[Hotel]
(A lone policewoman walks the corridors of a deserted hotel, then opens the door to room 214. There is a sad clown in there, holding a balloon and sitting on the bed.)
LUCY [OC]: My name is Lucy Hayward, and I'm the last one left.
(Room 215 has an old-fashioned photographer with a girl and a birthday cake.)
LUCY [OC]: It's funny. You don't know what's going to be in your room until you see it, then you realise it could have never been anything else.
(Further along is a second Room 214, and a gorilla comes out of the bathroom. Lucy remembers some news reports, screams and backs out. She writes in her notebook.)
LUCY [OC]: The gaps between my worship are getting shorter. This is what happened to the others. It's all so clear now. I'm so happy. Praise him. Praise him.
(Something big, heavy and snarling comes down the corridor. She stands to meet it.)
LUCY [OC]: Praise him.
VOICE [OC]: Praise him.
[Staircase]
(Of the same hotel. The Tardis has parked herself on the first floor landing of a staircase which winds its way up the floors in a tight set of flights.)
AMY: Let's go to Ravan-Skala, he says. The people are six hundred feet tall. You have to talk to them in hot air balloons and the Tourist Information Centre is made of one of their hats, he says. I'm sorry, but I don't see any huge hats.
DOCTOR: Amy, Beaky, this could be the most exciting thing I have ever seen.
RONALD : You're kidding.
Isabella : How can you be excited about a rubbish hotel on a rubbish bit of Earth?
[Reception]
DOCTOR: Because, assembled Ponds, this is not Earth. This has just been made to look like Earth. The craftsmanship involved. Can you imagine?
AMY: What? Then where are we?
DOCTOR: I don't know. Something must have yanked us off course. Look at the detail on that cheese plant!
RORY: Right, but who would mock up an Earth hotel?
(The Doctor finds an apple in a large bowl.)
DOCTOR: Colonists maybe, recreating a bit of home, like when ex-pats open English pubs in Majorca. No, whoever did this, I am shaking his stroke her hand stroke tentacle.
RONALD : Have you seen these? Look at the labels underneath.
(A set of photographs on the wall.)
RORY: Commander Halke, defeat.
(A Sontaran.)
RONALD : Tim Heath, having his photo taken. Lady Silver-Tear, Daleks.
Isabella : Paige Barnes, other people's socks. Tim Nelson, balloons. Novice Prin, sabrewolves. Royston Luke Gold, Plymouth? Lucy Hayward, that brutal gorilla. Doctor, what does it mean?
DOCTOR: I don't know. Let's find out.
(He rings the bell on the desk and three people appear, two of them brandishing objects as weapons, the third waving a white flag.)
RORY: Whoa!
DOCTOR: Blimey, that was a bit quick.
GIBBIS: We surrender.
(A grey alien with slightly rodent front teeth and no hair.)
RONALD : No, it's okay, we're not
GIBBIS: We surrender.
RORY: We're nice.
DOCTOR: She's threatening me with a chair leg.
RITA: Who are you?
(Dressed in hospital scrubs.)
HOWIE: Oh god, we're back in reception.
(A bespectacled awkward teenager.)
GIBBIS: We surrender.
DOCTOR: I've never been threatened with a chair leg before. No, hang on, I tell a lie.
Isabella : Did you just say, it's okay, we're nice?
RITA: Okay, I need everyone to shut up, now.
(Someone or something is watching on the CCTV.)
HOWIE: Rita, be careful, yeah?
RITA: Their pupils are dilated. They're as surprised as we are. Besides which, if it's a trick, it'll tell us something.
DOCTOR: Oh, you're good. Oh, she's good. Amy, with regret, you're fired.
AMY: What?
DOCTOR: I'm kidding. (silent) We'll talk. (normal) I take it from the pathological compulsion to surrender, you're from Tivoli.
GIBBIS: Yes. The most invaded planet in the galaxy. Our anthem is called Glory To Insert Name Here.
DOCTOR: You with the face, Howie, you said you were surprised to be back in reception.
HOWIE: The walls move. Everything changes.
DOCTOR: You, clever one. What's he talking about?
RITA: The corridors twist and stretch. Rooms vanish and pop up somewhere else. It's like the hotel's alive.
(The Doctor turns off the musak.)
DOCTOR: That's quite enough of that.
HOWIE: Yeah, and it's huge, with, like, no way out.
RORY: Have you tried the front door?
RITA: No. In two days it never occurred to us to try the front door. Thank God you're here.
(Isabella laughs. The Doctor opens the front doors.)
DOCTOR: They're not doors, they're walls. Walls that look like doors. Door-walls, if you like, or dwalls. Woors even, though you'd probably got it when you said they're not doors. I mean, the windows are
(Pulls back the curtains to reveal more bricks.)
DOCTOR: Right, big day if you're a fan of walls.
RITA: It's not just that. The rooms have things in them.
DOCTOR: Things? Hello! What kind of things? Interesting things? I love things, ask anyone.
RITA: Bad dreams.
DOCTOR: Well, that killed the mood. How did you get here?
RITA: I don't know. I'd just started my shift. I must have passed out, because suddenly I was here.
HOWIE: I was blogging. Next thing, this.
GIBBIS: Oh, I was at work. I'm in Town Planning. We're lining all the highways with trees so invading forces can march in the shade.
DOCTOR: Ah.
GIBBIS: Which is nice for them.
ALL: Yeah.
DOCTOR: So, what have we got. People snatched from their lives and dropped into an endless, shifting maze that looks like a 1980s hotel with bad dreams in the bedrooms.
(The Doctor takes George's Rubik's cube from his pocket.)
DOCTOR: Well, apart from anything else, that's just rude.
YOU ARE READING
The Story of a mad Man with a box series 6 (Doctor Who)
ActionAmy, Isabella Ronald Rory and River Song receive invitations to the Utah desert where they meet the Doctor, who claims to be nearly 200 years older than when they had last seen him and says that he will take them to "Space: 1969". As they dine besid...
