10th Doctor - Last of the Time Lords (i)

Serial 312 – Lust of the Time Lords
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Better In The Dark

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


Serial 312 – Lust of the Time Lords -

{Previously on Doctor Who – The Beat of the Drums}
The Bastard has finally worked out that if you can’t beat em, join em and regenerated himself into a creepy psycho stalker who is a bit too much like the Doctor for anyone to be comfortable. Teaming up with Lucie bleedin Miller, the Bastard assumes the non de plume of "Alan B’Stard" and thus becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain Jack Sparrow are unable to stop PM B’Stard from seizing control of Skybase Valium and using the cannibalized TARDIS to summon forth an army of six billion flying soccer ball cyborgs hereafter referred to as Toclafane for simplicity’s sake.
With the Bastard using Captain Jack for target practice and the Doctor reduced to a crochety old age pensioner, it’s up to Martha Jones to run for her life, steal the Bastard’s TARDIS and set off around the conquered Earth to carry out the one thing that can defeat the Bastard and the Toclafane, a course of action known only as...
..."Plan B"!
{And now on Doctor Who – Lust of the Time Lords}

As part of the Doctor’s very complex and intricate scheme to defeat the Bastard, Martha Jones has used her stolen TARDIS to travel the world, visiting every community, contacting every resistance cell, criss-crossing back over her own time line which means that, six days after the Toclafane descended, she’s spent a whole years hooking up with the human rebels, the survivors of UNIT and generally been raised to the status of Mythical Deliverer From The Shit Sandwich Mankind Has Found Itself Trapped In Once Again.

Probably the most interesting anecdote from this period is the time when Martha accidentally got trapped in a Japanese labor camp run by an oft-forgotten race of bug-eyed gits from Babylon 5 called the Drakh. Upon discovering that a third party is trying to take over the Earth at the same time as he is, the Bastard decides to go genocidal on their pale parasitic asses and soon the Japanese Islands are razed by the Toclafane, just for a laugh.

So let’s skip through all that tedious crap and get to the GOOD STUFF!


Parte the First

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the planet Earth one week after the Bastard took over:

Planet: Earth
Language: BBC English
Major Industries: Manufacturing Weapons of Mass Destruction
Events: Daily Karioke by Supreme Overlord Potentates
Culture: None, bar the floating soccer balls homicidal "human hunts"
When To Go: Never

Summary Follow:
Although this small blue green planet with its curious ape-descendants and their primitive belief that ringtones are a "pretty neat idea", since complete executive control was taken over by a foam-at-the-mouth psychopathic Gallifreyan who – for reasons it is best not to go into here – calls himself "the Bastard", all space lane traffic is advised to stay away. The Earth has been closed for what the Bastard dubs "hardcore socio-economic restructuring" which the MegaDodo Archtron Mega-Pan-Galactic Tourism Board believes is synonymous for the entire planet facing terminal extinction. Thus the planet, also known as Sol 3, should be avoided at all costs and let them get on with wiping themselves out.

It is mostly horrible and likely to get worse.

Meanwhile, on a Welsh beach, Martha Jones returns to Cardiff after 365 days of incredibly complicated time travel. With her stolen TARDIS taking the inconspicuous form of the shark from "Jaws 7: The Revenge", she emerges to meet a cool-looking stud with a lantern.

After a long year of absolutely no sex whatsoever, Martha is starting to fancy anything remotely bipedal and this scruffy bit of all right certain pushes all her buttons. "What’s YOUR name then?" she smiles, trying to suggest availability without turning into a panting sex-crazed bitch beyond desperation.

"Tom Milligan," replies the pin-up. "No need to ask who you are, the famous Martha Jones who’s a bit of a legend – she who sailed the Atlantic, walked across America, the only person to get out of Japan alive. ‘Martha Jones', they say, 'she’s gonna save the world because she and she alone can still the Bastard stone dead.'" he adds, rather redundantly, just in case anyone who had never seen Doctor Who before was stupid enough to tune in to the season finale and then miss the pre-credit catch-up scene. "So, what’s the plan?" he asks, mainly to stop her sniffing his neck.

"Oh," sighs Martha, struggling to control herself, "I need to see Professor Doherty, you know. Rude old bitch who works in the repair shed at Nuclear Plant 7. Can you get me there?"

"You bet," Tom Mulligan explains. "I’m medical staff and have a license to travel so I can help out at the labor camps. I’m actually just a trainee aromatherapist, but you take what you can get nowadays.

"Oh my god!" Martha squeals. "I’m travelling with a DOCTOR! This is like, totally, destiny! YESSS!"

Deeply disturbed, Tom follows Martha into the TARDIS which disguises itself as a common-or-garden steam train and starts off down the beach as dawn breaks. High above Cardiff, the Skybase Valium sails above the clouds and the jubilant Bastard takes control of the PA system:

"CITIZENS REJOICE! THE INCREDIBLE HERR GENERALISSIMO STEPPENFÜHRER VYVYAN BASTARD VC, DC, VIP, BA STANDS ON HIGH! AND YOUR LORD AND MASTER - WHO IS NOT ONLY HUNG LIKE A BRAMAH BULL BUT CAN DO FORTY-EIGHT PRESS-UPS IN A ROW AND SLAM HIS BALLS IN THE FRIDGE DOOR WITHOUT SO MUCH AS WINCING – IS PLAYING TRACK TEN OF... BETTER IN THE DARK!"

The Bastard spins and dances onto the Valium Bridge, singing along to 'What You’re On' as it booms around the flight deck. Sliding up to his wife Lucie B’Stard (who is SO over it by now), he gives her a good long grope and then dives into one of the conference chairs, spins around and waits for his morning cup of tea (thirty-seven sugars, natch) served to him by Francine "Ballcrusher" Jones, who is dressed as a French maid to reflect her amazing business acumen and degree in economics.

Laughing at her humiliation, the Bastard throws a cup of scalding tea into her face and then turns his attention to the Doctor, who has spent the last week living in a small canvas tent on a heap of straw with nought but a dog bowl to his name. Nevertheless, the Doctor lived in worse when he visited Glastonbury, so he takes it with dignity...

...until the Bastard kicks the Time Lord in the gonads, knocks him into a shopping trolley and then pushes said trolley around the room again and again and again until the decrepit Doctor looks quite sick. Yep, this incarnation of the Bastard is all about crushing his enemies on the inside, and if he can have a laugh doing it, all the better!

This why, just in case you were wondering, the Bastard has kept Martha’s family alive – sheer, bloody spite, knowing their continued existence will cause Martha misery and despair while ensuring the Valium will be the one place Martha will dare not return.

The Bastard skids to a halt before a porthole and grabs the Doctor by the turkey-like scruff of his old neck. "If you succumb, what’s done is done – what’s done is done... why don’t you tell me what you’re on?" the Bastard demands.

"Keep guessing," sighs the old man.

"Now, now," the Bastard beams, digging a thumbnail into his enemy’s ear lobe and then violently twisting it. "You know, according to the latest gossip on AintTheBastardBitching?News.com, they say that Martha Jones has returned to Cardiff, even though she’s got my TARDIS. Now why would anyone do that of her own free will?"

"I’m sure you’re going to tell me."

"But you said something to her, didn’t you? Last week, you did, I saw you! Now what did you tell her?!" the Bastard demands.

"I said you’re crap in bed and hung like a baby carrot."

"That’s not what Jo Grant thought," laughs the Bastard, flipping over the trolley and giving the Doctor some particularly nasty compound fractures. "Oh, well, I was just curious. Guess I’ll have to get back on with that whole conquest of the universe shebang!" he says cheerfully, clapping his hands.

But the Bastard has crucially underestimated the Doctor. For over the last seven days, the cunning brain of the Time Lord has been formulating amazing new plans – as he is, after all, one of the two smartest beings on the planet. Knowing that the Bastard will be expecting him to cripple the Valium, or fire its missiles at the Archangel satellites, or seducing the guards, the Doctor has come up with a truly-out-of-left field plan that no one will be expecting:

1) The Doctor gives a secret message to Francine
2) Francine passes it to her husband Clive (also in a maid’s outfit)
3) Clive passes it to his daughter Tish (maid’s outfit, ditto)
4) Tish passes it to Captain Jack who is crucified upside down in the vaults of the Skybase (he’s in a nurse’s outfit!)

Of course, Captain Jack still isn’t sober after a week of torture, humiliation, pain and repeated chainsaw buggery, and doesn’t at first get the message as he waffles on to himself. "Ah, smell that sea air! Makes me long for good fish and chips and going to bed with a salty sailor! Hahaha! And what do I get, cold mashed dog food on cornflakes. Some hotel THIS is! Last time I book over the internet! This sucks more than Ralifex 4 where they eat their visitors if they fart too loudly... or should I say BREATHE too loudly. Very good hearing. Drives them mad. So, Tish Jones, I suppose you want to do naughty things to my helpless body, huh?"

After beating some sense into Jack, everyone is ready for the rest of this fiendishly brilliant plan of lateral thinking genius!

5) They wait until three in the afternoon
6) The Bastard has his daily combined Shiatsu massage and torrid sex session with Wife Number Two, forcing Lucie to flog them both while they’re at it
7) Wait for the Bastard to get so distracted he starts his usual crap about having a mass S&M bondage orgy on Katria Nova, the planet of golden whirlpools
8) Jack breaks every bone in his body to escape his bonds, before being magically repaired by whatever voodoo shit fixes it for him and then goes on a gun rampage
9) Clive throws Jack’s slop bucket over the fuse box, sabotaging the engines of the Skybase Valium
10) Tish steals the Bastard’s discarded coat and gives to Francine
11) Francine steals the Bastard’s laser screwdriver from the discarded coat and gives it to the Doctor

Now, there ARE more steps to the plan, but they’re not remotely relevant as the plan completely fucks up at this point – the Bastard’s laser screwdriver is isomorphic and will only work in its owner’s manly, hairy hand and so while the Doctor holds it, it is nothing more than a combined paperweight and sex toy!

"That’s IT?" sneers the Bastard, drop-kicking the old Doctor and leaving a dent in his skull. "That’s the BEST you could come up with? Nicking a laser pointer?" The evil dictator giggles like a loon and then uses Francine for target practice until she blubs.

While Clive is beaten unconscious and Captain Jack machine-gunned to death for the second time that day, and all the Jones rounded up and handcuffed together, the Bastard has Lucie throw the Doctor face-down into the shopping trolley and recalls the past glory of the show’s central character.

"Oh, Gramps," sighs the Bastard, kicking over the trolley and making the Doctor hurt his head. "Oh, do you know, I remember the days when the Doctor – oh, that famous Doctor – was a conscientious objector in the Temporal Difference of Opinion. And look at him now? Stealing screwdrivers. How did he EVER come to this? Oh yeah: ME!" he laughs. "Jings, I really have been going WAY too easy on you, haven’t I? As Fanny Craddock once said, revenge is best served hot! Oh, they will write text-books about what I am going to do to you..."

Far below them, in the desolate landscape of Wales, Martha and Tom pass a whacking great statue of the Bastard in a Saturday Night Fever dance pose – in his cruel tasteless villainy, similar statues can be found all across the world, with the defaced Mount Rushmore now having the face of "Alan B’Stard" and the Statue of Liberty now resembling John Simm in drag. This is part of the Bastard’s desire to become "the 8th Wonder of the World".

Finally, the duo arrive at one of the giant shipyards, where huge Jules-Verne war rockets are being constructed and prepared for battle, each with their own black-hole inverter.

"The entire south coast of England converted into shipyards. They bring in slave labour every morning; break up cars, houses, anything, just for the metal, building a fleet out of scrap," explains Tom for the audience who are no doubt confused as hell by now. "Along with wedding rings, tooth fillings and stuff. On the bright side, Paris is worse. The Eiffel Tower has been ripped down, balconies torn out and half the city is leveled, all the houses taken down and the remaining frogs forced into whatever is still standing. You gotta laugh, haven’t you?"

"You should see Russia," Martha notes, rather cheaply describing the situation so the Mill won’t have to animate it. "That’s Shipyard number One. All the way from the Black Sea to the Bering Strait, there’s a 100,000 rockets getting ready for war with the rest of the Universe! Thousands upon thousands of civilizations all around us with no idea of what’s happening here and the Bastard can build weapons big enough to devastate them all!"

"...OK, it’s a bit difficult to see the funny side of that one," Tom concedes, when suddenly two Toclafane (cunningly hidden up the nostrils of the giant Bastard monument) approach and demand Tom give the special password that stops them killing him. Tom sighs and notes there ISN’T a password, they just want to see him shit himself in terror. Annoyed at spoiling their fun, the Toclafane stamp his pass and float off, bitching in the way only floating soccer balls can.

Martha laughs evilly and waves around her adapted TARDIS key with it’s Someone Else’s Problem Field that makes her invisible – this, combined with her access to the Bastard’s TARDIS is why she was able to stand at the foot of Mt. Fuji while the Toclafane cut down all the people trying to escape the flames; why she alone survived the New York purges when a piece of bread stolen by a four-year-old boy lead to the entire population being vaporized one by one; and why she never has to pay for snacks at the local branch of D’You Believe This Is Pizza?

As Martha brags about all the inhuman genocide she’s watched from the sidelines with some popcorn, Tom begins to suspect she might be completely barking insane – and similar thoughts will occur to many characters from now on, since Martha very clearly HAS gone nuts having been exposed to inhuman suffering, unstoppable carnage, and hasn’t had a good shag for far too long...

Anyway, Mad Martha and Tom Milligan ride the steam-train TARDIS to the workplace of Doherty, a rude, stupid, self-obsessed bint with a truly appalling taste in neckwear. A rather antisocial woman, she’s placed a chain-link fence around her lab while she sits around watching TV and isn’t remotely interested in Martha Jones, the Queen of Sheba or anything beyond her fanatical desire to see repeats of Countdown – even though all television networks show nothing but the All Bastard Channel!

The Friday Night line-up of which is:

7.00: Panorama of the Bastard: Yep, the World’s Still My Plaything
7.30: The Toclafane Reduce Alex Drake to Ashes!
8.30: Gerry Robinson’s Car Crash Was Caused By The Bastard
9.30: Make ’Em Die!
10.00: Celebrity Bastard-Chef
10.25: Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire Die Horribly At the Hands of the Bastard
10.30: The Real Hustle Marvel At How The Bastard Conquered The World
11.00: Have I Got News For You? No, So Get Back To Work!
11.45: The Bastard’s Book Quiz Pottery Special

"Oh God, I miss Countdown," sighs Doherty as Tom and Martha are forced to cut their way through the fence. "Hasn’t been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. What’s the plural of Des? Desii? Deseen? Still, both of them gone now, in the Great Celebrity Purge of Day One. Perhaps the Bastard’s not so bad after all."

"Christ, no wonder the Welsh resistance has got nowhere," complains Martha. "You’re worse than the bloody Touchwood Institute!"

(For those who were wondering, the Bastard deliberately sought out all the possible resistance leaders and decided to make all their lives as humiliating as possible: the survivors of Touchwood were made slaves in Honolulu and were forced to make chocolate biscuits for the Bastard using only breadcrumbs and butter beans; the Brigadier, Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton were taken to a slave camp in Portugal and forced to do the Hokey-Pokey 24 hours a day while attached to a Xantoid fragmentation grenade set to blow up if they made a single mistake – which, after 97 hours they did, all dying when Benton tragically forgot to "shake it all about"; while Sarah Jane Smith and her gang of pubescent pals were sent to toil in the plutonium puddles of Petersborough and the fallout fields of Filey, respectively).

Anyway, it’s time for "Jester Bastardo's Medieval Torture Hour", a live transmission from the Skybase Valium that’s also shown INSIDE the Valium so Captain Jack, the Joneses and all the non-speaking extras can goggle at what’s happening.

"My people!" speechifies the Bastard. "Salutations on this, the eve of war... lovely woman... but I know there’s all sorts of whispers down there, stories of a child, walking the Earth, giving you hope – but I ask you, how much hope has THIS man got?" he asks, indicating the old Doctor, stuffed into a cage from the ceiling like in a stripper club.

"Say hello, Gandalf," commands the Bastard.

"Hello Gandalf," sighs the Doctor, unimpressed.

"Jings, very funny, old man. Except, of course, you’re not THAT old. You’re an alien with a much greater life span than all the stunted little apes watching at home – and what if it showed, huh?" the Bastard ponders, fiddling with his laser screwdriver. "What if, just as example, I suspended your capacity to regenerate? What if we could see all 900 years of your life? Heh. 900. You still pulling that "I’m still 39" crap? It fools no one. Not anymore..."

The Bastard fires the screwdriver at the wizened Time Lord and everyone watches as the Doctor writhes in agony and transforms...

...into a perfect copy of the William Hartnell Doctor!

"Hmph. Are you satisfied now, hmm?" the old man snaps.

"Not reaaaaallly," the Bastard admits. "I was hoping for something a bit more spectacular... something to cut you down to size, really. Like so," the evil dictator laughs and zaps the Doctor again, the laser screwdriver set to 'matter condensation tissue compression stuff', and the Hartnell Doctor shrinks into a tiny, frail creature as techno-music blares in the background for some reason. "Down, down, down, you go! Straight on like an arrow!" the Bastard crows.

The Hartnell Doctor is left a tiny, ancient Yoda-like thing with a lined, parched face and eyes slitted by the weight of eyelids that are really 2339 years old, all his attempts to look young, groovy and "with it" with the "now" generation all gone.

"Oh, my mistake!" the Bastard giggles. "He’s not Gandalf, he’s GOLLUM!"

Lucie laughs uproarishly for a moment. "I don’t get it," she adds.

"Do you STILL fancy him NOW, Miss Jones?" sneers the Bastard across the airwaves, before the end credits begin along with a trailer for the midday movie – the 1976 version of The Omen, with the Bastard edited in and performing all the gruesome murders to the cast while Rogue Traders tracks play in the background.

Martha, having watched all this in silence, smiles. "You know, he STILL looks hot in that pinstripe suit," she announces, and both Tom and Doherty back away from her very slowly, making no sudden moves.

Awkwardly, discussion turns to how to defeat the Bastard, but that’s going to be tricky as the entire population of the Earth are being kept docile and terrified by the telepathic signals from the Archangel Network – not to mention the six billion indestructible Toclafane just looking for an excuse to start a massacre.

Martha suggests they catch a Toclafane as she found out on one of her many trips to South Africa that Toclafane have but one weakness – a bit of paper shaped like a butterfly bouncing on a string! Simply luring a Toclafane to Doherty’s place by Tom firing a gun into the sky and screaming, "BRING IT ON YOU STUPID BLOODY TERRAHAWKS!!", Martha trasnfixes the floating sphere with a paper butterfly and it immediately abandons its mission and spends all its time giggling and trying to catch the bit of paper with its extendable claws.

"And the human race got its arse handed to it by these things," Doherty notes. "That IS depressing."

Suddenly, the Toclafane starts to sing drunkenly:

"Look in the mirror ball!
This is the day I see it all!
If you come out to play!
It'll be worth the wait!"

Tom kicks the sphere, which cracks open to reveal the sphere contains a shrunken human head, formaldehyde-yellow, with the face wired in, mouth gummed shut, skull welded to the metal. A whole nation of school children wonder if the Toclafane were all really Lavros all the time as its light starts to flash.

"Hello, Martha J," says the human head cheerfully. "Sweet, kind Martha Jones. You helped us to fly to Dystopia, you led us to salvation to where the skies are made of diamonds..."

"My God!" gasps Martha. "Creet?! Is that you?"

"Yup. Pity the whole Dystopia thing turned out to be bullshit! There was no solution, no diamonds. Just the dark and the cold..."

In an incredibly chatty mood, the little boy who once unnervingly resembled Dakota Fanning reveals that the six billion humans, the dregs of the species, arrived at the last remaining planetoid around the last remaining sun, and discovered that despite all those thousands of years of work there was actually sod all to sustain them against the endless expanse of space and all went ever so slightly batshit crazy.

Thus, when the Tall Man from the Phantasm movies suggested cannibalizing people and turning them into homicidal spheres, humanity was totally up for it to stop being extinguished with the ending universe. Giving into their worst impulses, they butched their bodies, impaired their minds, driving out individuality and conscience and – would you believe? – end up making them all go even MORE insane!

"We made ourselves so pretty," giggles the head. "So we used all the inventiveness that sustained us over the eons, turned it all inwards. It didn’t stop reality collapsing around us, though. But then the Bastard came with his wonderful time machine to bring us back home!"

"Am I the only one finding this deeply fucking disturbing?" asks Doherty. "I mean, apart from anything else, these idiots are murdering their own ancestors! They should vanish in a puff of logic!"

"The Bastard’s dues ex machina sorts all that out," the Toclafane says cheerfully. "We can kill you all and be all right, and soon the rockets will fly and everyone will need medicine when we hurt them!"

"Why the fuck would you do that?!" demands Tom.

"For fun!" the severed head retorts, and breaks out into such insane, evil-clown-like laughter that Tom grabbing a double-barreled shotgun and blowing the head to slime is frankly quite a relief.

"Well. This is a bit of a bummer," Martha sighs, reflecting on the pointless nihilistic destiny humanity and indeed all life in the universe inevitably faces.

In its final bleak and disturbing death throes, humanity’s selfishness knew no bounds as it sunk to all-time horrible lows – the immense swarm hive of Toclafane truly represent the FINAL END OF ALL HOPE as they scream into the night...

OK, enough self pity. On with the plot!

Whilst the Jones’ are locked in a cell aboard the Valium, handcuffed to a bed, all wearing French Maid’s Outfits and bitching about how disappointed they are in Martha, the Bastard and Lucie go and decide to taunt the walnut on legs in a birdcage that the Doctor has been reduced to earlier on in the plot.

"It’s all go tomorrow," the Bastard gloats. "The fleet will launch, shoot itself through a wormhole right into the heart of Bracatolian space. They won’t see us coming. Well, they don’t see ANYONE coming, they don’t have any eyes at all, but the speed and surprise still count. Kinda scary huh?" he whispers.

"If it concerns you so much," the Doctor retorts, gripping his tiny pinstripe lapels, "then do away with this nonsense, all this talk of evil, killing, destruction and vicious fists-of-fury marital loving!"

The Bastard sighs. "Once the empire is established and there’s a new Gallifrey in the heavens? Maybe then. Maybe then it stops." The Bastard looks at the Doctor through the bars of the coming. "The perpetual loop of Rogue Traders songs. The never-ending Elvis Costello riffs. Ever since I was a child and you sabotaged my iPod. That’s when they chose me. The Rogue Traders, the call to war from Natalie Bassingthwaite. Can’t you HEAR it? Listen, it’s there now! Right now!"

Somewhere in the distance, the head-numbing beat of the drums can be heard... or can they?

"Jings, Doctor, this is serious," hisses the Bastard, wild eyed with a terror beyond the latitude of human minds. "Heat will rise! I cannot defy it! It’s become obscene, the words that I mean, I catch my breath with every step! I inhale between every word they say, oh yeah! Wanna hear it again? Wanna hear it again? TELL ME YOU CAN HEAR IT, DOCTOR! Why don’t you, why don’t you? I really wanna know! TELL ME! OH YEAH!"

The millenium-old Time Lord snorts. "I hear nothing, sir. It is only you that hears this discography. It’s all inside your head and yours alone, you crazy amphetamine-fueled midget!"

The Bastard stares at him. "Good," he says. For some reason. Well, he IS nuts. "It means I’m special. And when you’ve lived trillions of years in the future at the universe, watching everything dying as the whole of creation falls apart around you, you realize that there’s no point. No point to ANYTHING. Not EVER! There's no surprise, Kings and Aces, cause I have fallen from high places and you don't know the way you touch me! So why the hell SHOULD there be a reason for the all the songs stuck in my head?"

"God, are you STILL going on about that?" scoffs Lucie.

"Throw your arms around me," he whispers to Lucie. "Totally surround me til there’s no turning back!" He glances back at the Doctor. "And don’t get all superior with me, bitch! Jings. It’s all your fault, remember? You knackered the TARDIS, you made sure I could only go between the ethnographic present on Earth - where you’d just got rid of the Prime Minister and created a power vacuum - to the year 100 Squillion - where there just happened to be an incredibly freaking enormous army of pissed off cyborgs rather annoyed you screwed over their attempts to find a way to escape the end of everything."

"So you inappropriated, er, their plan of using the TARDIS to invade the 21st Century, hmm?" Doccy the House Elf muses. "You’re not just insane, you’re unoriginal to boot! Hmm, I should say so, yes..."

"But you should have SEEN it, Doctor! Furnaces burning..."

"What ELSE would furnaces be doing, hmm?"

"The last of humanity, screaming at the dark at what a complete dickhead you are, betraying the same species you saved time and time again," the Bastard muses. "With the only option, mankind becomes something worse than a Dustbin, because at least they’re trying to keep the cosmos tidy. But they kill for a laugh! The race that you put so much faith and hope into turns out to be the greatest monster the universe will ever know, not even TRYING to achieve anything in their destruction... The irony’s just insane, isn’t it?"

"It’s not the only one."

"So we joined forces and used your TARDIS, a living ship strong enough to hold the paradox in place, allowing the past and the future to collide in infinite majesty without any sodding Dommervoy getting on my case. My masterpiece. A bastardized TARDIS. A BASTARDIS? Ooh, I like that. Good name. BASTARDIS. Much better than boring old dues ex machina."

"You can’t rewrite history!" spits the CGI goblin. "Not one line! And you’re trying to change the history, not only of Earth but the entire consent-constellation! Yes!"

"I’m a Time Lord, I have that right!" beams the Bastard. "Besides, it was the humans’ idea to come backwards in time to build a brand new empire - wipe out half the human race and adapt the rest to be a strong warrior race, capable of lasting for eternity... or 100 Squillion years, whichever comes sooner. And with ME as their leader. I mean, the species I spent all that time in the seventies trying to destroy turns out to be the one I can totally rely on? I mean, how fucking messed-up is that?"

"Anyway," says Lucie, "time to call it a night. And we’ll turn the light off as we go, Doctor. After all, you look better in the dark!"

"Disgusting woman," mutters the homunculus Doctor as they leave. "Thank God I never slept with her, eh, Chatterbean?"

Down below, Doherty recalls a legend that claims Martha searched the world for a way to kill a Time Lord, collecting the four chemicals scattered across the world to arm a device capable of killing the Bastard stone dead.

"What the hell gave you that idea?" boggles Martha, and she and Tom decide to leave because Doherty’s really annoying and weird. True, Cardiff is now full of wild dogs capable of eating them alive, but it’s a lot more alluring than staying here.

The moment she is alone, Doherty laughs like a crazy woman, rubs her hands together with glee and immediately pulls out a mobile phone. "This is Professor Alison Sex Machine Doherty! Access Priority One! I have some information for the Bastard concerning Martha Jones, but first I need to know... will I get on TV because of this?"

Aboard the Valium, the Doctor is sitting at the bottom of his cage, playing solitaire or something when the door slides open and the Bastard enters on tiptoe and turns on the lights. He is in a dark silk robe and his hair is mussed.

"Guess what?" the Bastard grins.

The Doctor groans and headbutts the bars of the cage.