"What are you talking about?" Robert asked.
"Don't pretend you're an innocent," the Doctor replied, storming along down the corridor with Josh and Howard in close pursuit, struggling to keep up. He wasn't at a dead run but he was certainly getting close to it. He had a full head of steam now, and he wasn't willing to let it go for anyone. "I've got a pretty good idea what's going on here," he continued, "and I know full well neither of you has been honest with me. I said I would help you, and this is how you repay me?"
"Who's lied to you?" Robert asked.
"You said that you were prisoners within this country. You said the government was oppressive and wouldn't let you leave. But you've got more than that going on down here. You've got railways and hoverskiffs and ocean liners. You've got the whole planet. I took a stroll through the botanical gardens on the way here. You have plants from every ecological region on the planet. Tropics, sub-tropics, arctic, arid. You've got it all."
"I don't understand," Robert said. "Who said anything about the country?"
"I think our friend the Doctor has got rather the wrong end of the stick," Sanders said. "Most likely he hails from a land where a planet consists of more than one sovereign nation."
Quinn thought back. She was sure, positive, that she'd heard someone refer to the country, but maybe not? Maybe Sanders was right, and they'd just made a simple mistake with the nomenclature. It didn't seem like it was completely outside the realm of possibility. "So this whole entire planet is ruled by one guy?" she asked to confirm.
"Correct," Sanders said, "His Lord and Majesty."
"Alright, alright, fine," the Doctor said. "So you're keeping people captive to the planet, not to the country or the continent. Fine, that's an issue of nomenclature. But your threats are empty, Telbok, and so were your attempts to play on my sympathies, Robert. I haven't found any evidence that there are prisoners here at all."
"'Prisoner' is an ugly word, Doctor," Sanders said. "Don't you think you'd prefer the term 'political bargaining chip'?"
"I'd prefer the term emotional blackmail," the Doctor said. "For all the propaganda and all the hype, you don't have an evil empire. You don't have a regime of soldiers ready to start taking prisoners and forcing the people to do your will. You barely have enough for a regiment, do you?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Sanders said.
"I've found your base of operations," the Doctor replied. "The seat of the government's power. There's nobody here. I haven't seen a single soul since I got down here - only the people I brought with me. No guards, no scientists, nobody. Where did they all go? Did you ever even have anyone to being with?"
"Yes," Telbok said. "Yes, we did."
"And where are they now? What have you done with them?"
"Nothing at all, Doctor," the man replied. "As they've moved on to other things - other positions, other careers, and some, some leaving us for the great beyond, they've not been replaced. We don't need to fill the positions anymore."
"How long have the Anchors been in charge of the planet?"
"I told you," Howard said, speaking up for the first time since they'd left the shield generator. "There were no Anchors until there were Travelers."
"Oh, I don't think that's true at all," the Doctor said. "What do you think, Telbok?"
"I think that you've been gathering too much information, Doctor," Sanders said, "and that if you aren't very, very careful with what you do with your new knowledge, then the consequences could be very dire indeed."
"There you go!" the Doctor yelled. "Another threat, another empty rhetorical doomsday prediction that you don't have the resources to carry out."
Quinn spoke up. "But Doctor... if they're not actually going to be killing people, isn't... isn't that a good thing?"
"Oh, the best," the Doctor agreed. "But that doesn't mean that we have to like their methods. You've crafted a perfect image for your regime, haven't you? Brutish thugs who shoot first and ask questions later, a cold, uncompromising government official who threatens everything in his path. This is how you want people to see you? Like thugs out for violence? This is the image you want to put forth? Because this kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, no sir. This sort of thing is carefully crafted, every meticulous detail planned and decided by committee."
"It's worked for centuries this way," Telbok said, "and neither the King nor I myself see any reason to change it."
"You have millions of people trapped in a perpetual state of fear," the Doctor said. "Not just fear, terror! That's no way for anyone to live, day in and day out wondering if this is it, if this is the day the government is going to swoop in and kill them for believing that there's something worth seeing beyond the upper atmosphere of the planet."
"Believe me," Sanders said. "Fear is the least of our desires, but right now it's the least objectionable of the two possibilities."
"Fear's better than hope and dreams and aspirations? You can say it as often as you like but I won't believe it."
Josh had listened to the whole exchange miraculously quietly, but he piped up now during a lull in the conversation. "I don't get it," he said. "Where are we going?"
"There was a prison block on the layout plans of this building," the Doctor replied.
"So that's where we're going?"
"No," he replied. "I've got something a lot more interesting, I think."
"Like what?"
"The prison block doesn't have power," the Doctor said. "Hasn't for years. Or heat, or lights. But there's a sickbay down a few twists and turns of the corridor, and if we go there, I think we'll find something to make our day."
"Clever, Doctor," Sanders said over the communicator.
"Well, I still don't understand," Josh said. "The government's not threatening to kill anyone at all? That seemed like it was the whole message of the hijacked play."
"It is, and that's the point. If you can convince people that their dreams are hopeless, if you can convince them not to follow them, then you can win an entire war without lifting a finger, without shedding a drop of blood."
Again, Quinn had to admit, stacked up against the alternative this didn't seem too bad. "That sounds peaceful," she said.
"It sounds demoralizing," the Doctor replied. "Robbing people of what makes them alive is almost as bad as actually killing them. The body lives on, the mind too in most cases. But the soul is defeated a long time prior that way."
Quinn tried to imagine the planet as Lima, Ohio. If she did that, she could almost imagine the desperation, the feeling that you wanted nothing more than to get out of this little place and make something of yourself. It was the same feeling that'd come over her when she found out she was going to be a mother at sixteen. Okay. Terrifying.
"But Sanders told us people would be killed if we interfered here," Quinn said. "That wasn't propaganda. He just... said it."
"Another lie in a long series of them," the Doctor said, disgustedly.
"No," Sanders said. "No, it's not."
"You've lost all credibility," the Doctor said. "Especially after what I'm about to find behind Door number 2!"
They had arrived at the sickbay now, and the Doctor brandished the sonic screwdriver, pointing it at the tiny lock on the door. It opened immediately, no trouble whatsoever. A young woman looked over to the three men storming into the room and, startled, dropped a small tray. An assortment of pills skittered all over the floor as she shrieked and stepped back towards a wall.
"What the hell is this?" Josh asked, looking around the room, bewildered. An assortment of faces stared back at him from chairs all in a circle around the room. A few of the people had drinks, two were eating some kind of pie-like dessert, and four seated around a large round table appeared to be playing a game of cards.
"That's your prison," the Doctor said. "Looks a bit cozy, don't you think?"
The Doctor led the group through the facility, back up through the tree lift into the botanical garden, and closed the door hidden in the tree behind him.
"You're fine? You're really, really fine?" Josh was asking his wife again.
"Yes, perfectly," she replied. "It really was nice to get away for a bit."
"Nice to get away?! I've been worried sick about you! All of us in the company have, and what've you been doing? Sitting around, being waited on hand and foot, sipping wine and eating expensive desserts, all while me and the rest cried and fretted and worried that you weren't ever coming back!"
"Well I didn't know what was going on, did I?" she asked, getting defensive. "All they told us was we were being taken into protective custody because the government was so proud of your work, and they thought someone might try to use your families against you."
"Someone did," Josh grumbled. "The government!"
"Well we didn't know that!" They walked along in silence for a bit, everyone lost in their own thoughts. "Aren't you at least glad to see me?"
"What?"
"You've done nothing but scream at me since we got out of there," she said timidly. "Are you really mad at me?"
His expression softened almost immediately. "No, of course not," He said. "It's not your fault. I'm just glad I have you back," he said, slinging an arm around her shoulder.
"There's still things you're not telling me," the Doctor said into the commlink as the prisoners filed into the TARDIS. "What is it? I'm not playing anymore, this is your last chance. You've seen me at work. Sooner or later all the lies see the light of day, so you might as well just tell me."
"No way," Sanders said. "I didn't threaten you, Doctor. I made you a promise. Sometimes secrets are there for a reason and if you continue on the way you're going, there'll be deaths. A lot of perfectly innocent people."
"Why do you keep saying that?" the Doctor asked. "What does that mean? Because it's not your regime you're talking about. How many of you are there left, less than a dozen? These people could wipe you out in an afternoon if they knew how much of an advantage they had, which is why you hide behind fear and fantasy and stories about how hopeless it all is. It's a good thing they believe the line you're feeding them, Telbok, because if they didn't your power would have dried up a long time ago."
"That may be, but they do believe us, and as long as that continues to be the case everything will be fine."
"But it won't be fine," the Doctor said. "That shield generator won't last forever."
"It's powered off of the very life of the planet," Sanders replied. "If it goes, we will have gone long before."
"I don't think that's quite true. D'you, Robert?"
"I don't know what you're talking about..." Robert said.
"Really? That two-part plan of yours, in the play... that's quite clever for a man who's not a scientist. Trying to find the exact inverse wave of the shield so you can cancel it out. What kind of processing power would that take, do you think?"
Sanders scoffed before the playwright could reply. "A lot. They'd never manage it without setting off every alarm in Anchor HQ."
"Not that there's anyone there to hear it," the Doctor replied. "Only I think they've done just that."
"Impossible," Sanders said, while Robert denied the idea outright.
"The displays on the bunker set. Either your art director has an amazing grasp of 4-D entanglements or those are real data, real numbers crunching away, that he hid right under your nose, Mr. Sanders."
The silence on the line was deafening. "He did... what?"
"No snarky reply to that, eh?" the Doctor said. "Where did the idea come from, Robert? This isn't the kind of thing one just dreams up without any prior knowledge."
"I can't say any more, Doctor," Robert said.
"Nor me," Telbok said.
"Okay. That's it," the Doctor said. "Quinn?"
"Yes, Doctor?"
"Time for that plan we talked about."
"Okay," she said, then turning her attention to the two men in the room she said, "Back up, get into that corner."
"Let me think about that... no," Sanders said.
She frowned and then, reaching into a pocket built into the side of her sundress, pulled out a large, imposing-looking gun. She pointed it right at the government agent's chest, and said, "I won't ask you again."
Robert was already won over, hands in the air as he backed into the corner she'd indicated. Sanders was at least sitting up and taking notice now, his eyes widened in uncertain, cautious fear. "So that's it, Doctor? You can't win me over so you're going to have your pet shoot me?"
"I am nobody's pet," Quinn said, the gun still pointed at him, unwavering. "And word of advice - don't piss off the girl with the gun."
"I'd do as she says if I were you," the Doctor said over the commlink, his voice oddly light and lilting considering his companion was threatening to shoot someone.
"I don't believe she'd actually do it," Sanders said.
"D'you want to risk it, though?" the Doctor asked. "You haven't seen the temper on her. You should have seen the look I got when I refused to pop back to the American civil war just for a watermelon. She's basically a powder keg of hormones at the moment."
"Shut up, Doctor!" she yelled. She changed her aim, pointing the gun right between his eyes. "What's it going to be?" she asked. "Are you going to do what I tell you, or am I going to splatter your brains all along the wall?"
Sanders looked at the fierce, piercing stare she was giving him, and decided that, no, he didn't want to bank on her not shooting him dead after all. Reluctantly he backed away into the corner next to Robert, hands raised above his head. She joined them in the corner, pressing the gun right to Telbok's chest. She saw him glance down at her weapon arm, calculating, thinking. Could he swat the gun away and get it himself, or rid her of it long enough to take her down? Somehow the fact that he'd willingly beat a pregnant girl didn't surprise her, but she narrowed her gaze at him. "Don't even think about it," she said. "I was a cheerleader under Sue Sylvester. I've got reflexes that'd make Jackie Chan weep." She raised the comlink up closer to her mouth. "Now, Doctor," she called out.
A warm wind whipped up around them, suddenly, and the actors lounge seemed to grow strangely dim, and the noise was deafening. The two men looked about, confused as to what was happening, but not Quinn. She knew precisely what was coming - the Doctor had planned it. The room they had been in morphed and changed, and suddenly they were standing on the ramp in the console room, while the prisoners and the Doctor stared at them. The Doctor had materialized the TARDIS around them.
"Oh, so she's allowed to have a gun," Josh said, earning him a light slap on the arm from his wife.
Quinn lowered the weapon and tossed it lightly into the air towards Josh. "You were right, Doctor," she said. "Acting is fun."
Josh caught the gun, surprised by its lightness, and a moment later he smirked, wondering when the girl had found the time to go rummaging through Clegg's prop room to find such a realistic-looking piece.