10th Doctor - Army of Ghosts (i)

Serial 210 – Dustbin -vs- Cyberman!
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' They SAY Time Heals Everything... They Are Wrong!

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides - Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial 210 – Dustbin -vs- Cyberman! –

The Doctor stands brooding in a graveyard on a rainy day, glaring at two gravestones marked 'ROSE MARION TYLER 1987-2007, GATHER THE ROSE OF LOVE WHILST YET IS TIME PLUS SHE SO DYED HER HAIR' and 'JACQUELINE ANDREA SUZETTE TYLER, 1966-2007, FOR HER CHILD IS THE ANCHOR THAT HOLDS A MOTHER TO LIFE, BOY SHE KNEW HOW TO PARTY!'

The Doctor starts vandalizing the grave stones furiously.

"Planet Earth. This is where she was born. And this is where she dumped me. For the first nineteen years of her life nothing happened. Nothing at all, not ever. And then she met me, a man called the Doctor, a man who could change his face, and I took her away from home in my magical machine. I showed her the whole of time and space. I thought it would never end. I thought she was going to stay with me forever. But then came the ghosts; then came Touchwood and the war on Earth. And that’s when it all ended. The last story I’ll ever tell of Rose Tyler. This is the story of how that lying, two-faced, scum-sucking, chav-minded whore dumped me and dropped her knickers to party on another planet."

The Time Lord storms off, scowling.

"I can’t believe I gave up Charley Pollard for that peroxide bitch..."



ACT ONE – FOLLOW THE PHANTOMS


Parte the First

In the gleaming white Touchwood Tower, Director Yvonne Hartman orders two scientists to push some funky levers up, and the laboratory fills with bright light and everyone slips on a bitching pair of shades. As Yvonne stands in the busy main office, Captain Jack Sparrow lounges around in the glass-partitioned private office, knocking back a bottle of rum and bitching that no one seems to remember that when Touchwood was restructured in 2003, Numbskull chose HIM to run the outfit.

"Honestly, screw up a couple of dozen operations and get your entire team killed by Santa Clause and the whole world turns against ya," he sighs as the light glows brighter and brighter.

The Doctor and Rose arrive back on Earth in the Powell Estate of Cardiff in a children’s play area famous for kids being stolen by extra-dimensional paradox monsters. They decide to ride Arthur and go and see Jackie, and ensure that her life is utterly miserable as revenge for all crap she’s put them through over the last two seasons.

However, it seems that Jackie’s gone nuts as she excitedly throws her arms around the Doctor and despite his weak protests starts to remove his clothes and lick his chest. Awkwardly, Rose tries to distract her insane mother by revealing they bear gifts from their travels across the galaxy. Which just so happen to resemble two tons of dirty washing and a couple novelty stocking-fillers from the planet Argon Five.

"It’s from the market on this asteroid bazaar," Rose enthuses. "It’s made of um... Bezoolium. When it gets cold, yeah, it means it’s gonna rain - when it’s hot, it’s gonna be sunny! You can use it to tell the weather!"

"I’ve got a pine cone that does that for me," Jackie points out, continuing to try and remove the Doctor’s trousers.

"Oh, great! I get her bezoolium - she doesn’t even say 'thanks', the ungrateful cow!" snaps Rose in her typical smug, self-centred annoyance.

It looks like nothing can possibly save the Doctor from Jackie’s ministrations when suddenly a strange apparition forms in the sitting room, a jet-black humanoid figure surrounded by light. Jackie pays it absolutely no attention and finally the Doctor manages to punch her lights out and together he and Rose flee the apartment atop Arthur and vow never to return.

"Why does she always want to steal my boyfriends?" Rose wails. "First Jimmy Stone, then Mickey... my god, she’s lost it!"

"Tell me something new," the Time Lord sobs as he tries to put his pants back on as Arthur gallops for their lives. "She needs rebooting!"

But as the Doctor and Rose reach the streets outside the estate, they find dozens of ghostly figures interacting silently with other human beings. No one seems to be remotely alarmed by their presence. A group of boys carry on with their illegal narcotic dealings, just as normal.

"But no one’s running or screaming or freaking out or anything!" the Doctor observes. "What’s the fun in a completely baffling supernatural event if no one is losing it embarrassingly! It’s the only reason I come to this stupid mud ball. And for the booze. And the women. And the lunar eclipses. Jings, this is gonna be one of THOSE days isn’t it?"

The Doctor suspects that the Biblical End of Days may be at hand. "I’m sure there's something in the Book of St John’s Really Excellent Skunk Visions about the dead rising to walk the earth again just before Doomsday," he explains to Rose, and is rather put out when Jackie explains that the ghosts are just the results of the government putting LSD in the water supply. Again.

Rose points out that she and the Doctor HAVEN’T drunk the local water, so how can they possibly take part in a group hallucination? Ergo, these strange wraiths must be REAL! Instantly there is a mass panic across the entire housing estate as everyone hides inside their homes and nails the doors shut.

Moments later, the figures begin to fade, leaving the trio utterly alone outside the block of flats and you begin to wonder if it was something they said? Or maybe they just smell?

In Touchwood Tower, the scientists pull down the heavy levers, reducing
some kind of power output and only the educationally subnormal wouldn’t notice any kind of connection between this and the ghosts fading away.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Yvonne announces. "We’ve just measured the ghost energy at five thousand gigawatts. Give yourselves a round of applause!"

Captain Jack knocks back another bottle of rum as the rest of the staff clap wildly. "That’s it! Clap all the time! The 21st Century is when it ALL changes, and you gotta be ready. But are YOU ready? No. You just clap! Clapping bastards, you!"

The Doctor, Rose and Jackie all return to the flat where a flick through the television channels shows that the ghosts are appearing all over the world, not just London and not a single damn person cares about... beyond the writers of Eastenders who are using the jet-black humanoid wraiths as a novel plot twist to bring Dirty Den back from certain death YET AGAIN.

After watching the rest of the episode, the Doctor decides that they must get to the bottom of the fake ghost business before Leslie Grantham gets any more typecast than he already is! The Time Lord theorizes that the ghosts are pressing themselves into the surface of the planet, and only an elite paranormal crime fighting squad can help them.

"What, Touchwood?" asks Jackie, confused.

"No," the Doctor tuts. "The professionals! We’re gonna call the Ghostbusters!"

"GHOSTBUSTERS!" chimes in Rose happily. "I ain’t afraid of no ghost!"

"Oh, get real Rose. Not that back of emotional cripples and their bright green bulimic ectoplasm mascot! The real thing! Filmation. The ones with that gorilla. Yeah. GO, GO, GHOSTBUSTERS!"

Back at Touchwood, Yvonne uses her funky bluetooth earpiece to contact a scientist called Rajesh, who is sitting in a dull room immersed in "Pornographic Sudoku Book 509: Anal Fists of Glory". He glumly reveals there have been no advancements, despite new machinery all possible readouts have shown the sphere does not exist.

What sphere I hear you ask? Well, the enormous bronze-coloured spherical object eerily suspended in mid-air at the other end of the chamber and wobbling like the cheap CGI it so obviously is.

"R&D came up with a new spectrometer yesterday. Barged in here, all full of themselves, said they could detect the heat off a single protozoa through half a mile of steel. They found nothing. Same as ever. So we had a transvestite orgy to boost moral."

"Any new theories on the internet forums?"

"Well, Geoff Dicquead of Dim Journal Express thinks we’re using its power to detect movements in space and blow up spaceships on Christmas Day. Stella Crossman from ITN’s convinced that the ghosts are members of Touchwood who’ve gone missing and are being drawn to Earth from outer space by something in the basement that glows, and that all the ghosts have two hearts. Oh, and eyeofsaurus.com swears on their grandmother’s graves that the ghosts are coming from some sort of spaceship behind the moon that’s actually full of Cybermen."

"Usual bollocks then?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Rajesh as he spray paints his tag "NO FEAR"
on the giant sphere, only for the paint to drip from the frictionless surface and on to his gormless face.

Meanwhile, Esme Jones is sorting through a print out at her desk, as she receives yet another memo from Prime Minister Harriet "Hellfire" Jones to "stop mucking about and get rid of the damn ghosts".

For those of you who ARE able to cope with the fact that cold, dead-eyed red beret psycho from the previous Cyberman story is, in this reality, a fluffy bunny sort of girl and criminally naive, well you select few can instead boggle at the fact that the professional adults working in a top-secret government facility text each other via instant messenger while smiling cheekily at each other.

yawn god i'm bored.
imagine how i feel – i'm watching you being bored! lol
fancy a coffee?
though u never ask :-) ooh i'm so excited and jumpy! i can't wait to bite down on that hard erectile juicy cup of coffee!!

Only a jump cut later, Gareth and Esme arrive in a part of Touchwood Tower under construction and revamping because BBC Wales are desperately trying to redress the sets from this story to work for The Santa Tip, so there is a completely meaningless maze of semi-transparent plastic curtains that looks amazingly similar to the Arctic Base seen earlier on in this incredibly disappointing season.

Gareth promises that they will be completely safe in this out-of-bounds part of the studio and waves a stopwatch to see if they can get their disgusting activities down to a mere two minutes. Esme is skeptical, worried that the director will find them bonking and then have to try and fit this totally random development into the ongoing story, even though Gareth insists that they are filming the fight scenes on the other side of the studio.

Esme snaps that she’s "not going to be unprofessional" now she’s a regular, and tells Gareth he’s dumped. Undaunted, he runs through the curtains alone to indulge in some disgusting habits. Realizing she’s still horny, Esme runs inside after him but Gareth has seemingly disappeared and she is confronted by a tall, well-built figure standing on the other side of a piece of sheeting.

Esme immediately begins to flirt with the silent, shadowy figure but it gives no reaction beyond pulling the sheeting separating them away and reveals itself; it is a Cyberman.

"A kinky Cyberman bondage outfit? Oh, Gareth, you foul perverted beast! I LOVE YOU!" Esme screams as the Cyberman lurches forward ominously...

Back in the TARDIS the Doctor is arguing on the telephone: "What do you mean they’re all dead?! Jake, Eddie AND Belfry? No! Even Tracey the Gorilla? Not Skelevator, Skelescope and Shock Clock! What about Skelevision... Skelevision too?! JINGS! But I was only chatting to them in 1976... what about the Ghost-Buggy car? Is the car still alive? No? Oh well, Rodney the Wrecker is VERY humane when he crushes sentient cars. He gave Knightrider twice as much respect as that punk deserved. So, let me get this straight, the only part of the elite paranormal eradication service left alive is YOU? Ansa-Bone? The novelty skull-faced answering machine with an attitude problem? You’re the only one saving the entire Earth from the evil ghost wizard Prime Evil? You think this is funny, do ya?"

The Doctor zaps his phone with the sonic screwdriver and there are screams from the other end.

"Not so funny NOW, ye sassenach bastard, eh?" he shouts, before slamming the phone down and turning to Rose. "Turns out they were all murdered by a malevolent spirit called Pipes who was unleashed by Michael Parkinson on Ghostwatch back in 1991. Guess we’re all in this on our own, then. Get me the proton pack and the traffic cones!"

In moments the Doctor arranges three traffic cones in a triangle around the swings as Jackie watches on with a rising self of disbelief as the Time Lord explains that the cones "triangulate points of origin".

"I don't suppose it’s the Gelth?" asks Rose, but the Doctor just stares at her until she looks away and apologizes.

"You mean, these are the genuine ghosts of the dead?" boggles Jackie. "Just think of it, though... all the people we've lost - our families coming back home. Don’t you think it's beautiful?"

The Doctor pauses in his work, meeting her eyes for the first time. "I think it’s horrific. I didn’t kill all those wankers just so they can come back and annoy me. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t have killed them in the first place, would I?"

In the office Gareth and Esme return to their desk and apologise
to Yvonne for their lateness. This, coupled with the fact they are now wearing TWO ear pieces rather than one AND the fact these ear pieces are beeping and flashing with sinister blue light AND the fact they walk jerkily, robotically as they start to use their computers to hack into the lever controls really SHOULD warn Yvonne that members of her staff are now under alien mind control.

But like pretty much everyone in Touchwood, Yvonne is an oversexed moron and completely misses all the signs and they start the next Ghost Shift in a cunning re-use of stock footage from the start of the episode.

As the Doctor continues to power up the traffic cone detection field, Jackie observes Rose leaning over the TARDIS console in a scene that’s actually rather naughty when you remember that the actresses are supposed to be mother and daughter and not checking out each other’s asses, especially on camera.

Soon the Ghost Shift is starting and as the Doctor waits outside a
ghost forms between the traffic cones, trapped by a ring of electricity. The Doctor laughs insanely that the scientific community never accepted his claims he could created a ghost-stunning Ectro-Stobe Fright-Freezer Dematerializer Net Spectre Snare out of random highway detritus.

"Who’s laughing NOW, Bureau of Paranormal Research?" the Doctor screams at the sky. "WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!?"

At Touchwood, alarms go off – perhaps reacting to the excitation of the Ghost Field but more likely detecting David Tennant’s diabolical overacting! Yvonne nearly wets herself with terror and orders the Ghost Shift closed early, ignoring Captain Jack’s "What? No clapping? WUSS!"

The ghost vanishes and the Doctor dashes inside the TARDIS. "I said so! Those ghosts have been forced into existence for one specific point! And I can track down the source. Down by Cardiff docks, building that looks just like Canary Wharf. Gosh, last time I was at Canary Wharf was in 2003, when the Cybermen were using the building as a transmitter of alien energy to cause freak weather for some reason or another. Something to do with the Queen’s Jubilee. I dunno, I pretty wasted on orange sherbet at the time. Anyway, allonzee!"

The Doctor tells Rose not to let Jackie leave the service balcony mounted to the wall as he takes off. "She’s always bitching about us travelling through time and space, but she never tries it herself does she, the minging hypocrite, eh?" he notes as he rushes around the console room activating controls, ignoring Jackie’s screams of protest as the time machine grinds into life.

Meanwhile, Yvonne has Matt trace the source of disturbance closer and closer to an exact reference via Google Earth and soon find the Powell Estate, just as a large blue police box in a playground which suddenly dematerializes from the face of the Earth.

Yvonne watches it with misty eye and realises it is the Doctor! Or Professor Gamble. Or maybe the Stranger. But very probably the Doctor. And whoever it is, they’re no doubt heading straight for Touchwood to find out what the hell is going on with all these ghosts. Laughing hysterically, she runs to the toilet, hopping over the body of Captain Jack who has drunk himself comatose.

Yvonne contacts Rajesh to tell him the Doctor is finally on his way to get involved in their little story arc, and Rajesh instantly starts to find something to wear so he can score with the Last of the Time Lords, all the while babbling, "It’s him! It’s him! It’s the Doctor! He’s come for me! No doubt he’s read all my depraved poems on my blog and he wants to do it with me! I must disport myself saucily..."

In the stationary cupboard deep beneath Touchwood Tower, a patrol of soldiers ready themselves, guns aimed as the TARDIS materializes. Being surrounded by shouting, gun-wielding thugs gives the Doctor a huge nostalgia buzz to that time he was in San Francisco. For old time’s sake, he strides out the doors right into the line of fire. It is only when the soldiers en masse release their safety catches and aim their guns straight at the Doctor, it strikes him that his plan so far has been stupendously awful.

Inside the TARDIS, unseen, Rose and Jackie watch through a crack in the door, waiting for the Time Lord’s lungs to be lined with lead so he can regenerate into Bill Nighy, but that plan is scuppered as Yvonne hurries into the room.

"Oh...! Oh, how marvelous. Oh, very good. Superb. Happy day!" she sobs, overcome with joy, applauding wildly and all the soldiers immediately lower their guns and start clapping as well. "Hurray! If it wasn't for you, none of us would be here. The Doctor and the TARDIS!"

The Doctor stares at the strange clappy people for a while, not quite sure what to make of this reception and then deciding to act normal and bask in his own glorious magnificence.

"So, uh, you’ve heard of me then?" he grins.

"Yeah, *I* told them!" a familiar voice announces as the drunken Captain Jack Sparrow shambles in. "STOP CLAPPING, YOU TOSSERS!" he shouts at the soldiers as he passes.

The Doctor sighs. "Oh, jings, not you again. Oh well, Captain Casanova, how did you get back from the freezing arctic wastes?"

"It’s a long and tedious story," Captain Jack says incredibly truthfully. "With sea turtles. How’s Rosie?"

"According to the records, you’re not one for travelling alone. The Doctor and his companion. That’s a pattern isn’t it, right?" Yvonne buts in, trying to move the plot back on course.

"Get bored of her too did you?" Captain Jack belches. "Ditched for being too feisty? Left her here and found a replacement?"

"There’s no point hiding anything," Yvonne says, her voice suddenly adopting a slightly sinister quality not unlike that of the chick in The Exorcist. "Not from us. So where is she?" she adds with a bipolar smile.

"How well trained is this one? Does actually do what you tell her?" Captain Jack asks the Doctor, but is so drunk he seems to be trying to snog the police box behind him.

He reaches into the TARDIS and without looking deliberately drags Jackie outside instead of Rose and introduces her to everyone as "Doctor Evelyn Smythe! Hmm. She’s not the best I’ve ever had. Bit too blonde. Not too steady on her pins. A lot of chatting and just last week, she stared into the heart of the Time Vortex and aged 57 years. But she’ll do."

"I’m 40 you lying son of a bitch!"

"Deluded. Bless. I’ll have to trade her in. Do you need anyone? She’s very good at tea. Well, I say 'very good', I mean 'not bad'. Well. I say 'not bad'... anyway! Lead on. But not too fast. Her ankle’s going."

No sooner has 'Evelyn' demonstrated the strength of her ankle by kicking the Doctor up the ass, than the time travelers are following Yvonne, Captain and the soldiers out of the basement. Rose watches them leave once more on the scanner and is left to her own thoughts.

"I know, I’ll ask Arthur what to do!"

As they make their way around the building Yvonne tells the Doctor
that it was only a matter of time before he found them. She welcomes
them to the institution they are walking through; Touchwood.

"Touchwood? God, I bump into them all the time!" the Doctor complains. "You’re the Institute that utilizes alien technology you either find
or take by force! Every time I meet you lot you tell me your motto is 'If it’s alien, it’s ours' and expect me to be impressed..."

"Course, with HER in charge, the motto should be 'Three cheers followed by a round of applause instead of all that guff about if it's alien it's ours!'" Captain Jack bitches before falling over his own feet.

"But you’re not supposed to know about us!" Yvonne pouts. "You’re the enemy. You’re actually NAMED in the Touchwood Foundation Charter of 1879 as an enemy of the Crown, when Her Majesty Queen Victoria had a nasty date with a werewolf and created the Institute with the express intention of keeping Britain great, fighting the alien horde and mastering all known types of orgasms! And we’ve done everything to make sure you’ve not heard of us all those times you’ve been on this planet!"

"That explains why I know all about you then," the Doctor snorts. "You’re crap at absolutely everything! Only took you, what, 21 years to actually get anything REMOTELY useful in your acquisitions and applications department, before you managed to blow up a nuclear bomb in a time rift! You were so screwed over you changed your name to Department C-69 and spent the next ten years organizing paperclips because no one trusted you with anything interested!"

"Actually, what REALLY happened was..."

"In fact, you were SO crap, the RAF took over the alien business with the Internal Counter-Measures Group, before Lethbridge-Stewart turned it into UNIT and you lived off them like a parasite, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and hiding it in a greenhouse in Surrey! Pity the Bastard then nicked it all and triggered a government purge, eh? So you changed your name to SLAG-3, which lasted, ooh, a week maybe before they realized the Goodies were better value."

"That is a gross misinterpretation..."

"The Cabinet ditched you, didn’t they? So you called yourself the Forge for the rest of the 1980s until the stock market crash made all your vaguely competent members split off and form their own fascist organization, ISIS, didn’t they?"

"ISIS was a thuggish, ham-fisted impatient fiasco that tried to overthrow the government! They had nothing to do with us!" Yvonne shouts.

"Still were more likely to get things done, weren’t they? Cause THEY didn’t spend all their time knobbing each other! I know that cause I was their leader. Oooh, what a giveaway! Anyway, it’s lucky for you that Harriet Jones didn’t close you down after Numbskull got nuked back in 03! And since then you’ve been her hired assassin using fabled Belgrano Devices to blow the fuck out of the Sycophants, a quaint historical holdover while UNIT does all the REAL work. Am I right?"

A long pause.

"I think he makes half of it up," says Jackie after a while.

Yvonne reveals she had a whole guided tour set up to explain what Touchwood is for and goes ahead with it even though the Doctor knows twice as much about the organization than SHE does. Thus they have to wander through a factory floor as she points out all the amazing alien rubbish they’ve managed to get off eBay because JR Ewing couldn’t be bothered to bid for it.

There’s a Jaffa Death Glider used by Anubis against Abydos and now the heart of the Belgrano Device, some unstable particle toothbrushes and some Ice Cream Vendor Magnum Scoops, devices capable of lifting imperial tons of material with one hand. But about the ONLY interesting artifact they have is the TARDIS, which even now is being driven away on a lorry.

"Oi! Where’re you taking that?" Jackie demands.

"If it’s alien, it’s ours," says Yvonne.

"You’ll never get inside it," the Doctor says confidently.

"Whatever!"

"Seriously, with anyone else, I’d be worried. You lot couldn’t open a tin of baked beans that was already only. Unless you were sexually assaulting it to deal with your massive compensation syndromes."

"AND they clap while they do it!" agrees Captain Jack.

"Hey! That’s my bloody arm!" the Doctor exclaims as he spots a suspiciously-familiar limb in a bubbling tank of warm liquid goo.

"So? You weren’t using it!" Captain Jack slurs.

Back in the main office, Matt meanwhile is suspicious when Esme texts him in a vaguely legible and grammatically correct manner:

Hey Matt. Want to see something good?
is it porn? did u buy that schoolgirl outfit i suggested
Come and see. In that order.

Esme then gets up and leaves and Matt follows, not bothering to tell anyone of the incredibly strange and unusual behavior of his coworkers who, after all, are only exposed to sinister alien forces every single day. Thus, it is with a karmic sense of Darwinism in action that Matt follows Esme to his incredibly obvious and predictable doom.

"You know," the Doctor points out as the tour of Touchwood continues, "if you were REALLY trying to catch me, why didn’t you just stake out the Powell Estate 24/7. Christ knows I visit the dump often enough."

"Well," Yvonne explains, "you see... shut up. Just shut up!"

Yvonne then heads to the massive bulkhead blocking the door to the room containing the sphere. Pressing her breasts against the digital lock, she opens the door with the gratuitous nudity at the very core of the Touchwood mindset.

"Now, what do you make of that?" demands Yvonne impressively.

"Left one’s a bit shy," Jackie concludes.

"No, not me, Dr Smythe, THAT!"

They enter the room as the massive sphere hovers above them. Noticing their arrival, Rajesh straightens his jacket and approaches the Doctor, who is gazing open mouthed up at the sphere. "You must be the Doctor. Rajesh Singh. It’s an honour, sir. Do you want to go for a drink or shall we just snort the alien date-rape drugs NOW and see how the mood takes us, huh?"

He drops his pants, but the Doctor is too immersed in gazing up at the sphere to notice and Rajesh sheepishly wanders off. Jackie explains it gives her a very bad vibe, which is a stunningly accurate and detailed analysis compared to the Doctor, who just gawps.

"Well, my love, Rajesh has that effect on everyone," Captain Jack confides in her. " He upsets people because he gives off... nothing. He is... unromantic. Makes you wanna run and hide. Like it’s forbidden. That’s what makes the sex brilliant," he adds with a nostalgic grin.

"I was talking about that sphere thing."

"Oh, THAT. Don’t worry, it doesn’t exist. Weighs nothing, doesn’t age, no heat, no radiation, not atomic mass. AND no libido."

"But I can see it!" Jackie protests. "How can I see it if it doesn’t exist, eh? Explain that!"

"Probably something in the drinking water," Captain Jack says with completely unintentional irony and opens another bottle of rum.

The Doctor coughs loudly to draw attention to the fact he is once again capable of speech. "THIS... is a Null-Sphere! A Void Ship!"

"...and?!" prompts Yvonne.

"Well, it’s implausible for starters," the Doctor explains in a worried voice. "It’s a vessel designed to exist outside time and space. Travelling through the space between dimensions containing absolutely nothing. Imagine that - nothing. No light, no dark, no up, no down. No life. No time. Without end. My people called it the Void, the Eternals call it the Amish Paradise. But some people call it Hell."

"But SOMEONE built the sphere!" Rajesh protests, now clothed from the waist down again.

"Probably the ghosts."

"By why go there?"

"The Void is a really big place. It probably voyaged there to explore nude worlds, to seek out perverted life and kinky civilizations, to boldly get blown where no man has been blown before! You could sit inside that thing and eternity would pass you by. You’d exist outside the whole of creation!"

"You see, we were right," says Yvonne with the smugness of someone who simply hasn’t paid attention to a word the Doctor has been saying all throughout the scene. "There IS something inside it!"

The Doctor stares at her. "Yes. Yes, there is."

"So how do we get in there?"

"That’s what they WANT us to do!" the Doctor snaps. "They aimed this Null-Sphere at this reality like a canon ball! So we do NOT get in there. We do NOT open it!"

The Doctor stands up, ranting for absolutely no other reason than it will look fantastic in the Next Time... trailers, and shouts at the top of his voice with absolute fury:

"WE SEND THAT THING BACK INTO HELL!!"