The Doctor: So there’s this man, he has a time machine. Up and down history he goes, zip zip zip zip zip. Getting into scrapes. Another thing he has is a passion for the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. And one day he thinks, “What’s the point of having a time machine if you don’t get to meet your heroes.” So. Off he goes to 18-century Germany. But he can’t find Beethoven anywhere. No one’s heard of him. Not even his family have any idea who the time traveller is talking about. Beethoven literally doesn’t exist. This didn’t happen by the way. I’ve met Beethoven. Nice chap. Very intense. Loved an arm wrestle. No. This is called the bootstrap paradox. Google it. The time traveller panics. He can’t bear the thought of a world without the music of Beethoven. Luckily, he’d brought all of his Beethoven sheet music for Ludwig to sign. So he copies out all the concertos and the symphonies and he gets them published. He becomes Beethoven. And history continues with barely a feather ruffled. My question is this: who put those notes and phrases together? Who really composed Beethoven’s Fifth?
The Doctor: Where’s Bennett? We need to get going.
O’Donnell (Morven Christie) about Bennett: Oh he’s still throwing up. One small step for man, one giant {she mimes throwing up}.
The Doctor: Time travel does that sometimes.
O’Donnell: I somehow doubt that Rose or Martha or Amy lost their breakfast on the first trip.
The Doctor: You seem to know an awful lot about me.
O’Donnell: I used to be military intelligence. I was demoted for dangling a colleague out of a window.
The Doctor: In anger?
O’Donnell: Is there another way to dangle someone out of a window?
O’Donnell: What year are we in?
The Doctor: 1980.
O’Donnell: So, pre-Harold Saxon, pre-the Minister of War, pre-the moon exploding, the big bat coming out.
The Doctor: The Minister of War?
O’Donnell: Yeah—
The Doctor: No. Never mind. I expect I’ll find out soon enough.
Bennett (Arsher Ali): Why have we gone to Russia?
The Doctor: Ah, we haven’t. We’re still in Scotland. This is the town before it flooded. The TARDIS has brought us to when the spaceship first touched down. But here and now it’s the height of the Cold War. The military were being trained for offensives on Soviet soil.
The Doctor: This isn’t just any spaceship. It’s a hearse.
Prentis (Paul Kaye): Albar Prentis. Funeral Director.
Bennett: You’re from Tivoli, aren’t you?
Prentis: The most invaded planet in the galaxy. Our capital city has a sign saying, “If you occupied us, you’d be home by now.”
The Doctor: What are you doing here?
Prentis: Ah yes. Of course. This is the Fisher King. He and his armies invaded Tivoli and enslaved us for ten glorious years. Until we were liberated by the Arcateenians. But, thank the gods, soon we’d irritated them so much they enslaved us too.
Bennett: My first proper alien and he’s an idiot.
Prentis: And now, in accordance with Arcateenian custom, I’ve come to bury him on a barren, savage outpost.
O’Donnell: You mean the town?
The Doctor: He means the planet.
Prentis: Although, at the risk of starting a bidding war, you could enslave me. In the ship I have directions to my planet and a selection of items that you can oppress me with.
Lunn (Zaqi Ismail): You’ve been here before. In situations like this before.
Clara: Yeah, not exactly like, but… Yeah, once or twice.
Lunn: So you’ve had to deal with people who are scared. What do you say to them? I’m asking what I should say to you.
Clara: That it will be all right. That the Doctor will save us.
Lunn: And when you say it, do you believe it?
Clara: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Lunn: Cass thinks the Doctor’s saying something different to the others. He’s saying, “Moran, Pritchard, Apprentice.” No, Prentiss. “O’Donnell, Clara, Doctor, Bennett, Cass.” It’s just a list of all our names. And when he finishes he just goes back to the beginning again, over and over, that’s it.
Clara: Another ghost has appeared.
The Doctor: What? Who? Has someone died?
Clara: Doctor, it’s you. {silence} You okay?
The Doctor: Yeah. Well. Currently.
Clara: What does it mean?
The Doctor: It means I die.
The Doctor: This isn’t potential future, this is the future now. It’s already happened. The proof is right there in front of you. I have to die.
Clara: No. You can change things.
The Doctor: I can’t. Even the tiniest change, the ramifications could be catastrophic, could spread carnage and chaos across the universe like ripples on a pond. Oh well, I’ve had a good innings. {to O’Donnell} This regeneration, it’s a bit of a clerical error anyway. Gotta go sometime.
Clara: Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me, you do not leave me!
The Doctor: Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else’s.
Clara: I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to think about that, not yet.
The Doctor: I can’t change what’s already happened. There are rules.
Clara: So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You’ve made yourself essential to me, you’ve given me something else to… to be. And you can’t do that and then die. It’s not fair.
The Doctor: Clara…
Clara: No. Doctor, I don’t care about your rules or your bloody survivor’s guilt. If you love me in any way, you’ll come back.
The Doctor: I assume that I’m just saying the same thing as all the others.
Clara: No. You’re saying a list of names. Our names mainly. Moran, Pritchard, Prentis, O’Donnell, Clara, Doctor, Bennett, Cass. Who’s Prentis?
The Doctor: The mole-faced chap.
Clara: You’ve moved inside. You’re inside here now.
The Doctor: What am I doing?
Clara: Ah… Nothing. You’re just standing here.
The Doctor: I’m not trying to kill you? Why am I not trying to kill you?
Clara: Okay, Doctor you’re on.
The Doctor to Ghost Doctor: Doctor. Such an honor. I’ve always been a huge admirer! This is really a delight. Finally someone worth talking to.
Cass (Sophie Stone): His message has changed. He’s saying something different. He’s saying…
Clara: What?
The Doctor: What?
Lunn: What?
Cass: He’s saying, “The chamber will open tonight.”
The Doctor: Oh. There’s a problem.
Clara: Problem? What problem? No really, because everything else is going so smoothly.
The Doctor: Come on. Oh. Wait a minute. Not you, O’Donnell.
O’Donnell: What? Why not?
The Doctor: Someone needs to stay here and mind the shop. {she laughs} Well what if Clara calls?
O’Donnell: The last bloke that said something like that to me got dangled out of a window.
Bennett: Maybe the Doctor’s right. Um, maybe it’s best if you stay here.
O’Donnell: Never gonna happen. Seriously, have you two met me?
O’Donnell: Guess that dead body wasn’t so dead after all.
Bennett: And now we’ve got the writing.
The Doctor: The Fisher King did it himself. The future is still coming.
Bennett: That list your ghost was saying. That’s the order in which people are going to die, isn’t it? I mean I’ve only just figured that out, but you knew that all along. Didn’t you? Moran, Pritchard, Prentis, O’Donnell.
The Doctor: I thought perhaps because her ghost wasn’t there. in the future—like Prentis’ was—I thought maybe… maybe it wouldn’t happen. Maybe she stood a chance.
Bennett: Yeah but you didn’t try very hard to stop her though, did you? It’s almost like you wanted to test your theory. So who’s next?
The Doctor: Clara.
Bennett: Yeah. Yeah, except now you’re going to do something about it, aren’t you? Yeah, ’cause it’s getting closer to you. You’ll change history to save yourself, but not to save O’Donnell. You wouldn’t save her.
The Doctor: This isn’t about saving me. I’m a dead man walking. I’m changing history to save Clara.
Bennett: When are we going to?
The Doctor: Off the map, out of the rulebook. What if I don’t die? What if I refuse? I’m gonna go back to the base and I’m gonna save Clara because that’s what I do. And I don’t see anyone here who’s going to stop me {the TARDIS clangs her disapproval}.
The Doctor: We’ve moved half an hour backwards. I’m locked in my own time stream. The TARDIS won’t let me leave.
The Doctor: However that sentence ends, no we can’t. Save him and you’ll want to save O’Donnell. You can’t cheat time. I just tried. You can’t just go back and cut off tragedy at the root. Because you’ll find yourself talking to someone you just saw dead on a slab. Because then you really do see ghosts. We don’t tell him. Understand? Not a word. We don’t have that right.
Clara: “The dark. The sword. The forsaken. The temple.” When we found out what the ghosts were saying we weren’t surprised, because the words, they were already inside us. But you… you were, weren’t you? You didn’t know what the words were going to be.
Lunn: Uh, no I didn’t. How did you know?
Clara: Who was the one person who didn’t see the writing in the spaceship?
Lunn: Me. Ah, Cass wouldn’t let me go inside.
Clara: That’s why the ghosts didn’t hurt you when they had the chance. Because the message isn’t inside you.
Lunn: Yes, I suppose that makes sense.
Clara: So you can get the phone back.
Lunn: She said to ask you whether traveling with the Doctor has changed you, and why you always have to put other people’s lives at risk.
Clara: He taught me to do what has to be done.
Clara: Look, he’ll be fine. I promise. {Cass signs something and storms off} Okay. Didn’t need anyone to translate that.
The Doctor: I’ve come from the future. I’ve seen the chaos you caused, the bloodshed.
Fisher King (Neil Fingleton): Tell me what you have seen.
The Doctor: Ghosts.
Fisher King: Ghosts?
The Doctor: Souls wrenched from the dead. Repeating directions to here, to this spot, over and over.
Fisher King: How many ghosts do I create? How many!
The Doctor: There are four that I know of. Maybe five by now. Probably more since I left.
Fisher King: My ghosts will make more ghosts. Enough to bring an armada. Enough to wake me from my sleep.
The Doctor: What will happen when your people arrive?
Fisher King: We will drain the oceans and put the humans in chains.
The Doctor: This world is protected by me.
Fisher King: Yes. One man. Lost in time.
Fisher King: The seed of their destruction is already sown. They will die. The message will be sent. My people will come. And you will do nothing to stop it. Time Lord.
Clara: Look, Lunn is going to be fine, I promise. We have to stay here. {Cass glares at her} I know that look. I do that look. Okay, fine. But we stick together.
Fisher King: Time Lords. Cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most war-like race in the galaxy. But you—you! You are curious. You’ve seen the words too and can hear them tick inside you. But you are still locked in your history. Still slavishly protecting time. Willing to die rather than change a word of the future.
Clara: Cass? Cass? {realizing} Idiot. I’m an idiot.
Fisher King: You will be a strong beacon. How many ghosts can I make of you?
The Doctor: You know, you’ve got a lot in common with Tivolians. You’ll both do anything to survive. They’ll surrender to anyone. You will hijack other people’s souls and turn them into electromagnetic projections. That will to endure, that refusal to ever cease. That’s extraordinary. And it makes a fellow think, because you know what? If all I have to do to survive is tweak the future a bit, what’s stopping me? Oh yeah yeah yeah! The ripple effect. Maybe it will mean that the universe will be ruled by cats or something in the future. But the way I see it, even a ghastly future is better than no future at all. You robbed those people of their deaths. Made them nothing more than a message in a bottle. You violated something more important than time. You bent the rules of life and death. So I am putting things straight. Here, now, this is where your story ends.
Fisher King: There is nothing you can do.
The Doctor: I’ve already done it. The words have gone. I got rid of them. The future I saw, none of that will happen now. The message will never contaminate my friends. No one will die, no one is coming to save you. That’s the thing about knowing you’re going to die: you’ve got nothing left to lose.
Fisher King seeing the words: The Time Lord lied.
The Doctor: This is security protocol 712. The echelon circuit has been activated. Please stow any hand luggage and prepare for departure.
Clara: What’s that noise?
The Doctor: It’s the call of the Fisher King. The call of their master.
Clara: So what was it, your ghost?
The Doctor: A hologram. Like the one we made of you to lure the ghosts into the Faraday cage. With a soupçon of artificial intelligence and a few pre-recorded phrases thrown in. All beamed from the sonic glasses. As soon as you brought me and the chamber on board, it connected with the base’s wi-fi. Bob’s your uncle for the ghost Doctor.
Clara: Why did they only come out at night?
The Doctor: Because they’re electromagnetic projections that were out of phase with the base’s day mode.
The Doctor: Right. That’s it. I’ve erased to memory of the writing. Though you might find you’ve lost a couple of other memories too. You know, like people you went to school with or previous addresses, or how to drink liquids.
Bennett: What will happen to them?
The Doctor: UNIT will cut out the Faraday cage with them inside and take them away. Then the space hearse will be destroyed so the writing doesn’t infect anyone else.
Bennett: What do I do now?
The Doctor: I don’t understand.
Clara: I do. You keep going. You have to.
Clara: What will UNIT do with the ghosts?
The Doctor: Drag the cage into space, away from the Earth’s magnetic field. With nothing to sustain them, the ghosts will eventually fade away.
Clara: Here’s what I don’t understand. You did change the future. You stopped the Fisher King from returning.
The Doctor: The Fisher King had been dead for 150 years before we even got here. But once I went back I became part of events. But here’s the thing: the messages my ghost gave, they weren’t for you. They were for me. That list. Everyone after you was random. But you being the next name, that’s what made me confront the Fisher King.
Clara: And saying the chamber will open?
The Doctor: That was me telling me to get inside and when to set it for.
Clara: Smart.
The Doctor: Except that’s not why I said them.
Clara: How’d do you mean?
The Doctor: I programmed my ghost to say them because that’s what my ghost had said. And the only reason that I created my ghost hologram in the first place was because I saw it here. I was reverse-engineering the narrative.
Clara: Okay, that’s still pretty smart.
The Doctor: You do not understand. When did I first have those ideas, Clara?
Clara: Well it must have been… Wow.
The Doctor: Exactly. Who composed Beethoven’s Fifth?