******************************************************************************* ** The All-Singing, All-Dancing Five Doctors Pro-Am Cabaret Extravaganza ** ** part seven ** ** (c) Matt Clifton 1994 ** ******************************************************************************* "This way to the Tomb of Rassilon!", read the first notice. Two minutes later, the came upon the second: "No cameras". A mile further on, a fat tourist hung bloated from a swinging quintain, photographic equipment smashed and scattered upon the ground, the lead wound about his neck and a bundle of bleached, unwound film stuffed into both his nostrils. The sign read, "We *said*, no cameras, thicko". The second Doctor and the Brigadier reached the cave mouth just as the last dying rays of the sun struck the gold plated portico before the entrance. Ancient carved figures and mysterious hieroglyphs covered the surface of the stones ; sacred and untouched since the dawn of the Time Lords. An almost mystical air hung over the scene. The Doctor ignored all this and concentrated on drawing stick willies on all the depictions of Omega he could find. This done, he got out his recorder and whistled a new tune: "Oh, my name is Brigadier, And I am rather queer It's said I once shagged fifty men And I'll try and do more this y....yaarrghhh!" The Brigadier crouched over the Time Lord's prone frame. "Are you in pain, Doctor?", he asked concernedly. This was perhaps a slightly disingenous thing to say as it had been the Brigadier who'd kicked him in the balls in the first place. "Help me up, and I'll show you," replied the Doctor. "No!", returned his military friend wittily, and they then proceeded to engage in a fistfight to the death. Well, OK, not to the death. At least, not to the death of each other, but to that of a Mr. G. P. Nasalsnipe, who had just wandered onto the scene in search of some plot. "None to be found here, me old matey," declared the Brigadier, a micro- second before a huge metal crate labelled 'Plot Devices - Shipment 1' parachuted down onto the top of his head. *** ZZZZBBBTTTT *** We interrupt this broadcast to bring you some plot *** ...he said, musingly. And so saying, he took one of the torches from its bracket in the wall and edged his way into the darkness of the cave entrance. After a moment of thought, the Brigadier followed. *********************************************************************** The fifth Doctor, Susan and Tegan had been walking for a good ten minutes before anything even slightly important happened. They tramped o'er hill, did they, o'er bracken and o'er vale and o'er field and o'er the occasional farmer who happened to get in their way. They were about to optimistically attempt to trample o'er a bloody great boulder in the middle of the road when a ululating, ethereal voice came to them from afar. "Oy, Doctor you fat wanker!", it said, enigmatically. A small, Satanically- bearded sheep then leapt out of its disguise and revealed itself to be the Master in cunning costume. The Doctor narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Discovering that this just made everything go out of focus, he tried widening them suspiciously. Hmm, he thought, not much of an improvement. He began to walk down the slope towards his enemy, all the while waggling his left ear and opening and closing both his nostrils alternately, in an _extremely_ suspicious way. Tegan and Susan waited on the ridge ; the former with hands upon her hips and her head thrown back, the latter standing absolutely still, not daring to move in case a misplaced breeze shattered her ankle in a thousand places. The Doctor closed with the Master. Both exchanged a secret Time Lord sect signal, involving many complex hand-waving and eyelid-batting combinations, topped off with a side-holding parody of laughter and a ritual flicking of the Bogie of Rassilon, a near-mythical artifact embued with incredible powers of sticking to the inside of nostrils and swinging in the wind. "Neil Toynay, I presume?" remarked the Doctor drily, looking as disapproving as his pleasant open face would allow. The Master shuffled, looking embarrassed. "Actually, no. The author wouldn't let me use a cunningly deceptive alias." He stared at the script morosely. "Said I couldn't even call myself 'Mr Master'. And another thing. You know, I've never had a title mention. Not one. Season eight, there I was popping up in the first five minutes of every story, and do I get a 'Return of the Master' or a ' The Master's Revenge'? I do not. Every other -" The Doctor sighed wearily. " - villain gets one in, but not me, oh no. I've had just about all I can take of this 'Genesis of the Daleks'/'Attack of the Cybermen'/'Time and the Sodding Rani' crap." "Your point?" added the Doctor impatiently, eyeing a nearby rock and mentally balancing the effects of smashing the Master's brains out with it against the effects of losing five million kiddie viewers/gaining five million psycho pervert viewers/whatever. "Didn't have one. Oh yes, I remember. Why did you never get a catchphrase?" "Beg pardon?" "You know, like 'Have a jelly baby' or 'Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow'. A verbal recognition handle." The Doctor pursed his lips. "What about 'Brave heart, Tegan'?" "Not particularly generic, is it? I mean, hard to imagine it being of much use on the Desert Plains of Xxalus, or the Tel'Gonje Slimepits...especially if Tegan isn't actually *there*. Why are you looking at me like that?" "What have you done with the tall chap? My predecessor?" "Oh, the wierdo?" The Master decided to have a little fun with Quasi-temporal Thought Physics. "I killed him." The Doctor vanished. "...not", completed the Master. The Doctor re-appeared, and huffed loudly. "Very funny", he said. "Stop it." "Actually, I haven't done anything. I've been sent here by the High Council - to *help* you." So saying, the Master produced the singing Seal of Rassilon from the folds of his cloak, and, holding it up to the light, depressed the switch on its base. The device began to sing. "The Master is a git - A sneaky, lying git I wouldn't trust him as far as I could vomit a gerbil, And that's the end of it." Then it self-destructed, showering the pair of renegades in glittering shards of nine-dimensional matter. The Master frowned, and stroked his beard. "Can't say much for the scansion", he muttered. The Doctor shook his head sadly and started to walk back up the slope to his two friends. "No, no, wait! It's true! Look!" Desperately the Master searched his cloak for supporting evidence for his claims. He unearthed, in quick succession, his main, spare and Sunday-best TCE's, a membership card for Fiends Inc, a *cough* and dr*hack* the *cough!!!* a..what? *coooough* *cough* *hack* *wheeze* *cough* I'm sorry about thi-*cough* *splutter* *kkkoofffff* *ff** *cooooooooooououououuoughghgh* [ My audience appears to have started a Mexican Cough. Please hold on while I get rid of a few of them. (Author pulls black switch : first ten rows of the theatre are instantly incinerated by laser bolts.) Now, have we all finished? * kof * ZZZAAAAPPPP!!!!!!!!!!! Good. (Author holsters personal staser pistol.) ] "Not convinced", declared the Doctor. He glanced at the horizon. "And those Cybermen aren't fooling anyone. Really, Master, your imagination is pathetic." "What Cybermen?" The Doctor turned and gestured at the cohort of Cybermen sledging down the nearby hill on kitchen trays. The Cyberleader, in front, was sporting a particularly jolly matching Christmas hat and mittens. "Oh", noted the Master. "*Those*..." Suddenly, without warning and with callous disregard for safety, one of the flanking creatures let loose a volley of bullets in the Time Lords' general direction. "STOP!", ordered the Cyberleader, in spite of the obvious fact that both the Doctor and the Master were standing absolutely still. This state of affairs, naturally, did not last long. "Daleks!", cried the Doctor, pointing over the Master's left shoulder. The evil renegade spun round, and the Doctor took the opportunity to chop him in the neck. His archenemy fell like a black-cloaked, Satanically-bearded ...sack of potatoes. Quickly the Doctor rummaged in the cloak for the TCE, but in the fall they had all simultaneously become activated and shrunk themselves into oblivion. Twenty Cybermen approached. A word came into the Doctor's head. It rhymed with 'Duck'. A small, round, gold-coloured object rolled from the Master's prone form. The Doctor caught and examined it. There was a button on the top surface. It was labelled 'Press'. Righto, thought the Doctor. The Cyberleader reached them both, and levelled his weapon. "YOU WILL COME WITH US." "Sorry," apologised the Doctor. "Moustache", he added, pointing to the Master's. The Cyberman looked down to where the Doctor was indicating. When he looked up again, there was no-one there, save a Groucho Marx disguise kit that fluttered slowly to the ground. Fortunately it turned out to be yet another of the many things Cybermen are allergic to, giving Tegan and Susan a chance to make their exit. That is, Tegan took her chance and ran for it, being the plucky young Ocker she was. Susan, being the stupid old hag *she* was, simply fell over and fractured her skull. Didn't make a blind bit of diffference, of course. ************************************************************************ The Chamber of the High Council of Time Lords. Been there, described that. Borusa and the Castellan, as befitted their high intellects, were simultaneously playing five games of chess against each other, composing vast operatic symphonies, occasionally discovering the Unified Theory and then hushing it back up again, just for kicks. Flavia, as befitted her status as a good-looking, but otherwise completely characterless stock female Time Lord, was sitting around making pigeon noises. The transmat began to hum. In an instant, Flavia had jumped over to the console and activated her Renegade Debearding Mechanism (TM), which would rip every last hair from the Master's so-called Satanic chin growth when he appeared. In addition, she had programmed it to indelibly laser the word 'SPAM' onto his forehead. Atoms in the region of the transmat swirled, coalesced, and became the Doctor. Flavia's machine beeped twice, exuded a pair of scissors which twitched feebly towards the Doctor's chin, lasered a swathe of the chamber wall leaving a residual scar in the shape of a cat, and then fell over. The Doctor, completely untouched, stepped down from the dais and turned to face the assembled Time Lords. "Well!", he exclaimed. "Looks like the Master was telling the truth all the time. Hum ho." He then paced around the room and stared at the new incarnation of President Borusa. "My God, you're ugly, aren't you", he pointed out, ripping off John Cleese something rotten. "I thought that leper body you inhabited in my college years was bad. Christ." (He was right, too. Of all the countless generations of Time Lord incarnations since the days of Rassilon, Omega, and that mysterious, veiled figure known only as 'an Aaronovitch cock-up', only President Xankia III's attempt to reproduce the fair visage of Thora Hurd had been a less popular move. Although there hadn't been much celebrating when the Keeper of the Matrix had danced around the corridors of Gallifrey adorned in a brand-new incarnation that bore a frightening, and some may think surreal, resemblance to Poggy, King of the Puffin-Men.) The President flinched under a combination of the Doctor's verbal onslaught and his very own encroaching Parkinson's disease. "Doctor. You will tell us what is happening in the Zone." "Will I? It seems to me -", began the Doctor, wagging his finger in an especially puerile manner at the President, "- that you owe _me_ an explanation, Bonzo. After all, I've been kidnapped, vortexed, chased by Daleks, fired upon by Cybermen, forced to endure Turlough, etc, etc, and all without the benefit of a cliffhanger to get my breath back." "Oh, that. That's the Castellan's fault", put in Flavia, loyally. The Castellan started visibly. "Eh?", he retorted, intelligently. Flavia, the Doctor and the Lord President all marched over to his chair and leaned menacingly into the Castellan's face. He leaned back. "Eh?", he said again. "Me? A traitor?" "Yup," shouted the President. "And you can wipe that smile off your face, Doctor - you're as guilty as he is. Guilty as hell, the pair of you." "Which reminds me" - began the Doctor - "how *is* that young girl these days? Still in therapy? The court case can't have done her much good, eh. And those medical tests. Very *probing*, so they say. *Very* probing." The President sniffed. "Well, just the Castellan then. Guards!!!" ************************************************************************ The first Doctor hummed thoughtfully for a while. The girls had returned in a state of considerable agitation, claiming that hundreds of very tall men cloaked in a silver suit ensemble topped with Davy lamps had arrived on the scene and spirited the Doctor away by magick. Two things had immediately struck him ; first, that these metal creatures were obviously the delirious result of over-active imaginations, and secondly, that Tegan and Susan had the brains of a septic sheep. That little bit of misogyny over with, he focused on the problem of what to do with the three humans. The word 'kebab' popped up, unsolicited, in his mind ; he stifled the thought and cleared his throat to announce his plan. "I shall go to the Tower myself", he dribbled wetly. He turned to find that the others were, as usual, completely ignoring every word he uttered, so absorbed were they in the TARDIS scanner currently tuned in to a satellite porn channel. The Doctor twisted the scanner control and blanked out the screen. "Right", stormed Turlough, "I'm going to kill you for that." Fortunately, the girls managed to hold him back before he could maim the Time Lord to the point of regeneration and *really* screw up continuity. Susan hobbled over to her grandfather. "What's your plan, gramps? Do you want me to accompany you to the tower?" Huffing for a bit, the Doctor decided that, on reflection, he would rather slow-dance a Mechanoid than voluntarily travel with *any* of the three humans to the Tower. Still...Turlough was out, that was obvious. And lately he had gotten particularly sick and tired of Susan's whinging and her capricious ankles. So...erk...that left the Oz. Whatsername. Tegan. Yeah. Sighing, he dragged the girl out of the TARDIS, reminding the remaining two not to talk to any strange Cybermen. Then he was gone. ************************************************************************ The Cyberleader loomed over the prone form of the Master. "YOU ARE NOT THE DOCTOR." "Er..er, yes I am. I am really. I just regenerated. Gosh-", said the Master in feigned surprise, feeling his face, "- a Satanic beard. What fun." Desparately he felt for the transmat control. "I wonder what mysterious things this new incarnation has in his pockets...um..." - scrabbling about, and finding little of any use - "...damn." He located an object, and offered it up to the Cyberman. "...stick of celery? cricket ball? er, 'The Left-Handed Hummingbird'? what a pile of crap." "YOU ARE NOT THE DOCTOR." "Oh, bugger it. Alright, alright, no, I'm not. But listen here..." The Cybermen leaned in close to hear what he had to say. ************************************************************************ Reader, I must apologise in advance for the next scene. We had a bit of trouble at the Guild recently, and, well, to cut a long story into strips of raw, bloody meat, they didn't like my stuff. Bastards. So they've drafted in Chris Boucher of Blakes Seven fame to do this next bit. This will explain why the Cyberleader and DeputyLeader have adopted Cockney accents and the ludicrous names of Kilmer and Brantz. The scene will also be divided into two completely strange and unconnected parts, to be joined at the end into a glorious, slightly sentimental finale. Oh, and just before the credits Vila will make some weakly humourous remark which will make the entire Liberator crew howl with extremely artificial laughter. (Hello Children of Auron, well hello Children of Auron.) [As an aside, it is a known fact that the Cockney accent is the most stubborn lifeform ever created. Remember that classic scene in 'Genesis of the Daleks'?: "Davros, if you could create a virus that would spread throughout the universe, destroying all of creation, etc, etc, would you do it?" ...to which Davros replies, "Cor blimey, Guv, what a question." You see my point. Rhyming Slang *is* that virus. Why else do you think the survivors on the Ark in Space were all banging on about rejects having a '.007 survival predict' when they themselves were saying things like 'I knew there'd be a snitch-up. Didn't I say there'd be a snitch-up? Roll aht the barrel...' It is calculated that by the Earth year 17900, all intelligent creatures will have become subdued by the encroaching menace of Cockneydom. Even Mother Earth herself is not spared the ignomony, although you'd have thought that all the Londoners would have buggered off to the Colonies by this time, but oh no. Just look at the name of the planet. It becomes known as 'Ravolox' which is a clear degradation of 'Shabba Wox'. OK, that doesn't actually prove anything about Cockneys, but it just goes to show. (Note to Ed : is this 8000 words yet?) What's that? 7998? Oh, antelope.] Sorry, I've just been told Chris Boucher didn't, in fact, write Children of Auron. But I think we deserve to be told who did, and why there aren't armed men out searching for him. ****************************************************************************** Within the TARDIS, Susan and Turlough were merrily wheeling their barrows to and fro while exchanging pleasantries in cheery Ealing-speak. Susan, you see, had been marooned in 22nd century London for the last forty years, and had been exposed to an unhealthily high dose of Cockneyesque language, and the exile Turlough had just adopted the lingo in the belief that doing so would make him extremely cool and a 'hard lad'. As we have seen, it merely had the effect of putting his speech in the same incomprehensibility league as Dave Shariff Yadallee postings. Fortunately, this excursion into fantasyland did not last long, as neither of them could think up a rhyme for 'TARDIS'. "So you're his granddaughter then?", asked Turlough of the girl. He was almost certain there shouldn't have been a comma after an interrogative, but didn't like to say anything as the author considered himself to be a grammar pedant. Susan sneered. "No, not really. That was a big joke back on Gallifrey, you see. He's an old man, right? And in this incarnation I look like a young girl, yes?" "Mmm", disagreed Turlough vehemently (still unsure about that comma outside the quotation marks). Well, not *that* vehemently, as all he said was 'Mmm'. Mind you, he was devouring a large black pudding at the time. Susan continued, "...so, the idea got about that he was my grandfather. Laughable, if you think about it." "Why, what was he really?" "My probation officer", announced Susan, picking up a large can of kerosene and liberally spraying it over the console before throwing in a lit match and turning the whole show into a raging fireball. She rubbed her hands in the crackling glow. "Why do you suppose the author has made every character in this story singularly unlikeable?", mused Turlough, leaning back in the Louis Cairns lounger that had mysteriously disappeared from the TARDIS about the time of that business with the Sensorites, and had been reinstated by the First Doctor in its previous location covering up a particularly nasty continuity glitch. Susan sipped her tea. "Mmm, don't know. Perhaps he's attempting a clumsy mirror of his own distorted perceptions of reality." She sat up suddenly. "Or. Or maybe it's a crypto-socialist attempt at a world takeover!!" "What?" "Yes, of course!" The woman leapt to the console and accessed the databank. "A pathetic attempt to veil the truth! A government cover-up! Conspiracy! Conspiracy!", she cried, madly waving a pathetic banner in the air. "Cons-" Just then, Giles Brandreth, Richard Stilgoe and Willie Rushton entered the room by way of a freak timestorm. Luckily for Susan, these three were even *less* likeable than *any* of the main characters in the story, and Turlough loosed PGMP plasma bolts into them instead of the Time Lady. Their bodies span and danced before slumping in a bloody tangled mess into the corner of the console room. Some small children laughed and danced around their pulped, steaming bodies. Ah, wish-fulfillment. The loud knocking outside halted any attempt by Turlough to prop the corpses up against the console in amusing poses, and he activated the scanner. The silver nostrils of a Cyberman filled the screen, then moved sharply back to reveal the whole face. In a rush of horror, the author suddenly realised he had to write some incredibly tedious Cyber-dialogue, and racked his brains for a way out. "YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE", intoned the giant creature. "MY ONLY SUNSHINE. YOU MAKE ME - ", he clenched his fist menacingly, "- HAPPY, WHEN SKIES ARE GREY. WE HAVE BEEN EXPERIMENTING WITH EMOTIONS, EARTHLING. I DON'T KNOW WHY I LOVE YOU, BUT I DO." "A WOO WOOOO - ", chorused the cohort of Cybermen standing around outside the TARDIS. They swung their hips and clicked their fingers to the rhythm. The Cyberleader climbed down from the TARDIS roof and reached for his sax. "No sax, please...", said Turlough, "...we're British." "AHAHAHAHAHA", the Cyberleader intoned. "YOU SEE, WE UNDERSTAND HUMOUR TOO." "No you don't", argued Susan, "or you wouldn't have laughed. What do you want?" She edged up against the console, secretly feeling for the switch that controlled the TARDIS defence system. She spent the best part of a minute in the search, until she finally realised that the time machine didn't have one. She racked her brains to recall the Cybermen's one weakness. "FOOLISH CHILD", grinned the Cyberleader. "WE HAVE NO WEAKNESSES." One of the troop of Cybermen came forward to whisper in his Leader's aural input sensor. The Leader listened, then stood to face the TARDIS. "OH, YES, EXCEPT GOLD. FORGOT THAT ONE." Turlough put his hand up. "What about, er, gravity?" "GRAVITY. YES, WELL DONE BOY", intoned the giant with a hint of annoyance. "THE ONLY TWO THINGS WHICH A CYBERMAN MUST FE-" "And radiation", countered Susan. "And lasers and cyberguns and grenades." Turlough joined in. "Javelins, um, rockets, er..." "Magnetic reversal!", shouted Susan. "A good shove in the chest! Margarine!" The Cyberleader scratched his head. "YES. SLIGHTLY. BUT -" "And crummy dialogue!", finished Turlough triumphantly. "A Cyberman's fatal weakness. The compulsion to say 'excellent' at least twice in a conversation." "RIDICULOUS!!!", snarled the giant, flapping its arm in the air like a particularly feeble halibut. "I HAVE NO MORE TIME TO WASTE WITH YOU." He turned to his deputy, who had spent the last few moments tugging plaintively at the Cyberleader's sleeve to attract attention. This attention was swiftly given, but as it consisted solely of a volley of laser bolts up the nose it perhaps wasn't in exactly the format required. The leader dragged the other up from the ground and flicked his ears until he regained consciousness. "IS THE DEVICE READY?", the commander bellowed. "YES, LEADER." "EXCE..er..EXC..um..JOLLY GOOD." Snarling at the TARDIS, he beckoned a group of Cybermen over to the time machine. They bore a cubic red object, which was lain onto the ground nearby. The two humans inside the TARDIS exchanged worried glances. "Big, isn't it?", noted Turlough. "Yes", agreed Susan. "But hadn't we better concentrate on the *bomb*?" "Fnar." *********************************************************************** "So what happened then?" "Well, I got home - to Tooting Bec, you know - went to the bog, and do you know what I found sitting on it?" "Mmm?" "A television producer. Scared the shit out of me." "Fascinating", said the Doctor, aiming the Kalashnikov square between the eyes of an advancing sheep. He squeezed the trigger, and an explosive shell screamed through the air and ripped into the small fluffy Merino, sending it arcing through the sky, a distressed look slowing forming on what was left of its face. "There's too much violence in Doctor Who these days", noted a passing sixth- floor executive sagely. "We ought to inject a little more humour into the show." Right on cue, he stepped into a bear trap which sliced through his leg like a sharp, toothy knife through red, crunchy butter. The Doctor and Sarah agreed that this was prime comedy indeed, and stood around for a good ten minutes guffawing, and videotaping the scene for posterity. Then they continued their trek up the mountain pass. Some fifty yards on, they came across a sign, half buried in the scree that rattled, on occasion, past their feet into the abyss to their left. The sign was battered and twisted, but the words 'Simulacrum Enclosure: Tedious Old Provincials Section, proprietor K. G. Raston Esq" could be made out. Sarah asked, "What does it mean, Doctor?" "Raston was a brilliant robotic engineer in the days of Rassilon. He tapped the Matrix to find Time Lord memories of people, who he reproduced in robot form. Undoubtedly a genius, but also completely insane, as the Council came to realise when they found him one day training a gerbil to become General of the Gallifreyan Security Force." He clambered over and around a large boulder in their path, then helped Sarah up before continuing with his explanation. "One day he vanished, disappeared completely from the records. Some say he sent himself into the very bowels of the Matrix, where he resides still with the likes of Morbius, Goth, and those villianous fiends Terry and June. Some say he created an ultimate, perfect android, and transferred his mind into the creature. Some say 'Fleep, zary zary poo', but they're just mad." "Oh." The girl puffed a little as the unaccustomed exercise took its toll on her no-longer-slender frame. In fact, the Doctor was no more used to the physical toll than she, but he had taken his cocaine supplement that very morning and was consequently chirpy as a sparrow. A sparrow juiced to his eyeballs on lighter fluid, that is. Suddenly, there came a strange, ululating sound, not unlike that of an old man wheezing his breaths between flapping gums. The Doctor and Sarah stopped where they were. A moment later, an old man turned the corner of the path above them. He was dressed in a scabby brown shift, and wore long, straggly chin hair that seemed to have rather less to do with the word 'beard' than the word 'hedgerow'. There were *things* in it. There also appeared to be things in the sack he had slung over his shoulder, and one of them was a rabbit. "Are you a poacher?", asked Sarah unwisely. She swiftly realised exactly how unwise she'd been when the man sidled right up to her and stared sidelong at her face with one globular eye. "Nooowoinebberseddat, noiw, diddnnoi?", he appeared to answer. The Doctor had been frowning in perplexed thought, and now recognition of the newcomer brought with it a surge of horror. "Sam Sealy!", he cried. "God, no!!!" Completely forgetting the existence of Sarah, he leapt across the path and started to scramble down the slope, slipping on the slate. Oh god, alliteration. Yeuch. Sarah began to back away from the old man. When travelling with the third incarnation of the Doctor, he had told her of his adventures with Liz Shaw and Jo Grant. After she had slapped him about a bit, he stopped telling her about that and gave her a resume of his battle against aliens and things. One of the events, soon after his regeneration, concerned a struggle against the Nestene and its plastic embodiments, the Autons. There had apparently been a replusive old tramp who used to poach rabbits, steal Nestenes, and talk incomprehensible gibberish to anybody stupid enough to try and speak to him. His name had been Sealy. "Doctor!", cried Sarah. "Wait for me!" And then she stopped as she saw three more shambling figures approaching the Doctor from the other side of the enclosure. He spun around, and hotfooted it back up the hill. "We're trapped!", he called. Glancing behind him, he recognised the nearer of the figures as a nameless, cackling old witch who had burbled pathetically around the 'Talons of Weng-Chiang' studios until bodily ejected by a gang of burly, brainless security officers with noseplugs. She had, though, persuaded the director to give her one line, which she now repeated with gusto for the dubious benefit of the Doctor and Sarah. "You got 'im, inspector! Ooh, it's a floater all right. Whoo-ee, wouldn't want that served up with onions! Never seen anything like it in all my puff! Make an 'orse sick, that would!" "AAAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!", yelled the Doctor in psychic agony. He stumbled up the path, and found it blocked by a boulder ; spinning around to face the four loathesome horrors, he pulled Sarah in front of him to ward off the worst of the robots' fishy odours. "Trapped!", warbled Sarah in horror. "Mecheorrs?", said Sealy, apropos of nothing. " 'Funderbolts, oi calls 'em." "There's gwin'na be a toime when oi'll be too old for this sort a' thing", said the simulacrum of Mother Tyler, scrunching up her gums like a particularly repulsive piece of tripe, and grinning toothlessly at Sarah. All seemed lost! Every tramp, crone, and batty old maniac in the history of the series was advancing up the path, waving their tatty clothing and mutter- ing such soporific gems as 'I wash in th' Waaaaar, laddy!'. It all appeared to be the end for the Doctor and Sarah, except for.... Cybermen!!!!! Cybermen!!!!! Cybermen!!!!! Yes, Cybermen! A cohort of lost Mondasians had arrived on the scene and were now laying about the shambling Provincials with the cutting edge of their Cyberguns. Mirthfully, many of the creatures turned on the Cybermen and let fly with a salvo of dried-egg recipes, memories of Blackpool ('when it *were* Blackpool') and the best way to skin a badger. In the midst of this melee, the Doctor pulled Sarah over the boulder and up onto the bridge of the mountain pass. On the way up they encountered the skeleton of a climber, and filched his gear for a laugh. Also for continuity purposes. Behind them, the battle continued. The occassional war-cry could be heard echoing over the hillside, and the last they discerned as they rounded the mountain was that of Joe the sad cyclist from 'Claws of Axos'.... "Take 'AT, 'ee poile o' silver-clad maaaaaaanure - and don' you vomit milk a' *me*...." END OF PART 7