Waiting for a fish monster to come back to his lair after he was disappointedly left at the altar's about fun as pounding rice into mochi, at least Lila can eat the mochi afterwards.
Getting antsy, Catherine worried that the baron sensed the plot and went away from the loch, but Theodore assures her that the baron's on his way back to the loch.
It's familiar waters to him, he won't risk leaving it for another loch. He'll sooner fight them than leave the protection of Loch Mead.
"Curious how he got here?" Lila internally asks Theodore what he thinks and the aloof giant said that there wasn't a disturbance, so the baron didn't find his way through rifts and tears. He likely crashed landed here and had to go far as stripping his ship to nothing.
Perhaps he had a family, but the crash killed them all, this's his way of getting them back, and ruling over the humans.
"And why wouldn't Al have picked up on the ship?" Lila continued while she waited with Theodore as they're hidden away, keeping a close eye on Catherine while looking for signs of the baron.
As he's thinking, Theodore scratched the side of his face before saying that he himself's questioning the TARDIS as time went on.
Some things, Al excelled doing, but others, such as helping Theodore with the strange happenings that've bedeviled the aloof giant since it all started, it's a different story.
It's hard to say it's incompetence, but Theodore can't deny there's something wrong, and with Al's temperament, Theodore can't get a straight answer.
He doesn't doubt Al would've said something about a ship landing somewhere on this planet and the baron made his new life in Scotland, but everything else, Theodore can't be sure.
"He's old, Theo, you can't hold it against him," Lila tried telling him that Al's older than the both of them, even with Laney helping in fixing him up, internally, the TARDIS's older, not as apt as it once was, as it were.
Snorting, Theodore tells her, "Don't let him hear that, we'll never get home before Thanksgiving!"
Stopping himself, Theodore mentioned that he doesn't think it's age, in fact, it's almost like Al's dodging him for some odd reason.
It's baffling and worrying.
If Theodore can't trust the TARDIS, then what chances does he have elsewhere?
The Doctor must trust the TARDIS, it's quintessential!
If the Doctor cannot trust the TARDIS, then it'd surely result in terrible tidings.
It'd be akin to the head not trusting the body.
"Why would he do that?" Lila wondered why Al would dodge Theodore on helping him find answers to Stumpy, the coins, the death of the professor, everything else.
Maybe they're not detectives, but this chain of events is unusual, too unusual to be pure coincidence.
Especially, the coin Theodore fleeced from the professor going missing.
Theodore said he had it in Paul's journal and Lila trusted him not forgetting where he'd put it, the man knows where he puts all his jelly baby stashes whenever he gets a haul.
Like a squirrel and its acorn stashes, preparing for the dreary winter and dentist appointments thereafter.
"I don't know where it went, I even asked Bam Bam to track it for me, but he couldn't find it," Theodore sighs as he's unable to find the lost coin, even Bam Bam couldn't find it as he's prone to collecting loose coins from Theodore's wallet, even if he found it, he's doubtful that Al would've been helpful finding the origin of the coins.
They're too unique for it to be custom made, but the way they looked, Theodore thinks they were used as currency, he's sure of it.
In his mind, he sees the coin that he pondered over in his hand, he even drew a picture of it.
Without the trustee, Theodore's never going to find the origin of the coins, and it's just making his head hurt.
"Hey, if you can finish a sudoku page without snapping your pencil, you can solve anything," Lila lightly nudged him while they waited with Catherine as it should be close to the time the baron's arriving back.
Their silent conversation ended with a quizzical look from Catherine, staring at them with her hazel brow raised. She said to them, "What's with your eyes?"
Blinking, Theodore asked her what she meant and the princess points at his face, saying that their eyes kept moving weird, like they were talking, but their mouths didn't move.
Ah, the problems with telepathy, even if their mouths didn't move, their eyes still do, reflexively.
"Nothing," Theodore waved it off, trying to avoid having to explain to the princess that he's part-alien, can't spend all the time talking, now, can he?
Catherine didn't press on the matter, but she gave looks every now again while she impatiently waited for the baron, who they caught coming up the same pathway they took to the loch, holding a lantern above his face as he peered through the glass.
"Everybody to your places," Theodore gestured and they took their spots as they waited for the baron to hide away the cloaking device into the container that he salvaged from the wreckage of his ship.
Hidden in the darkness, Theodore sees the plump baron, wearing frilly clothes, a plume dangling off the side of his ruby cap, as he glances around, looking for anyone outside, before hurrying to the hole with the container sticking out, his plump hand disappearing in the pocket on the side of his trousers, taking out a white round object, looked like a shell someone would find on a beach, using his hand, the container opened, and dropped it in.
As he did, the baron's disguise disappeared, and aside from his head turning from an older man in his 50s into a fish monster, he still wore his clothes, a plus, Lila thinks.
Just as he was about to go into the waters, he's instantly startled by Catherine who shouted at him, "Listen here, you fat lipped fish, I am not going to "mate" with some fish from the loch!"
Stumbling backwards, the undisguised baron's frightened at the sight of the seething Catherine, before it caught up to him, and he recognized her.
If fish could smile, they'd smile better, because the baron's spiny teeth jutting out as he smiled didn't help convey his emotions.
"My love! Please, I can explain!" cried out the baron as he tried to reach for Catherine with his hands, but they looked like flippers with claws, causing her to recoil as she stared at him angrily.
Snorting loudly, Catherine shouted, "Explain? Explain?! You killed my own father just to push me into marrying you, you want to explain to me what?"
Didn't give the baron a chance at explaining himself before Catherine marched towards him, unafraid, which, Lila gave props that she wasn't scared at seeing her first alien.
Staring him right in his beady eyes, Catherine's about ready to clubbier him as he held his hands up in defense.
"Please! I can explain!" Catherine heard the blubbering baron beg her, but fury in her hazel eyes burned brighter than London fires, as she lunged at the baron, prepared to kill him herself.
So much for diplomacy!
Theodore and Lila rushed to separate the two from each other, Catherine outright trying to claw out the baron's beady eyes as Theodore held her, using his strength to keep her from breaking away.
"You killed my father!" Catherine shouted at him. "Murderer! I demand his head! I want his head!"
Screaming literal bloody murder, Catherine fought against Theodore as she desperately wanted to kill the baron.
Going deep in his mind, Theodore pulled out the oldest card his father used when dealing with rowdy situations such as this.
A booming, "Si-lence!"
Everyone stopped what they're doing, their eyes wide, looking towards Theodore as he exhaled sharply, hearing silence for the first time since a hot minute, before he said in a forced polite tone, "Can we please, discuss this rationally, before we decide on killing him?"
Already, Catherine's looking like she wanted to refute, but seeing the ire in his icy blue eyes' enough for her to remain quiet, as Theodore let her go, and she stood quietly with the baron uncomfortably looking around.
"Is it true, did you kill her father?" Theodore asks the baron as he slowly turned his oddly shaped head towards him.
Gurgling, the baron replied, "It was… a mistake…"
Pleading, the baron insisted that it was a mistake, he didn't mean to kill Catherine's father, and Catherine shouted at him, "A mistake? Killing my father's a mistake?!"
Sighing, Theodore halted her and talked to her in the way his father talked to him and his siblings.
"My grace, have I not listened to your woes unquestionably?" Theodore asks Catherine.
Pondering, Catherine meekly said that Theodore listened to her, but it was expected, he had to, but Theodore pointed out, he listened.
"And that I listened to you, means I listen to him, understand?" Theodore tells her that he listened to her when she poured her heart about her father's murder, now it's the baron's turn to tell his side, even if he's guilty, Theodore needs to know both sides.
Gritting her teeth, biting her tongue, Catherine exhaled sharply and quieted, while Theodore talked with the baron.
"What happened?" Theodore politely asked the baron what happened that resulted in the accidental death of Catherine's father.
Squirming in his spot, the baron responded that Catherine's father found out what he was, and he panicked.
He didn't mean to strike and kill Catherine's father, but he was about to alert the guards, and the baron already lost so much, he couldn't bare to lose more.
By the time the baron realized what happened, he fled, and the only reason he pushed for the marriage in the first place's just to appease the customs of the land.
"Bull. How'd we know you're not planning on turning her into one of you?" Lila spoken up, poking a hole in the baron's statement, going off what they know of the species from a Doctor's experience with them prior.
The question's enough to lull the baron into a deep thought, the silence solidified the guilt, and Theodore inquired the baron's true name, to which he finally responded.
It… wasn't a name anyone's able to pronounce remotely without looking like they're drunk, so Theodore short handed it to something they can all say.
Cole.
"We know about the ship crashing, care to explain?" Theodore asks him how they ended up on this Earth and Cole told of how they ended up in a lose-lose situation on their home planet, he and several others attempted to escape the wars, but the wars followed them throughout space.
It was a miracle they descended into the Earth's stratosphere, but that quickly waned, with the ship burning up into nothing, only Cole survived, no one else, and he only managed to scavenge the cloaking device to blend in with the locals.
"I'm guessing you're not a baron at all, right?" Lila questioned his authenticity as baron and Cole confirms that he wasn't one on his home planet, he was a war lord, a prideful one, but that wasn't enough to stop the happenings that destroyed their world, plunged his people into near extinction.
"If you were trying to restore your people, why go after one female human, why not create a harem?" Theodore pointed out that Cole could've had an easier time populating the earth with hybrid Saturnyn if he had committed to a harem of human women, but Cole told him that he wanted a royal bloodline established first.
Without a royal bloodline established, he can't hope to bring his people back from the brink, they'll fall into chaos once again!
"And I believe the customs here do not allow royal harem, correct?" Cole points out that he couldn't have a harem filled with royalty due to the customs of the land that would've prevented it, and it'd cause even further problems for him.
He wasn't wrong in his observations.
"You murdered a king, Cole, you realize the customs for king slaying, do you not?" Theodore warns Cole the consequences of accidentally killing Catherine's father.
The humans would want justice for his death, even if it was indeed an accident, and they're not going to buy the explanation from Cole, much less when they know he isn't human.
Pleading with them, Cole insisted it was an accident, but Theodore reminded him that it's for the courts to decide.
Thinking to himself, Theodore gotten an idea, and suggested that everyone gets what they want, within reason.
"What's the plan, spaceman?" Lila asks him as she sees the cogs in his head turning, hearing them in hers, before Theodore tells them the idea.
When he finished, Catherine responded with, "Are you mad?!"