THE LEISURE HIVE

BY DAVID FISHER

Episode 3

Original Air Date: 13 September, 1980
5:55pm - 6:20pm

DOCTOR: Was I in there long? It felt like centuries.

HARDIN: Are you all right?

DOCTOR: Yes, I think so. A bit weak. Why? What are you all staring at?

BROCK: Have you seen yourself?

DOCTOR: No, not recently. Why, should I

DOCTOR: Is that me? What happened?

ROMANA: I don't know. Hardware malfunction. I don't understand.

DOCTOR: I was just going to check something in there. I can't remember what.

MENA: The Doctor is unwell. See that he is given a cabin.

PANGOL: And confine him there. He's still on trial for m*rder. Confine them both.

MENA: Very well. I declare a limitation on them both. Hardin, you will come with me.

MENA: Am I leaning too heavily on you?

HARDIN: No, Mena.

MENA: The distance between us seems to have lessened again. What went wrong with the experiment? I felt so sorry for you.

HARDIN: For me?

MENA: And for the Argolin, of course. It seemed to offer a last chance for us. Technology offered us hope once before, after the w*r.

HARDIN: Hope of survival? How?

MENA: It isn't something we talk of to outsiders.

HARDIN: It isn't the end. I know I can make it work. Don't despair.

MENA: Despair is the death of hope, and all our hope died years ago. The Helmet of Theron. His ambition laid waste the planet. We keep it there to remind us to live in humility.

HARDIN: To live, yes.

MENA: And to die with grace. Please, Hardin. Send for my attendants.

GUIDE: Your movements will be unrestricted provided you keep to the programme.

ROMANA: We're being programmed?

GUIDE: Vargos will explain.

VARGOS: The programme allows you to be in certain areas at certain times. The collars will only become uncomfortable if you attempt to depart from the programme. Or try to remove them.

PANGOL: This must be solved before dawn. The time is very close. Vargos?

VARGOS: Yes, Pangol?

PANGOL: Somehow or other the alien's trivial experiment is degrading the segmentation.

PANGOL: Your experiment draws power from the Generator, Hardin?

HARDIN: That's right.

PANGOL: My guides would like your help in removing it. We can't allow interference with our developments.

HARDIN: Developments? What do you mean?

PANGOL: I'm not going to discuss that with an alien. Besides, the tachyonic facilities are for scientific research, not fraud.

MENA: Fraud?

PANGOL: My guides have been through Stimson's effects. It's clear the experiments were rigged.

MENA: Is this true?

HARDIN: Well, I was on the verge of a breakthrough. I needed funds.

MENA: There was real hope for us and you allowed Stimson to cheat us.

HARDIN: But the test I made here with the girl Romana, they weren't fakes. We created negative time images. It worked!

PANGOL: Tell that to the Doctor.

HARDIN: Give me more time and I can prove it.

MENA: Let him have his wish. Give him access to the laboratory.

HARDIN: And Romana. I must have her help.

PANGOL: I don't trust this. It's a conspiracy.

MENA: Romana will stay where she is. Work on your own, Hardin.

DOCTOR: I'm sick of being old. There must be some way of reversing the process.

ROMANA: Temporal asymmetry. We'll have to get back to the Generator. Your condition's unstable.

DOCTOR: Pangol's very young.

ROMANA: Pangol?

DOCTOR: Yes. And everyone else is old, except Pangol. And he runs the Generator. When you were fitting the Schrödinger oscillator, did you notice there were two baryon shields?

ROMANA: Mmm. Why two, I wonder?

DOCTOR: I don't know. I didn't have time to look. Five hundred years goes by so rapidly.

ROMANA: An alternative function? There must be a second circuit in there doing something we know nothing about.

DOCTOR: Yes. Yes.

MENA: When the Chairmanship passes to you, Pangol, you'll moderate your views.

PANGOL: The ancient Greeks of Earth believed in moderation.

MENA: Athens was the seat of wisdom.

PANGOL: And it fell to the might of Rome.

PANGOL: What do you want, Earthling?

BROCK: Madam Chairman!

MENA: Don't be alarmed, Mister Brock. My medical attendants assure me that my termination is proceeding normally.

BROCK: I suppose you know that the shuttles have been packed to capacity with visitors leaving.

MENA: Two unfortunate accidents in one day.

BROCK: Two m*rder. An exodus. The value of this Foamasi offer must be falling by the hour. Tomorrow they may withdraw completely.

PANGOL: Good.

MENA: Have you a suggestion, Mister Brock?

PANGOL: A public trial and execution, perhaps?

BROCK: I had something more constructive in mind.

PANGOL: So have I. Who cares if an alien doctor lives or dies?

HARDIN: Mister Brock says you might be able to help by looking at the Recreation Generator.

DOCTOR: Really, it's astonishing how far the Argolins have come with tachyonics.

HARDIN: These are mere toys. My time experiments are the first glimpse of any real use for the Recreation Generator.

DOCTOR: Really? Are you sure of that?

HARDIN: Of course. The Argolins have nothing to show for their forty years work on tachyonics.

DOCTOR: No, nothing except a sort of cabinet of illusions. And then the name of the thing. Has that struck you?

ROMANA: The Generator?

DOCTOR: Recreation Generator. Re-creation.

ROMANA: Creating things again.

DOCTOR: Things, yes. Or people.

BROCK: The Foamasi are offering excellent terms.

PANGOL: Let me see that.

MENA: There is an alternative.

BROCK: What?

MENA: When the time comes, we will open the airlocks and together the Argolin will walk out onto the surface of their planet for the last time.

BROCK: Mass su1c1de? Why even consider it when you have these terms?

PANGOL: This isn't a Foamasi government document.

BROCK: Did I say it was? A private deal from a group of Foamasi citizens.

PANGOL: The West Lodge? I've never heard of them.

BROCK: They prefer a low profile. Bluntly, it's either them or bankruptcy.

PANGOL: There is a third possibility, Mister Brock, that Mena didn't mention.

BROCK: Oh?

PANGOL: The new Argolis.

DOCTOR: This way.

BROCK: This new Argolis, whatever that might be, will need funds.

PANGOL: From this forgery?

BROCK: I beg your pardon?

PANGOL: I know the Foamasi. I've studied them. Do you think my hatred has turned me into a blind fool?

MENA: There are no private enterprise groups among the Foamasi.

PANGOL: Another trick by the government. For years they've been trying to foist restitution money on us.

BROCK: Some small attempt to

PANGOL: For genocide, Brock?

BROCK: You said yourself that is not a government document.

PANGOL: The West Lodge. Ever since the w*r, the Foamasi government has owned the whole planet.

BROCK: Officially.

PANGOL: What?

BROCK: Private enterprise is irrepressible. I have several copies, of course.

MENA: Your West Lodge can raise that much money?

BROCK: Easily.

PANGOL: We don't need it. I have something better than money.

BROCK: A novel concept.

PANGOL: Manpower.

BROCK: Excuse me for reminding you that this is a sterile planet. There haven't been any Argolins born here since the w*r.

PANGOL: Which was forty years ago. But how old do you think I am, Mister Brock?

DOCTOR: The radiation out there affected the Argolin metabolism.

HARDIN: Yes, it produced this rapid aging effect.

DOCTOR: Yes, and made them sterile.

ROMANA: It's not re-creation, it's some sort of reduplication process going on in there.

DOCTOR: The implications of that could be very unpleasant.

ROMANA: We need to check out the Generator and find out what Pangol's up to.

HARDIN: I'll go.

ROMANA: No, it can't be you or the Doctor. I'm the only one who can go in the Generator while it's unstable.

DOCTOR: Yes, or else there might be, what do you call it?

ROMANA: Tachyon surge. If there is, I come out aged six hundred and fifty, but if you're in there. What we need is a diversion.

DOCTOR: Yes. Or even a plan would do.

MENA: No, Pangol! No!

PANGOL: It's time you understood, Mister Brock. You must be more stupid than you look. Mena is not my mother.

MENA: No, Pangol! You've said too much already.

BROCK: You mean you're not an Argolin?

PANGOL: Of course I'm an Argolin! The first of the new Argolin. I am the child of the Generator.

HARDIN: Psst! You, come on.

DOCTOR: Look at this, old thing.

DOCTOR: Do you know, I had a feeling he wasn't quite ready for the rigours of warp mechanics.

DOCTOR: Hadn't you better get him off to bed?

HARDIN: But you said

BROCK: You mean the Argolins donated cells from their bodies to this Recreation Generator and cloned themselves? There's a flaw in your story. Where are all the others?

MENA: The theory was still primitive. There were many failures.

BROCK: And yet he survived.

PANGOL: For twenty years a moratorium was declared on the technique, until I came of age, a thoroughly proficient tachyon engineer. There will be no more disfigured mutants in our next reduplication programme.

PANGOL: There is the future of the Argolins. Where are the guides?

PANGOL: How did he get there? Alert! Alert!

PANGOL: It's over there.

COMPUTER: Status update. Intruders.

PANGOL: It's all right, he's in here. Five hundred years the last time, Doctor. Let's see what you're like when you've aged two thousand.

DOCTOR: There's no doubt about it, all this rushing about takes it out of you, particularly when you're twelve hundred and fifty years old.

ROMANA: It's all right, he's a friend. He got me out of the Generator before Pangol started it up.

DOCTOR: Who is he?

ROMANA: I don't know.

DOCTOR: What? Doesn't make any sense to me.

HARDIN: Doctor!

ROMANA: Shush.

HARDIN: Romana, thank heavens you're safe.

DOCTOR: Shush. Don't interrupt. He's a Foamasi.

HARDIN: What's he doing on Argolis?

DOCTOR: I don't know. Ask him.

ROMANA: Well, at least he showed me why our rejuvenation process doesn't work. We found this behind the second baryon shield.

HARDIN: Doctor, what do you make of this?

DOCTOR: Of course. Of course.

PANGOL: That Doctor has been interfering with the Generator again. I want them all found.

BROCK: Mena is dying.

PANGOL: The life of an individual is trivial.

BROCK: You might at least try Hardin's idea.

PANGOL: With Mena's death, the future arrives. The Children of the Generator will rise to claim their inheritance.

ROMANA: Is it something to do with the random field frame?

DOCTOR: I wish I knew what you wanted, friend.

DOCTOR: Of course. Come on, let's go then. Come on.

ROMANA: Where to?

DOCTOR: Back to the boardroom. Our scaly friend's seen someone he wants to talk to.

HARDIN: But can we trust him?

DOCTOR: Well, you can trust me, that's the important thing.

PANGOL: When the dawn comes, Mena will be d*ad. The birth of the new Argolis must be recorded by history. I shall need one alien witness.

BROCK: So that's why you're telling me all this.

PANGOL: The Doctor! Seize him!

DOCTOR: Oh no, I've got a surprise for you all.

BROCK: No, no. Don't you touch me! No! No, don't touch me. Stay away from me! No, don't touch me! Argh!
{"type": "series", "show": "Doctor Who", "episode": "18x03 - The Leisure Hive - part 3"}