Party Games

Compromise Candidate | Yes, Minister : 

1984 Christmas Special | BBC Comed...

Bernard Woolley: [Discussing possible reasons for the Prime Minister's early retirement] Minister, I've heard something quite different.

James Hacker: What?

Bernard Woolley: That there is £1 million worth of diamonds from South Africa in a Downing Street safe, but of course it's only a rumour.

James Hacker: Is that true?

Bernard Woolley: Oh, yes.

James Hacker: So, there ARE all those diamonds in Downing Street!

Bernard Woolley: Are there?

James Hacker: You just said there were.

Bernard Woolley: No, I didn't.

James Hacker: Yes, you did! You said you'd heard this rumour, I said is it true, you said yes!

Bernard Woolley: I said yes, it was true that it was a rumour.

James Hacker: You said you heard it was true!

Bernard Woolley: No, I said it was true that I heard it!

Annie Hacker: I'm sorry to cut into this important discussion, but do you believe it?

James Hacker: I believe I heard it. Oh, about the diamonds. No.

Annie Hacker: Is it impossible?

James Hacker: No, but it's never been officially denied. First rule in politics: never believe anything until it's officially denied.

British Intelligence

Full episode available to watch - After Dark: British Intelligence

"This is an example I've been involved [in] :

As far back as 1938, after Munich, there were two individuals 

who volunteered to assassinate Hitler -- one was Mason Mcfarland, 

who was our military attacher in Berlin, the other was My Wartime Chief, 

in New York -- he was then living in England, and was A Director of a company 

called PressSteel, Sir William Stevenson -- well, he was Mr William Stevenson, then --

well both of these gentlemen volunteered to assassinate Hitler --

and they were informed by Lord Halifax, who was then Foreign Secretary 

that Diplomacy had not yet been superseded by assassination --" =D

"But you were in America, working for BSC with Stevenson, 

Didn't you assassinate people in America...? 

Didn't BSC knock people off in America, 

who were opposed to America joining The War....?" 

"I think ONE was, on a SHIP, as far as i know -- It was only --"

"Only one! Only one --"

"I don't know who would be giving out information to The Enemy it should be said that in 1939

why was this trap assassinated i'm tired didn't get that only one man was assassinated

to my knowledge in in the united states by the uh

british security coordination which was under the direction of william stevenson

there was one seaman on a a neutral ship i think it was a

portuguese ship who was detected giving information to the

germans and as far as i know he was liquidated but i only know this is in

the water case no this is before america joined

which as i understand it was an attempt to to get the united states to join the war

right did the operation intrepid not consist in in very broad and general terms of a series of essentially Dirty Tricks-- yeah? 

I know there were any dirty tricks about um there is some uh persuasive effort

made and with the help of a men like general donovan um

american destroyers were offered to the british and accepted in return for bases

in bermuda and the caribbean but um there were any specific dirty tricks i

mean is it not true that the to the british intelligence uh and uh

two of the things that british intelligence uh did through one of their agents was uh

to um capture the italian naval ciphers

and also uh the vichy french cyphers the italian cyphers helped the

battle of cape matapan to uh that's not dirty i'm sure that's not dirty jason what about forge letters what about

blackmail there was i don't think it was blackmail but there were certainly fabricated uh documents

fabricated letters there was um one letter which

uh apparently emanated from the bolivian minister

in in berlin to uh the bolivian prime minister

um suggesting that the germans should

be encouraged to take over bolivia but you see

this important uh this was significant because into what it what it meant was

the germans through the politicians used to strengthen uh uh aircraft no wait wait

there isn't there's a point here and i think you're right and i think mr hyde's forgotten his own book room 303 if you read that alongside a man called

intrepid you will see that was indeed a fairly serious campaign of disinformation and dirty tricks in north america aimed at the isolationist

opponents of america john in the war done by the british state british government 

...I just finished and say that

the result of this letter was that um

The German Mission in La Paz, 

the capital of Bolivia was closed down 

and The Germans were turned 

out of the country, and 

the actual document, which 

I mentioned, was delivered 

to President Roosevelt 

who read it out in one of 

his fireside chats, indeed; 

And The Individual who was responsible 

for uh producing this document, 

which was written in the kind of 

Spanish that was customary in Bolivia 

at that time was -- 

your humble servant 

[ I.e. - "Me. I wrote it." ]

"And did you work with Cecil Roberts on this...?"

"Uh uh no, not Cecil Roberts, Cedric Belfridge, 

who was the chap -- Cecil Roberts wasn't that --

"Let me ask this do we feel ... 

Is it is it a general feeling 

that in fact these kind of "Dirty Tricks", 

in inverted commas, are perhaps 

perfectly legitimate if 

The Cause is right....?"

"I mean, in Wartime, yes, 

but in Wartime --"

"But America wasn't at WAR --"

SHARE This with NO ONE --

"I know a rock group in Berlin called The Klingons, who decided to change their name, because there's another rock group that come along in England called The Klingons, which is becoming better-known than this group in Berlin -- 

So even though they had The Name first, they feel they got to surrender it, so they won't get confused with this English group, so they changed their name to The Cloaking Device -- which was STOLEN by The Klingons, from The Romulans..!! 

You see, Star Trek is our new Mythology, it's an international language! 

I read in the Irish Times while when I was living in Dublin, every hour of the day, 24 hours of the day, every hour on this planet there are 1 Million people looking at Star Trek reruns in various parts of The Planet, so it's becoming The UNIVERSAL Language --

Sometimes when I want to describe the The Eight Circuits of The Nervous System, I use Star Trek, since everybody can understand that Scotty is The BioSurvival circuit, McCoy is The Emotional Circuit, Spock is The Rational Circuit, Kirk is The Sexual-social Circuit, and the various extraterrestrials are The HIGHER circuits and uh -- 

It's A Language everybody understands, like they once understood Greek mythology; nowadays, if you refer to Greek mythology, you got to put in footnotes "Hercules was a very strong man", you know, like Kurt Vonnegut did in Bluebeard."

Marxism is basically a maneuver to put Other People down --

"....long airplane flights, and I started thinking, uh, they always, you know --

They always show the same movie at the beginning of, uh, these flights, and uh --

It always ends up with, "Smoking is forbidden anywhere on the plane and if you try to creep into the men's room we got smoke detectors to catch you and to try to deactivate the smoke detector is a federal crime punishable by 30 years imprisonment to find $20 million and having your balls cut off or something to that effect --"

-- and uh, I -- I started thinking there are two types of people who suffer on long-distance flights : Heroin addicts and Nicotine addicts; 

But The Heroin Addicts don't really have to suffer much because they can they they can go into The John, and do up their works, and have a fix, and there's no detector that'll detect them; so The Heroin Addicts can just fly across country all the time without going through withdrawal, enjoying themselves basking in the glow of their addiction, while The Nicotine Addicts are all slowly falling apart because they got these smoke-detectors --

And it kind of makes me wonder, who does Our Government really hate more...? The Heroin Addicts or The Nicotine Addicts...? It's, uh --

I never thought about that question before uh it's just uh then I thought maybe uh maybe that's the cure for the nicotine problem which is you know The Country is getting more and more into a turning into An Armed Camp, especially California --

.....by the way I speak uh so you know my B I speak as an ex-smoker which is not the same as a non-smoker -- it's not that I never smoked I was addicted, and I'm not here to preach to those who are still because I know how hard it is to kick; I'm just reflecting on the paradoxes of, theoretically we hate heroin addicts more than nicotine addicts, but on long airline flights, we make the nicotine addicts suffer more than the heroin addicts -- suppose we try to turn all the nicotine addicts into heroin addicts so that they could have relief on these long flights?

If we could get them all off nicotine on the heroin they would not suffer so much -- this would be the humanitarian thing to do, they just go in the men's room, do up their work and there, you know.... That's civilised compared to the cruelties we're inflicting on them now --

Like, uh, one of the things I like about Amsterdam, my favourite city in Europe, is everybody in Europe -- 'all the men', I should say not everybody -- all the men in Europe say the best window shopping in Europe --

Ah, some people have been to Amsterdam and know what I'm referring to -- Uh, a lot of coffee houses in Amsterdam where you can buy hasheesh, and uh, it's great -- there you are, just sitting around drinking coffee with your friends, and buying hashish, and uh every now and then The Cop on The Beat comes in and takes a toke from somebody he recognises, and my God! Civilisation is possible on planet Earth it's just that The Dutch are the only ones who figured out how to do it! 

And I was in one of those coffee shops and I saw a sign it said "No Hard Drugs Please" -- I thought "Gee,that's the essence of the Dutch sensibility, that word, 'please'! -- that's so nice, you know that compared to the hostility of the signs you see in this country as a general rule no hard drugs please and you know if you're sitting around in a Amsterdam coffee shop with friends uh smoking your hash it does bring down the tone of the establishment if you look over and there's some goddamn junkie there ready to shoot up you know it's just not classy so so I really admire the Dutch um but then I realised I've been in the junkie neighborhood of Amsterdam it's right next to the red light neighborhood which is what I was talking about before the best window shopping in Europe uh and everybody in the junky neighborhood is smoking like a what's the smoking like a fish no no drinking like a fish smoking like a chimney and so heroin and nicotine and they can be addicted to both so getting all the nicotine addicts not the heroin won't work so there's another beautiful Theory destroyed by a few inconvenient facts what has this got to do with Quantum psychology nothing I'm just getting warmed up as just what happened to be on my mind uh somebody was telling me a story about a friend of theirs desperately hunting around here for an ashtray and that brought all this back to mine uh I lived in Ireland for six years Ireland uh is famous all over Europe and so psychiatric and social worker circles for having the highest alcoholism rate of any European country and uh this is a uh a source of continuous investigation the Irish are the most uh surveyed and studied people around because everybody wants to know why their alcoholism rate is so high uh I can't seem to get off the subject of addiction uh if they can figure out why their rate is so high then that might give us clues about you know what to do about it so they're always studying the Irish and uh the people who don't drink in in Dublin uh pretend to Ireland is the biggest consumer of non-alcoholic beer in the world every Pub in in Dublin has non-alcoholic beers and uh the reason is that the pub is the center of Irish Social Life everybody goes to the pub at night that's where you meet your friends and so if you're if you suddenly you decide you're an alcoholic and you got to give up drinking your social life comes to an end or it would if it weren't for the Blessed invention of non-alcoholic beers now the alcoholics in Ireland can sit around the pub with their friends drinking non-alcoholic beer and looking perfectly normal by Irish standards uh you don't look normal in Ireland without a drink in your hand um uh the Irish also smoke like chimneys to get back to that simil I should come up with something more original but uh smoke I like smoking like a fish that's better cuz it's more confusing like uh that great graffiti I once saw in a men's room in Berkeley uh a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle makes you think doesn't it h in Ireland they have heard the news uh that smoking is dangerous and hazardous and all that but they they don't take it seriously so everybody smokes continually and when I was living in Ireland I'm I was coming back to this country to do lectures and it's like uh going from one planet to another here's a planet where no matter where you go the room is full of smoke then you come to this planet where there's no smoke visible anywhere if anybody lights up everybody starts throwing stones at them and tries to destroy them and uh then you then you notice these other differences in this country they're just starting to allow uh legal gambling in a few places a few states are beginning to liberalize all through my life it's been strictly it's been Unthinkable unamerican uh abominable the idea that the of a state run lottery or to let the tracks take uh bets off the way from the track or anything like that in Ireland every block right next to the pub there's a beding establishment and uh in this country uh until uh Thomas gets confirmed abortion is totally legal everywhere outside of Louisiana uh in Ireland it's totally illegal am I just rambling or if I started talking about Quantum psychology uh the Irish assume it's perfectly normal for everybody to drink and for some people to drink heavily It's Perfectly Normal to smoke it's abominable to have an abortion and divorce is illegal too and of course everybody knows who are the worst villains in the world it's the English and nobody in Ireland has ever doubted that for the last 800 years since the English first invaded them and they've been trying to get the English out ever since 

Uh, in Amsterdam uh -- you have an entirely different culture where you can uh uh where the porno theaters are not only wide open but they have gigantic letters as big as the theaters on Broadway or Market Street in San Francisco no nothing more Broadway you got to go to in New York to see and and the these great big signs say things like Li [ __ ] inside in in English uh because most of the tourists are English English is becoming an international language in Ireland prostitution is illegal and uh which means there are no prostitutes in Ireland uh I was in Ireland two days when I found out which part of the keys the prostitutes all gather on uh but the police officially don't know it homosexuality is illegal in Ireland uh the penalty is 20 years at hard labor still uh so there are no gay men in Ireland there's a restaurant across the street from Trinity College uh called the pink cartion uh the no I mean the green Carnation what's the matter with me the green Carnation and it's quite it's uh got a picture of Oscar wild in the window one of Trinity most famous graduates after Jonathan Swift and Samuel Becket and it big sign saying basket lunches uh but the police uh do not know of any gay bars in duin because they're illegal actually there is one gay man in Ireland his name is David narus he's a professor at Trinity College and a member of the Irish Senate and he is suing the Irish government claiming the law against the sodomy that's what the law calls it the law against sodomy is interfering with his civil liberties and uh he's a member of the Senate I think it's the only country in the world where I remember of the Senate is suing the country itself of violating its civil liberties of course he is not really the only gay man in Ireland it's just that they pretend he isn't until like uh everybody grows up within a culture uh that tries to teach them that the way our culture does things is the natural way ordained by God it's the only rable rational and sensible way and all other cultures all the damn foreigners are all crazy dirty degenerate and subhuman and uh they they also every place you go they also believe tourists are a curse invented by God to punish us for our sins uh the reason tourists appear a curse invent by God is uh that tourists don't act the way people are supposed to act if they come from Germany they don't act like us they act like Germans if they come from Ireland they act like Irish if they come from Japan they act like Japanese they don't know the right way to act which is the way we were taught to act and I have pondered all my life all my adult life why do people spend so much time on the singular occupation of making life hard for other people that is to say why do people put so much energy into trying to put other people down to find nasty things to say about them ways to criticize them ways to humiliate them ways to make them feel like they're one step down well according to most standard psychological theories people do this because they feel insecure people who feel insecure are trying to put other people down that makes them feel a little less insecure because they put somebody even further down than they feel okay that theory sort of makes sense but then you look around and you see how much time people spend trying to put one another down and the only conclusion you can come to is that everybody feels insecure 

"Human Society consists of a bunch of people who basically have this program, which the great New York psychologist Albert Ellis defined way back in The 50s as,
"I am a No-Good Shit." --

Ellis, I regard as my great predecessor in using Honest Language in books about Psychology, describing the way people really think and feel :

"I am a No-Good Shit." 

That is the basic program that
most people are operating on -- 

The second program is, "If I pretend hard enough, nobody will guess I'm a No-Good Shit", and the third program is,  "The way to Do it, is to convince everybody else that they're No-Good Shits."  --

The people who become most adept at this, find An Ideology which allows them to go around correcting Everybody Else, all the time, which explains why there are so fucking many Marxists in The World, even after Marxism has totally collapsed everywhere outside of China, Cuba and Pacifica Radio.... 

Marxism is basically a maneuver to put Other People down -- you just wait for them to Say something,  you got a long list and as soon as they violate one of The Taboos, you jump : "A-ha! Bourgeois-Thinking!",  uh…. "Male-chauvinism!", uh, --  whatever is the latest thing....

Now, why are people so devoted to putting one another down, why do they all have this basic program, "I am a No-Good Shit"?  

Pope BOB, R.A.W,

Northern California, 1991

Well, infants are born without any culture — every infant, as Bucky Fuller once said, is born naked, hungry and intensely curious —

And that's about it.  Naked, Hungry and intensely Curious — so the principle role of parents, is to take this naked hungry intensely curious being and persuade it, cajole  it, browbeat it, terrorise it, or one way or another, convince it that The Way We Do Things in this tribe is the natural way, ordained by God, and anything you feel like doing or want to do, or that seems ‘natural’ to you, if it doesn't fit into tribal customs, you [have]  got to stop it right away —

now most people have been so thoroughly conditioned by their culture that they really are horrified when they become parents if they become parents they really are horrified when they notice that their children do not have the tribal taboos firmly in place the children are born without the tabos they do all sorts of things that according to Social standards are immoral unethical disgusting perverse uh and not what not the way human beings are supposed to behave so the parents are really shocked oh my God we gave birth to a monster so so then they put on more pressure so the process of growing up from infancy to toddler to uh young child ready getting ready for school there a process of learning continually that you are in no good and you got to learn to put on this mask and act like everybody else and repeat all the social customs and then nobody will notice you're a no good and this creates so much tension that people spend most of their adult lives still trying to recover from this by finding other no good shits and and denouncing them so Human Society consists of a search and destroy mission against no good shits let's find the no good shits and get rid of them in California right now it's the cigarette smokers according to George Bush it's the pot smokers uh they talk a lot about crack babies but uh judge sweet when he uh had his Awakening or whatever it was and decided the War on Drugs was the craziest thing that ever happened to this country and started speak out against the judge swe pointed out that 70% of the budget for the War on Drugs goes to the pursuit of pot smokers so if they're so worried about crack babies why aren't they spending 70% and fighting cocaine why are they spending 70% fighting pot well it seems uh I don't know uh that has a lot to do with it probably those of you 

David Lynch Keeps His Head, by David Foster Wallace

David Lynch Keeps His Head 

by David Foster Wallace

Being An Ally

Serenity (2005) - The Beginning

Lure

Green Butt Skunk - Twin Peaks

[Outside Davros' laboratory]

ORCINI: 

Davros. 


(Bostock gets out his flick knife. 

Orcini throws down his walking stick, which 

sticks into a stone step. Davros whirls round.)

[Davros' laboratory]

DAVROS: 

What's that? Ah. 

Remove that object. 


(A [Human] Guard picks up the stick 

and walks up the steps with it.)

[Outside Davros' laboratory]

ORCINI: 

Thank you. 


(Bostock stabs The Guard.)

[Davros' laboratory]

(The Guard falls back down the steps 

with a dying scream. Orcini steps forward 

and sprays Davros with automatic fire. 

Davros sends an electric 

bolt out from his 'eye', 

which hits a bishops statue 

at the top of the steps.) 


DAVROS: 

You are fools! 

You cannot kill me! 

I am Davros! 


(At a signal from his master, 

Bostock goes in first, shooting. 

The two men split up, forcing Davros 

to spin round and round to get at them. 

Their bullets hit his control chamber. 

It spins out of control then goes BANG! 

There is a scream and Davros' head 

collapses like a punctured balloon.) 


BOSTOCK: 

You've done it, Master. 

You've killed him. 


ORCINI: 

Has your instinct deserted you? 

The kill was too easy.


DAVROS: 

That you have realised too 

late, Grand-Master Orcini. 


(Davros, in his black leather suit and 

Dalek travel unit, is behind them.) 


DAVROS: 

Place your guns 

on the floor. 


ORCINI: 

Of course --

(Bostock throws his knife and Orcini lets off a clip 

of bullets. The knife finds Davros' shoulder.) 


DAVROS: 

Guards! 


(A Dalek shoots off Orcini's prosthetic leg 

while Bostock sprays bullets around.) 


ORCINI: 

Bostock! 


PRAETORIAN DALEK: 

I Cannot see! My vision is 

impaired! I cannot see! 


(Bostock tried to 

shield His Master 

from the other Daleks.) 


PRAETORIAN DALEKS: 

Exterminate! Exterminate! 

Exterminate! Destroy! 


(Bostock falls. Davros zaps Orcini 

with electricity himself.) 


DAVROS: 

You are old, Orcini! 

Your reflexes have gone! 

Do you think you're the 

first to try and kill me? 

That tank was but a simple lure, 

a focal point for the 

assassin's bullet. 


(Orcini stops moving.)

Hazard

Stone Age man, he picked up a rock. He said, 

"Oh, das ist ein ball!" 

He throwed it, und he killed a man. 

He said, "Oh, what fun!" 

Und now everybody loves the balls! 

Until the year five billion, 

when the very last human picks up 

The Skull of His Enemy und says, 

"That is the final ball of all." Ja?

Old Grandfather :

 Drive him out. Out.

Friend: 

Yes, drive him out. 

He killed the old woman.

(The Tribe start pelting Cain with stones)

The Tribe of Gum: 

Drive him out.

(Kal leaves, and Za is 

on his feet again)

Friend : 

Remember -- 

Kal is not stronger 

than the whole tribe.

It's The Monkey's Paw of Quantum Uncertainty -- Unintended Consequences.

[Cave]

HORG: They are coming.

(The stretcher is put down and the travellers dragged away)

Cain : 

Za and the woman went 

with them. I, Kal, stop them.

HUR: 

They saved Za from death near the stream.

Cain : 

They set them free from 

The Cave of Skulls and 

went with them.

HUR: 

The old woman cut them free.

Cain : 

Za is so weak a woman speaks for him.

HUR: 

It was the old woman. 

She showed them a new way 

out of the Cave of Skulls.

Cain : The old woman does not speak.

 She does not say she did this or did that. 

The old woman is dead. 

Za killed the old woman.

HUR: 

No!

Cain : 

Za killed the old woman 

with his knife.

HUR: 

No.

Cain : 

Here. Here is the knife 

he killed her with.

Old Grandfather : 

This knife has no blood on it. 

I said, 'This knife has no blood on it.'

Cain : 

It is a bad knife. It does not 

show the things it does.

Old Grandfather : 

It is a finer knife than yours.

Cain : 

I, Kal, say it is a bad knife.

Old Grandfather : 

This knife can cut and stab. I have 

never seen a better knife.

Cain : 

I will show you one.

(Kal pulls out his flint knife)

Old Grandfather : 

This knife shows what it has done. 

There is blood on it. (to Za) 

Who killed the old woman?

Abel : 

I did not kill her.

Old Grandfather : (to Kal)

You killed the old woman.

Cain : 

Yes! She set them free. 

She set them free. 

She did this. 

I, Kal, killed her.

Old Grandfather : 

Is this your strong leader? One who 

kills your old women? 

He is a bad leader. He will 

kill you all. Yes, all. (to Ian) 

Follow my example.

(The Doctor picks up some stones 

and throws them at Kal)

Old Grandfather : 

Drive him out. Out.

Friend: 

Yes, drive him out. 

He killed the old woman.

(The Tribe start pelting Cain with stones)

The Tribe of Gum : 

Drive him out.

(Kal leaves, and Za is 

on his feet again)

Friend : 

Remember -- 

Kal is not stronger 

than the whole tribe.

Abel : 

Kal is no longer 

One of This Tribe. 

We will watch for him. 

We will all fight Kal 

if he comes back. 

We will watch for him. 

Take them to The Cave of Skulls.

Friend : 

Take us back to The Desert and 

we will make Fire for you.

Abel : 

The great stone will close one place, and you will 

stand by another I will show you. Take them.

Old Grandfather : 

Don't struggle.

Abel : 

They are inside the cave. 

You see them come out, kill them.

Regeneration is a roll of The Dice, it's A Game of Chance -- throughout all the scenes with The Toymaker, there are always many, many embedded games; elsewhere, The Toymaker offered the following explanation as to WHY he is so fixated on Games, when he is Functionally Immortal, and older than the (current) known universe, with the reality-warping powers of A God (within the focus of his immediate concentration of attention, only) :

" Meaningless destruction is as appetising as meaningless creation and just as unfulfilling... 

Until I found distraction in The World of Games, until I could throw off the pretence of Purpose and Meaning, until I too could be a prey to Chance and Hazard ..." -- that's why he makes himself subject to the arbitrary rules of whichever game he has challenged his opponents to play.

As The Doctor points out, to cheat at any of these games is the one thing that He will never do, but the second half of that sentence is that before he makes any challenge, he will have already set The Rules in his favour every time -- and because he won't tell you what they are (until you break any of them), and he won't even tell you what kind of game it is that you both are actually playing, even, he gets off on people blundering headlong into their own destruction, based off false assumption -- which means that in order for him not to win every time, The Universe has to get creative in thwarting him in his (unfair) intention to trap you -- Much like Ruby's Snowstorms and the VHS White Noise, it's the unforeseen randomness and chaos that he didn't expect, didn't think of and didn't account for when he set the conditions for The Test and made the challenge to his opponent, whilst trying to Control The Games....

 

The Toymaker looked on, though with a faint smile creasing his mouth now, as he saw the two extra Lives vanish, snuffed out like tiny candles. And his eyes glinted. 

The counter moved again, not spinning frantically now, but turning through treacle, past 125,000 and towards The Toymaker’s High Score. Stefan looked on aghast. Not a muscle moved on The Toymaker’s face. 

The streets were littered now with broken monsters, cracks starting to appear in the asphalt where the firefight had proved too much for the substance to stay stable. The cracks widened as the very ground rumbled. The frantic pitch of battle had slowed also, the steady crunchcrunchcrunch now returning to dominate the scene. The Doctor, exhausted, looked around for the source of the noise. There was something... something his other brain was telling him, something washed in or washed out by the fighting, by the insight he had into the mind that devised The Game. 

The Score hardly mattered. 

He knew he had only one life left and he had to find The Answer before that was gone. Had to stay alive and find The Answer... had to fight on... had to fight on... 

The street filled with screaming crushing monsters one after the other as he blazed away, using the weaponry he had left as a hosepipe more than a precision piece. One life left and he was called back, called by the blare of electronic trumpets as the High Score was swept away. One more, two more, three bursts and again the street was clear before him... 

One life left. Still one life... 

One that was The Answer... 

One... One alone... 

He turned from The Machine, sweat pouring from him, scars that would never show criss-crossing his mind. ‘You’re alone,’ he croaked hoarsely at The Toymaker. ‘One. One alone. 

There’s just you, no one like you. Ever. 

This Game – an empty city, a ghost city. And one, just one fighter, one enemy, one on his own... 

You’re not from this Universe, are you?’ 

He turned and walked towards The Toymaker, past the speechless Stefan, who had just witnessed, for the first time in eight hundred years another being’s victory over his Lord and at one of his Lord’s own games! 

‘The Game,’ stammered The Mandarin, ‘you’re not thinking about The Game!’ There was a blare from The Machine as The Doctor’s last life was lost. The counter had come to a stop. 131,000, and The Toymaker’s score was languishing under ‘Last Player’. 

The Doctor appeared not to notice. ‘You’re not from this Universe,’ he repeated, ‘that’s why there’s no trace. That’s why The Laws of this Universe don’t concern you. You’re from another Time and Space!’ 

The Doctor was in full flow as the ramifications of his theory crashed in on him. Behind him, the game machine’s ominous crunchcrunchcrunch had started distantly in the background. No one took any notice of it. Not yet... 

‘Whatever catastrophe it was,’ The Doctor continued, as much to himself as to anyone else, ‘it hurled you from your own universe into this one. You carry your own matter with you – you’d have to – not anti-matter, of course, otherwise you’d have started the next Big Bang – but different from ours.’ 

He paused, thunderstruck by his own conclusions. ‘Relativity,’ he breathed, ‘follow it through...’ 

He swung round on The Toymaker again, ‘Your own universe is receding from this one so fast, it’s pushing your time back as it goes!’ He stared at The Toymaker, awestuck. ‘You’ll live for millions of years!’ 

The Toymaker had a look of crushing despair on his face as he croaked out, ‘I have done...’ The crunchcrunchcrunch was getting louder. A figure had appeared at the centre of the screen, and was growing larger, growing closer... 

‘The isolation of aeons,’ whispered The Doctor, overcome with compassion for the being he’d detested all his adult life. ‘The crushing loneliness of thousands of millenia... you poor, poor creature...’ 

The Toymaker’s eye was cast on a far, far distant horizon, lost in a world vanished aeons ago. ‘... and then I grew tired of even creating... ships, cities, continents, whole planets even. 

I created Life. 

I colonised, I helped it survive and thrive for millenia, hundreds of millenia, thousands...’ His voice trailed off as he remembered, as the bitterness and the loneliness overcame him. 

He rounded on The Doctor, his eyes turning away from the softness of remembrance to the fury of the present. ‘Until I came to destroy, wantonly, wilfully, the same ships, the same planets I’d helped to create, and that too became too easy and too empty... 

Meaningless Destruction is as appetising as meaningless Creation and just as unfulfilling... 

Until I found distraction in The World of Games, until I could throw off the pretence of Purpose and Meaning, until I too could be a prey to Chance and Hazard...’

The glint was back in his eye now, more dangerous than ever before as it merged with the gleam of triumph. The Doctor, seeing the difference, whirled round to see the formation of The Monster on The Screen, to see it grow larger and larger until The Screen could not contain it. The crunchcrunchcrunch had reached its inevitable crescendo, and The Electronic Monster stood outside The Machine, brighter, if anything, and more terrible than before. 

The Toymaker’s triumph screeched out at last. ‘A Hazard, Doctor, which you have lost!’

 The monster turned and lumbered slowly towards the transfixed Time Lord.