The Sound of Irony

For fuck's sake..

I would just like to make the next announcement.

The next person I meet who gives a rant as to how shithouse series two is and how it's gone to the dogs, I will murder in cold blood.

Don't say you were warned.

Now, that wholy remarkable book, The Completely Useless Encyclopedia, notes that fandom is a curious beast and that every fan decides that the current output of the show is crap, not half as good as it was x years ago. Despite the fact they said the exact same thing x years ago, when the show was crap and not half as good as it was y years ago, before they were born or even watching. Now, the reissue of TCUE rips the shit out of series two on many occasions but this is forgivable as a) they did the exact same thing to every other era and b) the book was specifically about them ripping the shit out of new stuff.

However, the number of "official" intellectual fans who are banging on about how Doctor Who is doomed bugs me. Especially as they were all screaming that this was the best TV one year earlier. Mike Morris - MIKE MORRIS! My guru, the bloke who's tossed around ideas inspire me to create story arcs! The guy who was impressed by my analysis of Planet of Fire! Who, unless he's reviewed a story, I refuse to comment on! A guy whose opinion I respect - has given two rants about the second series and Christmas special, and as for Kaldor "Subtext, you moron, SUBTEXT" City...

I'd just like to sum up the general criticism.

1) The new stuff is crap.
See my comment on this being part of being a fan.

2) David Tennant isn't half as good as I was expecting.
Bollocks. He just isn't what you were expecting, which is entirely different. Everyone points to shows where he plays gritty serious characters and goes, "Ah! THAT'S how he should play it!" Steven Moffat famously decided Tennant had the right stuff when he played Carlisle in Blackpool... a character who, on paper, was just like the Ninth Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston. Is it any wonder he plays it differently, rather than aiming for redoing his Cassanova or Carlisle or Fergus the Looney?

The fact is, David Tennant's Doctor is frankly, better for the show. There. I said it. Put the gun down, bitch, I ain't finished. Chris Eccleston was ... let's just say it... fantastic. The Ninth Doctor was brilliant. He shoulda stayed longer. Etc. But the fact is the Ninth Doctor couldn't last. An untrustworthy, morally-bankrupt character who can barely stay sane WITH a beautiful blonde teenager isn't going to work in the long run, and this is supposed to be a children's HERO!

Imagine Eccleston in Attack of the Graske. It wouldn't work. You wouldn't risk stepping aboard the TARDIS with him at the helm! You saw what happened to the last two, both abandoned without a second thought and given lots of crap in the meantime! The Ninth Doctor could screw up, get you killed, give up... arguably, that makes him the more interesting character, but, remember this sport's fans. Doctor Who is for kids. The ideal role model is not and never will be a bloke who wanders round threatening people with big fucking guns EVEN if he was never going to use it. The show itself said this guy wasn't up to it. That's why Rose was there, to make him better, to get us back/forward to David Tennant. It was the story of how the Doctor found his groove.

The Tenth Doctor is called smug, irritating, etc. But remember, the fictional character of the Doctor is having one of the best times of his ENTIRE life. He is happy! He's travelling with his best friend, having so much fun, who cares about what caused that hole in time or what "torch wood" means! And he pays for that. Like the fifth Doctor, the Tenth's confidence in himself was shattered when he lost his friend. Forever. And on top of that, he immediately started to devolve back to the harsher character before he met her - which is exactly what Rose BEGGED him not to!

Now the Doctor is trying to get on WITHOUT the massive blonde with the cute teeth... or visa versa. Now he's on the look out for repeated memes, trying not to let himself go ape shit and brutally abort spider babies. He's evolving as a character. Which is what the Ninth Doctor did. The only difference is, this one has more time to do it with.

He's the first Doctor since McCoy to have that chance as a given.

3) God damn it, Rose is a smug bitch!
Now, there IS some evidence to this and unsurprisingly it comes from the worse script in Series Two - The Idiot Lantern. Where, after losing a mother, a father and her boyfriend, who she only realized seconds before saying goodbye how rude she'd been to, how cruelly she'd treated him... and she's over it. Totally.

Would it have been so difficult to shove in a few lines? Have the trip to see Elvis a desperate attempt by the Doctor to make Rose smile again? Have the last scene with the toast also have Rose saying she'll not dwell in misery because Mickey would hate that?

Of course, this isn't ENTIRELY Gattis' fault. RTD grunted, "People move on" in justification and Gattis maybe thought TIL was set years after Rise of the Cybermen. Hell, TIL was, in the original running order, right after The Runaway Bride, which saw Rose... getting over Mickey. Yeah, she was pissed off when Mickey joined but look at all the reasons:

a) now Mickey will be in danger every time the TARDIS lands
b) it's not like Adam or Jack ended up happy
c) she thinks she'll have to live with "No, it's RICKY!" arguments
d) the Doctor asked her opinion as an afterthought
e) she won't be able to flirt with the Doctor any more...

And then she pulls herself together and gives Mickey the tour of the fifty-first century, getting a new hairdo, a tight T-shirt, and wrapping her arms around him every chance she gets!

The fact is, Rose is not so bad out of context. The trouble is we see her in The Christmas Invasion (were her confidence vanishes completely); New Earth (where she's possessed by a bitch); Tooth and Claw (where she is SUPPOSED to be smug); School Reunion (when she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch); The Girl in the Fireplace (where she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch); and Rise of the Cybermen (where she is SUPPOSED to be a bitch).

Imagine if Love and Monsters had been shown instead of TIL. When we see Rose as a hurt girl determined to protect her mother at any costs, and forgives Elton when she learns he's lost both the girl he loves and his mother. It makes sense.

If Rose WAS such a bitch, then I remind you of:
- wishing Cassandra luck
- calming down Flora
- inviting Sarah Jane aboard
- urging Tommy to reconcile with his father
- pulling together the team of SB6
- forgiving Elton
- trying to get Sec to exterminate her to save Mickey's life
- realizing that the Doctor won't cope without her.

She was willing to abandon everything she cared about for the man she loved. To sacrifice her life to stop evil. To risk brain damage to save a hospital full of hypocritical cats.

4) Torchwood is a crap arc
Indeed it is. Explaining what the word means on its second appearance is not good. Exploring the beginning of it in its third is dumb.

But the thing is, Bad Wolf was a mystery. Torchwood isn't. The Doctor's total ignorance of the organisation is a statement in itself! It's like the first episode of Destiny of the Daleks - we all know who's going to be behind the strange radioactive drilling, just as we know who's behind British Alien Defence. The Doctor doesn't. We can see him walking to his doom and, like in Earthshock, the niave cheer makes the crushing defeat all the worse.

However, all the signs are the Saxon arc will be better. Hopefully, the Doctor will actually try to find out who he is, much like Angel going on the offensive the moment he twigs that Wolfram and Heart are getting mixed up in his business. The fact the seeds have been sown in two different shows also says something.

Bad Wolf asked us "what is that?" Torchwood asked us "when will they come after the Doctor?"

5) Crap continuity
Yep. But look at the evidence! Read the pitch document for series one - everything makes sense, it all fits together neatly and the episodes happen the same way as we ultimately saw them. If RTD had stuck to his original outline, series two would have gone:

New Earth
The Girl in the Fireplace
School Reunion
Rise of the Cybermen
The Age of Steel
The Runaway Bride
The Impossible Planet
The Satan Pit
The Idiot's Lantern
Love and Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts
Doomsday
Tooth and Claw - the Christmas special where the ending would be a twist, the Doctor creating the very organization that just wrecked his life!

So the message to RTD is - first guess is the best.

Thankfully, Martha's intro suggests there will be a rigid order to Series Three.

6) It's childish now
No, you're just not being distracted by Slitheen flatulence and burping bins and vomit ice cubes.

7) It shows the total decline of western values that RTD is now doing 'play it safe'
Name one show that decides to tamper with a winning formula. Go on. Is 24 going to abandon the real time element? Supernatural forget the ghosts? The Bill focus on the plight of the Natterjack Toad?

This all reeks of the people who rubbished Season 17, then JNT and went back.

8) The music is too loud
Then fuck off. I don't want to talk to you no more you empty headed animal.

Faith No More

Sir Nigel Verkoff esquire, Kommisar of the new cargo cult The Order of Saint Macka the Usurper, talks with Ewen Campion-Clarke about life, God, the universe and his upcoming trial at Sydney Criminal Court

Nigel Verkoff does not look like the stereotypical view of a cult leader.

He is calm, collected, not prone to thunderous proclamations and his outfit is casual to say the least. A pair of denim jeans and a bright, neon-pink T-shirt with the words I AM WHAT WOMEN WANT (with the ‘I’ taking up most of the space) are not exactly the usual attire of religious leaders. Eyes hidden behind a pair of John Lennon spectacle sunglasses and with his beehive hairdo died peroxide blonde, he looks like a photo negative of some 1950s gay icon.

When I mentioned this to him, he called me a disgusting waste of DNA. Fair’s fair.

Appearances can be deceptive, but Verkoff’s history does not point to him as the sort of man to embrace any sort of religion, let alone style himself as the leader of a cult that misspelled the word ‘Saint’ for the first six months of their campaign.

Adopted at six weeks of age by the upper class Yang family, Aborigine Verkoff was clearly a fish out of water at home – exacerbated no doubt by his open courting of his sister, to whom he still regularly sends love tokens and used underwear.

"The past is a graveyard which need never be revisited," Verkoff opines thoughtfully over a chocolate milkshake. "Unless there’s a plague of zombie rats or something. No, I’ve restarted my life. You only have to look at my name – I used to be called Nigella Yang, but that part of me is dead and gone forever. One tick of a deed poll and I’m a new man."

Why exactly did he choose the surname ‘Verkoff’?

"Yeah, that’s a bit of a sore point. I was filling in the form at the pub, and I was chatting up the barmaid. She was obviously insane, but I respect them being released into the community so soon. They either sink or go under. No, wait, that’s wrong..."

Why was she insane?

"She didn’t want to sleep with me. Anyway, she took offence and wrote... er... something very rude on the form. I managed to convince people it’s pronounced ‘Ver Kov’ rather than ‘Far Koff’."

But why not simply change his name by deed poll again?

"I never thought of that," Verkoff admits after several minutes’ thought.

Moving on, what exactly is the core belief of The Order of Saint Macka the Usurper and what does it have to offer to ordinary Australians. "All religions are basically variations on the one pattern," Verkoff explains sagely. "One force creates the universe and everything in it, and the only way we can understand this and reach paradise once we die is to behave in a certain manner. Get it? Got it? Good. Oddly enough, every single religion works on the principal that it is the only true religion and all the others are misguided, wrong or out and out lies. Now, The Order of Saint Macka the Usurper is unique in the fact that, as a religion, it believes itself to be a pack of lies and all other religions to be correct, even if they contradict each other." He taps his nose with woozy cunning. "Clever, eh?"

And how in the name of all that is sane does this work?

"Well, say you wished to join The Order – and, looking at you, son, I think it might be a case of ‘too little, too late’ – after paying all the required duties, and making a contribution to the parish fund, I’d spin you a yarn about Atlantis, aliens, nuclear testing and angels. And," he continues, looking left and right to make sure no one’s looking, which is pointless as we are alone in his tree house, "if you believed so much as one word of it, you wouldn’t be allowed in."

Would I get my money back?

"Course not. If you believed it, you’d be a fool and a fool and his money are soon parted. God, are you mental or something?"

But what are the benefits of the Order?

"Depending on the amount of the donation you give, you will rise through the echelons [Verkoff mispronounces it as ‘etch-lions’] of the Order. There’s sergeants, inspectors, superintendents, detectives... no. Wait. That’s the police force. Sorry. Uh, the ranks in the Order are warrant officer, brigadier, sorry. That’s the army. In the Order, I am the Kommmisar, absolute ruler of the Order, High Lord of the Sexual Air Supply, Controller of the Supreme High Council of the Oompa-Loompas, President Elect of the Lower Order of Ice Cream Venders, Protector of the Legacy of Tarintino and Defender of Uluru.. Below me are... just about everyone really. There are Castellans, Coordinators, Cardinals and under them the most multitudinous and malevolent of all. The gofers. They are people whose contributions don’t break the five thousand mark. There are more of them out there than you think."

I point out that at last count the membership of the Order numbered in the tens.

"Pah," Verkoff jeers. "Semantics. I thought you were a serious journalist. The Order of Saint Mazza the Usurper—"

‘Macka’, I correct.

"Whatever! The Order is a serious movement for those concerned about the problems facing the Earth and the people on it. It’s the only planet we have. In fact, it’s the only planet there is!"

I can think of a few astronomers that would argue about that.

"What? Have you been to any of them? You just see a few pictures of Saturn in a school book and take it for Gospel. For crying out loud, that sort of gullibility would get you chucked out of the Order. We call your sort ‘Ye of too much faith’."

The Order was created by Verkoff on 15th of May 2002 based on the holy text What I Did On My Christmas Holidays by Verkoff himself. From a rental of the local Masonic Centre to its own prime time public access TV hour, the Order still does not carry the same weight as the Christian Church or Bhuddism to name but two. Indeed, the two members of the order that admitted their religion on the census form were fined for not taking the project seriously. Verkoff scoffs at the idea that more people claim to be ‘Jedi’ rather than ‘Usurperists’, but doesn’t say much else about it and indeed changes the topic.

"Of course, public awareness of the Order has sky-rocketed in the last year," Verkoff boasts, making a rare trip to the reality the rest of us inhabit. "Surrender to Your God with Nigel Verkoff is the highest rated informercial in its time slot and that’s a fact. Just a pity we couldn’t get it broadcast any later than five in the morning. But with only five episodes, you’d have to be bowel-shatteringly insane not to say we’ve made an impact."

That is certainly true with over thirteen TV critics listing Surrender to Your God with Nigel Verkoff as Show of the Week, with their only criticism being the ungodly hour the episodes were screened yet. However, it must be pointed out that Surrender to Your God with Nigel Verkoff was mistakenly believed to be an adult comedy with topical religious satire as its cornerstone. Verkoff himself was nominated for a Logie after his roll call of people who he had cured using the power of faith and positive thinking, especially when the unimpressed audience discovered he was bluffing this speech with a copy of the Yellow Pages and a medical dictionary.

"Philistines," is all Verkoff has to say on the matter before abruptly changing his mind yet again. "That show was made with a shoestring budget, broadcast live. I had to, out of my own pocket, pay the audience members to turn up. Half of them weren’t even members of the Order. Do you know how off-putting it is to have the floor crew singing Abide With Me? To have the audience sitting there, sobbing in silence? To have drama students thanking me after my two-hour long dissertation on the history of Atlantis and the nature of Hollow Earth in relation to the French nuclear testing? I suffered for my art, and those morons in the press assumed it was a stand up comedy act. How these people got to where they are today beggars my imagination. And my imagination isn’t begged easily."

I note that of the several jobs that Verkoff is recorded to have had before starting the Order, nearly every attempt was made to become a TV reviewer for the local paper. On one attempt he was trying to make his own newspaper, The Irish Racist, which was never seriously taken up. Is this a case of sour grapes on Verkoff’s part to be ridiculed by the very profession he was desperate to achieve?

"Well, come on. Everyone wants to be a TV reviewer. Or a porn star. Or both. Why do you think Big Brother gets so many contestants? To get paid for sitting on your arse and doing what comes naturally is the Australian ideal, the Ozzie Destiny if you’ll pardon the pun."

What pun?

"Wasn’t there one? Sorry. I mean, we may all think putting down your occupation as ‘sperm donor’ is incredibly pathetic and immature, but that guy is having a lot more fun than ‘inner city banker’, ‘rat catcher’ or ‘one-legged Tarzan impressionist’. Now, enough of these digressions. Where were we?"

We were here. We haven’t moved.

"Leave the humor to the experts, duck face," Verkoff spits on the floor.

Surrender to Your God with Nigel Verkoff is no longer being produced or broadcast, however several copies of the last episode are now highly sought after by fans, members and above all the police. During the last episode, Verkoff took faith healing to the next level in what the tabloids dubbed as ‘Slaughterhouse Savior’.
Just what possessed Nigel Verkoff – a man who even his best friends would describe as a ‘complete and total See You Next Tuesday’ – to start shooting innocent people live on television in front of not only an entire studio audience but a home audience increased to six million people by favorable reviews in the Junior Gazette?

"I am not a psychopath," says Verkoff with a surprising earnestness. "I took no joy in the shootings. I was as scared at any one and was as sickened as the next man when it became clear it wasn’t just flesh wounds. I was the one who called the ambulance, after all."

Only after the third victim died, I remind him.

"That was a tragedy and in no way my intention or the intention of the Order. How was I to know the idiot was a hemophiliac? Why didn’t he tell us? He’d be alive today if he was a bit more forward with that info!"

Maybe he would have had he known he was going to be shot?

"I couldn’t have revealed that information. It was reality television and it was what the public expected – real emotions, real fear, real desperation..."

Real corpses?

"I have more than enough visual and printed evidence to show I aimed to wound, to disable, never to kill. If those morons hadn’t started running around and screaming, my aim would have been better."

I point out he shot his own floor manager who was not part of the sequence in any way at all.

"Well, that was an accident. It was good he was appealing for calm. It was just that I wanted to appeal for calm as well and fired two warning shots."

Into his head?

"He moved. Had he stayed perfectly still, he might have got off with a fractured kneecap."

The question is, of course, why did Verkoff bring a group of audience members on stage and then go crazy with a loaded firearm? Verkoff who, as the massacre demonstrated, had no prior use or even inclination to use firearms? A man who was unable to perform even the most basic of nipple cripples? Why kill seven people?

"It was eight actually. A fiancé of one of the victims committed suicide," Verkoff corrects absently. "You see, this entire situation was forced onto us by the press."

So Verkoff is blaming the media for his use of a gun?

"No, I’m blaming the media for forcing me into the position where I needed a gun to use. You see, as you should point out in your article if you have even the slightest shred of journalistic integrity, the media assumed we were some comedic variety act. The penultimate episode, where I brought on all those healed, former-sufferers, was treated as a complete joke."

A very funny one.

"That doesn’t make it better, boy!" Verkoff snarls.

The sequence in question was in the fourth episode, just after Verkoff slipped a mordant epileptic some hallucinatory drugs and performed an ‘exorcism’ ("That was a valid reconstruction," Verkoff opines. "At no point did I claim it was the genuine devil. Apart from that one time. But hell, it convinced me."). Verkoff brought forth twelve people he knew had suffered childhood diseases and claimed that the power of Saint Macka the Usurper had cleared them of their horrible ailment. Eleven of them ridiculed this and called Verkoff a ‘lying, cheating bastard fraud’ and the remaining victim giggled uncontrollably.

"I can understand their criticism. We’ve all seen some fraud bump into a quadriplegic with syphilis, a head cold, no facial features and leprosy, lay their hands on the poor git’s head and say ‘What ails you, my child?’ and they say ‘What do you bloody reckon?!’ and then suddenly they can walk, and dance and sing and praise the word of the lord. Sure. The fact we saw the cripple lap-dancing before the show is quietly ignored.

"That was why I came up with the plan. I brought out genuine members of the audience, who I had never met before in my life, lined them up and got out the gun. No one, and I mean no one is going to think it was a set up. I maimed complete strangers live on stage. The wounds were real, the reactions real, and the faith healing would be real."

Verkoff never did get round to the faith healing part, though, did he?

"I couldn’t have just gone, ‘Whoops! Get an ambulance!’ could I? I’m a faith healer. These hands heal using the power of Saint Macka the Usurper – I’m talking crap, I hope you realize this, gullibility-brains – and the moment I call a mortal man to heal is the moment the grass-munching pig-ignorant public realize what a fraud I am!"

Isn’t that the point?

"In the long run, yes, but I wanted the audience to work it out for themselves. That’s why I held back the emergency services until the first one died. And, to be honest, I claim no responsibility for that death. OK, I shot him through the kidney, but I wasn’t the smart arse who shouted "LET ME THROUGH, I’M AN AROMA THERAPIST!" and started applying lavender oil to the wound, am I?"

With all the witnesses to testify how upset and desperate to help Verkoff was after the shooting, one would think that Verkoff might have a chance in hell in his upcoming trial of not going to jail. However, while only three people were shot during the show, the rest were still mortally wounded by Verkoff using golf clubs, a boom mike, the inflatable plastic furniture which is the signature of Surrender to Your God with Nigel Verkoff’s set design.

"After the first four shots, I had no intention of still firing the gun. It went off the remaining two times, I can assure you," he says with no real gravity. "I dropped the gun, kicked it out of harm’s way and immediately directed the police to it when they arrived. However, the show had to go on, so I continued to injure and beat the remaining participants with less immediately lethal weapons. In fact, I’m not sure I should be telling you this, but one of the main points of my defense is that I am not directly responsible for the death of five of the victims. Not only was one a suicide, the rest were only killed after the lighting scaffolding fell on top of them and crushed them to death. Just because one of my stray bullets is responsible for that, it’s entirely inadmissible."

I point out that at least one of the victims was found suffocated by Verkoff’s inflatable armchair.

"Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot all about that! Thanks." Verkoff shakes his head in wonderment. "That totally dropped out below my radar. Thanks for that, mate, that’s a good point to know before the court case. Man, I’d be stuffed if the prosecutor noticed that before I did. I owe you one. Do you want everlasting life?"

Ask me again in 500 years.

"OK, how about a book token? Or a free autographed pen?"

Assuming the so-unlikely-as-to-count-as-a-miracle event of Verkoff leaving that court case a free man, will he continue his association with the Order of Saint Macka the Usurper? Or start another career?

"Well, whatever happens in court, it’s got to be worth a book deal with Allen and Unwin. I’m made either way, but with a personality like mine can you imagine any reasonably-impartial jury will find me guilty."

Without doubt, I say.

"Yeah, well, you’re gullible. We established this at the start of the interview. Once the book’s published, I’ll be taking a sabbatical in my duties as Kommisar. The Order of Saint Macka the Usurper will be torn apart by internal strife and I shall salvage the wreckage to collect any more donations made during the intervening weeks. After that, I have another religion in the pipeline: the Church of the Later-Day Nymphomaniacs with me as Arch Deacon. For any Usurperist, the Church of the Later-Day Nymphomaniacs will offer the same spiritual and financial benefits, however, I should point out that joint membership will be charged double. Get it? Got it? Good. After that, well, maybe I’ll have enough experience and patience to pursue my career goals of TV reviewer and porn star. Imagine that – I could review myself. What a wonderful world we live in."

However, it appears that the police I called for when Verkoff approached me for this interview have finally arrived. Verkoff moves to climb out the window and make a break for the local railway station, intending to flee to Manly via a ferry from Circular Quay.

One final question – why did the Order petition parliament to replace Advance Australia Fair with No Milk Today by Herman’s Hermitts as the Australian national anthem? Was it some spiritual decision? Or because No Milk Today is obviously the better song?

"What a stupid question," Verkoff sneers and makes a break for it.

Depending on the outcome of his trial – assuming the police recapture him in time to attend it – our concept of Sir Nigel Verkoff esquire is hard to define. A modern-day religious icon? A notorious fraudster? A man with a unique perception about how humanity views its own reality? A dangerous lunatic with delusions of grandeur?

But what he can’t be pegged as is unAustralian.

If *I* Had Written Time-Flight 4

EPISODE FOUR

Kalid has the TARDIS dragged in. He explains that he is a wizard from Arabia who was contacted by the "great power" which has allowed him to enter this realm and do the bidding of the power. The Doctor asks bluntly what Kalid wants. The Master arrives and explains that the TARDIS is needed by the power - and the power is willing to pay for its services.

Nyssa can see Tremas and Tegan can see Aunt Vanessa. Whoever it is, they explain that the Xeraphin escaped the destruction of their planet by becoming a mass of pure thought. However, every so often there is a weak point in space and time that makes them vulnerable to reality. It is such a moment, and when Concord arrived, the realm they are in reacted to all these new non-Xeraphin minds.

Because of all the dark aspects of human nature, a rift has formed between light and dark Xeraphin and the forces have been trying to guide the TARDIS crew since they arrived - though to different ends. Aunt Vanessa urges Tegan to snap the crew out of their trance as the plane is almost ready for take-off. When the passengers are aboard, they must leave at once before the window closes.

Kalid notices Tremas talking to Nyssa and uses his powers to freeze Nyssa in place to stop the good Xeraphin from revealing his plans. Meanwhile, Adric explains to the Doctor that the passengers were brainwashed so they could be used to break into the dome. Inside is the core of the Xeraphin intelligence. Once released they can return to the physical universe and become all powerful.

Kalid explains that he is willing to let the passengers and Concord go in return for using the TARDIS to travel inside the dome and collect the intelligence. The Doctor agrees and Adric calmly points out that he has made mistakes before. But which Xeraphin is talking?

The passengers and crew, lead by Tegan return to the Concord. The Doctor tries to play for time but Kalid insists that time is running out. Soon the window will close and when it does not even the TARDIS can escape. They should do their business at once.

The Doctor lets Kalid inside the TARDIS as Tegan runs back for Nyssa, only to find she has disappeared. The Doctor tells her to wait for him at the "airport". He and Kalid travel to the inside of the dome with Professor Haytor, but find Nyssa is already there, possessed. She picks up a boulder and hurls it at the intelligence.

There is a mighty flash and the intelligence vanishes. Kalid collapses and dissolves - he was a plasmaton, a physic projection of the evil Xeraphin determined to win and given a false personality. But now the good Xeraphin and bad Xeraphin are balanced out, using all their energy to attack and defend itself. Nyssa collapses and the Doctor and Haytor drag her inside the TARDIS.

With the balance restorted, the zigurat and the false Heathrow around it begin to dissolve. Stapley and the pilots power up the plane and the TARDIS materializes to pick up Tegan and drop off Haytor, who thanks the Doctor for the adventure and flees for the airplane as fast as he can. The Doctor decides they must leave at once.

Tegan drops a bombshell. She has checked with Stapley - this is the right date and Concord is heading for Heathrow. She's one step from home and can't bring herself to miss it. The Doctor insists it's safer to go by TARDIS but, with a surprising lack of malice, Tegan reminds the Doctor of Adric. She isn't blaming him, just making a point.

The Doctor watches, shattered, as she turned and runs off through the airport as it dissolves into mist. He then returns to the TARDIS and sets the time machine in motion. It vanishes just as the airport finally vanishes and Corcord flies off into reality.

Aboard the ship the Doctor tends to Nyssa as she recovers. He glosses over Tegan's whereabouts, but when pressed admits she's left. He also reveals he doesn't know whether or not she escaped the realm or died before she reached Concord. Nyssa is devastated, and the Doctor suddenly collapses.

Suddenly, he's dangling from a wire above the Pharos Project. He hears Nyssa calling for him, and then he... lets go.

The Doctor collapses onto the floor of the TARDIS. Nyssa tries to revive him, but he seems to be in a coma. As Nyssa looks around, realizing how alone, she is, the police box spins off into the void.

END OF THE STORY

NEXT: THE TIME OF OMEGA.