This short story was adapted from the Doctor Who Audio Visuals story "Vilgreth".
The Seventh Doctor, travelling alone, ends up on a giant spaceship and promptly manages to park the TARDIS inside the engine. Once he and the captain, Vilgreth, have recovered her, they decide to have some tea.
They're interrupted by a police officer from the nearby planet that the ship is approaching. The officer has planted a bomb on the ship, and warns the Doctor to leave before it's too late.
The Doctor, carrying the Idiot Ball of the day, refuses to listen until he realises that Vilgreth's story makes no sense. He eventually finds out that Vilgreth is a cloned early (pre-Neanderthal) humanoid, who went mental one day, killed his creators and stole the ship. And the ship was originally an interstellar garbage truck, which turns excess planets and other celestial bodies into fuel. Vilgreth is incapable of seeing anything wrong with using inhabited planets to fuel his home.
The Doctor briefly tries to save Vilgreth, but finds himself forced to blow up the ship.
Tropes:
- Anti-Villain: Both Vilgreth and the Lizard official. Vilgreth doesn't understand what he's doing, and the other wants to blow him up in order to prevent deaths.
- Back from the Dead: Vilgreth.
- Berserk Button: DON'T hurt the ship.
- Big "NO!"
- Commonality Connection: The Doctor and Vilgreth bond over their love for tea.
- Companion Cube: The boilers for the Captain.
- Cyborg: Vilgreth.
- Crew of One: Captain Vilgreth.
- Downer Ending
- Et Tu, Brute?: "You were my friend!"
- Exact Words: The TARDIS is technically indestructable. The Doctor muses over the technically for a bit.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke
- Is It Something You Eat?: Chalk.
- Lizard Folk
- Narrator: The Doctor is by himself for parts, so he narrates.
- The Missing Link: Vilgreth is a Titanthrope-clone, an evolutionary dead end that existed before Homosapien.
- Mysterious Past: Vilgreth is not particulary good at remembering what he's been through.
- News Broadcast
- Not Now, Kiddo
- Planet Eater: The ship the Doctor crashlanded on.
- Poor Communication Kills
- Spanner in the Works: Invoked by the Captain.
- Time Bomb
- Trail Of Breadcrumbs: Chalk arrows.
