Series 10, Episode 1
“YOU ARE READY TO EXPERIENCE KNOWLEDGE"
working title : "THE GOSPEL OF THE VOORD"
By
SIMON BUCHER-JONES
DURATION: 47’10”
10:00:00 EXT. SKY – NIGHT
A star flares up in a dark patch of sky – turning the night into a bowl of white light. The sound of footsteps running on sand in the whiteness. We can’t see who, or where.
CUT TO:
10:02:30 INT. ASTRONOMER’S TENT (MIDDLE-EASTERN)
A terrified young hebrew is shaking awake a dark bearded man, who is lying on pile of rugs.
ESDRAS
Saraias, Father, wake up for the sky is burning.
SARAIAS (Waking, his voice is slurred and he might be drunk.)
(Waking) I gave you a light in a pillar of Fire, and great wonders have I done among you; yet you have forgotten me, saith the Lord.
ESDRAS
Father, there’s no time for prophesy, things are happening NOW!
SARAIAS
No time for prophesy, he says, too proud to learn a trade, say I.
Oh my head.
ESDRAS
Father!
A bulky black shape looms suddenly against the white flaring radiance of the tent's entrance.
EDRAS screams.
ENTER - a figure in a close-fitting futuristic wet-suit, its head is a narrow wedge. From it's forehead a blunt antenna rises. It has no eyes.
VOORD
Give Me The Keys To Your Conscience. You Need Sin No More....
10:05:00 CUT TO TITLES SEQUENCE
10:05:33 CUT TO INT: A MODERN DAY BOOKSHOP
CLARA
It's no use I just can't think of a present for Dad. What do you think? He likes historical fiction?
DAN
What sort of period? Victorian? Tudor? Country-house Austen?
CLARA
He's gone a bit biblical. I blame Dan Brown, and all that Holy Grail stuff. Give him a book with a lost prophecy and a big stone on the front and he'll be happy.
DOCTOR (from armchair where he is reading)
What about a Dead Sea Scroll? An original gospel?
CLARA
How long have you been there? Is that your armchair?
DOCTOR gives arm-chair a proper look. Camera pull back, we see it is TARDIS blue.
DOCTOR
Their's weren't very comfortable.
(He jumps up). Camera pull back further, we see TARDIS is parked at back of book-shop among crime books section.
DOCTOR
Help me get this back inside and we'll go see what we can pick up.
DAN (Voice off)
Er, Clara. Maybe you should have a look at this.
Clara and Doctor come around shelves, to bookshop's religious section. A life sized card-board display cut-out of a Voord (only partly seen) stands before a pile of books. Dan is looking at the back of one of the books, he holds it so the photograph is visible to Clara and the Doctor.
DAN
Isn't this your dad?
The Doctor takes the book, and looks at the picture..
DOCTOR
I've met him haven't I. Once, at a meal. I don't remember him having the cold dead eyes of a psychopath. Still it probably runs in the family.
CLARA
I don't suppose he remembers you being an elderly scot's git, either. Give me that. It can't be Dad.
(She reads from the blurb / biog on the back of the book). Held towards the camera we can see it's called. YOU ARE READY TO EXPERIENCE KNOWLEDGE: The Hidden Gospel by DAVE OSWALD)
"Learn the recently discovered facts behind secrets hidden in the Apocrypha: You too can be without sin, You too can be without Guilt. Learn to lock and unlock your Conscience with the Sacred Keys."
I don't understand: when did he find the time to do any of this. He barely manages his job, and reading the paper.
DAN
It is him though.
DOCTOR
Unless he's got an evil twin. Is he important?
CLARA (Annoyed)
He's my father of course he's important.
DOCTOR
Nuclear codes important. Could he fry anything? No, not a fish supper. Is he in charge of the Boris Bikes or where they're going to put the hover-airport? We're missing something. Each of you, take a book at random. Sorites.
DAN
What?
DOCTOR
Pick three random sentences and read them out. It's an old form of biblical prophetic exigesis. Quite mad, but, sometimes...well go on.
CLARA (From her father's book)
"Like a machine the conscience can be programmed: once programmed it becomes unquestioned."
DAN (From a religious book taken at random)
"Then the strangers said, behold we have come among you, to bring the new wine."
CLARA
"Once unquestioned the conscience becomes, innate and undefeated."
DAN
"And they took the son of the old prophet who was called Sairas, and they said unto him: Hail Esdras for you will become even as we are."
CLARA
"Once initiated and undefeated: there will be only goodness - and that goodness will have no end."
DAN
"Then Esdras cried out saying, 'be gone strangers for you are not angels of the lord but creatures no man has seen upon the earth, and your ways are not our ways."
10:10:00 CUT TO EXTERIOR DESERT HISTORICAL, TENTS IN BACKGROUND.
Voord, holding Esdras by the hair. He is on his knees before it.
VOORD
THEY WILL BE.
TARDIS materialisation sound effect.
The Doctor runs into shot.
DOCTOR
Put that man down now. This is not your place.
VOORD
Our place is where there is evil. For we are Good.
Our place is where there is doubt. For we are Certainty.
DOCTOR
Your place is another world and another time. I can smell the acid of its seas on your rubberised skin. What are you doing here? What on earth do you think you're doing?
VOORD (lifts its hands to its headgear, and removes it with a sweeping gesture. It splits around the antenna which remains wired into the Voord's skull like a unicorn's horn.)
I am the Prophet of the Repentance. I am the Voord.
I bring the good news that says: evil is ending.
Who are you to resist the Voord?
The Voord is a beautiful young woman, aside from the aeriel protruding from her skull.
CLARA
Never mind all that. What the fuck have you done to my dad?
10:15:30 CUT TO: INTERIOR MODERN CHURCH HALL
PRIEST
Now I know you're all here for the ALPHA course, but I hope you'll bear with me if I introduce a guess speaker. The man whose research into the Apocrypha has caused so much controversy in the religious world- who lives in our very own parish. DAVE OSWALD.
DAVE
Hello everyone. I've made a discovery. A discovery you can share. When my wife Ellie died, I left the church - I walked in the darkness for so long. I was angry. With God with the Church even with the Government. Only the love of my daughter, and my family kept me sane....but I doubted God. In my doubt I looked in strange places. The Occult. Oh yes, I confess it freely. The Scientologists. Yes, I know - one step down fom the Occult right? The books of the Bible the Church has long since rejected. And in the latter I found a set of keys, a hidden methodology, a way to make my doubts vanish. A way to make my temptations vanish. A way to make us all the good men and women God wants us to be. And I can show you now. (He Smiles) The Key is in us all. You Are Ready To Experience Knowledge.
10:16:00 CUT TO: INTERIOR TENT
DAN, (tied with ropes back to back with DOCTOR and CLARA)
Well that was telling her. Very effective.
DOCTOR
Her? What do you mean her?
CLARA
Ms Honey-Blonde Fetishist From Space, who else.
DOCTOR
From Space yes, blonde maybe. Ms - arguable. When I last met these creatures, they never ever took their masks off, and yet this one just happens to want to shake her locks at us. What did it look like before we saw under the mask eh? DAN, I need you to do something for me.
DAN
What?
DOCTOR
Sleep.
DAN (Starts snoring).
CLARA
How did you do that? Why did you do that?
DOCTOR
Experience...and, experience. I want to tell you about our hosts - but I want DAN to keep an open mind. If I tell you both, you'll both be biased. I'd have told him to stick his fingers in his ears and hum, if we weren't tied up. As it is baby go bye-bye.
CLARA
You're talking as if you''re angry that you aren't sure.
DOCTOR
I'm not. I think I met them once - oh so long ago - on a world that was as complex as your own. A world I only saw a few parts of, and whose history I never quite understood, and yet the Voord impressed me as dangerous.
CLARA
Right, they're dangerous - check!
DOCTOR
Unless they're not now. It might have been centuries, these might be different Voord. That's why I want Dan to act as my control. I don't want to prejudge the 17th century French from a bad experience with some 12th century Italians. Wearing rubber isn't an absolute guarantee of evil, although it probably helps.
CLARA
We're tied up. It was...she was...grabbing someone by the hair. It...they've...done something to my father. I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
DOCTOR
Which is why you're not asleep. You and me we're biased. We need Dan to have a fresh mind. He'll need us to have the background. So - oh centuries ago, probably, on a planet called Marinus, a humanoid species made a machine that re-enforced their morality. Under the influence of the Conscience crime became impossible, war ceased, vulgarity, and spitting disappeared. Everyone was happy, without the option, until, a random mutation, or an alien spore, or sheer chance, freed a person called Yartek from the machine's influence. Yartek lead an uprising - in the process of which the last Keeper of the Conscience died and the machine was destroyed. I thought Yartek too had perished.
CLARA
Ms Fetish seemed to think otherwise.
DOCTOR
Yes.....
10: 17:00 CUT TO FLASHBACK, EXTERIOR DESERT
VOORD
Your clothes and morals are not those of the culture here. I am assessing this culture to determine the correct Keys for its Best Outcome. You will be held until you can be assessed by YARTEK.
(There is a white flash of light, sourceless. Implicity, at this point the Doctor Clara and Dan were captured.)
10:17:30 CUT TO INTERIOR TENT.
CLARA
So Yartek was, what - a terrorist - or a freedom fighter? You said everyone was controlled by this machine?
DOCTOR
The Keeper of the Machine would have said the former. He was a kind man, he believed implicitly in the good the machine had done, as did his daughter. But I was never sure. Every regieme believes it acts for the best. However, whatever his initial intent, by the time YARTEK attempted to gain control of the machine he seemed more interested in using it on everyone else than intent on destroying it.
VOORD (entering tent)
That is correct. But since those days, the Yartek has refined his views. He is wise and old and to be obeyed.
DOCTOR
Take it from me, you don't want to be listening to old people. They'll bore you death with what they did in the Time War, and how the cosmos is turning slower, and don't get me started on lumbago.
CLARA
He said it, and he's ooh over two thousand so he ought to know.
VOORD
Your age is nothing to the years of wisdom of the YARTEK. You are not ready to experience knowledge. You must first be changed.
DOCTOR
Right, that's enough. (He stands up, and ropes fall away). Thank you Houdini. Now listen here Missey, you are in a lot of trouble. You've interfered with the history of this planet...
CLARA
And you've turned my dad into a creepy holly-roller. (CLARA decks the Voord, who falls).
DAN (now awake)
Whoah, Clara - that's not like you.
DOCTOR (kneeling to examine Voord as speaking).
No it isn't is it? Anger, sweary, violent Clara is rather new isn't she. I wondered about this when she turned all slappy inside that Dalek. Quick Dan - what would you say is Clara's relationship with her father?
DAN
Er, good I guess - um - wait - aren't they not speaking now, Clara didn't you say that....(he trails off, confused by Clara's blank expression).
DOCTOR
What the Voord are doing, here in the past, it's been reaching its tendrils forward through time already. I'm immune at least for now, but you and Clara are starting to have different pasts. They've found a peculiar weak spot - a place where small changes impact out of all proportion. That's probably why they're piddling about the edges of Christianity rather than going straight for St. Paul or Mohammed. That and the fact the BBC would never stand for it: not if it buggered up Songs of Praise. This is very advanced thinking for the Voord I remember. Glass submarines. Machines to order and control the mind. Yes. Any grasp of time technology, no. Ah, ha - beautiful blonde woman, my eye.
(He pulls a flimsy, sheer mask away from the Voord, we do NOT see what is beneath.).
This is a memory-plastic mask, with holographic emitters built in at the nanometre level. Again, not Voord technology - but I can't help feeling I've....
YARTEK (An ornately robed VOORD entering tent)
Oh my dear Doctor, you have been naive....
DOCTOR
Well firstly I thought you were stuck in a time-lock with Rassilon, and secondly - I had hoped that once the drums weren't beating in your head every waking moment, you'd stop with all this nonsense, and if you did escape...
MASTER (for YARTEK is he, removes headgear to reveal [Can we get SIMMS? Check]...)
...You hoped I'd get a proper job. Like you. Well it may surprise you Doctor, but I have. The Voord have taken me to their collectively disorganised bosoms. You left them leaderless - a society based solely on its opposition to something that..........you left in ruins. Anarchists with a fixation on a Strong Man figure....with nothing left to hate. They accepted the return of Yartek, as a divine gift. I am the Voord's Messiah, and soon I will be Earths.
DOCTOR
Bending the population to your will again? Have you learned NOTHING. You odious little, little man. We were friends once.
MASTER
Sometimes I wonder why. It's lucky I have no self-esteem issues. No, you misjudge me. Come follow me, walk in the steps of the Master, and many things will be made clear to you.
10:25 CUT TO: PRESENT DAY CHURCH INTERIOR (SONGS OF PRAISE VIBE)
DAVE OSWALD (Laying a hand on the head of a kneeling figure)
Say what you want and turn the key.
THE CONGREGATION (Shouts)
Say what you want and turn the key.
KNEELING FIGURE (SOBS)
I want not to over eat, I want to feel loved, I want to know I have value.
DAVE OSWALD
You can. You can turn the key that locks your free-will to what you freely will now. You can decide once and for all. The Lock makes us Free! Never again do we have to decide. We can be good. Be good and stay good.
CONGREGATION (Shouts)
The Lock makes us free! Be good and stay good.
10:30: DESERT EXTERIOR, TENTS, CAMELS ETC.
MASTER (Moving among the tribesmen easily, nodding to one here, acknowledging another there. We see a number of rubber suited Vvord among the crowd. In the background not in focus are large grey shapes stretching upwards.)
Imagine Doctor how much good the human race could do, if they only once – for a generation say – lived in accordance with their own best ideals.
No murder, no adultery, no coveting of each other asses. No bickering, no backbiting. No envy. Just unified work to unified goals. The greatest good of the greatest number.
DOCTOR
You have a point to make?
MASTER
The human race needs the science of the Vvord, it needs to listen to its conscience. I have. The Locks have set me free. Free to serve them.
DOCTOR
Them?
MASTER
Look up, Doctor, see their glory and be humbled, as I have been. Turn the key upon your doubt and fear and live in the glory of the ULLLLLLL.
DOCTOR
Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
(The camera pans up. We see that the grey shadows in the background are the legs of massive humanoid Space Elephants the size of Galactus, standing over the whole oasis, their bodies wreathed in technology and haloed with crackling lightning bolts of cosmic space power!)
10:35 CUT TO MODERN CHURCH
The camera pans up from the congregation to the Altar which is carved into the head of a Massive SPACE ELEPHANT!!
PRIEST: Praise them, Praise them! Praise The Pachyderms of Power!!
The roof of the church cracks across and a grey trunk reaches down and pulls the Priest up into nothingness. There is the sound of crunching. Human bones and tatters of meat and gore fall down upon the heads of the congregation.
10:37 CUT TO OASIS.
DOCTOR: Just say no, keep saying no in your heads or out loud, don't let them get into your minds.
DAN: Why what'll happen, I mean noooooonnnnnoooo nnoooo.
DOCTOR: They'll eat you if you've been naughty. They're Carnivorous Space Elephants and they're huge, powerful, dangerous, telepathic, self-righteous and hungry. Before the War they were quarantined by the Time Lords, but now they they're loose.
CLARA: What do they consider naughty..no...no..NO NO....no.....
DOCTOR: They never forget so they only ever make a mistake once, so they have no compassion for flawed forgetful species: they judge everyone by their standards and they eat the unfit as an act of communion with their even BIGGER SPACE ELEPHANT GOD. They know when you've been naughty, and they barely give a thought to the possibility that you might have been nice.
MASTER: You see now Doctor I have brought Voord technology to earth, only it can make humanity honourably inedible to the Hordes of UUUULLLLLL. Each person living truely to his or her own best impulses - locked securely into invulnerable rectitude.
DOCTOR: Yes, good try, but its a bit no NO NO NO no no like cutting your head off to cure the toothache, there must be something else we can do. It's a good job your heads been so full of Rassilon's drums for so long that they can't see what you're really thinking...oh..no...shouldn't have thought that....no NO....NOOOOOO......
A trunk reaches down and snatches the Doctor into the air....
The roof of the church cracks across and a grey trunk reaches down and pulls the Priest up into nothingness. There is the sound of crunching. Human bones and tatters of meat and gore fall down upon the heads of the congregation.
10:37 CUT TO OASIS.
DOCTOR: Just say no, keep saying no in your heads or out loud, don't let them get into your minds.
DAN: Why what'll happen, I mean noooooonnnnnoooo nnoooo.
DOCTOR: They'll eat you if you've been naughty. They're Carnivorous Space Elephants and they're huge, powerful, dangerous, telepathic, self-righteous and hungry. Before the War they were quarantined by the Time Lords, but now they they're loose.
CLARA: What do they consider naughty..no...no..NO NO....no.....
DOCTOR: They never forget so they only ever make a mistake once, so they have no compassion for flawed forgetful species: they judge everyone by their standards and they eat the unfit as an act of communion with their even BIGGER SPACE ELEPHANT GOD. They know when you've been naughty, and they barely give a thought to the possibility that you might have been nice.
MASTER: You see now Doctor I have brought Voord technology to earth, only it can make humanity honourably inedible to the Hordes of UUUULLLLLL. Each person living truely to his or her own best impulses - locked securely into invulnerable rectitude.
DOCTOR: Yes, good try, but its a bit no NO NO NO no no like cutting your head off to cure the toothache, there must be something else we can do. It's a good job your heads been so full of Rassilon's drums for so long that they can't see what you're really thinking...oh..no...shouldn't have thought that....no NO....NOOOOOO......
A trunk reaches down and snatches the Doctor into the air....
10:38 : ELEPHANT'S EYE VIEW
Doctor is tiny figure in trunk, brought gradually up to eye line.
GIANT CARNIVOROUS SPACE ELEPHANT (GCSE)
WHAT ARE YOU? YOUR MIND IS DIFFERENT. THESE CREATURES PRETEND TO BE GOOD BUT THEY SMELL OF CHAINS.
DOCTOR:
Well I'm not pretending anything. I do what I have to, and so does everyone else - good or bad. So why don't you push off back to your SPACE ELEPHANT MOTHER SHIP and leave these good and bad people to make their own decisions. Hm? What business is it of yours what they do?
GCSE:
THIS FROM YOU LITTLE THING? BUT I SEE IN YOUR BRIGHT MIND, YOUR BRILLIANT MIND THAT YOU DO NOTHING BUT INTERFERE AND JUDGE. WHAT DO WE DO THAT YOU DO NOT?
DOCTOR:
Well for a start I've not got an angry man in my trunks, besides you're not fooling me.
GCSE
WHAT MORTAL!
DOCTOR
Giant Carnivorous Space Elephants, who are behind the Master, who's behind the Voord? This is bloody fanfic isn't it. I suppose the fact that your initials spell G.C.S.E is some sort of in-joke.
It could have been worse. You could have been a mutant ninja turtle.
GSCE
Or, I could just have been playing with toys.... Oh Doctor how long have you been bounded within my domaine without knowing it.
GSCE (Pulls off elephant mask to reveal sneering face of the Celestial Toymaker played by best actual chinese actor we can get, or failing that Sir Ian McKellen.)
CLARA: Didn't you know I was a doll Doctor? Didn't you recognise little Clara the Clown!
DOCTOR: Nooooooooo!
10:47: End Credits.
Doctor is tiny figure in trunk, brought gradually up to eye line.
GIANT CARNIVOROUS SPACE ELEPHANT (GCSE)
WHAT ARE YOU? YOUR MIND IS DIFFERENT. THESE CREATURES PRETEND TO BE GOOD BUT THEY SMELL OF CHAINS.
DOCTOR:
Well I'm not pretending anything. I do what I have to, and so does everyone else - good or bad. So why don't you push off back to your SPACE ELEPHANT MOTHER SHIP and leave these good and bad people to make their own decisions. Hm? What business is it of yours what they do?
GCSE:
THIS FROM YOU LITTLE THING? BUT I SEE IN YOUR BRIGHT MIND, YOUR BRILLIANT MIND THAT YOU DO NOTHING BUT INTERFERE AND JUDGE. WHAT DO WE DO THAT YOU DO NOT?
DOCTOR:
Well for a start I've not got an angry man in my trunks, besides you're not fooling me.
GCSE
WHAT MORTAL!
DOCTOR
Giant Carnivorous Space Elephants, who are behind the Master, who's behind the Voord? This is bloody fanfic isn't it. I suppose the fact that your initials spell G.C.S.E is some sort of in-joke.
It could have been worse. You could have been a mutant ninja turtle.
GSCE
Or, I could just have been playing with toys.... Oh Doctor how long have you been bounded within my domaine without knowing it.
GSCE (Pulls off elephant mask to reveal sneering face of the Celestial Toymaker played by best actual chinese actor we can get, or failing that Sir Ian McKellen.)
CLARA: Didn't you know I was a doll Doctor? Didn't you recognise little Clara the Clown!
DOCTOR: Nooooooooo!
10:47: End Credits.
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