We remember it well.
ROMANA: Then all that's happened, all that's occurred, is all part of the Web of Time now?
Oh, brilliant. Just brilliant. The very fact of history's unravelling becomes part of its
continuation. Oh, Doctor, you did it. You finally did it. It took you nine hundred years but
sooner or later you had to make one last glorious gesture too many, and you saved Time itself
by beating history at its own game. But history will remember you. The Time Lords will
remember you. And I will never, ever, forget you. Objectionable, irrational, block-headed,
impetuous, magnificent you. So, what happened next?
RASSILON: Daughter of Time, you should know better than to ask.
ROMANA: Sorry, what? You. An old man, eternally sad and infinitely wise. The Doctor said
he'd seen you in the Matrix, my Lord.
RASSILON: Ah, the Doctor. A favourite son. He saved his friend, whatever the cost. But the
price he paid was terrible indeed.
ROMANA: Then Miss Pollard, Charley, lived?
RASSILON: She did. And the breach was sealed for the last time. She was reconstituted in
the Doctor's Tardis, the paradox of her survival resolved forever, because if history's Web
was saved by the very fact of her existence, then the very fact of her existence cannot have
imperilled it at all.
ROMANA: A paradox.
RASSILON: Which we can surely all live with. This will be the first of the many challenges
which face you, Madam President, throughout the fullness of your reign.
ROMANA: My reign? Then I can return to Gallifrey? Oh, this is cheating, surely.
RASSILON: Were you to attempt to return through the Matrix door you entered, you would
most certainly be destroyed. But there is more than one way out of the dreamscape for those
whom the Matrix favours. The choice is yours, Madam President.
ROMANA: I think, I hope, I still have much to offer the people of Gallifrey. Especially after
today.
RASSILON: Then it is our wish you should continue in her stewardship.
(Whoosh.)
ROMANA: A doorway!
RASSILON: Go with our blessing, Daughter of Time.
ROMANA: I thank you, my Lord. The first thing I will do is rescue Miss Pollard and find a
space for her in history's pages.
RASSILON: Miss Pollard? Oh, her story is not quite finished. In fact, it is only just
beginning. As the next chapter unfolds, and a dark and terrible chapter it is, I trust you to play
your part, Romana, with all the wisdom and passion you have displayed today.
ROMANA: The next chapter? What do you mean? What's going to? Sorry, my Lord. I didn't
mean to.
RASSILON: If you do not wish to remain, I cannot grant you that knowledge.
ROMANA: Of course. I'll just have to take it, well, one day at a time.
RASSILON: Go, Madam President. Go into the future.
ROMANA: I will, my Lord.
(Whoosh, tinkle.)
RASSILON: Farewell, daughter. We wish you well. For Zagreus waits at the end of the
world. And Zagreus is the end of the world. His time is the end of Time, and his moment
Time's undoing.

CHARLEY: Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there? Oh, Doctor, are you there?
(Coughing.)
CHARLEY: Doctor. Doctor, is that you? It's so dark and cold in here I can hardly
DOCTOR: Keep away.
CHARLEY: Doctor! Doctor, it is you! Is this the Tardis? I mean, what's happened? It's all
been like a dream. I found myself here when I was last in the Time Station with those awful
Neverpeople and
(The Doctor coughs. His voice is developing an electric crackle that intensifies slowly,)
CHARLEY: Oh, Doctor, come on, let me help you.
DOCTOR: I said, keep away.
CHARLEY: Oh! Doctor, what's wrong? Have you been injured or something?
DOCTOR: Injured? No, I've not been injured. This Tardis contained all of the Time Station
when it exploded. This ship was filled to bursting with a great mass of the fiercest fizzing
energy.
CHARLEY: What, anti-time?
DOCTOR: A crude term for such a matter of life and death. But now that the breach is
resolved, now that the problem of you is resolved, well, all that remains of that stuff in this
whole reality is held in here.
CHARLEY: What, in the Tardis?
DOCTOR: (laughs) No, in here.
CHARLEY: You're scaring me now. Stop it, Doctor, please.
DOCTOR: Doctor, Doctor. I hold the last vestiges of the most awesome power ever
imagined. Imagined, yes. How much better if I should take my title from a work of
imagination. A creature willed to power by the undying anger of an unreal race!
CHARLEY: Doctor, I haven't got the faintest idea what you're on about, but I really think
you need help so if you'll just let me
(Slap!)
CHARLEY: Ow! Doctor. Doctor, what's wrong with you?
DOCTOR: I told you, girl, I am not the Doctor! I am become he who sits inside your head.
He who lives among the dead. He who sees you in your bed, and eats you when you're
sleeping. I am become Zagreus!!!