Doctor Who (1963–1989): Season 12, Episode 7 - The Ark in Space: Part Three - full transcript
Knowing that Noah has been infected by the Wirrn, the Doctor persuades Vira to halt the reviving of her people, knowing it will place them in danger as well.
(DOCTOR WHO THEME PLAYS)
(FEMALE VOICE) Space Station Nerva,
this is the Earth High Minister.
The fact
that you are hearing my voice
in a message recorded
thousands of years before the day
in which you are now living,
is a sure sign
that our great undertaking,
the salvation of the human race,
has been rewarded with success.
You have slept longer
than the recorded history
of mankind.
And you stand now
at the dawn of a new age.
You will return
to an Earth purified by flame,
a world that we cannot guess at.
If it be arid,
you must make it flourish.
If it be stony,
you must make it fertile.
The challenge is vast,
the task enormous,
but let nothing daunt you.
Sounds like a pre-match pep talk!
Remember, Citizen Volunteers,
that you are the proud
standard-bearers of our entire race.
Of the millions
that walk the world today,
you are the chosen survivors.
You have been entrusted
with a sacred duty -
to see that human culture,
human knowledge,
human love and faith,
shall never perish
from the universe.
Guard what we have given you
with all your strength.
And now,
across the chasm of the years,
I send you the prayers and hopes
of the entire world.
Godspeed you to a safe landing.
I bet that did your female
chauvinist heart a power of good!
Why?
Well, fancy a member of the fair sex
being top of the totem pole!
(NOAH) Vira! Vira!
Yes, Commander?
Vira, hear me. This is an order.
Expedite revivification.
Commence main phase now.
But, Noah, the safety checks...
Ignore safety checks!
We...
you...
..are in great danger...
Get our...
..your people to the Earth before...
Noah?
..before...the Wirrn...
Vira, take command!
Hear me! You take command!
What has happened?
Commander, are you there?
The Wirrn are here...
They will...
(VOICE CHANGES)
We shall absorb the humans...
The Earth shall be ours!
Noah! Noah!
(NOAH'S VOICE) Vira...
Vira...
there's no time...
They're...
in my mind...
getting stronger...
Libri is dead...
You will all die...
Must save our people...
You must!
(VIRA) Noah!
The chap sounds in a bad way.
What did he mean -
they're in his mind?
Absorb?
''We shall absorb the humans''?
Endoparasitism?
He talks to himself sometimes
because he's the only one who
understands what he's talking about.
If the Wirrn can do that,
we've no chance at all!
Complete physical absorption.
Of us?
They'll literally eat us alive.
Vira, I must talk with Noah.
Come with me. He trusts you.
My duty is to supervise
the revivification.
No! Noah passed command to you.
- Your duties have been widened.
- What is your intention?
To find out exactly
what we're facing.
And only Noah knows that.
I can't leave until the last of
our technical section have awakened.
Harry can handle that.
Can't you, Harry?
- Well, I...
- You've watched Vira.
- You know the procedure.
- Yes, I...
One gramme of scropholine when
the neural register enters the red zone.
- Right...
- He'll be all right.
The injection
must be over the pectoralis major.
That I do understand.
Good luck!
(DOCTOR)
And, Sarah, you stay and help Harry.
Yes, come along, Nurse Smith.
See? This chap's in the red zone.
Hey, there's another one
seems to be awake here.
Well, after 10,000 years,
he can't be in that much of a hurry.
I hope you know what you're doing!
Yes. Dead simple.
Medicine by numbers.
Oh, yes! Dead simple!
Just a question of fixing
a fresh ampoule thing into here.
Keep back! Don't touch me!
- Noah!
- Keep back, I said!
Tell us one thing.
How much time do we have?
Time?
Before the Wirrn
reach their adult form?
It feels near...very near...
The tearing free and then
the great blackness rushing through...
Noah and I were pair-bonded
for the new life.
Let's go back.
Dune and Libri?
And Noah?
I'm sorry.
It must be a terrible shock for you.
So there's just two of us
to check the ship?
- And Vira. She's taken command.
- Where is she?
She's gone with the Doctor.
They're trying to contact Noah.
There's been a snitch-up!
Didn't I tell you, Lycett?
5,000 years ago,
I said there'd be a snitch-up!
- 10,000!
- Oh, beautiful (!)
We should have taken our chance
and gone into the thermic shelters!
We'd be happily dead!
What killed them?
Their lungs, was it?
Hmm?
Dune and Libri? We were told
our lung tissue might atrophy.
- Well, no...
- Something got in here.
Yes... Some sort of space creature.
It cut through
your alarm clock system.
- What?
- Look.
Oh, it's OK - it's dead.
But, unfortunately,
its larvae are still very much alive!
- Vira!
- Vira, it's gone wrong!
Welcome, Lycett. Rogin.
You feel well?
Yes...
Commander.
What are we going to do with it?
How much anatomy do you remember?
Quite a lot, I think.
But you need a blooming entomologist!
We need to find its weaknesses,
and quickly.
- Can we help?
- Not at the moment, thank you.
Then, we will commence
the main phase. Lycett, Rogin.
What was that she said?
They're going to start
the main phase.
Carry on with that thoracic incision.
Not too deep.
- But the safety checks?
- We shall over-ride them.
- Why?
- We can't!
That is my decision.
Take your operating stations.
Vira, the main phase must wait.
Noah said we should expedite
the revivification programme
- and get our people to work.
- He was wrong.
How long would it take?
72 hours for complete revivification.
- Another 24 to evacuate the Ark.
- Four whole days?
At the rate the Wirrn are developing,
they'll have pupated
to imago long before.
- We must try!
- You can't do it!
The Ark will be crawling
with those creatures within hours!
Doctor, the fate of all humanity
might be decided
within the next few hours!
Vira, if you fail, your people
will die in pain and fear.
If I fail, they'll die anyway,
but only the six of us
will know anything about it.
You have an alternative plan?
Between the larval
and the imago forms,
there must be a pupal stage.
Now, the Wirrn will be dormant
and defenceless.
If we can find their weaknesses...
We might destroy them?
Yes.
- Very well. Stand down.
- Good.
There's a power flutter in Section 4,
Commander.
What does that indicate?
External fault.
Shall I check the stacks?
No! The larvae have taken over
the infrastructure.
They seem to need solar radiation.
We should have stayed on Earth,
Lycett!
I liked the Earth! I like heat!
Curious lung structure, Doctor -
look at it.
Yes, fascinating.
A superb adaptation.
What is it?
Obviously, the creature's lungs
recycle the wastes,
almost certainly by enzymes.
Quite wonderful.
Carbon dioxide back to oxygen.
You mean the way plants make oxygen?
Exactly right.
It must live in space,
probably just occasionally
visiting a planetary atmosphere
for food and oxygen,
the way a whale rises from the ocean.
Judging by the size of his mandibles,
this chap doesn't live on plankton!
Noah spoke of a great blackness...
..rushing in...
He meant space, but how did he know?
He now has the race memory
of a Wirrn.
Symbiotic atavism, to be precise.
I'm going to need your help now,
Vira.
Do you have
any spare extension leads, Rogin?
- Yes.
- Hurry! Fetch them!
What are you going to do, Doctor?
A little experiment.
Circuit display, Lycett.
It's forbidden
to alter those circuits.
I need the neural cortex amplifier.
Not for long - don't worry.
(SLURPING)
Right, switch on the video circuit,
Lycett.
It'll take a little time to warm up.
Doctor, what are you trying to do?
Latent neural impressions
can be revived.
- Really?
- Yes.
I've never heard of that!
Advanced technology.
Gypsies used to believe that the eye
retained its last image after death.
Not so far out.
No...
It's not going to work.
Switch off, Lycett.
Now what?
It SHOULD work!
The coil isn't giving
a strong enough stimulus.
I'll have to link in my own cerebral
cortex. That's the only thing.
That is highly dangerous!
I know. Two more leads, Rogin.
- It could burn out a living brain!
- I agree.
An ordinary brain.
But mine is exceptional.
I cannot permit it!
The shock might kill you.
I think not. Unless, of course,
the experiment was interrupted.
That could be dangerous.
- Do you have to do it?
- Why take the risk?
If I find what killed that creature,
we might have a chance of fighting
the Wirrn. That's our only hope.
Yes, but do you have to be...?
It's not just our...existence
that's at stake, Sarah!
It's the entire human race.
It may be irrational of me,
but human beings
are quite my favourite species.
Vira...
- Yes, Doctor?
- Take this.
Don't hesitate to use it
if anything goes wrong.
- You won't have much time.
- What do you mean?
Switch on, Lycett.
Lycett!
Doctor!
He's joining his mind to the Wirrn!
He could remain a part of it
for ever!
Look! It's working!
(CLATTERING)
What was that?
We'd better look.
Over here!
Case-hardened diranium -
bent like tin!
Look out! Behind you!
Shut the door! Shut the door!
What's going...?
Get out, man! Get out!
They've killed Lycett!
There's some sort of huge grub
in there!
- Stop the experiment!
- You'll kill him!
The armoury, Rogin!
Get the fission guns!
- Right!
- I'll come with you!
(BANGING)
Hurry, Rogin!
That door won't hold much longer!
Dune!
Fools! Human fools!
(WHIRRING)
(EXPLOSIONS)
Help me with him, Vira!
Wait! Come away!
Wirrn...
- Wirrn...
- Doctor...
- Wirrn!
- Doctor! Doctor!
No, you can't! I won't let you!
Can't what? Is it time to get up?
Doctor, you're going to be all right!
(BANGING)
Is that noise in my head?
(WHIRRING)
Doctor, come back!
Doctor, don't!
Doctor! Doctor!
Aim lower!
- It's gone back through the grille.
- That was a close one!
- You all right, Sarah?
- Yes.
- Doctor?
- Why?
Why have they gone on to the attack?
They want to destroy us.
But they've only to wait.
In their adult form,
they'll be a thousand times deadlier.
- Fission guns will have no effect.
- How many of them will there be?
At a hatching? A hundred...
A hundred? We won't stand a chance!
How can we fight a hundred of those?
Electricity!
Only by electricity!
That's the one thing I found out!
- Electricity?
- Yes...
The auto-guard killed the queen -
half a million volts.
- We found the queen in the cupboard!
- Amazing willpower!
I could feel it struggling against
death until its task was done.
Rogin, is there any way
we can electrify the infrastructure?
Not from here, Doctor. We'd have to
run cables from the Control Centre.
Control Centre? Right, let's go!
- You can't go that way, Doctor.
- Noah's waiting out there.
Put one foot inside the transom
and you're dead!
Yes... I was forgetting
Noah's extra mobility.
We are trapped.
The Wirrn are using Dune's knowledge
of the Ark.
Perhaps there was something
he didn't know.
Dune was first tech. He knew it all!
He helped design the systems.
Nobody knows it all!
Perhaps he's forgotten
that these transmats are reversible!
- That's clever!
- Isn't it?
And as you appreciate it, Rogin,
you can go first!
I'll give you a hand!
Oh, well...
I never liked it here anyway!
(PINGING)
You next, Harry!
(PINGING)
I say!
(ROGIN) Are you all right?
What a marvellous way to travel!
It always sets my teeth on edge!
That was a power drain.
Hello, Control Centre?
(ROGIN) Hello, Doctor.
We've got a power failure.
It's general, then.
Do you have a fault reading?
Section 4...
That's the secondary stack.
There's no power... (VOICE FADES)
All power systems are self-repairing.
Malicious damage excluded.
Oh, well, obviously,
I am not going anywhere!
Help me, Doctor.
The oxygen pumps have stopped.
Of course! In their pupal stage,
the Wirrn don't need oxygen.
An easy way of killing us.
Well, suffocation
is not the most unpleasant death!
What? We're not finished yet!
- You two stay here.
- Where are you going?
The infrastructure.
If they've entered the pupal stage,
they'll be dormant.
Could be our chance to get down there
and switch the power back on.
- You're forgetting Noah.
- No, I'm not.
I think his job's done now.
He'll be metamorphosing, too.
(CREAKING)
(FEMALE VOICE) Space Station Nerva,
this is the Earth High Minister.
The fact
that you are hearing my voice
in a message recorded
thousands of years before the day
in which you are now living,
is a sure sign
that our great undertaking,
the salvation of the human race,
has been rewarded with success.
You have slept longer
than the recorded history
of mankind.
And you stand now
at the dawn of a new age.
You will return
to an Earth purified by flame,
a world that we cannot guess at.
If it be arid,
you must make it flourish.
If it be stony,
you must make it fertile.
The challenge is vast,
the task enormous,
but let nothing daunt you.
Sounds like a pre-match pep talk!
Remember, Citizen Volunteers,
that you are the proud
standard-bearers of our entire race.
Of the millions
that walk the world today,
you are the chosen survivors.
You have been entrusted
with a sacred duty -
to see that human culture,
human knowledge,
human love and faith,
shall never perish
from the universe.
Guard what we have given you
with all your strength.
And now,
across the chasm of the years,
I send you the prayers and hopes
of the entire world.
Godspeed you to a safe landing.
I bet that did your female
chauvinist heart a power of good!
Why?
Well, fancy a member of the fair sex
being top of the totem pole!
(NOAH) Vira! Vira!
Yes, Commander?
Vira, hear me. This is an order.
Expedite revivification.
Commence main phase now.
But, Noah, the safety checks...
Ignore safety checks!
We...
you...
..are in great danger...
Get our...
..your people to the Earth before...
Noah?
..before...the Wirrn...
Vira, take command!
Hear me! You take command!
What has happened?
Commander, are you there?
The Wirrn are here...
They will...
(VOICE CHANGES)
We shall absorb the humans...
The Earth shall be ours!
Noah! Noah!
(NOAH'S VOICE) Vira...
Vira...
there's no time...
They're...
in my mind...
getting stronger...
Libri is dead...
You will all die...
Must save our people...
You must!
(VIRA) Noah!
The chap sounds in a bad way.
What did he mean -
they're in his mind?
Absorb?
''We shall absorb the humans''?
Endoparasitism?
He talks to himself sometimes
because he's the only one who
understands what he's talking about.
If the Wirrn can do that,
we've no chance at all!
Complete physical absorption.
Of us?
They'll literally eat us alive.
Vira, I must talk with Noah.
Come with me. He trusts you.
My duty is to supervise
the revivification.
No! Noah passed command to you.
- Your duties have been widened.
- What is your intention?
To find out exactly
what we're facing.
And only Noah knows that.
I can't leave until the last of
our technical section have awakened.
Harry can handle that.
Can't you, Harry?
- Well, I...
- You've watched Vira.
- You know the procedure.
- Yes, I...
One gramme of scropholine when
the neural register enters the red zone.
- Right...
- He'll be all right.
The injection
must be over the pectoralis major.
That I do understand.
Good luck!
(DOCTOR)
And, Sarah, you stay and help Harry.
Yes, come along, Nurse Smith.
See? This chap's in the red zone.
Hey, there's another one
seems to be awake here.
Well, after 10,000 years,
he can't be in that much of a hurry.
I hope you know what you're doing!
Yes. Dead simple.
Medicine by numbers.
Oh, yes! Dead simple!
Just a question of fixing
a fresh ampoule thing into here.
Keep back! Don't touch me!
- Noah!
- Keep back, I said!
Tell us one thing.
How much time do we have?
Time?
Before the Wirrn
reach their adult form?
It feels near...very near...
The tearing free and then
the great blackness rushing through...
Noah and I were pair-bonded
for the new life.
Let's go back.
Dune and Libri?
And Noah?
I'm sorry.
It must be a terrible shock for you.
So there's just two of us
to check the ship?
- And Vira. She's taken command.
- Where is she?
She's gone with the Doctor.
They're trying to contact Noah.
There's been a snitch-up!
Didn't I tell you, Lycett?
5,000 years ago,
I said there'd be a snitch-up!
- 10,000!
- Oh, beautiful (!)
We should have taken our chance
and gone into the thermic shelters!
We'd be happily dead!
What killed them?
Their lungs, was it?
Hmm?
Dune and Libri? We were told
our lung tissue might atrophy.
- Well, no...
- Something got in here.
Yes... Some sort of space creature.
It cut through
your alarm clock system.
- What?
- Look.
Oh, it's OK - it's dead.
But, unfortunately,
its larvae are still very much alive!
- Vira!
- Vira, it's gone wrong!
Welcome, Lycett. Rogin.
You feel well?
Yes...
Commander.
What are we going to do with it?
How much anatomy do you remember?
Quite a lot, I think.
But you need a blooming entomologist!
We need to find its weaknesses,
and quickly.
- Can we help?
- Not at the moment, thank you.
Then, we will commence
the main phase. Lycett, Rogin.
What was that she said?
They're going to start
the main phase.
Carry on with that thoracic incision.
Not too deep.
- But the safety checks?
- We shall over-ride them.
- Why?
- We can't!
That is my decision.
Take your operating stations.
Vira, the main phase must wait.
Noah said we should expedite
the revivification programme
- and get our people to work.
- He was wrong.
How long would it take?
72 hours for complete revivification.
- Another 24 to evacuate the Ark.
- Four whole days?
At the rate the Wirrn are developing,
they'll have pupated
to imago long before.
- We must try!
- You can't do it!
The Ark will be crawling
with those creatures within hours!
Doctor, the fate of all humanity
might be decided
within the next few hours!
Vira, if you fail, your people
will die in pain and fear.
If I fail, they'll die anyway,
but only the six of us
will know anything about it.
You have an alternative plan?
Between the larval
and the imago forms,
there must be a pupal stage.
Now, the Wirrn will be dormant
and defenceless.
If we can find their weaknesses...
We might destroy them?
Yes.
- Very well. Stand down.
- Good.
There's a power flutter in Section 4,
Commander.
What does that indicate?
External fault.
Shall I check the stacks?
No! The larvae have taken over
the infrastructure.
They seem to need solar radiation.
We should have stayed on Earth,
Lycett!
I liked the Earth! I like heat!
Curious lung structure, Doctor -
look at it.
Yes, fascinating.
A superb adaptation.
What is it?
Obviously, the creature's lungs
recycle the wastes,
almost certainly by enzymes.
Quite wonderful.
Carbon dioxide back to oxygen.
You mean the way plants make oxygen?
Exactly right.
It must live in space,
probably just occasionally
visiting a planetary atmosphere
for food and oxygen,
the way a whale rises from the ocean.
Judging by the size of his mandibles,
this chap doesn't live on plankton!
Noah spoke of a great blackness...
..rushing in...
He meant space, but how did he know?
He now has the race memory
of a Wirrn.
Symbiotic atavism, to be precise.
I'm going to need your help now,
Vira.
Do you have
any spare extension leads, Rogin?
- Yes.
- Hurry! Fetch them!
What are you going to do, Doctor?
A little experiment.
Circuit display, Lycett.
It's forbidden
to alter those circuits.
I need the neural cortex amplifier.
Not for long - don't worry.
(SLURPING)
Right, switch on the video circuit,
Lycett.
It'll take a little time to warm up.
Doctor, what are you trying to do?
Latent neural impressions
can be revived.
- Really?
- Yes.
I've never heard of that!
Advanced technology.
Gypsies used to believe that the eye
retained its last image after death.
Not so far out.
No...
It's not going to work.
Switch off, Lycett.
Now what?
It SHOULD work!
The coil isn't giving
a strong enough stimulus.
I'll have to link in my own cerebral
cortex. That's the only thing.
That is highly dangerous!
I know. Two more leads, Rogin.
- It could burn out a living brain!
- I agree.
An ordinary brain.
But mine is exceptional.
I cannot permit it!
The shock might kill you.
I think not. Unless, of course,
the experiment was interrupted.
That could be dangerous.
- Do you have to do it?
- Why take the risk?
If I find what killed that creature,
we might have a chance of fighting
the Wirrn. That's our only hope.
Yes, but do you have to be...?
It's not just our...existence
that's at stake, Sarah!
It's the entire human race.
It may be irrational of me,
but human beings
are quite my favourite species.
Vira...
- Yes, Doctor?
- Take this.
Don't hesitate to use it
if anything goes wrong.
- You won't have much time.
- What do you mean?
Switch on, Lycett.
Lycett!
Doctor!
He's joining his mind to the Wirrn!
He could remain a part of it
for ever!
Look! It's working!
(CLATTERING)
What was that?
We'd better look.
Over here!
Case-hardened diranium -
bent like tin!
Look out! Behind you!
Shut the door! Shut the door!
What's going...?
Get out, man! Get out!
They've killed Lycett!
There's some sort of huge grub
in there!
- Stop the experiment!
- You'll kill him!
The armoury, Rogin!
Get the fission guns!
- Right!
- I'll come with you!
(BANGING)
Hurry, Rogin!
That door won't hold much longer!
Dune!
Fools! Human fools!
(WHIRRING)
(EXPLOSIONS)
Help me with him, Vira!
Wait! Come away!
Wirrn...
- Wirrn...
- Doctor...
- Wirrn!
- Doctor! Doctor!
No, you can't! I won't let you!
Can't what? Is it time to get up?
Doctor, you're going to be all right!
(BANGING)
Is that noise in my head?
(WHIRRING)
Doctor, come back!
Doctor, don't!
Doctor! Doctor!
Aim lower!
- It's gone back through the grille.
- That was a close one!
- You all right, Sarah?
- Yes.
- Doctor?
- Why?
Why have they gone on to the attack?
They want to destroy us.
But they've only to wait.
In their adult form,
they'll be a thousand times deadlier.
- Fission guns will have no effect.
- How many of them will there be?
At a hatching? A hundred...
A hundred? We won't stand a chance!
How can we fight a hundred of those?
Electricity!
Only by electricity!
That's the one thing I found out!
- Electricity?
- Yes...
The auto-guard killed the queen -
half a million volts.
- We found the queen in the cupboard!
- Amazing willpower!
I could feel it struggling against
death until its task was done.
Rogin, is there any way
we can electrify the infrastructure?
Not from here, Doctor. We'd have to
run cables from the Control Centre.
Control Centre? Right, let's go!
- You can't go that way, Doctor.
- Noah's waiting out there.
Put one foot inside the transom
and you're dead!
Yes... I was forgetting
Noah's extra mobility.
We are trapped.
The Wirrn are using Dune's knowledge
of the Ark.
Perhaps there was something
he didn't know.
Dune was first tech. He knew it all!
He helped design the systems.
Nobody knows it all!
Perhaps he's forgotten
that these transmats are reversible!
- That's clever!
- Isn't it?
And as you appreciate it, Rogin,
you can go first!
I'll give you a hand!
Oh, well...
I never liked it here anyway!
(PINGING)
You next, Harry!
(PINGING)
I say!
(ROGIN) Are you all right?
What a marvellous way to travel!
It always sets my teeth on edge!
That was a power drain.
Hello, Control Centre?
(ROGIN) Hello, Doctor.
We've got a power failure.
It's general, then.
Do you have a fault reading?
Section 4...
That's the secondary stack.
There's no power... (VOICE FADES)
All power systems are self-repairing.
Malicious damage excluded.
Oh, well, obviously,
I am not going anywhere!
Help me, Doctor.
The oxygen pumps have stopped.
Of course! In their pupal stage,
the Wirrn don't need oxygen.
An easy way of killing us.
Well, suffocation
is not the most unpleasant death!
What? We're not finished yet!
- You two stay here.
- Where are you going?
The infrastructure.
If they've entered the pupal stage,
they'll be dormant.
Could be our chance to get down there
and switch the power back on.
- You're forgetting Noah.
- No, I'm not.
I think his job's done now.
He'll be metamorphosing, too.
(CREAKING)