From: steven.k.manfred@UWRF.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Survival plot synopsis  PART THREE !SPOILERS*!
Date: 31 Jul 92 06:07:00 GMT


                                                    

At long last, Part Three of the "Survival" plot synopsis, which I
will now be able to email as well as post.


Before reading this, it is perhaps worth remembering this quote from 
the Doctor in a previous story regarding the Master:

	"Are you suggesting he survived?"
	"I hope not Spandrell!  And there's no one else in the galaxy
I'd say that about.  The quintessence of evil."


SPOILERS!
	









And now, the planet of the Cheetah People provides the final Battlefield
for "Survival," between the Master, and Doctor Who.



SURVIVAL
by Rona Munro
PART THREE


The Master points a triumphant finger at the Doctor and tellshim
he did help him after all.  He kept the others alive just long enough for
his purposes.
The Doctor pleads with Midge for the transformed teen to listen to him,
but Midge seems to ignore him.  The Master goes on to say how only the
animals of this place can leave because they carry it with them.
The Doctor pleads for Midge's attention again, but this time Midge snarls
visciously at him.  
"He doesn't remember his name!" chides the Master.  He takes a firmer
hold of his hide-leash on Midge's neck, looks hypnotically into Midge's
eyes, and tells him to go home.
Midge turns and starts to run, the Master following, and with a tremendous
flash, they disappear off the face of the planet.
"So there is a way out," says Shreela.  The Doctor says this is true.
They must wait for one of themselves to change, and then the others use
that person to escape before that person tries to kill them all.
Paterson voices soem paranoia about not being able to tell who will be next,
and he grows suspicious of Derek's stare at him.  Paterson believes Derek
to be the one changing next, and pushes himself away, when Shreela tells
them all to "Look!"
Further up the path at the foot of the hill stands a lone horse and rider,
a Cheetah rider.  Ace recognizes the Cheetah as the one she helped earlier
and she tells the Doctor that she's better.
"Doctor, look!" she says, as she turns her head back to the others.....
...........and we see that her eyes are a bright, glowing yellow..........
"Come hunting, sister!" says the Cheetah.  The Doctor feebly tells Ace to
wait, but Ace just giggles at them all and takes off running after the
departing Cheetah Woman.  
"Who's next, eh?" yells Paterson.  "Who's next?  If I had a gun I'd...."
"..we'd be in even more trouble than we are already!" interrupts the Doctor.
He tells the others to stay here while he follows Ace.

They run.
They seem to run ahead of time itself, as though each were running in a 
slow-motion dreamscape.  
The Cheetah smiles with the joy of the speed.
Ace smiles her newly-fanged face and revels in the wind in her hair.
The Cheetah raises its head to the sky and gives a silent roar.
And Ace follows her sister, running like the wild she is.....

A pleasurable high-pitched purr pours out of Midge's throat.
He lies on a sofa in a small flat on Earth.
The Master is watching him, bent over to look in Midge's yellow eyes.
He straightens up, turns to a mirror and sees his own reflection betraying
a similar state in his sight.  
"I will be free of it," he commands the reflection.
The reflection does nothing, he turns away, and he repeats his command
of himself, closing his eyes as he does so.
He turns back to the mirror, opens his eyes, and sees them clear and blue
once again.  
He turns to look at Midge, a condescending attitude in his voice as he
speaks to the senseless form on the sofa.
"You are all animal now," he tells the brain-dormant Midge, "You're so
weak, your will devoured!"
he turns away and says "A stronger mind will hold on to itself longer,
a will as strong as mine!"
He turns to the mirror, and a feeling the Master is very unaccustomed to,
self-doubt, invades his features and his words.  "How much longer?"
he asks the pained face of the reflection."
With his confidence in himself failing him, the Master returns to the one
emotion, the one feeling that can perhaps never leave him, hatred, hatred
of one person in particular, a very comfortable feeling which he uses now
to regain his strength.  He looks into the mirror, past the mirror, to
an unseen face beyone the mirror and beyond this world.
"If I have to suffer this contamination, this humiliation...If I am to 
become an animal then like an animal I will destroy you, Doctor.
I will.   Hunt you, trap you,.....and destroy you!"

Ace and the Cheetah Woman lie on the shore of the lake once more.
Ace looks in the Cheetah's eyes, and asks a question.
"I thought cats hated water."
The Cheetah looks back, and with a quickly vibrating voice, tells her
she isn't a cat.  "I'm Karra," she says, "I'm your sister!"
"No you're not," denies Ace.  She looks confused towards the water and
asks why she keeps calling her that.
"You're like me," explains Karra.
"Yeah?" asks Ace.
"You will be!" promises Karra.
Ace smiles and says that this is good.  She likes feeling like this.
She kneels forward, closer to the water, and sees her own reflection,
a reflection new to her, one with fanged teeth and yellow eyes.
She reacts with the one emotion strongest in her, her trust of the Doctor,
and she asks where he is.  She says she has to get back to the Doctor.
Karra ignores this and asks "Are you hungry?"
Ace turns away from the water, still confused, while Karra explains her
creed, the new creed Ace now lives by....
	"Chase.  
	"The hunt.
	"Smell the blood on the wind.
	"Hear the blood in your ears.
	"Run, run beyond the horizon and catch your hunger!"
	Karra howls, and two horses obediently answer her call, walking
slowly down a small hill.  Karra mounts the nearest one, letting the
second walk past her as she climbs on.
Karra repeats her question: "Are you hungry, sister?  Come hunting!"
Ace smiles in response, swiftly climbs to her feet and mounts her steed...
A hand swings a small tracking device set into a gold pocket watch over a
patch of dusty ground.  The hand takes the device closer to its owner's
face to allow the Doctor to see the readings.  He looks up into the red
clouded sky in despair and asks the air, "Ace, how far have you gone?
And can you come back?"
A snarl brings his head back down to look at the ground.  Across from him
lies a Cheetah, lazily looking him up and down from a crouching position
behind a thick of tall grass.
The Doctor looks back at the Cheetah with anger, pulls himself to his 
feet, and continues on his hunt.

Karra and Ace ride down a small valley, Karra stopping her horse at the
foot as she sees a large, dead, half-eaten animal lying nearby.
Karra proclaims with joy that this is good hunting as she dismounts and
approaches the animal ready to end her hunger.
Ace hesitates on her horse, but this time it is her own morality stopping
her rather than reflexive fear.  She looks at Karra and the dead animal
and accuses "You kill people!  You eat people!"
Karra looks back, confused, and explains that which seems simple to her.
"When I'm hungry, I hunt.  When I hunt, I eat."
"Would you eat me?" asks Ace.
Karra turns away and looks at the animal with relish again, pointing out
that there is meat here.
"Yeah, but if there wasn't," says Ace, "Would you kill me?"
Karra turns to her, a challenging look in her eyes as she asks,
"How fast can you run, sister?"
Ace leans back in her saddle, and says "Fast enough."
Karra smiles, breathes a noise of approval, and says that that would be
a good hunt.  "Are you hungry?" she asks again.  "Come and eat!"
Ace smiles, her doubts forgotten, and dismounts.
She approaches the animal, she too ready to devour it and end her hunger,
when a voice stops her in her tracks,
"Ace!" 
She turns to look at the Doctor standing on the hill.
"Ace, come back," he says.
She looks uncertainly at Karra, and the Doctor says "Come home."
She looks at the Doctor again, and then at Karra, and once more he
asks her to "Come home."
She turns once more back to her Professor, this time with her eyes clear
once more.  She runs to his side, and hugs him, burying her tormented
head in his slight chest.  
	"Good hunting, sister!" calls Karra to her departing friend.
"What's happening to me Doctor?" asks Ace.
"It's alright, Ace," he promises her, "We're going home."
He shoots a look of pure hatred at Karra for doing this to his Ace,
and then he leads Ace away from her.
Karra watches them go, and smiles a snarl at their backs.

"Look at me, Look at me."
The Master calls to the dormant brain of Midge.  Midge's mind rouses
slightly and looks into the Master's eyes.
"You have power now, " says the Master, "We have power now."
The words reach Midge's mind, and he smiles in response, "Yeah."
"You can do anything you want now, Midge, anything."
"Yeah!" grins Midge, getting more excited with every word.
"You're my hunting dog Midge, the teeth for my trap.
"Trust me, Midge.  Trust me."
Midge looks obediently into his Master's eyes, and repeats the words.
"Trust me, Midge.  Trust me."
Midge smiles.

"Ace, listen to me."
The Doctor and Ace have rejoined the other three (Shreela, Derek, and
Paterson), and the Doctor calls into the dangerous and driven eyes 
behind Ace's face.
"You're possessed.  It's the planet, the Cheetah People.  You've changed."
The words reach Ace's mind, ans she smiles in response, "Yes."
"You're powerful, dangerous."
"Yes," agrees Ace, getting more excited with every word.
"You can do what they do, you can carry your prey home.  You can help
us escape,"
"Yes," responds Ace.
"But if you do that," warns the Doctor, "You may never change back.
You'd become like the Cheetha People forever."
Ace looks at the Doctor in panic and desperation, hoping he has the
answer.  She asks what she should do, and asks him to tell her.
"I trust you."
"The choice is yours," says the Doctor.
Ace looks at the others for an instant, and makes her choice.
She turns back to the Doctor and reaches out her hand.
He takes it, and with a wide grin, he leads Ace to the others, and he
tells them, "We're going home!"
All five link by hand, and run after Ace, who runs back along the path....

.....and runs to another world.  The Earth, Perivale.
All five appear with a zap-flash beside the Police Box TARDIS.
"I did it," smiles Ace, "I got us back!"
She asks the Doctor is she's alright now, and he says yes, she is.
Shreela looks around in amazement, hardly ablt to believe they're back
in Perivale.  She tells Ace she has to get home, gives her a farewell
hug, and runs down the street.
Derek and Paterson are so stunned they're still holding hands.  Paterson
looks down at his grasp, yanks his hand away and says "What's your
game, then?"  
The Sergeant now goes on to deny the whole experience, telling himself
how it was all a delusion, although his tattered and shredded clothes
bear witness to the reality of it all.  
He insists he just had a black-out due to stress and overwork.  
He then criticizes Ace for not getting a doctor to him, since that was
the least she could have done.  He then looks at the Doctor, and
criticizes him as a Doctor; he should have known better than to keep 
him lying about in the street.  
"Thanks Ace," sneers Ace, "Thanks Doctor, thanks for saving my life and
getting me back home."
Paterson says he doesn't know what she's talking about.
Derek grabs the Doctor's arm and shakes his hand vigorously.
"Thanks Ace," he says, "Thanks Doctor, thanks for saving my life and
getting me back home!!"
Derek runs down the street, and Paterson says he's late for the self-
defense class.  Paterson walks off the other way up the street.
Ace moves to enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor hesitates and ponders
something, tapping his quesiton mark umbrella on his chin.
"Looks like everything's back to normal then," tries Ace, but the 
Doctor still hesitates.
"Oh, come on Professor, what are we still hanging around here for?"
"Unfinished business," responds the Doctor cryptically, "The Master."
Ace asks if he's still around here, this dump of the Universe.
the Doctor reaches an arm out to Ace, grabs a thought from her
direction, and pulls it back to his head.  "It was you..."
"Yeah, yeah," completes Ace, so she thinks, "who wanted to come home
right.  Listen, *this* is the only home I've got now, right?"
punctuating her question with a slap on the side of the Police Box.
"No, no," complains the Doctor, "it was you who brought us here,
home.  Therefore, Midge must have....."
He starts pacing the street quickly and asks Ace where Midge lives.
She responds with an "I don't know," but says she thinks it was in
some old flats over in the direction her hand is now pointing.
"Come on," goads the Doctor, and takes off down the street, Ace
hesitating, and then rushing to catch him up.

A telephone receiver hangs from its cord.
The cord hangs from the main unit placed on a desk.
The desk stands in the corner of a motorcycle garage, somewhere in
Perivale.
Midge runs his hand admiringly over the gas tank of one cycle, but 
then turns to another bike near the centre of the room.
The room is a shop with a large streetfront window, a window now strewn
across the floor in glass shards.
Midge mounts the bike, and looks out the open wall at the face of his
Master watching from outside.  The Master smiles at him, and Midge
speaks his thoughts:
	"Just the start, Midge.  Just the start."

Ace and the Doctor are searching the small confines of Midge's flat.
Ace is looking over Midge's album collection, and wonders how this
group is still having a go since they were drawing pensions when she
was last clubbing.
The Doctor bends over next to the sofa, and puts a hand to his nose
as he sees the corpse of a half-eaten, small, purple-furred cat.
A child's cries turn their heads, and Ace leads the Doctor down a
small, tight hallway to a lavatory.  Inside, Ace finds a crying little
dark-haired girl, crying about her cat.
"The bad cat killed it, the bad cat the man brought!" she cries at them.
"What man?  Which way did he go?  Show me," says the Doctor, ushering
the girl and Ace outside the flat.

The young men of the self-defense class are lined up and talking amongst
themselves at the Youth Club gymnasium.  
They turn when they hear someone enter behind them, and are a little
surprised to see it isn't Sergeant Paterson.
It is Midge, dressed in leather biking clothes, Fonz-style, complete
with sunglasses to conceal his eyes.
"Waiting on the Sarge?" asks Midge.
"He's been held up," he tells them as he strides towards them.
"He asked me to have a little chat with you.  I learned a secret today,
a secret for success."
He has now walked through them, and now he turns and looks at them all
with a sweep of his head as he tells them, "Thought I'd share it with you."

"He went over there!" 
The little girl points off into the distance from this third or fourth
story landing outside the flat.  
"Midge and the Bad Cat-Man.  Midge went away, and then he came back.
He's my big brother.  He's got funny eyes now!"
Ace kneels down by her head and asks "Where's your Mum, Squeak?"
"He made her go away!" she tells Ace.
Ace looks up at the Doctor and asks why the Master's still doing it.
She straightens up and asserts that he doesn't need to keep the Cheetahs
busy.  "he's safe!  What's he still doing it for?"
"Mailce," answers the Doctor.
Ace looks down at "Squeak," and tells the Doctor that the girl's gran's
the next floor up, and she'll take her there.  
She then looks at the Doctor again and sees he isn't saying something.
"It's not just malice," she maintains.
"Survival," shrugs the Doctor, "It's what he lives for.  He must hop,
believe he can find something...."
"What?" asks Ace.
"...to destroy me," completes the Doctor.
"You'd wipe the floor with him!" exclaims Ace.
"Yes, well we are an explosive combination," explains the Doctor,
"One day one of us might blot the other one out."
A small white cat knocks over trash cans nearby, while the Doctor explains
his own plan, his own trap....
"If only we could track him down, take him by surprise before he's ready..."
Ace suddenly steps back, down one of the steps behind her, putting her
head back on level with the little girl.  Her eyes are closes, but when
they open, they are yellow once more.
"Bad Cat-Man," says the little girl.

A kitling leaps from the Master's arms and onto the ground as he walks
slowly to the door of the Youth Club.  His eyes are yellow and his teeth
are fanged.  He stops outside the door and looks at his reflection in the
glass.
	
Ace sees the reflection too.
"He's at the Youth Club," she tells the Doctor.
He looks at her with concern, but when she gets to her feet, her eyes
are normal again.  
"I know he is!" she says with emphasis.
They both bundle "Squeak" along, hurrying to get her up to the next floor
so that they can resume their chase.....

"It's just common sense, right?" questions Midge of the self-defense class.
Midge delivers a rallying speech to his nation, explaining his creed and
what he stands for, what they can too stand for:
	"It's just the way of the world.
	"Survival of the fittest.
	"Get rid of the deadwood,
	"Let the wasters go to the wall,
	"And the strong shall inherit the Earth.
	"You and me."
He now challenges them with questions.
"Do you hear what I'm saying?" he demands.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT?" he SHOUTS.
He whips off his sunglasses, revealing his glowing yellow eyes.
One of the class moves in surprise, until Midge says...
	"Don't move!"
			"Turn here."
	The Master stands behind the assembly, and like zombies or
robots, they all turn to look at him, and stare into his eyes.
		"Do you understand me?"
		"Do you understand me alright?" repeats Midge behind them.
	The Master begins slowly walking through the crowd.
		"You'll do anything I say..."
		"You'll do anything I say..." repeats Midge.
	The Master joins Midge, and stands to his side..
		"Won't you?" says the Master.
		"Won't you?" says the Dog.
			"Yes, Master,"
		answers the self-defense class.
The door to the gymnasium again opens and shuts, admitting Paterson, who
shouts at the class's backs, telling them he had a wee accident but that
everything's alright now.  
He smacks his hands together and tells them, "Right, lads, let's get 
moving, let's starting seeing a little bit of sweat...."
He trails off as the crowd parts and he can see the orators in the front,
where he sees the transformed Midge, and the Cat-Eyed Master.
		He swallows hard.
		"Why don't you take over now, Midge?" asks the Master.
Midge slowly steps forward toward the Sergeant, a grin slowly forming on
his cheeks, and the self-defense class begins to encircle the dumb-founded
Sergeant Paterson.....

Ace and the Doctor race down a Perivale street, turning a corner rapidly
and heading for the door of the Youth Club.  The Doctor swings open the
door and first Ace and then himself slip inside.

Inside, the gymnasium is empty, except for one man dead on the floor.
Sergeant Paterson.
"So much for the SAS survival course," eulogizes the Doctor.
Ace looks down on his body, then blinks and gasps.  Her eyes open yellow
again.  
The Doctor looks into those eyes and asks her "Where?"

A motorcycle stands on a hill, a hill in the park, the park above Perivale.
Ace and the Doctor walk up this hill, stopping at the motorcycle.
The Doctor runs his hand along it's surface, and remarks that is is the
Master who has chosen the time, place, and means.
"The trail stops here," says Ace.
The Doctor has her turn to look at him, and she is again looking with yellow
eyes, and so he warns her.
The color fades, and she asks if she went again.  
"I don't even feel it," she protests, "I don't even feel myself go.
Doctor, will I stay like this?"
Before he can answer her, the sound of a running motorcycle tears across
the ground.
At the crest of the hill runs up a motorcycle, being ridden by a young man
seen only in silhouette, and around him a wall of shapes of young men
stretch to the left and to the right.
Ace begins to rush forward to meet them, but the Doctor pushes her back
and steps forward himself.
The Master steps up the hill to the mounted Midge's side, and hands him
the large bone-knife Midge had created earlier on the Cheetah Planet.
			"You are my hunting dog."
			"The teeth for my trap."
			"The teeth to destroy!"
Ace climbs on the motorcycle, her eyes once again yellow.
The Doctor throws her off the bike with his umbrella, Ace landing in a heap
on the ground.  "Ace, listen to me, LISTEN TO ME!" he commands.
		"If you fight, you'll change!
		"You'll change completely, forever!!!"
The Doctor gets on the bike himself, and kicks the starter, the engine
obediently revving into noisy action, 
And the Doctor                stares              at Midge on the hill.

	Midge smiles in anticipation, and storms down the hill.
	The Doctor grits his teeth in response, and rushes forward.
	Midge reaches the level plateau between them and fang-smiles.
	The Doctor frowns and hunches down on his seat.
		They are on a head-on collision course.
Ace sees the collision coming, and screams out "NO!!!!"
The two bikes keep coming, each on the same line, each headed for a....
			     COLLISION.
The two bikes meet in a single point, in a single white and red cloud of
exploding petrol, in a single sound like a bomb inside a pipe....
Ace whispers "No," again, and rushes to the point....
Midge lands next to the wreckage, injured, dirty, and confused.  He looks
around himself, and sees his Master slowly walking toward him.
	"Survival of the fittest," recites the Master.
	"The weak must be eliminated, so that the healthy can flourish."
The Master reaches down and takes Midge's sunglasses, and the bone-knife
lying next to Midge's broken form.
	"You know what to do, Midge," says the Master to his Dog.
	Midge turns his head painfully away, looks into space,
	rests his head slowly on the ground, and.......dies.
			"Good boy," says his Master.
Ace runs to near the point of collision, stopping short of the burning
wreckage of the bikes, and picking up the only evidence of the Doctor she
can see....his hat and umbrella, and she cries.
As the Master pockets the sunglasses, the young men of the Youth Club
begin striding forward, like the unliving, toward Ace.
Ace looks up and sees them coming.  She orders herself that she must not
fight.  "I must not fight!" she demands herself.
			She cannot fight.
			She cannot flee.
		in the creed of Survival of the Fittest,
			Ace would die.
		This is a way of life she is denying,
		And thus she calls on a better way of
			Surviving.
		
			"Help me!" cries Ace.
		"WILL SOMEBODY HELP ME?!?!?" SCREAMS ACE.

A wind blows up, a flash lights the area, a noise, and a horse stands on
the ground, with a single rider, a rider who looks like a Cheetah and like
a Woman.        A rider by the name of Karra.
The youths of the club suddenly stop and watch the Cheetah, and listen to
the creed that Karra follows......

				"Chase.
		"To hunt in the morning and live till evening.
		"Run out of the light and slip into the dark.
	   "Die, at last, with your enemy's blood in your mouth..."
		"WITH YOUR ENEMY'S BLOOD IN YOUR MOUTH!!!!!!!"
			And the Cheetah howls....

Karra rides her horse past Ace and into the group of youths.  Their
hypnosis cracks and they scatter in panic.  
She circles the bike wreckage and Midge's body once, then completes one
half-circle and stops her horse in front of the one figure who did not run,
				the Master.
			"Get off the horse," he orders.
				Karra obeys.
		Karra steps forward to three feet in front of him.
		She listens and looks into his eyes as he tells
		her who he is, what he is, and what his power is.
			The Master speaks his creed.

			"You have no power here.
			"This is not your place.
			    "I command here.
			    "I command you.
		    "I can do anything I wish to you,
			"And you can do nothing.
			    "Nothing to me."

	  	    Karra looks at him, and answers,	
		
			     "Do you bleed?"

		    The Master looks slightly nervous,
		and holds tight to the knife behind his back.

       	      "I can always do something to you, if you bleed..."

			Karra leaps on the Master,
			but does not reach him,
			for she falls on the knife
			being held outstretched,
			by the Master's right hand.

				"KARRA!!!"
				  -Ace-
			
		     He drives the knife further up her
		     stomach, and she crumples to the
		     ground at his feet, a painful purr
		     squeezing out from her broken form.

		      The Master looks down at his work,



			....and chuckles hollowly...




			He looks at Ace, smiles, and 
			       walks away......




The Master runs down a hillside, stopping at the sight of the Doctor's
legs sticking out from behind a junked sofa and other pieces of ruined
furniture left for trash on the hillside.  He tosses aside his murder 
weapon, and chuckles at the sight of the inert Doctor.  He stands and
watches for a moment, then stumbles his way down the hill.....
The Doctor wakes and pulls his head out of the rubbish pile.
"Oh, very good," he mutters dangerously, "Very amusing...."
He picks himself up and runs after the Master....

"Karra!" cries Ace at the motionless body across from her.
She gets up off the ground and runs to Karra's side.  She turns the
bloody body over and is surprised to see that Karra is now human,
and worried, as this is surely a sign that Karra is dying.
			"I can hunt in the dark,"
      says Karra in a voice that is weak, but a tone that is strong.
"I'll get you something," promises Ace, "I'll make you well again!"
			"I can run, into the dark,"
			     "Run forever!"	
"Just wait," pleads Ace, "I'll get you something!"
		  Karra looks at Ace with a smile and says,
			"Good hunting, sister..."
		  Karra smiles, leans her head back....
			and smiles no more.......
			Ace too smiles no more,
		     She weeps on her sister's body.



the Master is attempting to pick the lock of the door to the Doctor' TARDIS
with two metal rods.  He does not see the small figure step around the
corner until he is surprised with the words,
			    "Good hunting?"
The Master looks up and drops the rods, and speaks.
		     "It would have been too easy."
The Doctor takes two steps forward.
The Master takes two steps back.
    	   "They do say opposites attract," replies the Doctor.
		     "But this is the end Doctor."
The Master blinks and smiles a fanged grin, and he looks with yellow eyes...
			"Do you see it?" he asks.
		"It's a power.  A power from that planet.
They circle each other slowly, each circling to remain facing the other.....
			"It's growing within me.
			"Are you frightened yet?"
			"No," spits the Doctor.
			     "You should be.
	    	     "You should be, it nearly beat me.
		"Such a simple, brutal power, just the power
		      of tooth and claw, it nearly
		       destroyed me.  A Time Lord.
			      "But I won."
		      "I control that force, Doctor.
			"And now, at last........
		   "I have the power to destroy you...."
He jumps forward, slaps his hand on the Doctor's chest and throws him to
the ground......

....the ground of a dying world.
		     "Welcome to my new home, Doctor!"
The Doctor struggles underneath the Master's grip on the bleak surface of
the dying Cheetah Planet.  
The Master picks up a large bone for a weapon and prepares to smash in the
Doctor's skull, but surprisingly finds his strengthened smash arrested in
mid-swing by the arm of the Doctor.  He winces in pain as the Doctor
squeezes his arm with unnatural strength, and falls to his side.
The Doctor picks up a ruined skull, raises it triumphantly over his head,
ready to destroy the head of his ancient adversary with one smash....
		   the Doctor looks down on the Master,
			   with yellow eyes.
He stops his swing in mid-air as he looks through the eyes of the planet,
the eyes of the Cheetahs, and sees the Cheetahs before him fade away into
death as their world explodes in volcanic fury about them.
		    "What am I doing?" asks the Doctor.
		    "I've got to stop!  We've gotta go!"
		The Master says they can't go, not this time.
	 	    "YES WE CAN!" pleads the Doctor.
"Escape to what?" asks the Master.  "I don't choose to live as an animal!"
		The Doctor looks at the Master in desperation.
		He looks around and gestures to this planet as
		it's land melts into lava, as its water explodes
		into fire, as its air wretches in violent storms.
		As the planet itself finally disintegrates......
		He looks at this world that is dying, dying 
		because of all the fighting, the planet linked
		intrinsically to its inhabitants exploding in
		the final ancient conflict between these two
		age-old foes.  
		The Doctor looks at what has been done, and what
		they have done, and what they are doing, and
		what it is doing to their world, thier "home."
		He looks and knows what he must not do, and
		speaks a creed against the law of Survival of
				the Fittest.

		"IF WE FIGHT, WE WILL DESTROY THIS PLANET!"
			"WE WILL DESTROY OURSELVES!"

		The Master takes advantage of the Doctor's
		hesitation, and decides to fight.  He 
		forces the Doctor to his knees, and holds him
		by his collar.
		     "You should have killed me, Doctor."
		The Master raises a bony knife in the air,
			ready to destroy the Doctor.
			       And the World.
		
		The Doctor screams his final protest, and 
		decides he will not be a part of this.
			He will not fight, for....
		
   	   "IF WE FIGHT LIKE ANIMALS, WE DIE LIKE ANIMALS!!!!!!"

		The Master splits the air with his knife,
	
and a split opens up in the dimensions of space and time, for the Doctor
is leaving the planet.
				He goes home.

The Doctor materializes on the street next to the TARDIS, with his eyes
closed and his voice repeating his earlier scream.  He opens his eyes,
and they are normal blue once again.  He looks around and sees that he is
indeed, "Home."
			"Did you hear that racket?"
	The nasal voice of a local resident attacks the Doctor in a
	verbal assault.
		  "Flipping cat fights all hours of the day."
	The Doctor tries to tell the angry young woman that he thinks
	she'll find things quietening down now.
			"So you say, flipping cats."
	She tells him her creed, a creed shared by far too many on this
	planet, a creed of indifference to the battles for survival
	around them....
			"It's the owners I blame.
			"They want the pet, right?
			"They want the animal,
		   "But do they keep it under control?"
	The Doctor shrugs at her, and says "Well, we try."
			"So you say," she spits at him.
	The woman turns and storms angrily away, her thoughts full of
	blame......


Ace crouches next to the body of Karra.  Karra's face is dead-blue.
Ace tries to cry, but all her tears have already dried up.....
She looks up with a start as she hears a wind quickly rise, she sees a 
flash, and a Cheetah Creature appears on horseback.
She gets to her feet and steps back, letting the Cheetah reclaim its 
own.  It rides around the dead bodies of Karra and Midge once, and then
with a second flash, all are gone from the face of the Earth.
	Ace kneels on the ground again, wiping tears from her cheeks,
	staring at the ground where they did lay, and fitting the
	Doctor's hat onto her head.
	A familiar hand reaches down to her head, and fingers the hat.
	"Mine, I believe," says the Doctor's voice, and the hat flips
	up his arm and onto his head.
	Ace smiles but does not look at him.  She lifts the umbrella
	and he takes it in his hand, saying "Thank you."
	Ace still looks at the ground, smiles and asks 
	"Where have they gone?"
	The Doctor explains to her what he knows.
	"They've been taken back to the wilderness.
	"The place is different, but the hunt goes on.
	"You know all about the hunt, don't you Ace?"
			Ace tells him about the hunt.
	    	     "It felt like I could run forever.
"Like I could smell the wind and feel the grass under my feet and just.....
				"run forever."

	      He looks into the distance and says, a little sadly,
		"The planet's gone, but it lives on inside you.
			      "It always will."

			      "Good," says Ace.
			"And the Master?" she asks....
			"Who knows," he replies........

		The Doctor asks a question of his own......
			     "Where to now, Ace?"
			     "Home," she answers.
			       "Home?" he asks.
			  "The TARDIS!" she replies.
		     "Yes, the TARDIS," smiles the Doctor.

			They walk arm in arm into the
			woods behind the park, back 
			to Perivale, back to the TARDIS,
			back home.   
			
			As they walk, the Doctor tells
			Ace something, another creed,
			perhaps the best of all creeds,
			the simple creed he lives by,
			the creed Ace does now too.

			"There are worlds out there,
			"Where the sky is burning.
			"Where the sea's asleep,
			"And the rivers dream
			"People made of smoke
			"And cities made of song.
			"Somewhere there's danger,
			"Somewhere there's injustice,
			"And somewhere else the tea's getting cold!


		    "Come on Ace, we've got work to do!"






The Doctor
SYLVESTER McCOY
Ace
SOPHIE ALDRED
The Master
ANTHONY AINLEY
Paterson
JULIAN HOLLOWAY
Karra
LISA BOWERMAN
Midge
WILLIAM BARTON
Shreela			Derek
SAKUNTALA RAMANEE	DAVID JOHN
Squeak			Neighbour
ADELE SILVA		MICHELLE MARTIN

Title Music Composed by   Theme Arrangement
RON GRAINER		  KEFF McCULLOCH
Incidental Music
DOMINIC GLYNN
Special Sound
DICK MILLS

Production Manager	Production Assistant
GARY DOWNIW		VALERIE WHISTON
Assistant Floor Managers
STEPHEN GARWOOD		LEIGH POOLE
Visual Effects Designer	Video Effects
MALCOLM JAMES		DAVE CHAPMAN
Vision Mixer		Graphic Designer
SUSAN BRINCAT		OLIVER ELMES
Properties Buyer	Computer Animation
NICK BARNETT		CAL VIDEO
Engineering Manager	OB Cameramen
BRIAN JONES		PAUL HARDING   ALAN JESSOP
Videotape Editor
HUGH PARSON

Lighting		Sound
IAN DOW			LES MOWBRAY
Costume Designer	Make-Up Designer
KEN TREW		JOAN STRIBLING

Script Editor
ANDREW CARTMEL
Production Associate
JUNE COLLINS
Designer
NICK SOMERVILLE
Producer
JOHN NATHAN-TURNER
Director
ALAN WAREING

episode copyright BBC-Tv  MCMLXXXIX

this synopsis by Steven.K.Manfred@uwrf.edu



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