Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by Adams, Douglas

  The Big Bang Bomb.

  The Doctor and the Bomb.

  Doctor Who Saves the Universe.

  APPENDIX 2

  DOUGLAS ADAMS’S ORIGINAL TREATMENT

  Doctor Who – The Krikkitmen

  Cricket at Lord’s – the last day of the final Test, England need just a few more runs to beat Australia.

  The Tardis lands in the Members’ Enclosure: very bad form. The members are only slightly mollified when the Doctor emerges (with Jane) wearing a hastily donned tie and waving a very old membership card.

  Three runs still needed. The batsman hits a six and the crowd goes wild. In the middle of the pitch the Ashes are presented to the England captain. The Doctor causes a sensation by strolling over and asking if he could possibly take them as they are rather important for the future of the Galaxy.

  Confusion reigns, along with bewilderment, indignation, and all the other things the English are so good at. Then, whilst the Doctor is discussing the matter quite pleasantly with one or two red-faced blustering gentlemen, something far more extraordinary happens:

  A small Cricket Pavilion materialises on the centre of the pitch. Its doors open and eleven automata, all apparently wearing cricket whites, caps, pads and carrying cricket bats, file out onto the pitch. Bewilderment turns to horror as these automata, moving as a tightly drilled and emotionless team club those in their immediate vicinity with their bats, seize the urn containing the Ashes and file back towards their Pavilion.

  Before they depart, two of them use their bats as beam projectors to fire a few warning shots of stunray into the crowd. Another tosses what appears to be a red ball into the air, and with a devastating hook smacks it straight into a Tea Tent which promptly explodes.

  The door of the Pavilion closes behind them and it vanishes again.

  After a few seconds of stunned shock the Doctor struggles back to his feet.

  ‘My God,’ he breathes. ‘So they’ve come back.’

  ‘But it’s preposterous … absurd!’ people exclaim.

  ‘It is neither,’ pronounces the Doctor. ‘It is the single most frightening thing I have seen in my entire existence. Oh, I’ve heard of the Krikkitmen, I used to be frightened with stories of them when I was a child. But till now I’ve never seen them. They were supposed to have been destroyed over two million years ago.’

  ‘But why,’ people demand, ‘were they dressed as a cricket team? It’s ridiculous!’

  The Doctor brusquely explains that the English game of Cricket derives from one of those curious freaks of racial memory which can keep images alive in the mind aeons after their true significance has been lost in the mists of time.

  Of all the races in the Galaxy only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific star wars that ever sundered the universe and transform it into what is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game. It is for that reason that the Earth has always been regarded slightly askance by the rest of the Galaxy – it has inadvertently been guilty of the most grotesquely bad taste.

  The Doctor smiles again for a moment and says that he did enjoy the match, and could he possibly take the ball as a souvenir?

  The Doctor and Jane leave in the Tardis.

  During the next couple of scenes we learn some of the background history of the Krikkitmen from the Doctor’s explanation to Jane and his arguments with the Time Lords. If it can be done partly using flashback and archive recordings from Gallifrey then so much the better.

  BRIEF HISTORY OF KRIKKIT

  The Planet of Krikkit lies in an isolated position on the very outskirts of the Galaxy.

  Its isolation is increased by the fact that it is obscured from the rest of the Galaxy by a large opaque Dust Cloud.

  For millions of years it developed a sophisticated scientific culture in all fields except that of astronomy of which it, understandably, had virtually no knowledge.

  In all their history it never once occurred to the people of Krikkit that they were not totally alone. Therefore the day that the wreckage of a spacecraft floated through the Dust Cloud and into their vicinity was one of such extreme shock as to totally traumatise the whole race.

  It was as if a biological trigger had been tripped. From out of nowhere the most primitive form of racial consciousness had hit them like a hammer blow. Overnight they were transformed from intelligent, sophisticated, charming, normal people into intelligent, sophisticated, charming manic xenophobes.

  Quietly, implacably, the people of Krikkit aligned themselves to their new purpose – the simple and absolute annihilation of all alien life forms.

  For a thousand years they worked with almost miraculous speed. They researched, perfected and built the technology to wage vast interstellar war.

  They mastered the technique of instantaneous travel in space.

  And they built the Krikkitmen.

  The Krikkitmen were anthropomorphic automata. They wore white uniforms, peaked skull helmets which housed scything laser beams, carried bat-shaped weapons which combined the functions of devastating ray guns and hand-to-hand clubs. The lower half of their legs were in [fact] ribbed rocket engines which enabled them to fly.

  By an ingenious piece of systems economy they were enabled to launch grenades with phenomenal accuracy and power simply by striking them with their bats.

  These grenades, which were small, red and spherical, and varied between minor incendiaries and nuclear devices, were detonated by impact – once their fuses had been primed by being struck by a bat.

  Finally all preparations were complete, and with no warning at all the forces of Krikkit launched a massive blitz attack on all the major centres of the Galaxy simultaneously.

  The Galaxy reeled.

  __________

  At this time the Galaxy was enjoying a period of great harmony and prosperity. This was often represented by the symbol of the Wicket Gate – three long vertical rods supporting two short horizontal ones. The left upright, of STEEL, represented strength and power; the right upright, of PERSPEX, represented science and reason; the centre upright, WOOD, represented nature and spirituality; between them the GOLD bail of prosperity and the SILVER bail of peace.

  The star wars between Krikkit and the combined forces of the rest of the Galaxy lasted for a thousand years and wreaked havoc throughout the known Universe.

  After a thousand years of warfare, the Galactic forces, after some heavy initial defeats, eventually defeated the people of Krikkit. Then they have to face

  THE GREAT DILEMMA.

  The unswerving militant xenophobia of the Krikkiters rules out any possibility of reaching any modus vivendi, any peaceful co-existence. They continue to believe that [their] sacred purpose is the obliteration of all other life forms.

  However, they are quite clearly not inherently evil but simply the victims of a freakish accident of history. It is therefore implausible to consider simply destroying them all

  What can be done?

  THE SOLUTION

  The planet of Krikkit is to be encased for perpetuity in an envelope of Slow Time, inside which life will continue almost infinitely slowly. All light is deflected round the envelope so that it remains entirely invisible and impenetrable to the rest of the Universe. Escape from the envelope is impossible until it is unlocked from the outside.

  The action of Entropy dictates that eventually the whole Universe will run itself down, and at some point in the unimaginably distant future that life and then matter will simply cease to exist. At that time the planet of Krikkit and its sun will emerge from the slow time envelope and continue a solitary existence in the twilight of the Universe.

  The Lock which holds the envelope in place is on an asteroid which slowly orbits the envelope. The Key was the symbol of the unity of the Galaxy – a Wicket of Steel, Wood, Perspex, Gold, and Silver.

  Shortly after the envelope had been locked a group of escaped Krikkitmen had attempted to steal the Key in the process of which it was blasted
apart and fell into the Space Time Vortex. The passage of each separate component was monitored by the Time Lords.

  The ship containing the escaped Krikkitmen had been blasted out of the sky.

  All the other millions of Krikkitmen were destroyed.

  Or were they?

  The Doctor and Jane go to Gallifrey to try and find some answers.

  [Margin note on one copy: Time Lords playing Halva?]

  The Doctor is furious with the bureaucratic incompetence of the Time Lords. The last component of the Wicket to emerge from the Space Time vortex was the wooden centre stump which materialised in Melbourne, Australia in 1882 and was burnt the following year and presented as a trophy to the English cricket team.

  Only now, a hundred years later, have the Time Lords woken up to the fact that every part of the wicket is now back in circulation and should be collected up and kept safely.

  The Time Lords at first refuse to believe the Doctor’s story that the Krikkitmen have stolen the Ashes of the wooden stump. They say that every single Krikkitman was accounted for, and they are all safe.

  ‘Safe!’ exclaims the Doctor. ‘I thought they were all destroyed two million years ago!’

  ‘Ah well, not exactly destroyed, as such …’ begins one of the Time Lords, and a rather curious story emerges.

  The Krikkitmen, it seems, were in fact sentient androids rather than mere robots. The difference is crucial, particularly in war time. A robot, however complex, is basically a programmable fighting machine, even if an almost infinitely large number of response patterns give it the appearance of intelligent thought.

  On the other hand, a sentient android is taught rather than programmed, it has a capacity for actual initiative and creative thought, and a corresponding slight reduction in efficiency and obedience – they are in fact artificial men and as such protected under the Galactic equivalent of the Geneva Convention. It was therefore not possible to exterminate the Krikkitmen, and they were instead placed in a specially constructed Suspended Animation vault buried in Deep Time, an area of the Space Time Vortex under the absolutely exclusive control of the Tine Lords. And no Krikkitman has ever left it.

  Suddenly, news arrives that the Perspex stump has disappeared from its hiding place. The Time Lords are forced to admit that the Doctor’s story may be true and tell him the locations of the other components of the Wicket.

  The Doctor and Jane hurriedly visit the planets where the other components are stored.

  First, the Steel Stump. They are too late. It is gone.

  Second, the Gold Bail. It is gone.

  Third, the Silver Bail. It is still there! If they can retrieve it the Key is useless and the Universe is safe. It is worshipped as a sacred relic on the planet of Bethselamin. The Bethselamini are predictably a little upset when the Doctor and Jane materialise in the chamber of worship and remove the Sacred Silver Bail. The Doctor cannot stay to argue the point, but gives them all a little bow just as he is about to leave the chamber, thus fortuitously ducking his heed at the precise moment that a Krikkit bat swings at him from the open door.

  They have arrived.

  A pitched battle ensues in which the Bethselamini are rather forced to conjoin on the Doctor’s side.

  During the Battle the Doctor finds his way into the Krikkitmen’s Pavilion, where he has to fight for his life. Just as a death blow is apparently about to be struck the Doctor, half dazed, falls against a lever and the Krikkitman slumps forward, paralysed.

  The Doctor has inadvertently switched them all off. The battle is over.

  The Doctor is incredulous. If it is possible simply to turn them off then they can’t possibly be sentient androids, they must be robots – so what were the Time Lords talking about?

  Why weren’t the Krikkitmen destroyed?

  The Bethselamini are recovering. Jane seems to be slightly dazed, staring into the face of a paralysed Krikkitman.

  She soon recovers. We gather (though the Doctor doesn’t notice) that she may have been hypnotised.

  The Doctor dismantles one Krikkitman to examine its interior.

  He discovers that it is cunningly disguised as an android, but that in all crucial respects the circuitry is robotic, a fact that anyone making a thorough examination would quickly notice. Unless of course he didn’t want to look very hard …

  The Doctor and Jane return to the Tardis. The next step is clear. If the Krikkitmen are merely robots after all then they must all be destroyed at once. So – off to the Deep Time Vault.

  Jane points out that they shouldn’t leave the Pavilion and paralysed Krikkitmen on Bethselamin, but take them back to Gallifrey for safe keeping and/or destruction.

  The Doctor complains that he can’t do both things at once.

  Jane’s bright idea: if the Doctor will preset all the controls in the Pavilion and guarantee that all the Krikkitmen are now absolutely harmless, then she will take them back to Gallifrey and wait for him there.

  Nothing basically wrong with that, says the Doctor, and agrees.

  What he doesn’t see is that while his back in turned for a few moments Jane quickly and quietly switches a few of the Tardis controls, whilst a foreign intelligence flickers briefly though her eyes.

  As they leave the Tardis, Jane surreptitiously hangs her hat over a panel of lights.

  The Doctor sets the controls of the Pavilion, and rather reluctantly leaves her to it.

  As soon as she is alone, Jane completely resets the Pavilion controls, and it dematerialises.

  The Doctor watches the Pavilion leave and then returns to the Tardis. Whilst he is setting the controls, he notices that one or two of them are in the wrong position. With a momentary frown he resets them and dematerialises the Tardis.

  It is clear that the Journey into Deep Time is immensely complicated, and actually requires the active assistance of the Time Lords.

  Eventually the Tardis materialises in a large chamber full of life support sarcophagi. The chamber is clearly just one of a very large number.

  He leaves the Tardis. He passes Jane’s hat, but fails to notice that underneath it a bright warning light is flashing.

  After he has gone a hand picks up the hat. Under it a lighted panel roads ‘SCREENS BREACHED: INTRUDERS IN TARDIS’.

  The hand is Jane’s. Keeping carefully out of sight she follows the Doctor out of the Tardis.

  The Doctor has passed through into the next chamber. Jane goes to a large control panel set in the wall of the chamber, and carefully, quietly, moves a switch.

  Krikkitmen are coming out of the Tardis.

  The Doctor has opened a sarcophagus and is examining the internal workings of the Krikkitman within it.

  Not far behind him another sarcophagus begins to open …

  The Doctor is intent on his work. This Krikkitman is also quite definitely a robot.

  A voice says ‘Hello Doctor’. He starts and looks up. There in front of him is Jane. Around them are several dozen functioning Krikkitmen. All the sarcophagi are opening.

  A bat swings and connects with the back of the Doctor’s head.

  He falls.

  He comes to lying in the Tardis, surrounded by Jane and the Krikkitmen.

  ‘You should be on Gallifrey,’ he says to her, ‘how did you get here? The Pavilion isn’t a Tardis machine, it can’t possibly travel into Deep Time.’

  Then he catches sight of the flashing panel which Jane’s hat had previously obscured and the penny drops. He struggles to his feet and presses a button. A wall drops away and there behind it stands the Pavilion inside the Tardis.

  ‘So that’s why the switches were off. You lowered the Tardis’s defence fields and then reset the Pavilion’s controls so that instead of going to Gallifrey in it you materialised a few seconds later inside the Tardis. In fact, I gave you all a free ride into Deep Time,’ says the Doctor.

  A Krikkitman announces that the entire Krikkit army has now been revived – all five million of them. The Vault has been shifted out
of Deep Time into normal space, and they must now go to release their master on Krikkit.

  He orders the Doctor to transport the Tardis to the asteroid which holds the Lock.

  ‘And if I refuse?’ asks the Doctor.

  ‘I will kill myself,’ says the hypnotised Jane, holding a knife to her own throat.

  The Doctor complies.

  As soon as the Tardis materialises on the asteroid Jane slumps over. She is of no further use to the Krikkitmen. When she comes to she can remember nothing since the battle on Bethselamin.

  The Krikkitmen have reconstituted the Ashes into the original stump shape, and reconstructed the Wicket Key. They bear it before them out on to the surface of the asteroid.

  The Doctor explains to Jane that there, in front of them yet totally invisible is the star and single planet of Krikkit. It has remained invisible and isolated for two million years, during which time it has only known the passage of five years. In another direction they can see the great Dust Cloud that obscures the rest of the Galaxy.

  A very large altar-like structure rises out of the surface of the asteroid. A Krikkitman climbs up to [sic] and pulls a lever.

  A perspex block rises up out of the altar. It has deep grooves carved in it, evidently designed to hold the upright wicket.

  The Wicket is inserted. Lights glow. Power burns.

  In a scene that would make Kubrick whoop like a baby, the star slowly re-appears before them, with its planet tiny, but visible in the distance.

  All the Krikkitmen turn to the awe inspiring sight and together chant ‘Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit!’

  In that moment of distraction the Doctor grabs Jane and makes a dash for the Tardis. They escape leaving that small group of Krikkitmen stranded on the asteroid.

  The Doctor explains that there’s no point in trying to fight the robots now that they’ve all been released. Their only chance now is to go to the centre of it all … Krikkit.

  The Doctor is palpably scared stiff; Krikkit is about the most dangerous place that anyone other than a Krikkita could possibly go to. And they’ve got to go and make them change their minds …

  They land on the planet …