Continued from the last episode, the Cybermen are keen on finding a lot of Human Resources. The Eighth Doctor distracts the Cybermen (the Mondas variety) by pretending to offer them his TARDIS. They'll need to get near it to make use of it, so the Doctor points them in the right direction. The office warship has managed to defeat a lot of Cyberman ships. An improbable amount of them, actually. Hulbert points this out and offers his services to the Cybermen from now on. They sort of ignore him.
Lucie, Karen and La Résistance leader Malcolm meet up with the Headhunter, who is still right miffed that Lucie was fired immediately after she went to all the trouble of finding her. She's ready to quit her current job and strike out somewhere else.
The Time Lords who blocked the TARDIS throughout this whole season turn out to be the Gallifreyan C.I.A.: a group who feels that the Time Lord policy of "not interfering" doesn't involve nearly enough interfering. Their representative, Straxus, plucked Lucie away from the office after her job interview (and dumped her with the Doctor). They couldn't risk her joining the war office... because they were already working on her. And since the office is propelled by a probability drive (something Hulbert didn't realise during his hostile takeover but which neatly explains the improbable amount of dead Cybermen), they didn't want her near the drive, and transmitted her into the Doctor's TARDIS instead. As it turns out, Lucie was destined to become an intergalactic war criminal in another timeline, and the CIA Time Lords meddled with her probability factors until she grew up to be just plain old Lucie. Her being near the drive would have ruined all that.
The Doctor convinces the Cybermen to steal the probability drive. It works wonders. For the Doctor, that is, because the thing was specifically programmed to destroy the designated enemies of the office, not just help whoever's holding it. The drive causes system failure in the Cybermen and they're rather easily defeated.
Lucie realises that she had her job interview on the same day as Karen, and it turns out that it was Karen whose timeline the Time Lords had been messing with, not her's, and the Time Lords kidnapped Lucie by mistake. The Headhunter is quite interested to hear that and offers Karen a job as her new assistant on her way out. Lucie's free to go home. She and the Doctor banter for a bit, until she gleefully makes him admit that he'd like to keep her on board as his proper Companion from now on.
Tropes:
- All the Myriad Ways: The MacGuffin is a Quantum Crystaliser, which shatters the timeline, and then picks and chooses the most favorable outcomes to go down. This is how the office has been successful at fighting off the Cybermen for a prolonged period of time.
- Bad Boss: Hubert is willing to join the Cybermen, give up his staff's lives, and let them invade Earth.
- Bait-and-Switch: The future intergalactic tyrant is Karen, not Lucie.
- Call-Back: The CIA is back. And one of their members mistakes the Doctor's TARDIS for having a state of temporal grace.
- Les Collaborateurs: The head of the company immediately offers his services to the Cybermen, then when that isn't sufficient his staff, and when that doesn't cut it, he tries to give the Cyberleader access to an instantaneous way of reaching Earth for an Alien Invasion.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Depending on the level of evil you think the Cybermen are. See also Les Collaborateurs.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Cybermen get a dose of this in the end once the Doctor hands over the probability drive in the end.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A downright masterful one from the Doctor. It's so outright badass that the Cybermen never appeared again in the Big Finish Eighth Doctor Adventures.Cyberman: Your actions defy logic, why have you helped us?The Doctor: I will always aid the oppressed, but not you. To be honest I was amazed it was you. "The Mighty Cybermen", beaten down and scurrying for cover on a dust ball like this?Cyberman: Why do you offer your aid to other creatures unconditionally but oppose Cybermen?The Doctor: Because...well, if you win, and your existence isn't threatened anymore, what'll you do? Buy a farm? Settle down with a nice Cyber-girl?Cyberman: The resources of this world are not sufficient! We need more in order to survive.The Doctor: It always comes back down to that doesn't it? ... (imitating a Cyberman voice) "You will survive!" ...what for?Cyberman: The question is meaningless.The Doctor: Well I'll answer it myself then: To create; To achieve! You don't. You just oppress others to preserve yourselves. And what have you learned from being the oppressed for a change? No humility; no empathy. Nothing. I don't say this lightly, but you deserve to be oppressed."
- Reverse the Polarity: The CIA has reversed the Quantum Crystaliser so that it works against the Cybermen, not for them.
- Shout-Out: The Doctor mentions the business cards he was given are high quality, with bone coloring and Cilian Rail font, this is a reference to a fictional font mentioned in American Psycho having to do with fancy business cards.
- Stompy Mooks: The Cybermen.
- You Meddling Kids: Hubert's Last Words."I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for—" [laser fire]
