"Ah, smell that Atlantic breeze!" the Doctor announced cheerfully as he led the way out of the TARDIS. "Nice and cold. Lovely. Have you met my friend?"

The three of them looked up to see the Statue of Liberty smiling down on them.

"Woah!" Barry breathed. "I came here once. School trip. Uh, will come here. Will have come here…"

The three of them geeked out over it as they headed across the island. Martha pointed out the Empire State Building, in progress but not yet complete.

"If I know my history," the Doctor mused, "That makes the date somewhere around…"

"November 1, 1930," Martha commented.

"You're getting good at this," the Doctor said, but Barry smirked and pointed to her newspaper.

"Here we are!" Martha enthused. "It's here! It's now!"

"I know!" Barry grinned back at her.

"Does this ever get old?"

"Never," the Doctor told them, but frowned. "Look at this."

Hooverville Mystery Deepens, the paper read.


The three of them strolled through Central Park, the Doctor telling Martha about the Great Depression.

"Great-grandma Esther…uh, Joe's grandma…stayed in one of these," Barry agreed as they headed towards one of the Hoovervilles, shaking his head. "She told me about it once…or she did in another timeline…There's loads of them all over the States."

As they strolled closer, a fight broke out, with one man accusing another of stealing his bread. A tall black man stepped out of his tent, split the bread in two, and ordered them both to act like human beings.

"Come on," the Doctor nudged them as the fighters drifted off. "I suppose that makes you the boss around here," he addressed the man.

Solomon, as he introduced himself, brought them into his tent, and told them more about the disappearances, men and women snatched in the middle of the night and leaving their possessions behind.

"So the question is, who's taking them and what for?" the Doctor mused, looking up as a young man burst in.

"Solomon, Mr. Diagoras is here!" he announced.

Mr. Diagoras turned out to be a neatly turned out, cocky man who offered a dollar a day for men to go down into the sewers and clear some "tunnel collapses." Barry and Martha exchanged exasperated looks as the Doctor volunteered.

"I'll kill you for this," she mock-grumbled, as they, Solomon, and the young man followed suit.

Martha, Barry, and the young man (who introduced himself as Frank) hung back and chatted as they headed followed the Doctor and Solomon through the tunnels. They didn't find any collapse, but what they did find was a kind of glowing green jellyfish definitely Not Of This World. The Doctor ordered Solomon to take the others back, but before Barry could argue, what sounded like pig squeals echoed through the tunnels, seeming to come from all around. Martha spotted a figure huddled cautiously against the wall, and they advanced cautiously, the Doctor leading the way.

Following close behind, they found that the man, though dressed in ordinary street clothes, had a pig's head, which looked up at the Doctor soulfully through all-too-human eyes.

"Is that, er, some kind of carnival mask?" Solomon asked. "No, it's real," the Doctor told him, without looking away. "I'm sorry. Now listen to me. I promise I can help. Who did this to you?"

"Doctor?" Martha said as more pig-men slipped out of the shadows. "I think you'd better get back here."

"Doctor…" Barry insisted.

"Actually, good point," their friend agreed, retreating cautiously.

"Should I…" Barry whispered, but the Doctor shook his head and replied in the same lowered tone. "If we just disappear, they'll report that to whoever's in charge, and we don't want them to know about your speed. Let's do this the old-fashioned way."

Louder, he added, "Martha, Barry, Frank, Solomon…er, basically, run!"

They ran, the Doctor again leading the way to a ladder, which he climbed up, sonicking open the grate.

"Go! Go!" Barry encouraged them, pushing his friends up the ladder and using a touch of super-speed to boost himself up as well, rolling out of the way as the Doctor slammed the iron portal shut and sonicked it. Everyone bent over, catching their breath.

"What were those things?" Frank asked after a few moments. The Doctor shook his head.

"I don't know."

Just then, a woman came around the corner and pointed a gun at them. Barry eased himself to the front, just in case.

"All right then, you shmucks," she announced. "Put them up. Hands in the air and no funny business. Now tell me, what have you done with Laszlo?"

The woman, who introduced herself as Tallulah ("with three L's and an H"), explained that her boyfriend Lazlo had disappeared, and she'd been hearing strange sounds from underground.

Barry and Martha shared a look, understanding what had happened.

"Look," the Doctor said, pulling the green blob out of his pocket. "Listen, just trust me. Everyone is in danger. I need to find out exactly what this is. Because then I'll know exactly what we're fighting."

The Doctor and Barry worked together to rig up a crude DNA scanner, while Martha headed up to watch Tallulah's production. Solomon came by with a radio, which they appropriated.

"How about you, Doctor?" he asked. "Where are you from? I've been all over. I never heard anybody talk like you. Just exactly who are you?"

"Oh, I'm just sort of passing by," the Doctor said absent-mindedly. Catching Solomon's raised eyebrow, Barry looked at him.

"It's kind of complicated. But we're here to help. Promise."

Solomon looked him in the eye, one man to another, and both saw a kindred spirit in the other. He nodded, pulling his coat around him.

"We got to get back to Hooverville. With these creatures on the loose, we got to protect ourselves. Ain't no one else going to help us."

"Good luck," the Doctor told him sincerely.

"I hope you find what you're looking for, for all our sakes."

"We will," Barry said, and exchanged a nod with the older man, who left with Frank.


"So?" the speedster asked his mentor, who was listening to the jellyfish thing with a stethoscope.

"Fundamental DNA type four six seven dash nine eight nine," the Doctor muttered. "Nine eight nine…Hold on, that means planet of origin…"

Barry saw his friend's eyes widen, and he tensed automatically.

"Skaro," the Doctor breathed, and even though Barry was the fastest man alive, the Doctor leapt to his feet almost as quickly, especially when they heard Martha scream. Rushing down the corridor, he found her being wrestled by a pig-man towards the open sewer grate. Barry shoulder-charged it, sending the creature flipping head over hooves into the tunnel.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, thanks. You guys find out where that jellyfish thing came from?"

"Skaro," Barry told her through gritted teeth.

"What's Skaro?"

"Planet of the Daleks."

"Daleks. Didn't he say…"

"Yeah," Barry nodded, running a hand through his hair. "Imagine a Nazi, a space Nazi, in an utterly impenetrable tank, with weapons beyond anything we've got. You imagining that?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's nowhere near as bad as you're imagining," the Doctor announced, striding into the room with Tallulah at his heels. "They must've been the ones to engineer the pig-men, probably to kidnap more humans. Taking people, mutating them….oh, it's very Dalek."

"Wait, you're talking like these Dalek things are from outer space," Tallulah put in, and the Doctor directed a baleful glare her way.

"Geez, no kidding, then."

She threw her coat on, and this time, all three travelers looked at her.

"Look, if these Dalek things are taking people, maybe they took Lazlo, too," she said after a second. "If he's down there, I'll find him."

The Doctor sighed. "All right, then. Allons-y, you lot."


Inside the tunnels, though they kept a tense look-out for Daleks or hostile pig-men, the first being they saw wasn't hostile at all.

"Don't look at me," the man ordered, turning his face away from their lights. "Stay back! Don't look at me."

"What happened to you?" the Doctor asked him gently. "They made me a monster." "Who did? The Daleks?"

"The masters," the huddled man agreed. "They needed slaves. They needed slaves to steal more people so they created us. Part animal, part human. I escaped before they got my mind, but it was still too late."

"Were you in the theater?" Martha asked him.

"I never…yes," he sighed.

"Why?" Tallulah put in.

"I never wanted you to see me like this," he told her, and despite his protestations, eventually turned into the light.

"Lazlo?" she asked, voice quivering. "My Lazlo?"

"I'm sorry. So sorry."

"Lazlo, can you show me where they are?" the Doctor asked.

"They'll kill you."

"If I don't stop them, they'll kill everyone."

With a final glance at Tallulah, he nodded, and led the way onwards.

"Barry, Martha…"

"Don't even think about it," Martha stated firmly. The Doctor huffed out a sigh. "Let's see, 1933, 1933, who's available in 1933…Barry, can I borrow your mobile?"

The speedster nodded and dug in his pocket, handing it over to the Doctor.

"Since when do you get reception in the 1930s?" Martha asked in incredulity as the Time Lord dialed a number.

"Since the Doctor upgraded my phone in the year 5,000,000,000," Barry smirked.

"I'll do yours when we get back to the TARDIS," the Doctor promised Martha as he put the phone to his ear.

"Chief Inspector Morse speaking," came the voice on the other end.

"Oh, hey, it's the Doctor. Sorry, wrong number."

"Oh, hello, Doctor. Not to worry. Do stop in for a cuppa when you have a moment."

"Will do. Bye!"

The Doctor shrugged at his friends, before re-dialing and leaving a message on someone's answering machine. That done, he flipped the phone shut, handed it back to Barry, and followed Lazlo further into the tunnels.


The motley group watched as a pair of Daleks performed an intelligence scan on a group of humans, and the Doctor, Martha, and Barry slipped into the high intelligence group as it moved off, Lazlo joining the ranks of the pig slaves as Tallulah made her way back home. The Doctor inhaled a breath, and Barry squeezed his friend's hand. They nodded grimly at each other.

Eventually, they were led into a laboratory, where a black-armored Dalek was attended to by the three other bronze ones.

"So the Cult of Skaro survived," Barry muttered. At the Doctor's urging, Martha ordered them to report, and the Dalek revealed to her that they were the last four Daleks in existence-at least that's something, Barry thought-before Dalek Sec's casing opened, and a bipedal being with a Dalek's head, dressed bizarrely in a human suit and shoes, unfurled itself and rose.

"I. Am. A human Dalek. I. Am your future."

Yeah, okay, Inspector Morse cameo, just because. He probably isn't going to appear in person, but like the Doctor with a chimney at Christmas, my whole brain just went, "what the hell!" Who did the Doctor leave a message for? Well, tune in next week to find out!