Quick note: all words from Cass as interpreted by Lunn are attributed to Cass (since she’s technically speaking). Quicker note: Toby Whithouse rocks.
The Drum: Underwater Mining Facility
Caithness, Scotland
2119
Captain Jonathan Moran (Colin McFarlane): Private journal of Captain Jonathan Moran. 21st November, 2119. We have located a craft of unknown origin on the lake floor. Visual scans in situ revealed nothing. So, we have brought the craft on board and myself and the crew will now investigate.
Pritchard (Steven Robertson): Conversation needs to be had about who owns the spaceship.
Moran: Can we stop calling it a spaceship? We don’t know what it is.
Pritchard: A case could be made that this is an asset and my company has bought the rights to all asset—
Cass (Sophie Stone): How long do you think it’s been down here?
Bennett (Arsher Ali): Well there’s next to no corrosion. I’ve not seen technology like this—
Moran: Please don’t say “on Earth”.
Bennett: …on Earth before.
Moran: Maybe it’s some kind of experimental craft that got left behind when they abandoned the site.
Bennett: What, you think the Army would just abandon a weapon?
Moran: You’re new to the military, aren’t you, son?
O’Donnell (Morven Christie): We can’t just leave him in there!
Pritchard: There’s something in the spaceship. I saw it!
Bennett: O’Donnell. O’Donnell, he’s dead. Did you just see?
Lunn (Zaqi Ismail): Are we— The fire, are we safe out here?
Bennett: It’s fine. The CO2 will put the fire out.
O’Donnell to Pritchard: It was you! You were messing about with the controls on that ship! Cass screams and everyone turns to look
Bennett: Moran. But… we just saw you.
O’Donnell: He’s… my God. He’s a… ghost.
Three Days Later
The Doctor to the TARDIS: What’s wrong? You’re not happy. Why aren’t you happy? Tell me.
Clara: Come on! We’re on a roll! Monsters. Things blowing up. Oh hey, can we go back to that place where the people with the long necks have been celebrating New Year for two centuries? I left my sunglasses there. And… most of my dignity.
The Doctor oblivious: Why have you brought us here?
Clara: Here being?
The Doctor: Underwater. Some sort of a base. Technology’s twenty-second century. Maybe military. Maybe scientific.
Clara: Is there a crew?
The Doctor: Must be. Somewhere. There’s oxygen.
Clara about the knife in the wall: Food fight?
The Doctor: I think it was more than that. Whatever it was it happened pretty recently. checking the coffee Seven or eight hours ago. no bodies though.
Clara: And they took provisions. Okay, so, something—or someone—forced the crew to abandon the base. Maybe they went for a swim in the creepy, flooded village outside. Oh yeah, you see this is more like it. Well come on. Don’t leave me hanging. he walks off
The Doctor seeing people: Look. Told you. Crew. Hello, sailors. {they look a little… ghosty} Right. I did not expect that. Hands up, who expected that? Wait wait wait. I don’t think that they’re going to hurt us, I think that they’re just curious.
Clara: You sure?
The Doctor: Well. I mean, define “sure”.
Clara: What are they?
The Doctor: I haven’t a clue. Isn’t that exciting.
The Doctor about the writing: That’s weird. The TARDIS hasn’t translated it.
Clara: Hey, look. They’re back!
The Doctor: Hello! Did you want to show us this? It’s very nice.
Clara: Wait, are they saying something? {Moran grabs an axe} Okay, they now appear to be arming themselves.
The Doctor: Yes, I spotted that too.
The Doctor: Was it something she said? She does that. She once had an argument with Gandhi.
Clara: I’m starting to see why the crew did a runner.
Cass: Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?
The Doctor: This is Clara. And I’m the Doctor.
Pritchard: You’re from UNIT!
The Doctor: Well if that’s what it says.
Pritchard: I’m Pritchard. This is Bennett.
O’Donnell: O’Donnell. You’re really the Doctor. I’m a huge fan. Uh. I mean um, you know, nice work.
The Doctor: Tell me. What about those things out there. What are they? Why are they trying to kill us?
Bennett: Well they’re, uh, they’re ghosts.
The Doctor: They’re not ghosts.
Lunn: Cass is saying, uh, one—
The Doctor: Thank you, but I actually don’t need your help. I can speak sign. {pointing and circling his head… hee} Go ahead. {she does} Wait, no no. Actually I can’t. It’s been deleted. For semaphore. Someone get me a selection of flags.
Cass: One of the ghosts is our previous commanding officer. The other, uh, mole-y guy, we don’t know who he is.
The Doctor: He’s from the planet Tivoli.
Bennett: See? I told you he was an alien. Didn’t I say that?
The Doctor: Weird thing is, they’re not violent. They’re too cowardly. They wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose. More likely to give the goose their car keys and bank details.
The Doctor: When did they first appear?
O’Donnell: Oh, did you see that spaceship in the hangar? Yeah, we found that on the lake bed. We’d just got it on board and one of the engines started up and then Moran got… Moran was killed.
Cass: Then they appeared and pretty much straight away started trying to kill us. So we grabbed what we could and were looking for somewhere to hide. And that’s when we realized the ghosts couldn’t come in here.
Clara: What is this place?
The Doctor: It’s a Faraday cage. Completely impenetrable to radio waves and apparently whatever those things are out there.
The Doctor: So who’s in charge now? I need to know who to ignore.
Lunn: “That’d be me.” Her.
Pritchard: Actually that would be me. I represent Vector Petroleum. We’ve obtained the mining rights to the oil.
The Doctor: The oil? Where are we.
Bennett: Uh, this used to be a military training site. Uh, there was a dam overlooking it but the dam burst and the valley was submerged.
Pritchard: Then twenty years ago we discovered a massive oil reservoir underneath it.
The Doctor: I’d like to have a look at that spaceship, but what about those things that aren’t ghosts?
O’Donnell: Oh it’s okay. They only come out at night.
Clara: Weird how that is not comforting.
Pritchard: If it all goes pear-shaped, it’s not them that lose a bonus. What?
The Doctor: It’s okay, I understand. You’re an idiot.
The Doctor: So we are fighting an unknown homicidal force that has taken the form of your commanding officer and a cowardly alien, underwater, in a nuclear reactor? Anything else I should know? Has anyone got a peanut allergy or something?
Clara: What’s the matter?
Lunn: She won’t let me look inside the spaceship. She says it’s not safe. I’m saying it’s not safe out here.
Pritchard about the power cells: I imagine they’re pretty valuable.
The Doctor: What?
Pritchard: I mean powerful. Those power cells. I imagine they’re pretty powerful.
The Doctor: Well they can zap a vessel from one side of the galaxy to the other so you know, you take a wild stab in the dark.
Pritchard: And the missing one must still be out there.
The Doctor: Yes, well otherwise— Sorry, why is this man still talking to me?
The Doctor: So what have we got? Moran dies and then those things appear. They can walk through walls… they only come out at night… and they’re sort of see-thru.
Clara: Doctor, wait. You’re not saying—
The Doctor: They’re ghosts! Yeah, ghosts.
Clara: You said there was no such thing. You actually pooh-poohed the ghost theory.
The Doctor: Yes, well well there was no such thing as socks or smart phones and badgers until there suddenly were. Besides, what else could they be? They’re not holograms. They’re not Flesh Avatars. They’re not Autons. They’re not digital copies, bouncing around the Nethersphere. No, these people are literally, actually dead! Wow. This is… it’s amazing. I’ve never actually met a proper ghost.
Cass: Moran was our friend.
The cards.
The Doctor: Oh! Uh, right you are. Uh…
They shuffle through the index cards:
“I completely understand why it was difficult not to get captured”
“It was my fault, I should have known you didn’t live in Aberdeen”
“I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t care”
“No one is going to get eaten / vapourized / exterminated / upgraded / possessed / mortal wounded turned to jelly we’ll all get out of this unharmed”
The Doctor settling on one: “I’m very sorry for your loss. I’ll do all I can to solve the death of your friend-slash-family member-slash-pet.” But don’t you see what this means? Death. It was the one thing that unified every single living creatures in the Universe. And now it’s gone. How can you just sit there? Don’t you want to go out there, right now, wrestle them to the ground and ask them questions until your throat falls out? “What’s death like?” “Does it hurt?” “Do you still get hungry?” “Do you miss being alive?” “Why can you only handle metal objects?” Oh. I didn’t know I noticed that.
The Doctor: Okay, so they’ll try to kill you. Blah blah blah. What does that matter? You come back! A bit murder-y sure, but even so. Calm, Doctor. Calm. You were like this when you met Shirley Bassey.
O’Donnell: We’re switching back into night mode again. This can’t happen!
Bennett: Um, what’s doing that?
Clara: Doctor?
The Doctor: The TARDIS cloister bell!
The Doctor: You live and you die and that’s it. The ghosts are aberrations. A splinter of time in the skin. They’re unnatural. She wants to get away from them.
Clara: So what do we do?
The Doctor: Put the hand brake on.
The Doctor: I like adventures as much as the next man—if the next man is a man who likes adventures. Even so, don’t, don’t go native.
Clara: What do you mean? I’m not.
The Doctor: Look, there’s a whole dimension in here. But there’s only room for one me.
Clara: Wait. Wait a second, you just raved about ghosts like a kid who had too much sherbet.
The Doctor: Do you know what you need? You need a hobby.
The Doctor: Come on. You lot, you’re bananas about relationships. You’re always writing songs about them or, or going to war or getting tattooed.
The Doctor: They’re working out how to use the base against us. Altering the time settings, so they can go about uninhibited. Opening the airlocks. They’re learning.
Bennett: Cass, what do we do?
Cass: We abandon the base. Topside can send down a whole team of Marines or ghostbusters or whatever.
The Doctor: Wait. Wait.
Cass: I can’t force you to leave. So you can stay and do the whole Cabin in the Woods thing and get killed or drowned if you want. But my first priority is to protect my crew.
Topside: We’ve received your request for a rescue sub, it’s two minutes away. Over.
O’Donnell: Topside, who did you speak to and when was this request made? Over.
Topside: Drum control, it was in Morse code. Arrived maybe half an hour ago. Said it was urgent, comms were down, two crew members critically ill, full paramedic team requested. Over.
The Doctor: Topside, this is the Doctor, UNIT security visa 7-1-0-apple-0-0. You may be familiar with my work. Call back the sub.
Topside: Doctor, why would we do—
The Doctor: Call it back. We have a hazardous and undefined contagion on board. This base is now under quarantine.
Bennett: What did you do that for?
The Doctor: Well none of us sent the message, did we? So that means that the ghosts sent it. Which means they want that crew down here.
Cass: Why would they do that?
The Doctor: Well I don’t know, but I’m certain it’s not so they can all form a boy band.
The Doctor: We are going to do the impossible. We’re going to capture a ghost.
O’Donnell: Clara, look out. Two ghosts are still on your case. Right behind you.
Clara: I’m beginning to think we should have let the ghosts in on the plan.
The Doctor: Sorry, chaps. Just a hologram. You play a little too rough.
The Doctor: Open the door.
O’Donnell: What?
Clara: Doctor, you can’t go in there. They will kill you!
The Doctor: They don’t have any weapons or access to any of the controls. They can’t hurt me. So open the door.
Lunn: She’s says they’re saying the same thing. The same phrase over and over. They’re saying, “The dark. The score.” No, the sword. The for sale? No, the forsaken. The temple.
The Doctor: What?
Lunn: Yeah, she’s sure. “The dark, the sword, the forsaken, the temple.” Just that. Over and over.
The Doctor: Bennett! I need maps. I think I just worked out what our friend here is telling us.
The Doctor: See, it’s a location. Beaming out to someone or something across the Universe, over and over. And every time they kill one of us—
Clara: It strengthens the signal. Another ghost, another transmitter.
O’Donnell: Which is why they sent for that rescue sub.
The Doctor: Wait a minute though. Wait a minuet. Do you know what this means? It means they’re not a natural phenomenon. It means the someone is deliberately getting people killed, hijacking their souls and turning them into transmitters.
O’Donnell: But what do the coordinates lead to? To us, to the ghosts? What?
The Doctor: Ah! What the coordinates are for, that is part of the answer to the other question you’re all thinking. {confusion} Really? Come one, none of you? Surely just being around me makes you clever by osmosis. What is the other question?
Cass: The temple. The fourth part of the directions. What’s the temple?
The Doctor: Finally. It’s like pulling teeth.
Bennett: Sorry, um, have you gone insane? We can go home. … But they’re ghosts though. How can they be ghosts? Well at least if I die you know I really will come back and haunt you all.
O’Donnell: What are we looking for exactly?
The Doctor: Something that has the power to raise the dead and turn them into transmitters. I expect we’ll know it when we see it.
The Doctor: More questions. Everything I solve, just more questions. I have to go back to the beginning.
The Doctor: We arrive, we see the ghosts. They don’t kill us. They lead us here, they show us the spaceship. Then they try to kill us. Not translated by the TARDIS, why?
The Doctor: Lunn, translate for me. {to Cass} Whenever I step outside, you are the smartest person in the room. So tell me, what’s weird about this? I know that it’s all bonkers, but you know, when you think about it, one thing keeps snagging in your mind. What is it?
Cass: The markings on the inside of the spaceship.
The Doctor: The markings on the inside of the spaceship. Yes! Why?
Cass: I don’t think they’re just words.
The Doctor: They’re not. They’re magnets.
Bennett: Magnets? How?
The Doctor: Well a localized and manufactured electromagnetic field to be precise. The dark. The sword. The forsaken. The temple. When we heard the coordinates for the first time, did anyone expect them not to be that? No. Exactly. Me neither. It’s like we already knew somehow. Like the words were already in us.
The Doctor: Clara, why don’t I have a radio in the TARDIS?
Clara: You took it apart and used the pieces to make a clockwork squirrel.
The Doctor: And because whatever song I heard first thing in the morning I was stuck with. Two weeks of Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre. I was begging for the brush of Death’s merciful hand.
The Doctor: My god. Every time I think it couldn’t get more extraordinary it surprises me. It’s impossible, I hate it. It’s evil, it’s astonishing. I want to kiss it to death!
The Doctor: Where’s the TARDIS?
O’Donnell: On the other side.
The Doctor: We need to get there. It’s our only way out.
O’Donnell: Okay, we’ve got 30 seconds before the flood doors close.
Clara: You can’t just leave us!
The Doctor: Listen to me. I’m going back in time to where the spaceship landed. If I can understand why this is happening I can stop them from killing anyone else. I can save you. You trust me, don’t you Clara? {she nods}
Bennett: Wait. You’re going to go back in time. How do you do that?
The Doctor: Extremely well.
Cass: You’re sure they’re not going to hurt us?
Clara: They can’t get out of the Faraday cage.
Cass: And you’re sure the Doctor won’t just leave us here?
Clara: Guys, look. This is how we roll. He’s gonna go away, come back, and we’ll have to listen to how he did it.
Lunn: Is it Moran or Pritchard or the mole guy? How’d they get out?
Clara: No, I don’t think it’s any of them. I think it’s… a new ghost.
Lunn: What does that mean?
Clara: Well it means that something happened in the past, it means that somebody else must have… Oh no! Oh no no no no.