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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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Next Episode

The Doctor
COLIN BAKER

Peri
NICOLA BRYANT

Seedle
RON PEMBER

Snatch
NICK REVELL

Captain Slarn
VALENTINE DYALL

Steward/Drone/Maston
ALAN THOMSON

Grant
JON GLOVER

Computer Voices
JANE CARR


Studio Managers
COLIN DUFF
WILFRED ACOSTA
SARAH ROSEWARNE

Production Secretary
KATE ABERCROMBIE

Sound Effects
DICK MILLS

Incidental Music
JONATHAN GIBBS

Director/Producer
PAUL SPENCER

Transcribed by
Cameron Mason

8th April 2001

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