The Monsters Inside (novel)

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The Monsters Inside was the second novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by Stephen Cole and featured the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler.

Publisher's summary

The TARDIS takes the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler to a destination in deep space – Justicia, a prison camp stretched over seven planets, where Earth colonies deal with their criminals.

While Rose finds herself locked up in a teenage borstal, the Doctor is trapped in a scientific labour camp. Each is determined to find the other, and soon both Rose and the Doctor are risking life and limb to escape in their distinctive styles.

But their dangerous plans are complicated by some old enemies. Are these creatures fellow prisoners as they claim, or staging a takeover for their own sinister purposes?

Plot

The Doctor and Rose arrive on an alien planet. The Doctor says that the TARDIS landed more quickly than usual, as if something was drawing it to the planet’s surface. This is Rose’s first time visiting an another planet, and after she discovers a single alien flower she and the Doctor head out for a stroll. As they reach the top of a hill they see people constructing pyramids in the distance. A worker stumbles carrying a sledge of rubble, spilling it down a ramp, and is brutally whipped by an overseer. Rose says that the people look like humans, and the Doctor adds that they act like humans too. Rose asks the Doctor if they can do something, but before they have the chance they find that four alien overseers have crept up behind them, brandishing heavy whips and futuristic guns. The Doctor and Rose are arrested, but when one of their captors whips Rose the Doctor fights back, disarming the man. Rose and the Doctor then attempt to flee to the TARDIS, but are overpowered by the overseers. Before they can say anything two prison shuttles land next to them, and Rose and the Doctor are each escorted into separate spacecraft. Before they are separated, the Doctor tells Rose not to fight them, and reassures her that he will find her.

A few hours later, the Doctor’s holding cell opens, revealing a well-lit room. The Doctor enters the room, and feels himself being scanned. His captors then appear, and the leader of the group announces that they’ve found a goldmine, since the scan has determined the Doctor to be an alien. They tell the Doctor that he was trespassing on Justice Alpha, a prison planet in the Justicia System, and that’s why he was arrested. The Doctor demands to know where Rose is. The guards tell him that Rose is somewhere else, as humans and aliens are separated, and before the Doctor can do anything else the room fills with gas and he is knocked unconscious. As he begins to fall asleep, the lead guard tells his men to tag the Doctor’s brain and then ship him out. Meanwhile, Rose has a similar experience on her ship. As she’s scanned, she looks through a window and sees the planets of the Justicia System. When she notices a muddy handprint of the Doctor’s on her sleeve, she vows to get back to him.

The Doctor awakens on a metal couch, and is held in place by a restraint field. A woman with a clipboard introduces herself as Lazlee Flowers, and welcomes him to the SCAT-house. She explains that SCAT stands for Species-led Creative and Advanced Technologies, and that the SCAT-house is an underground complex on Justice Prime. She tells the Doctor he has been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison and has no right to a trial. He’s also been implanted with a chip that will aid inter-species translation, and allow him to interface with the automatic systems at the SCAT-house. The Doctor then accuses Flowers of running a workhouse and a labour camp, but Flowers insists that the SCAT-house is a legitimate business, and that prisoners may see some small rewards for any innovations they make while in prison. She explains that EarthGov was facing major issues with policing and inadequate prison systems as the human empire rapidly expanded, and Justicia, a private company, was able to privatise the empire’s penal system. After this their business rapidly grew, and they began to change the focus of the SCAT-house from developing new technologies to testing them. The Doctor then realises that he will be a test subject.

Rose’s shuttle comes to a halt, and two guards come into her holding cell. They introduce themselves as Warder Blanc and Warder Norris, and tell Rose she’s headed for a Detention Centre on Justice Beta. Rose protests that she’s innocent, but the warders say there is nothing she can do to prove this, and that she should instead make an appeal to the Governor. They recognise that Rose is scared, and tell her they’ve brought along some girls to help her settle in. When Rose follows a tunnel to a small room she finds that these girls, inmates at the prison, are sizing her up. The leader, Katza, threatens Rose before grabbing her hair and commanding the other girls to scalp her. As the other girls come towards Rose with sharpened spoons, Rose stamps on Katza’s foot and breaks free of her grasp. She then runs towards a door to escape, but finds that it’s locked.

In her office, Lazlee explains to the Doctor that all prisoners deported to Justicia are tested on to find effective ways of controlling social disorder. The prisoners the Doctor saw building pyramids, for example, were part of a test to see the effects of hard labour on criminal behaviour. When the Doctor says that the prison camp conducts torture, Lazlee tells him that the inmates are all monsters. The Doctor says that if anything happens to Rose then Lazlee will see a real monster.

Back in the fight, the door Rose has been struggling with suddenly opens and Dennel steps through. He defuses the fight and tells Katza to leave. As she goes, Katza threatens Dennel, saying that block-walking is a dangerous job. Warders Blanc and Norris then reappear. When they see that Rose has been beaten up they give Dennel ten demerits, and say that if he gets ten more he’ll lose his block-walker status and be sent back to share a cell with the rest of the prisoners. Rose and Dennel then leave, and Dennel gives Rose some grey overalls so she can blend in. Rose tells Dennel that she doesn’t plan on sticking around, and Dennel tells her that everyone says the same. Dennel tells Rose that as a block-walker he is still a prisoner, but assists with keeping other prisoners in check in the hopes that it will reduce his sentence. Rose notices that he has a wristwatch which allows him to open doors within the prison complex. As they walk, Rose and Dennel agree to look out for each other. Dennel then stays with Rose for as long as he can, before leaving her in a holding room while she waits to be processed. After waiting for a few hours,  Rose is stripped, searched, made to shower, and has all of her possessions confiscated before she is told to change into her grey uniform. A warder then takes Rose to a cell, where she finds that she has a cellmate who is hiding under the blankets of her bed and muttering to herself. Rose climbs into her own bed, and eventually falls asleep.

Flowers escorts the Doctor to his cell, taking him through a large underground tunnel. The Doctor taunts her, saying he can escape, and Flowers tells him that even if he breaks out of the prison the surface of Justicia Prime is uninhabitable. When the Doctor persists with his escapist fantasy Flowers encourages him to try. The Doctor then reaches to open a door, only to find that he is immediately swamped by moving grey globules. As Flowers explains, most places in the prison are out-of-bounds, and the globs will restrict the movement of anyone trying to enter these areas. When the Doctor stops struggling the globs release him and float away. Flowers then explains that the globs are linked to the Doctor’s implant, and can swoop in to stop him the moment he begins any kind of anti-social behaviour. Flowers then takes the Doctor into a dormitory block and shows him his temporary accommodation. When the cell door opens, the Doctor finds himself face-to-face with a Slitheen. Another Slitheen then emerges from the back of the room, and the pair introduce themselves as brothers Dram and Ecktosca. Flowers reassures the Doctor that he will be kept safe by the globules, then leaves the Doctor in his cell with the Slitheen.

Rose wakes up in her cell and meets her new cellmate, Rizwana Mani. Riz tells Rose that her previous cellmate killed herself in solitary confinement. After Riz empties a bucket kept beneath the sink, her and Rose head to the canteen for breakfast. Rose is surprised to see that the prison mixes male and female prisoners, and Riz tells her that it’s a new directive, saying that “it’s all just a big experiment”. As the pair sit to eat, Riz tells Rose all about the Justicia penal colony. After breakfast the pair return to their cell and tidy it before an inspection. A warden gives Rose a kind of credit card, which she can use to purchase things at the prison shop, and assigns her to work in the kitchens to earn her spending money. Riz, meanwhile, goes to work in the laundrette. As Rose works in the kitchen she begins to dread her meeting with the Governor, but is determined to plead her innocence and get back to the Doctor. However, when Rose’s kitchen work is sabotaged by the other workers, and she refuses to grass them up to warders Blanc and Norris, Rose is taken to the Governor early for a disciplinary meeting. As Rose approaches the office she sees a blue light coming from behind the door, hears a sound like electricity crackling, and smells a strong odour of decay. Rose immediately suspects that the Governor has been killed and replaced by a Slitheen. She protests to the warders, trying to tell them the truth, but they don’t believe her. With Rose fighting to break free, Norris and Blanc drag her towards the Governor’s door.

The Doctor chats with the Slitheen in his cell. They tell him that they have moved past their family’s history of crime, and are now antiques dealers. However, when Dram alludes to some “family business” Ecktocsa quickly moves the conversation on. Both Slitheen remark that the Doctor smells delicious, saying that they would enjoy to hunt him. Fortunately for the Doctor, the globules in the ceiling are keeping him safe from attack. As the Doctor goes to sleep, he thinks about Rose and hopes she is not stuck in a similar predicament to his.

Blanc and Norris take Rose into the Governor’s office. When Blanc inquires about the blue light, the Governor assures her that it was just a flickering desk lamp. Rose, noticing that the Governor’s fringe could cover the kind of forehead zip found in a Slitheen suit, and witnessing a burp which could have resulted from the Slitheen compression field’s gas exchange process, is not convinced. The Governor then dismisses Blanc and Norris to talk to Rose one-on-one. Rose asks about the Doctor, but the Governor responds by asking what she and the Doctor were doing on Justice Alpha in the first place. He asks what stories they might have heard about Justicia, and accuses them of being secret agents who got themselves imprisoned on purpose. Neither of them is forthcoming with any information, and the Governor then abruptly dismisses Rose. As the warders return to escort her, the Governor warns Rose that he’ll be keeping an eye on her.

That night, Rose is awake in her cell as Riz sleeps next to her. Her mind races, and her paranoia surrounding the Governor and her safety in the prison grows. She tenses up when she hears footsteps outside her door, but is relieved when she hears Dennel’s voice a moment later. She tells Dennel that the Governor might be a Slitheen, and asks him to keep an eye on him. Dennel thinks Rose might be losing her mind with stress, but agrees to tell her if he sees the Governor doing anything suspicious. Dennel then leaves, and as Rose falls asleep she thinks about her mum and home.

The Doctor is woken by a morning alarm, sent directly to his brain via his brain tag. He stands up, and is quickly whisked away to work by the globules. He then finds himself in a workshop, sat around a bench with a host of other alien creatures, ready to work. Flowers says hello to the Doctor and then introduces him to the rest of the room. When the Doctor asks after Rose, Flowers tells him that she’s in a detention centre simulation. She explains that the Doctor is now part of the gravity acceleration group, where members will literally pool their thoughts together through an electronic interface. She gestures towards the headsets in front of every participant, called mindmitters, which would allow them to project their thoughts directly onto a shared screen. When the Doctor projects an idea of Flowers dancing the Macarena before being carried away by globules the room breaks out in laughter. After this, Flowers instructs Yahoomer to present the results of his most recent experiment. Yahoomer begins, but his projected ideas are quickly struck through by the Doctor. The Doctor then effortlessly shows how gravity acceleration can be achieved by projecting a gravitational wave faster than the speed of light, decreasing the mass of an object. Nesshalop quickly picks up the Doctor’s idea, and the pair begin to brainstorm so rapidly and complexly that the mindmitter machines struggle to process the interaction. As the machines begin to smoke the globules sense something is wrong, but Flowers doesn’t send them to stop the Doctor. She wants to see where this is going. Suddenly a schematic appears on the shared screen, appearing to show the orbits of all the planets in the Justicia system. At this point the central console bursts into flames, and the system crashes. Triggered by the apparent vandalism, the globs descend and latch onto the Doctor and Nesshalop. The Doctor watches in horror as the globules on him and his new friend begin to pulse and throb, shooting pain through their bodies. The Doctor pleads with Flowers to have Nesshalop released, as it was his fault for not knowing the limitations of the system. Flowers agrees and overrides the globules, forcing them to retreat. When they do so the workshop is in a frenzy, and Flowers is distressed not to be able to understand the other prisoners. The Doctor tells her that he and Nesshalop have solved the problem Flowers has been trying to solve for five years, and that since he’s the only person in the workshop she can understand, Flowers will have to get this information from him. He proposes a trade: “Rose is in a borstal, you say? Let’s deal.”

The next day, Rose is back working in the kitchen. Nix, the girl who sabotaged her cooking yesterday, is keeping her distance. Maggi tells Rose that Katza warned Nix off, saying she wanted Rose for herself. At lunchtime, Rose and Riz sit together, watching the Governor eat with the warders at a nearby table. Rose moves to a table closer to the Governor’s, waving at Katza as she passes. Rose sits, loads up a forkful of mashed potato, and when the Governor is distracted she launches it across the room at Katza. Katza is furious, but won’t get up to retaliate with the Governor present. When Rose lands a second shot directly in Katza’s chest Riz joins in, flinging food behind her at random. This causes a small food fight to break out on another table, while Katza loads more food onto her fork and takes aim at Rose. Rose ducks and the food hits a group of girls behind her, who all retaliate against Katza. Suddenly the entire canteen erupts into chaos, with food being thrown by everyone. The warders get up from their table to try and control the mess, leaving the Governor unguarded. When Rose sees this, she crawls under her table towards the Governor’s. The Governor gets up to leave, so Rose grabs his legs from under the table and topples him. She then sits on his chest, lifting up his fringe looking for a zip, hoping to expose him as a Slitheen. However, when she lifts the fringe up there’s no zip to be found. Rose then hysterically begins shouting “he’s an alien” as a group of warders pull her off. One of them hits Rose over the head with a baton, and she blacks out.

The Doctor is sent on a tour of the SCAT-house. As the globs carry him past the solar workshop he sees the Slitheen from his cell. He asks them what they’re up to, and they tell him they’re preparing to fully contain an impending solar flare. The Doctor suggests that they’re using an advanced compression field, a larger version of the technology that previously allowed the Slitheen to fit into human body suits, but the Slitheen do not respond to this.

Meanwhile Flowers is outside Consul Issabel’s office, waiting to discuss the Doctor’s terms. When she goes inside, Flowers enthuses about the possibilities offered by the Doctor and Nesshalop’s breakthrough. She says they could develop craft built for true, quick, intergalactic travel, and keep the patents in Justicia’s name. Issabel however is less impressed, and more concerned with the costs of the property damage. Flowers then tells Issabel that the Doctor can demonstrate how to make his theory a reality, but he’s requested that Rose be moved from Justice Beta to be with him on Prime. Issabel is not keen on indulging the whims of prisoners, and reminds Flowers that she works in a labour camp and could also extract the information from the Doctor by force. She does, however, agree to give the Doctor’s proposal some consideration. Issabel asks Flowers to bring the datacore from the damaged mindmitter console to her, so that she can inspect it herself, and then sends Flowers away.

After his tour has finished, the Doctor is deposited back in his cell by the globules. His cellmates are still at the solar workshop, so the Doctor takes the opportunity to inspect their posters. When one picture appears to show Ecktocsa wearing the body armour of a dead Martian the Doctor suspects that they might not be as innocent as they previously claimed to be. He then decides to poke about in his cellmates’ nests.

Rose wakes up in solitary confinement. Dennel appears and talks to her through the door, telling her she’s become a celebrity and a hero in the prison, and that rumours say she tried to pull the Governor’s face off. Dennel then hears someone approaching and hurries away. Moments later, warder Norris arrives, knocking on the door. He then lets himself in, saying it’s time he and Rose had a chat. Rose notices for the first time the smell of Norris’ breath, and the low cap that’s covered his forehead every time she’s seen him…

The Doctor, searching the sleeping nests of his Slitheen cellmates, uncovers their homemade compression fields. Ecktocsa then arrives at the cell, catching the Doctor in the act. Dram then follows and attempts to attack the Doctor, but he is quickly subdued by the globules. The Doctor surmises that the Slitheen intend to compress themselves, confusing the chips implanted in their brains, and so make themselves able to avoid detection and entrapment by the SCAT-house systems. The Slitheen, feeling threatened, tell the Doctor that it’s not just the globules watching over him on Justice Prime.

At Rose’s request Norris removes his cap, proving that he’s not a Slitheen. He then tells Rose that he’s an undercover agent sent by EarthGov to monitor the secretive activities of the Justicia prison system. He had mistakenly believed that Rose was an undercover agent too. He tells Rose that since he arrived a number of warders and prisoners have gone missing inexplicably, and the Governor insists on sweeping this fact under the rug. After this, warder Blanc appears behind Norris. Norris pretends to have been disciplining Rose, but Blanc is not fooled. She chokes Norris to death, kicking Rose against a wall when she attempts to step in. With Norris dead, Blanc reveals herself to be a Slitheen. She says that since Rose has been drawing attention to herself, and is aware of who the Slitheen are, she poses too much of a risk to the Slitheen in Justicia if she’s left alive. Rose runs out of the cell and down the corridor as the Slitheen exits its skin-suit, gearing up for a hunt. As Rose runs, she wonders what would bring a Slitheen to Justicia, and how they could profit from the prison complex. Eventually she comes to a dead-end, and looks back as the Slitheen draws closer and closer to her. Rose bangs on a locked door, which is eventually opened by warders Robsen and Jamini. When they get the door open the Slitheen is gone. Rose insists that they go to her cell to see Norris’ body, so she can prove that warder Blanc is a monster in disguse. However, when they reach Rose’s cell they find the body has been removed. They find keys on the floor, which Rose tells them belonged to warder Norris. Robsen and Jamini then take Rose to see the Governor.

The Doctor is awoken by a voice talking to him through his implant. It tells him to head to the meeting room he attended earlier, where Flowers will be waiting for him. As he leaves the Slitheen wake up, and threaten him with violence if he grasses them up to Issabel. In the meeting room, Flowers tells the Doctor that Issabel as agreed to let him speak to Rose, but only via videolink. She says that Issabel will watch them talk in the lecture theatre in one hour, and if Rose cannot convince her that she’s an astrophysics genius then the Doctor may never see her again.

Meanwhile, warder Robsen is continuing with his evening rounds. He recalls what Rose told him about Norris and Blanc, and believes there may be some truth to her story. Suddenly he becomes aware of a prisoner crying in Katza’s cell, and when he opens the door he’s shocked to find that the crying woman is Katza herself. Katza tells Robsen that she’s fine, and that warder Blanc has already checked in on her a few times that evening. Robsen leaves, intending to tell the Governor that the keys in Rose’s cell were in fact Norris’ keys, but decides that he should pay a visit to Blanc first.

In the SCAT-house lecture theatre, Flowers pulls up a schematic of the Justicia system planets on a screen. She says that if they’re going to run experiments which could accelerate gravity then they need to be sure that they’re not going to unintentionally cause major damage. The Doctor notices that the orbits of all of the planets except for Justice Prime are in near-perfect circles, and that the planets are almost perfectly equidistant to each other. Before Rose is called for the presentation, the Doctor thanks Flowers for giving her a chance.

Warder Robsen finds on the duty roster that Norris was supposed to be taking a night off, and sets out to find him. At Norris’ sleeping quarters, Robsen finds that Norris is absent and his bed has not been slept in. He then heads to Blanc's quarters to see if he can find her there, and as he approaches the door he hears two voices talking inside the room. They are apparently a mother and child, with the mother calling the daughter careless. Robsen knocks on the door, and after a moment Blanc answers. She tells him that she was listening to an audio recording, made by Katza, which she says is a faked threat of violence made against Katza. Blanc plays the recording, and Robsen hears Katza sobbing while an unknown voice tells her not to say anything as nobody would believe her.

Rose is sat in the Governor’s office by warder Jamini when Robsen walks in. He says there is no doubt that the keys in Rose’s cell are Norris’, and that Norris is nowhere to be found. Rose asks Robsen if he found warder Blanc, but the Governor cuts Robsen off before he can answer. When Rose mentions the people who have been disappearing the Governor goes quiet. He then moves his fringe around to confirm to Rose that he’s not got a zip in his forehead, before telling Robsen to return to patrol and dismissing Rose’s monster stories as nonsense. When Robsen goes, the Governor tells Rose that Consul Issabel from Justice Prime has requested an audience with her. He hands her some clean clothes and cosmetics, then asks Jamini to take her to the executive washroom so she can smarten herself up.

In the lecture theatre, the Doctor hands Flowers a print-out of his projected effects of gravity acceleration on Justicia’s planets, and tells her that these are the same predictions Rose should come up with. When Consul Issabel arrives, she asks the Doctor how he can possibly send gravity waves faster than the speed of light without an immense piece of technology. The Doctor then proposes that the evenly-spaced planets and regular orbits of the Justicia system could act as a giant gravitational centrifuge, the energy of which could be harnessed with a gravity amplifier. He then suggests that the amplified gravity could be used to open a warp-hole, which would then allow for easy interstellar travel. Meanwhile on Justice Beta, Rose is washed and made presentable for the video call. She returns to the Governor’s office, where the Governor sits her on a large chair in front of a screen. The call begins, and as soon as Issabel mentions the Doctor Rose calls out with excitement. The Doctor asks if she’s being treated well, and Rose tells him there’s a Slitheen in the prison. Issabel then accusingly asks the Governor why a Slitheen would be an inmate in a human prison. The Governor says that Rose is delusional, and Issabel appears to accept this explanation alarmingly quickly. The Doctor then tells Rose that she’s been called to demonstrate to Issabel that she’s a genius, and will be invaluable to his studies on Justice Prime. Flowers then introduces herself to Rose before asking her to calculate a hypothetical tangential warp offset. The Doctor chimes in, mentioning telephone numbers and finally saying “Mum’s the word” when Issabel cuts him off. Rose, picking up on his clues, recites her mum’s telephone number. Flowers asks another question, and Rose struggles to work out the answer from the Doctor’s clues. Just in time, an alarm sounds in the lecture theatre and Issabel stops watching the screen immediately. She announces that it’s a Code One alarm – a prisoner is attempting a breakout. Issabel orders the Governor to have Rose sent to Justice Prime, then ends the call abruptly.

After checking Justice Prime’s computer systems, Issabel discovers that the Slitheen from the Doctor’s cell have escaped. Suspecting the Doctor may be involved, she commands the globules to carry him back to the cell. She then shuts off the alarm and orders Flowers to return to her quarters while she speaks to security.

On Justice Beta, the Governor is delighted at the breakout on Justice Prime, saying that it makes his planet less of a target for any Executive enquiries. He tells Rose and Jamini that the Executives on Justice Delta oversee the administration of the entire Justicia system, and also mentions that his prison has had no major incidents in seven months. Rose then recalls Norris telling her that his he had been undercover for seven months, and the Slitheen posing as Blanc saying that Norris’ contacts had been dealt with. Suspecting that the Executive might have met a similar fate to warder Blanc, Rose asks the Governor if he’s heard from the Executive recently. The Governor tells her that he never speaks to the Executive, and that they communicate via Consul Jakkson. He then orders Jamini to take Rose to a shuttle, and as Rose is escorted away she pleads with the Governor to investigate warder Blanc. He does not listen.

Back in his cell, the Doctor believes that the Slitheen thought he was going to sell them out, and so decided to make a break for it. This put him and Rose in a much worse situation. They were now unable to piggyback on the Slitheen’s escape attempt, and security on Justice Prime would undoubtedly be stepped up. Sat in the cell, mind racing, the Doctor wonders why there were Slitheen in Rose’s prison on Justice Beta, and why Issabel was so quick to dismiss her story.

Issabel returns to her office, where she examines the datacore the Doctor and Nesshalop damaged when developing their gravity acceleration theory. She then begins a video call with a mysterious figure. She tells him that she’s met the Doctor and studied his thought processes. She then says that his advancements in the warp-hole generating technology have accelerated her own plans, and tells the figure on the video screen that they should speed up their operations. The figure agrees, and says they are now ready to move to the final phase.

The next morning, Flowers is heading to her meeting with the Senate when she passes someone who she recognises as Doctor Meldow, one of the Executive’s senior diagnostic chiefs. She calls out to him, but he passes her without acknowledgement before entering an out-of-use aquaculture lab. When she gets to the meeting room, Flowers is surprised to find it empty. She video calls Issabel, who tells her that the meeting has been cancelled while the prison is in a state of emergency. Flowers then asks why Doctor Meldow is on Justice Prime, but Issabel insists that he’s not, telling Flowers she must be mistaken. She then tells Flowers to prepare a secure cell for Rose.

On her shuttle to Justice Prime, Rose sees smoke begin to pour into her holding cell. She bangs on the pilot’s door, and when the pilot comes to investigate he opens a door to the shuttle’s hold, where the smoke is coming from. He then appears to be pulled into the smoke, and Rose hears yelling and thrashing down below. Eventually it goes quiet, and she asks is anyone is there. To her surprise, Dennel emerges from the hold. He tells Rose he’s here to rescue her, and has knocked the pilot unconscious, but Rose tells Dennel that she doesn’t want to escape and instead wants to continue going where she was going. The pair use the pilot’s palm to open the cockpit to the shuttle, which flies somewhat on autopilot. They realise however that at some point they will need to wake the pilot up and force him to land the shuttle for them.

In the detention centre on Justice Beta, rumour has spread that Rose Tyler was shipped out of the prison for being too disruptive. Riz leaves the canteen in a hurry, missing her friend. She’s sitting alone in their cell when Katza appears. Katza seems uncharacteristically scared, and asks Riz if Rose ever told her anything about the monsters.

On Rose’s shuttle, the ship’s computer registers that the pilot has not been in the cockpit for a while and begins a countdown to a ‘control lock’ which would stop the ship in mid-space, leaving Dennel and Rose as sitting ducks waiting to be caught. They attempt to drag the pilot back into the cockpit, but as they do so his skin begins to stretch and twist away. Suddenly they realise the pilot is a creature in a skin suit, and they’re trapped on board with it. Taking Dennel’s lighter, Rose burns around the wrist of the skin suit until the pilot’s palm can be pulled free. She then uses this palm to abort the countdown in the cockpit. However, the flame from the lighter disrupts the gas exchange compressing the creature into the suit. It screams, waking up, and Rose and Dennel rush to lock themselves in the cockpit. It then begins banging on the door, and as the ship begins violently careening Rose and Dennel realise that they are no longer flying on autopilot.

In the SCAT-house’s gravity workshop, the Doctor oversees his other workshop members constructing parts for the gravity amplifier. He asks Flowers if he can have his sonic screwdriver back, and she says she’ll look into it. They step into a side room so the Doctor can give a progress report to Flowers, and he tells her he’s made a discovery: the orbits of the planets in the Justicia system have seemingly changed overnight, and are now perfectly mathematically precise. While all other planets are being inched closer to the suns however, Justice Prime has been moved 20 million miles further away. Noting that the planets’ adjustments make the warp-hole experiment much more likely to succeed, and much safer for those on Justice Prime, the Doctor says it’s as if someone else had the same idea before he did and has been preparing to make it work. When Flowers goes, the Doctor returns to working on his own private project. He knows that moving entire planets would require some massive equipment, and wants to find where in the Justicia system this equipment could be hidden.

As Rose and Dennel’s shuttle veers further off course an emerald planet comes into view. The alien pilot then breaks through the door, and bashes Dennel’s head into the ceiling as revenge. It then tells Rose that it’s not allowed to kill them yet, and attempts to get the ship back on course. Just before crashing into the forested planet, the creature gets the ship under control and attempts to pull back up. However, as it does so it collides with a floating building, screaming as the cockpit window explodes. The ship then falls through the trees onto the forest floor.

Flowers goes to Issabel’s office to inform her about the planets being moved, but as she approaches she hears screams from inside. Issabel is sobbing, talking about her “poor sweet cousin”. Flowers peeks through the door as Issabel opens a zip on the top of her head. As blue light floods the room, the Slitheen-like creature inside Consul Issabel takes off its skin suit and reveals itself. In a rage, it begins smashing furniture in the Consul’s office, before pressing a secret button and opening a video call with a mysterious figure. She addresses this figure as Don Arco. Don Arco tells the Raxacoricofallapatorian that her cousin was transporting Rose to Justice Prime when his ship veered off course and collided with a monitoring station on Justice Delta. Arco asks if the Doctor’s companion being dead will delay their operations, and Ermenshrew (who as been posing as Consul Isaabel) says she will not tolerate delays. Arco lists a huge number of prison officials who are set to be replaced, including all governors on Justice Beta and plantation managers on Justice Epsilon. Flowers, still peeking in, wonders how far the corruption has spread through the prisons, and when the creatures mention using ‘pathways’ she questions what they might mean. Flowers turns to leave, hoping to find the Doctor, but as she does so she lets out a small fart and gives herself away. Flowers then runs as fast as she can, with the creatures in pursuit. She passes the Doctor in a corridor, who is being returned to his cell by the globules. Flowers commands the globules to release him. Ermenshrew comes round the corner, and Flowers tells the Doctor that it was once Issabel.

On Beta, warder Robsen wakes up to the sound of construction. He finds Jamini sitting alone in the staff canteen. She tells him they’re rapidly building accommodation for a large influx of new prisoners, and that in the meantime male and female prisoners will have to share cells. When Robsen asks what the Governor is thinking, Jamini says he’s just following orders from the higher-ups.

The Doctor grabs Flowers’ hand and they flee from Ermenshrew. As they run, Flowers gives the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver back to him. She directs him to the systems hub, which is designed to be accessible for humans only and should keep Ermenshrew out for a while. In the hub, the Doctor is swarmed by globules intent on draining his energy. Flowers, after a while, manages to get them to leave him alone. Ermenshrew then appears at the end of the corridor leading into the hub, and begins to push her way towards the Doctor and Flowers.

On Justice Delta, Rose comes round in the crashed shuttle. She checks on Dennel, who is unconscious but still breathing. The Slitheen pilot then stirs, telling Rose to get help. He says that Delta is Justicia’s administrative centre, and suggests that the staff who find them will treat their wounds and send them to Prime to be incarcerated. Rose agrees to send a distress call, but only if Dennel is allowed to remain on the planet in secret. On the call, Rose gives out her location. She then refers to the pilot as a Slitheen, and the pilot takes great offence. He tells her that he’s in fact a Blathereen. Just then a picture comes into focus on the shuttle’s monitor, revealing a number of other Blathereen. They introduce themselves as the Executives of Justice Delta, and thank her for giving away her position. Rose realises she’s been tricked, and the Blathereen say they’re coming to get her.

The Doctor, weakened from the globule’s attack, tells Flowers to enter a chamber in the systems hub and find the environment controls. Meanwhile Ermenshrew tries to get in the Doctor’s head, telling him that Rose’s ship has crashed on Justice Delta. The Doctor asks her why her family have been trying to turn Justicia into a giant fast-gravity centrifuge, and she refuses to give a clear answer. Just then, Flowers switches off the SCAT-house’s gravity regulators, and she and the Doctor float into the air while Ermenshrew remains wedged in the narrow passageway. They drift into a nest of globules on the ceiling, where the Doctor discovers a series of tunnels bored above the ceilings of the SCAT-house which allow the globules to move between all rooms of the prison. He and Flowers pull themselves into a tunnel just as the zero-gravity turns off, and the Doctor tells Flowers that he needs to get to Justice Delta to see if Rose is okay.

On the crashed shuttle, Rose shakes Dennel awake and tells him that the Blathereen are coming to kill them. He gets up, and they race out of the shuttle and onto the planet’s surface.

On Beta, the creature disguised as warder Blanc visits the Governor in his office. She brings in an unsuited Blathereen, who intends to replace the Governor. Blanc then crushes the Governor’s skull, killing him. Simultaneously, the Blathereen slaughtered and replaced the ministers on Justice Epsilon. They also replaced the overseer of pyramid construction on Justice Alpha, and the Blathereen replacement then announced that all prisoners on the planet would be redirected to work on building a storage facility. On Justice Gamma, the final remaining human Governors were replaced with Blathereen, and an order was given to make all prisoners there labourers, and to drug those who resist into compliance. The Blathereen plan was in full effect, and the steady stream of incoming prisoners would provide them with a constantly-replenishing workforce.

In the ceiling tunnels on Justice Prime, the Doctor and Flowers come across two globules with zips, who they discover are in fact the Doctor’s escaped cellmates Ecktocsa and Dram. They tell the Doctor that the Blathereen have been taking over Justicia for years, and that as Slitheen they don’t necessarily approve.

On Justice Beta, Riz and Katza sit together in the social hall, talking about the alien infiltrators while everyone else is talking about the impending mixing of male and female cells. Maggi comes up to Katza and says she believes her about the monsters. Katza tells Maggi that the Blathereen disguised as Blanc came to her cell on the night she killed Norris and made her swear to provide an alibi for her whereabouts on that night. Maggi then decides to tell warder Robsen what had happened.

Rose and Dennel move through Delta’s forest, attempting to find the building they crashed into. Rose climbs a tree to get a vantage, and sees the building a short distance away. They head off, but soon come across a pile of skeletons wearing borstal uniforms. Dennel recognises some of them as inmates who went missing on Beta. Rose then sees the corpse of warder Norris, and wonders how he could have gotten here so quickly.

Back in the tunnels above the SCAT-house, the Slitheen in the globules tell the Doctor that they came to Justicia simply to collect some of their ancestors’ belongings, but that Ermenshrew had them locked up to make use of their brainpower. The Doctor notes that even though they are hidden, the Slitheen cannot escape from the underground SCAT-house. At this point Flowers mentions the pathways she overheard Ermenshrew talking about, and the Doctor determines that the Blathereen have been using warp-holes to travel between the planets of Justicia undetected. He suspects that they re-aligned the planets to make their system of warp-holes more stable, and want to develop gravity acceleration to make their warp-holes much larger and more effective. Justice Prime, because of its irregular orbit, would be pushed out of the star-system when the gravity accelerator gets switched on. The Doctor says that earlier that day he’d detected three gravity warp generators capable of moving planets within the Justicia system, one of which was on Justice Prime. Another was on Justice Alpha, which the Doctor realises must have been what drew his TARDIS there in the first place, and another was located in deep space. Ecktocsa then says that this must be on a Blathereen mothership nearby, and suggests that the Blathereen might have been gradually smuggling whole armies onto Justicia via their warp-holes.

Jamini tells Robsen that Maggi has requested to speak to him one-on-one, and Robsen agrees to see her later in the day.

In the tunnels, the Doctor switches off the sonic screwdriver to conserve its battery. Flowers suggests that there might be a warp-hole in the aquaculture compound that Isaabel ordered to be closed, where she had seen the Executive Doctor Medlow. The Doctor, Flowers and the Slitheen make their way towards the compound through the tunnels, but Flowers gets held up when globules begin to latch onto her arms and legs. They arrive at an opening leading into the aquaculture compound, too high to safely jump from. The Slitheen jump down and bounce in their globule-suits. The Doctor and Flowers then jump and the globules attached to them, which are programmed to punish but not to kill, keep them suspended in the air. They gently touch down on the ground, where the globules attached to Flowers move over to the Doctor – the only person present whose brain is still tagged – and begin to leech his energy. Flowers commands the globs to stop, but they ignore her. As the Doctor gets increasingly overwhelmed he gestures towards a container of nitrogen, and asks Flowers to open it. When she does, a high-pressure burst of nitrogen fills the room, freezing the globules attached to the Doctor and causing them to fall off. Flowers then reasons that the gravity warp must be on the planet’s inhospitable surface, where nobody would ever see it. Before the Doctor and Flowers can find a way to it, Ermenshrew enters the compound.

On Beta, Robsen goes to Blanc’s living quarters to investigate. He finds Maggi inside. Maggi tells Robsen that Blanc tied her up in here so she couldn’t tell him the truth about the monsters, and that she’s got a zip in her head. Maggi shows Robsen a black disc, which she says Blanc can use to summon other monsters. He decides to take Maggi to the Governor, but Maggi insists that the Governor is one of the monsters too. As Maggi struggles to get away from Robsen’s grasp Robsen steps back onto the disc, activating it. Robsen travels through a warp-hole, which a human being cannot survive. He screams as he burns and dissolves away into nothingness.

Rose and Dennel reach the operating station on Justice Delta. Inside the damaged building, Rose tries to turn on a few computers before one eventually works. She sees what appears to be security camera footage of various important places throughout Justicia, and a host of Blathereen in offices across the prison system. Rose and Dennel see a Blathereen zipping itself into the skin of the Governor of their detention centre. Dennel grimly states that the Blathereen have taken over everything.

In the aquaculture compound, the Doctor asks Ermenshrew why the Blathereen want to build such a large warp-hole. In response, Ermenshrew throws one of Nesshalop’s eyes onto the ground in front of the Doctor. The Doctor tells Ermenshrew that that he’s rigged the gravity warp above the room to explode imminently, and Ermenshrew goes up a ladder to check it out. The Slitheen to exit their globule-suits, as their shrunken lungs cannot handle the ammonia in the air. The Slitheen then activate a warp-hole transporter, which had been disguised as a plant, that can only be operated by Raxacoricofallapotorians. As Ermenshrew yells in the distance, realising she has fallen for the Doctor’s bluff, the Slitheen, the Doctor, and Flowers step onto the transportation device and travel through the warp-hole.

Rose and Dennel scan the different security camera feeds until they come across a video showing the corpse dumping ground they passed earlier. They wonder why the Blathereen would want to monitor this, when suddenly a warp-hole opens and Robsen appears. Rose then realises that the Blathereen might have seen her and Dennel pass that area, and decides that they need to pick up Robsen and get back on the move.

The Doctor, Flowers and the Slitheen materialise in an Executive conference room on Justice Delta. Dram and Ecktocsa shush Flowers, saying there are guards directly outside the room. The Doctor blocks Ermenshrew from following them through the warp-hole, and when he celebrates too loudly the Blathereen outside come through the door. One of them grabs Flowers, the Slitheen surrender, and another then lifts the Doctor off the ground.

On Beta, Riz and Katza notice that the Governor is acting unusually cheery, and has been spending a lot of time with warder Blanc. Maggi then arrives and tells the others about how Blanc captured her and Robsen helped her escape. She plans to prove that the Blathereen have taken over to the other inmates, and asks Katza to instigate a riot when she does. She then reveals that she’s picked up warder Robsen’s key-card.

Rose and Dennel meet Robsen and explain that he fell through a warp-hole. Robsen tries to return to the prison but the transporter doesn’t work in reverse. When the group hears a loud thrashing sound approaching them they decide to run.

In the canteen on Beta, Maggi feigns stomach pains and falls to the floor. A warder escorts her out, but Maggi breaks free as they pass the Governor’s table. She then jumps onto the table and exclaims to the entire hall that the prison really is run by monsters. She then grabs the hair of the Governor and Blanc skin suits and pulls off the heads, revealing the Blathereen inside. Maggi then gives her fellow inmates a choice: wait to be killed by the monsters, or kill them first.

The Doctor, Flowers, Ecktocsa and Dram are marched to the office of Don Arco, the Blathereen patriarch. Arco mocks the Slitheen, and his guards force them to their knees. Then, Ermenshrew materialises above a garden outside the room and lands in the bushes. The Doctor, suddenly reminded of the warp-holes, asks Don Arco why the Blathereen want to combine them to create a super-portal. Don Arco then tells the Doctor that he intends to transport the entire Justicia system.

Rose, Dennel and Robsen are continuing to flee when Rose hears a noise up ahead. She climbs a tree and sees six Blathereen in a clearing just in front of them, including the injured shuttle pilot. Behind them, Rose, Dennel and Robsen see the source of the crashing noise which had been pursuing them is the monitoring platform the shuttle had crashed into. Dennel realises that the crash must have caused its grav motors to malfunction, and Rose tells everyone to climb into the building so they can get past the Blathereen. They do so, but the building shudders and throws them around so much that they cannot close the door behind them. Very quickly the building turns so that the open door is now on the ceiling, trapping them inside. Rose then looks again at the monitors, and sees the Doctor standing with Don Arco.

On Beta, the prison canteen turns on the exposed Blathereen, and a mob beats them to death with chairs. Maggi then announces that the prisoners are in charge. She opens the canteen door with Robsen’s key-card and the mob pours out.

The Doctor challenges Don Arco’s plan, saying that when they move the Justicia System they will disrupt star-systems near to where they arrive, causing a gravity-quake. Arco then says he can reverse the circuits of the solar flare compressor that the Slitheen helped develop to turn Justicia’s three suns into a giant flamethrower, incinerating any star systems nearby. His plan is to cell off the nuclear-fission-rich incinerated planets as fuel. Flowers protests that EarthGov will notice when Justicia goes missing, and Arco reveals that his godchildren have already replaced EarthGov’s monitoring committees. Ermenshrew then storms into the room, demanding that Don Arco kill the Doctor, but Arco says he can use the Doctor’s brain if he’s kept alive. At this moment, Flowers notices a large shadow creeping across the garden outside. Suddenly a monitoring platform comes crashing into the floors above Don Arco’s office. Arco recoils at the influx of light and fresh air. Masonry falls into the room, and Flowers is knocked to the floor as the guard holding her is crushed. The Doctor, released from his guard’s grip, rushes to Flowers and tells her another platform is coming. He picks up Flowers so they can escape, but Ermenshrew blocks their path. Arco then calls to her, telling her to leave the prisoners and help him escape instead. The Doctor and Flowers leave, noticing that Ecktocsa and Dram have already fled the crumbling building, and decide to head back to the SCAT-house before the Blathereen can get there and use the gravity amplifier.

Rose, Dennel and Robsen are thrown around as their monitoring platform continues moving through the forest. Rose tells them they need to find the Doctor, and when Robsen tries to take control Rose tells him that he’s not a warder anymore, since to the Blathereen he is just another prisoner. Eventually the platform’s movement becomes less jerky, and when Rose rushes to the door she sees that it’s ploughing a trench into a massively overgrown garden, and the large building she saw earlier has been hit by a different platform. Rose then sees the Doctor and Flowers escaping from the building. She jumps out of the monitoring platform and lands in the Doctor’s arms, sending the two of them tumbling to the ground. After they’ve celebrated their reunion, they coax Dennel and Robsen into jumping down. The Doctor then explains why the monitoring stations are converging on the building – when he rigged the warp hole to deflect Ermenshrew following them he created a repulsion field, and also created a local attraction field to counteract this. As a result, the gravity fields of the monitoring platforms were drawn to the of the local attraction field. Robsen then points to a steady stream of Blathereen climbing out of the caved-in building. The humans run towards the forest, hoping to lose the Blathereen inside, but when another group of Blathereen emerge from the treeline they find themselves surrounded. Then, to Rose’s surprise, the inmates from her prison come pouring out of the forest too, and the mob descends on the Blathereen with Maggi leading the charge. The Blathereen by the forest are overwhelmed, and the Blathereen escaping the building decide to retreat.

Rose then spots Riz in the crowd and calls to her. They hug, and Riz tells Rose that she’s become a hero to everyone in their prison. Katza then emerges, walks up to Rose, and offers to shake her hand. She apologises for how she treated Rose, and Rose tells her not to get herself hurt in the fighting. The Doctor, impatient with the human reunion, urges everyone to get a move on. Maggi cries out for the mob to storm the Blathereen lair and the Doctor interrupts her, yelling that she should be quiet and let him think. The mob suddenly goes quiet, and all eyes fix on the Doctor. Several people call out that the Doctor is a warden, and hostility begins to grow. Katza then pipes up, pointing out that the Doctor is here with Rose Tyler, and instantly the mob’s aggression turns to admiration. The Doctor then nudges Rose, urging her to speak to the crowd. Rose tells the mob to cool down, saying they’ve lost the element of surprise and could get themselves killed. She tells them that they’re on Justice Delta, the whole planet has been commandeered by the Blathereen. The Doctor adds that the buildings are full of Blathereen technology which will be used to kill thousands of people. Rose then turns to Dennel, a former arsonist, and asks him to instruct the mob on how best to burn the buildings down. With that, Dennel and Katza go into the mob to instruct them on where to go. As Dennel leaves, he gives Rose a lighter and kisses her on the cheek. Riz goes too, squeezing Rose’s hand and giving Robsen a kiss on the lips. As the mob moves away, Flowers looks at the corpses of the Blathereen killed by the mob and hopes that Dram and Ecktocsa don’t meet the same fate. The Doctor then urges everyone to hurry, saying they need to get to the SCAT-house and destroy the gravity accelerator before the Blathereen have a chance to use it. They head into the forest, following the path carved by Rose’s monitoring platform, to return to the site of the warp-hole.

When they arrive, they see that they have been followed by Maggi and the Slitheen. Ecktocsa and Dram unzip Maggi’s forehead, revealing that she’s been replaced by their auntie Callis who had infiltrated the prison in an attempt to break them out. When the Doctor asks Callis how she got to Justicia, she shows him a local teleport device she had hidden inside a brooch. Rose then scorns Callis, saying she endangered all of the prisoners from her detention centre just to help her reach her nephews. Callis then asks her nephews who the humans are, and when they introduce Flowers as “the human who treated us like menial slaves” Callis suggests that they should kill all of the humans present. The Doctor takes issue with this, pointing out that if they work together they can stop the Blathereen once and for all. Ecktocsa then tells the Doctor that he saw Don Arco escape from the collapsing building via a warp-hole built into his chair. He then vouches for the Doctor, telling Callis to leave him alone. The Doctor then hands the black transport disc to Callis, asking her to set it for the SCAT-house, and when it’s ready they all travel there through the warp-hole.

They materialise back in the aquaculture compound, and the accuracy of the arrival point makes Flowers worry that the planetary alignment in Justicia is perfectly complete. Ecktocsa suggests that they destroy the gravity-warp above the aquaculture compound to disrupt the network of warp-holes leading to the SCAT-house. The Doctor asks him and Callis to sort this while Robsen stands guard, and then instructs Dram, Rose and Flowers to follow him to the gravity workshop.

In the workshop, Ermenshrew surveys the completed gravity amplifier. Blista, Yahoomer and Nesshalop sit slumped against the wall, exhausted. Don Arco sits in a corner, watching the humans destroy buildings on Justice Delta via security monitors. Ermenshrew tells Don Arco that the amplifier is ready, and that while it might be less accurate with the equipment on Delta being destroyed it should still be able to transport Justicia through space. Arco commands his guards to help him stand while technicians adjust the destination co-ordinates of the transporter in his chair. He grows ecstatic, talking about how the warp-holes across the system will be collecting potential energy from the perfectly-aligned planets, and tells Ermenshrew to prepare to turn on the amplifier.

Rose, the Doctor and Flowers are outside the workshop, listening in. The door is locked, and the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is too drained to open it. Dram suggests they could bomb the door to open it, and Rose suggests setting off fire alarms. The Doctor then come up with a plan, and asks everyone to give him fifteen minutes. He tells Rose and Flowers to head to the systems hub while he and Dram go to the solar workshop.

Ecktocsa and Callis reach the gravity warp above the aquaculture compound, exhausted from their climb up the ladder. When they remove a panel from the warp they are swarmed by globules which quickly begin to leech their energy.

In the solar workshop, the Doctor asks Dram about the solar flare compressor he developed with Ecktocsa. Dram tells him it beams from an orbiting satellite, and the Doctor tells him to fire it up.

Rose and Flowers arrive at the systems hub, only to find that the fuse boxes connected to the SCAT-house’s gravity systems have been chained and padlocked.

Ermenshrew and Don Arco hold each other as the gravity amplifier begins to glow. They fantasise about where they might end up, and the chaos that will ensue.

Robsen hears the Slitheen groaning in pain above the aquaculture compound. Callis says she can’t move her arms to use the teleporter. Suddenly Robsen is found by a Blathereen, who lunges at him. Robsen then pretends that there are more humans up the ladder leading to the gravity warp, and the enraged Blathereen begins to climb. Moments later the Blathereen screams and falls, crashing into the ground and lying still, covered in globules. Callis and Ecktocsa then come down the ladder, thanking Robsen for saving them, and say that they didn’t manage to fix the gravity warp. Robsen then offers to climb up with them and distract the globules while they get to work.

Rose runs through the corridors of the SCAT-house, following Flowers’ directions on where to find cutting tools. Rose looks at her watch and sees they have seven minutes left until the Doctor’s fifteen-minute timer runs out.

The Doctor realises that the solar flare compressor doesn’t have the range needed, and needs to be amplified. Dram suggests that the energy from the gravity amplifier could extent the range, and the pair rig the compressor to use this energy when Don Arco activates the amplifier. The Doctor looks at his watch – six minutes left.

Robsen tells the Slitheen to hurry up as the globules cling to him. He falls down the ladder, landing on the dead Blathereen, and Callis calls down to him.

One of Don Arco’s technicians announces that the accelerator will reach optimum power in four minutes. Ermenshrew taps a star chart, informing Don Arco that they will be moving Justicia to the New Washington System, and the pair laugh.

Rose finds the tool cupboard, opens it with Flowers’ key-card, and retrieves a jemmy. She sprints back towards the systems hub, racing against time.

The Doctor has to leave Dram, and asks if he can trust him to turn on the solar flare compression field at the right moment. In return, Dram asks the Doctor if he can be trusted to keep them safe.

Rose and Flowers break open the fuse box with thirty seconds to spare. Flowers panics as their time runs down, and shuts off the gravity to the whole SCAT-house. Flowers says the zero-gravity should last for a few minutes, and hopes that leaves the Doctor enough time to execute his plan.

A technician announces that the amplifier is ready. Don Arco shuffles towards the device, arms extended, ready to turn it on. The Blathereen then find themselves floating in zero-gravity and Ermenshrew curses the Doctor. Suddenly, the candles Don Arco has surrounded himself with begin to glow blue as the flames expand outwards in the zero-gravity. A technician drifts helplessly into the flame, screeching as he’s burned. Don Arco, whose lungs are weak, begins to panic. The injured technician then smashes the door lock controls so he can escape the room, and when he opens the door the Doctor swings in. Guards try to swing at him but can only float past. The Doctor kicks over the candles, causing the flames to multiply. Ermenshrew then lunges for the Doctor, but is intercepted by Nesshalop. Yahoomer, anchored into a control panel with one of his tusks, reels in Nesshalop and the Doctor with his trunks. Don Arco then pleads for his life, offering the Doctor all the money he wants. The Doctor tells Don Arco to remove all Blathereen from Justicia and turn himself in to the police. Ermenshrew says they do not accept his terms, and swings for the Doctor again.

Callis and Ecktocsa pull themselves down the ladder shaft, with Ecktocsa dragging Robsen behind him. As they reach the bottom, the SCAT-house’s regular gravity is restored.

As the gravity kicks back in, Ermenshrew falls to the ground in front of the Doctor. The smoke from the candles now formed a thick smog in the room. The Doctor tells Nesshalop, Yahoomer and Blista to flee. The Doctor calls to Don Arco, saying his deal is still on the table, when through the smog he sees Ermenshrew puncturing her patriarch’s neck with her talons. Ermenshrew then announces that Don Arco can’t speak at the moment, and that she is the head of the family now. Rose then appears behind Ermenshrew, pushing her into a wall. Immediately after this Dram arrives, announcing that the solar flare compressor is fully powered up. The group then turns to see Ermenshrew back on her feet and flanked by four Blathereen guards, with her claw poised above the gravity accelerator. The Doctor tells her that the gravity warp above the aquaculture compound has been destroyed, and that attempting to move Justicia now would kill them all. Ermenshrew is unphased, so the Doctor tells her that Dram has aimed the solar flare compressor at the Blathereen mothership, ready to crush it to the size of a postage stamp and destroy the gravity warp attached to it. He tells Ermenshrew that if she presses the button she will die, but Ermenshrew does not believe him. Seeing that she is about to press the switch, the Doctor tells everybody to evacuate the room. They dive out of the doorway as the button is pressed. And then, silence. Rose looks at Ermenshrew, who is now surrounded by white light and slowly turning translucent. She begins to scream, then crumbles into ash. Dram realises that the feedback from the accelerator still puts them at risk, and Rose closes the door with Flowers’ key-card. Flowers then arrives, out of breath, and an explosion from the workshop rocks the corridor outside. For a moment everyone is still, realising that they’re safe. Dram then urgently remembers Ecktocsa and Callis and runs off to find them. The Doctor is lying face-down on the floor. Rose ruffles his hair, telling him that he stopped the Blathereen’s plan, but the Doctor is too upset about Ermenshrew’s death to celebrate.

Robsen sits in Consul Issabel’s old office, where he video-calls Jamini. He tells her everything. The gravity warp explosion has killed Ecktocsa and Callis, and sent him flying across the room below. After the Doctor had found him, he told Robsen that there were still Blathereen imposters to be found on Justicia’s planets and in EarthGov, but that they’ve got no warp-holes now and will likely have lost the will to fight. After he ends the call with Jamini, Robsen calls his family. He tells himself that things on Justicia will not go back to the way they were before.

Flowers is sat in her office. The Doctor had told her that Justicia is finished, and that Earth Empire will never let something like this happen again. He had put her in charge of revealing the truth to EarthGov officials, and had nominated Nesshalop, Yahoomer, Blista and Dram for immediate release from prison. He and Rose had then set off on a shuttle to Justice Alpha. Filled with determination, Flowers turns to her computer and gets to work.

Back on Justice Alpha, Rose and the Doctor stand in front of the TARDIS. Rose sees the plant she saw when they first arrived is still alive, and that others have begun to spring up around it. Dennel stands on the edge of a nearby plateau, watching as a funeral pyre is built in the distance. The only technician who had survived the blast had requested that Don Arco be given a proper send-off, and the Doctor had agreed to let him carry out a funeral before submitting himself for imprisonment. Rose had requested that their shuttle pick up the inmates from her prison who were still on Delta, and they now stand around the base of the pyre, waiting to watch the funeral before taking the shuttle to go wherever they please. The technician lights the pyre, and before anyone can stop him he throws himself into the flames. Riz and Katza then lead the mob away, as Dram stares into the flames as if looking for answers. Dennel then says his goodbyes, and Rose tells him that Flowers can help him find his on Justice Epsilon. As the sun starts to set and the pyre is reduced to cinders, the Doctor and Rose step back into the TARDIS.

A few hours later, Dram sneaks onto the shuttle that the human prisoners are still attempting to start. Inside he finds the Blathereen technician and Don Arco, who is alive and well. Arco then unzips his forehead, and the Blathereen skin-suit is removed to reveal Ecktocsa. Arco’s body, along with the Blathereen technician (who was in fact Callis in a disguise of her own) had been transported from the pyre to the ship via a warp-hole. The Slitheen then discuss whether to sell this new technology or find a use for it. Finally, they celebrate the downfall of the Blathereen family, and cheer to their continuing lives of crime.

Characters

Worldbuilding

Science & Technology

  • A warp-hole in space can be created by generating a gravity wave that is faster than light. This is allegedly due to gravity making things heavy, so you need light to counter it.
  • For a gravity bend of 96% in system space, the tangential warp offset register is approximately 7398 and a warp overlap of 45
  • The Doctor bluffs that he's programmed a hyper-destronic pulse into the nitrogen feeder.
  • An offset gravity pulse fed to the warp relay will make it difficult to travel through one of the warp holes.

Story notes

  • Later reprints of this book removed the image of Billie Piper from the cover.
  • This story was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.

Continuity

Additional cover images

  • Alternate cover without Rose

    Alternate cover without Rose

Editions published outside Britain

  • Published in Denmark by DR in 2006 as a hardback edition.
  • Published in Hungary by Gabo in 2006 as a hardback edition.
  • Published in the Netherlands by Memphis Belle in 2006 as a hardback edition.
  • Danish edition

    Danish edition

  • Hungarian edition

    Hungarian edition

  • Dutch edition

    Dutch edition

Audiobook

  • Audiobook cover

    Audiobook cover

External links

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Raxacoricofallapatorian stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Raxacoricofallapatorian story" is one in which one living, authentic Raxacoricofallapatorian plays a part within the confines of the story, usually a Slitheen family member, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. Stories like The End of Time, The Gift and The Nightmare Man are also not included due to the Slitheens' cameos being of no consequence to the plot of the story.
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