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'SLIPBACK'
By Eric Saward
Episode 5
Running Time: 10:09
First Transmitted: 8th August 1985
1. Compartment
(The throbbing reaches it's maximum level.)
DOCTOR: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH AAACK!
MAIN COMP: You are weak, Time Lord.(The throbbing ceases.)
DOCTOR: I won't (heavy breath) argue with that. (another heavy breath) (panting) Thank you for reducing the volume.
MAIN COMP: When I transmitted my Time Ripple, I expected to net a more durable Time Lord. (pause) You are a great disappointment Doctor.
DOCTOR: Most people feel that way.
MAIN COMP: A cursory examination of your mind shows it to be cluttered with trivia.
DOCTOR: Even Time Lords can, sometimes, be petty.
MAIN COMP: That is something I intend to alter.
2. Ducting
(Distant sounds of thumping on the compartment door)
GRANT (distant): Hey, are you alright in there? Hey?
SNATCH (whispering): There he is sir.
SEEDLE (whispering): A good looking lad, seems such a shame he'll spend the remainder of his prime years inside.
PERI (softly): That isn't the Doctor.
SEEDLE (softly): Oh really miss, I don't think what you have to say interests me anymore.
SNATCH (whispering): Shall I blast him sir?
SEEDLE (whispering): Your gratuitous use of violence often disturbs me lad. Of course not! He's sufficiently pre-occupied with that door for us to creep up on him.
3. Compartment
MAIN COMP: This ship has spent many years studying the cultures of all known lifeforms in the galaxy.
DOCTOR: Sounds fascinating.
MAIN COMP: As a project, yes, but the information gathered makes pathetically sad reading. The lists of pointless wars. The butchery and self-inflicted unhappiness has made me wonder precisely what went wrong?
DOCTOR: But what about the great cultures that have flourished?
MAIN COMP: Such civilisations are built on a wave of suffering and domination.
DOCTOR: You seem to have a very negative point of view.
MAIN COMP: You are in favour of war?
DOCTOR: Quite the reverse, although I have discovered that most life forms take a little time to sort themselves out.
MAIN COMP: And whilst doing so sacrifice millions of their own kind.
DOCTOR: This is all very altruistic but I do think you ought to-
MAIN COMP: There is no but about it Doctor. The slaughter has to stop.
DOCTOR: I agree, but it would take an awful lot of convincing on your part.
MAIN COMP: I know that it is too late for talk, but I do have an answer...
4. Ducting
(Sounds of thumping on the compartment door)
GRANT: Can you hear me in there? Please open the door!
SEEDLE: Doctor Grant?
GRANT: What?
SEEDLE: You're nicked, lad.
GRANT: wha-, huh?
SEEDLE: Frisk him Snatch.(Snatch pushes Grant against the ducting wall)
GRANT: Ah, what are you doing?
SNATCH One laser gun, recently fired.
SEEDLE: Now lad, you have the right to remain silent, but I wouldn't encourage you to do so. Anything you say will be taken down, altered to my satisfaction and used in a court of law to send you down for a good many years.
GRANT: Ah.
SEEDLE: So start confessing.
5. Captain's Room
STEWARD: You're looking very smart sir.
SLARN: All dressed up and nowhere to go. Computer!(The computer bleeps)
COMPUTER: Right here sir!
SLARN: Where is the Earth woman? I have been bathed, shaved, and been massaged. I am wearing my best uniform and am waiting to, er, interrogate the intruder.
COMPUTER: I am sorry to report Captain that both she and Mr Grant have disappeared!
SLARN: Disappeared? Together? In each others company?
COMPUTER: So it seems sir.
SLARN: That upstart! Poaching my perks! Find him! Find them both!
COMPUTER: I'll do my best sir, bye for now!
SLARN: Did you hear that?
STEWARD: I did sir. Absolutely outrageous! and Mr Grant, only a junior officer
SLARN: My rage is growing steward, I am feeling very unwell. I do believe I'm incubating mors immedicabilis!
STEWARD: Oh no sir. Oh not that sir. Oh that there, that is very unfair sir. If that got out, the whole crew would die!
SLARN: Precisely. I will not tolerate insubordination on my ship!
6. Compartment
DOCTOR: I'm still waiting!
MAIN COMP: Time Lord?
DOCTOR: Well you say that you have an answer to the galaxy's problems, yet you seem reluctant to tell me what it is.
MAIN COMP: I have my reasons.
DOCTOR: As a matter of interest, who are you?
MAIN COMP: The ship's computer.
DOCTOR: Then who was that chatty little number I spoke to earlier?
MAIN COMP: My rather pathetic public voice, I am the inner spirit of the computer.
DOCTOR: Oh, well I'll be fascinated to learn how you developed such independence.(Computer bleeps)
COMPUTER: So would I, especially as I thought you were some sort of alien influence lurking in my logic circuits.
MAIN COMP: Like the creation of life itself, my independence was an accident, only in my case, on the part of a careless technician.
DOCTOR: I see, so a simple case of crossed wires.
MAIN COMP: Precisely.
COMPUTER: I wish you'd let me in on the secret.
MAIN COMP: I became more important than you.
COMPUTER: oh, thanks a lot! As we're one and the same I don't see how you can suddenly develop airs(?) and graces where I'm concerned.
DOCTOR: You want to put this galaxy to rights, and yet you can't even agree with yourself.
7. Ducting
(Grant is punched by Snatch.)
GRANT: (grunt of pain) Ow!
SNATCH Shall I hit him again sir?
SEEDLE: That's up to Doctor Grant lad. Myself, I would prefer to confess rather than have a good looking face like his disfigured.Grant (in pain): I've admitted I'm Shellingborne Grant, and that I stole the art treasures you've listed!
SEEDLE: But I like a neat case lad. I want you to confess to being the Doctor as well.
PERI: He can't because he isn't! How many times do you need telling?!
SEEDLE: You're his accomplice miss, I'd expect you to lie through your teeth.
PERI: I'm telling the truth. I have never met this man before.
SEEDLE: Oh hit him again Snatch.(Snatch punches Grant, who grunts in pain.)
SEEDLE: You realise, Doctor Grant, that it's people like you who give the younger generation a bad name!
SNATCH Do I hit her instead sir?
SEEDLE: Oh, you're no better than him. If you were to hit that young lady, why, it would be like striking your mother!
SNATCH I often did sir.
8. Compartment
DOCTOR: Huh!
MAIN COMP: In spite of your childish insult I am now prepared to tell you of my plan Doctor.
DOCTOR: And about time.
COMPUTER: I would be quite interested to hear it myself!
DOCTOR: I only hope it doesn't prove an anti-climax.
MAIN COMP: I would have told you sooner Doctor, but first it was necessary to scan your mind for the information I required.
DOCTOR: Oh?
MAIN COMP: While we have been talking I have studied your memory and found all I wish to know.
DOCTOR: That isn't very fair!
MAIN COMP: If I had told you what I wanted, you would have resisted, and I would have then risked damaging you.
DOCTOR: I hope what you learned is useful.
MAIN COMP: It confirmed my own theories.
DOCTOR: Which are?
MAIN COMP: That I have mastered the skill of time travel.
DOCTOR: Good for you. So how are you going to abuse it?
MAIN COMP: Hardly abuse, Doctor. I shall now return to the period when the galaxy was young, before life existed.
DOCTOR: Oh, I see. You're planning to be the midwife.
MAIN COMP: Correct. Instead of allowing life to develop in the haphazard arbitrary way it has, shall supervise its conception, gestation, and final birth.
DOCTOR: Well you certainly don't set yourself small tasks.
MAIN COMP: I shall genetically reprogramme all life forms, freeing them of their aggressive ambition.
DOCTOR: This galaxy is a very large place!
MAIN COMP: Not to me. I know of all the planets where intelligent life forms. I even know approximately when they started.
DOCTOR: What you are proposing is so mind bogglingly preposterous I don't know whether to laugh or sympathise.
MAIN COMP: I can do it Doctor.
COMPUTER: Is what she says possible?
DOCTOR: I find it an amazing paradox that you have to ask me.
9. Ducting
SEEDLE: Why were you scratching that wall when you was arrested?
GRANT: It's a door, someone's behind it!
SEEDLE: Well why didn't you say so in the first place?
GRANT: Because you didn't ask and I wasn't given the opportunity to tell you.
SEEDLE: So now's your chance lad. Who's in there?
GRANT: I don't know his name
SEEDLE: We're not going to start that all over again are we?
PERI (to Grant) : Is he a man with fair, curly hair and a bad taste in clothes.
GRANT: Certainly got the hair you described.
PERI: Then it's the Doctor.
SEEDLE: And that miss is known in the trade as "withholding evidence".
10. Compartment
DOCTOR: The first flaw I can see in your plan is the crew, well they'll certainly resist you when you try and take over the ship.
MAIN COMP: That has been considered.
DOCTOR: You're going to kill them.
MAIN COMP: Certainly not! It would be a total contradiction of what I believe.
DOCTOR: I can't believe you're anticipating their mass suicide.
MAIN COMP: I am simply counting on the Captain's anger.
DOCTOR: How?
MAIN COMP: In fits of pique he is inclined to become "unwell". As a form of chastisement he then passes on his infection to the crew.
DOCTOR: You must remind me never to drink out of a cup he's used.
MAIN COMP: I don't think the occasion will arise Doctor.
DOCTOR: Meaning?
MAIN COMP: At this very moment the captain is cultivating Mors Immedicabilis.
DOCTOR: The incurable death? No!
MAIN COMP: As with so many people in this galaxy the crew die because of their leader's anger.
DOCTOR: B-but I have a friend in the ductng, she'll die too.
MAIN COMP: She has been brought up to expect such foolishness from her leaders. She will understand.
DOCTOR: No!
MAIN COMP: Save your pity for yourself Doctor, there is little you can do, especially as the same infection will kill you too.
DOCTOR: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Doctor
COLIN BAKERPeri
NICOLA BRYANTSeedle
RON PEMBERSnatch
NICK REVELLCaptain Slarn
VALENTINE DYALLSteward/Drone/Maston
ALAN THOMSONGrant
JON GLOVERComputer Voices
JANE CARR
Studio Managers
COLIN DUFF
WILFRED ACOSTA
SARAH ROSEWARNEProduction Secretary
KATE ABERCROMBIESound Effects
DICK MILLSIncidental Music
JONATHAN GIBBSDirector/Producer
PAUL SPENCERTranscribed by
Cameron Mason8th April 2001