I originally wrote this story many years ago for the original version of the Strange Skins fanzine, but it was never published. Then it almost became a talking book with the voice of the Ninth Doctor provided by the wonderfully talented Pete Walsh, but a series of events in my life meant that this never happened either. I hope to one day put the talking book back together, but until then, enjoy this previously unseen story…

*Addendum: Since publishing this, I discovered that Pete completed the audio with his own narration some years ago. I knew nothing about this, but I’m perfectly happy because it sounds great! I’ve put a link to Pete’s YouTube channel at the bottom of this page.

“Come to Northumberland, he says, you’ll love it,” grumbled Rose, tucking herself in tighter behind the battered metal dustbin. “The scenic countryside, the historic…” She pulled up short as something soared overhead. Rose took it to be an empty bottle, but the Doctor’s sharp eyes detected a darker purpose.
“Run!” barked the Doctor, pulling Rose up by the sleeve and half-dragging her away from the shelter of the bins as the Molotov Cocktail exploded behind them, illuminating the darkness with a gout of golden orange flame.
Unfortunately, their route away from the makeshift explosive took them almost directly to the heart of the conflict in which they found themselves unwittingly embroiled. On one side were the miners; on the other, the police. The year was 1982 and the TARDIS had landed them slap in the middle if the miner’s strike.
Rose continued talking as the Doctor dragged her into the doorway of a boarded-up building. “I mean, even 1066 would have been better than this. At least it would have been historic.”
“This is history!” beamed the Doctor as a policeman stumbled backwards from the melee and into a heap in the doorway. The Doctor helped him to his feet and patted his back as he sent him on his way.
“It’s only seven years before I was born!”
“Well, modern history.”
“I always hated modern history.” Rose got sudden flashbacks of dreary lessons with Mr Thorpe, who had more hair up his nose than on his head and who smelled strongly of cigarettes and cheese ‘n’ onion crisps. “If I want to know what happened just a few years before I was born, I’ll ask my Mum. I don’t need to travel back in time to see a riot. I can see a riot back home.”
Something flew between their heads and broke the glass door pane. Neither of them saw what it was but they both agreed it was lucky it missed them. “Okay, we’ll go,” agreed the Doctor. “As soon as we can get back to the TARDIS without getting our heads kicked in.”
“That would be preferable, yeah.”
The pair of time travellers crouched in the doorway, waiting for an opening in the violent throng that would allow them a clear run back to the ship. Rose clung firmly to the sleeve of the Doctor’s leather jacket; the last thing she wanted was to lose him in this madness.
The Doctor’s keen eyes scanned the crowd. He loved humans, but sometimes they repelled him. They had boundless imaginations, which seemed to fail them utterly when it came to the settling of tribal disputes and it always seemed to come down to this primitive barbarism.
As he watched, an ambulance skirted the crowd. It swerved to avoid hitting one of the miners, then sharply to avoid an exploding petrol bomb. The course took it straight towards the entrance of a block of flats and it looked all set to crash into the building… but suddenly, the van was pushed violently backwards by some unseen force. It flipped onto its side, crashing to a halt and narrowly missing rioters of both sides. The driver crawled out, utterly bemused.
“Did you see that?” gasped the Doctor, astounded.
Rose had not seen it and said as much. She’d been concentrating on locating a safe route away from this place.
“I think we can get to the flats this way,” said the Doctor excitedly and started dragging her through the crowd.
“Whoa, whoa,” Rose shouted above the noise. “Why are we going to the flats? The TARDIS is that way!”
“Change of plan,” declared the Doctor, ducking to avoid being hit in the face by a placard. “We’re gonna check out some flats.”
“I repeat what I said before about being able to do all that back home.” Rose was starting to lose her patience.
The Doctor continued to drag her through the crowd, weaving between clashing groups of miners and policemen. “You wanted excitement and adventure, didn’t you?” he called above the noise. “Well, this is –“
The Doctor cut off abruptly. To Rose, it appeared as though he had run into a wall, but there was no wall there. She sidestepped to avoid the big man barrelling back into her as he tumbled to the ground.
Rose helped the Doctor to his feet. He rubbed his large nose, wincing. “Oh yeah, invisible barrier,” the Doctor said to himself. “Forgot about that.”
The Doctor rummaged around in the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, his amazing multi-purpose tool. He pointed the device at the invisible barrier and it emitted a high-pitched whine.
The air in front of Rose seemed to ripple and then part, creating a visible opening. The Doctor beckoned her through and then followed. The barrier snapped audibly shut behind them.
“Doctor, who’d want to seal off a block of council flats?” asked Rose.
“That’s what I intend to find out,” replied the Doctor, shoving open the doors of the building.
There was a certain eerie stillness in the lobby of the block of flats. Noise and light from the chaos outside filtered in weirdly through the cracked and yellowing frosted glass panels to either side of the doors.
“Well, this is all horribly familiar,” said Rose, looking round at the detergent smears on the dull grey walls that barely covered ghostly graffiti. The acrid stench of urine and disinfectant was also all too recognisable. A malfunctioning strip light buzzed and flickered overhead.
The Doctor was utterly disinterested in any of this. He stood in the centre of the lobby and scanned the surrounding area with the sonic screwdriver.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s here somewhere?” asked Rose.
“Alien tech,” replied the Doctor. “Alien wires spun on alien looms. Alien circuits printed in alien factories. Clicking and calculating a million light years from home. The sonic can sniff it out a mile off.”
“Well, that’s comforting to know,” said Rose sarcastically. She sighed and sat on the bottom of the stairs. “I shouldn’t complain,” she continued. “At least we’re away from that fighting.”
Something heavy thudded against the outside of the doors and Rose jumped. She put her hands instinctively on the steps to steady herself, but quickly removed them when she realised how unpleasantly sticky they were.
“Give us a hand with this,” came the voice of the Doctor. He had disappeared down the side of the stairwell and was making loud banging noises.
Rose peered through the banister and saw her otherworldly companion attacking the elevator doors with a fire extinguisher.
“Er, what are you doing?” she asked, as if addressing a small child.
“I’m trying to get this lift open,” replied the Doctor, continuing to hammer the sliding doors with the red cylinder.
“Have you tried just pressing the button?”
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped the Doctor. “This is a tower block in Northern England in 1982. It’s out of order, isn’t it?”
“Oi!” The voice cut through the air, momentarily drowning out even the loud hammering.
The Doctor ceased his assault on the lift doors and looked round. A young police officer had appeared from one of the side corridors and was advancing towards the time travellers with an air of uncertain authority. His uniform was splattered with paint and he held a similarly stained helmet limply in his hand.
“Oh, hello officer,” beamed the Doctor, still holding the fire extinguisher. Rose shrunk into the stairs, trying to appear invisible.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked the officer, indicating the dents in the lift doors.
“Trying to get into the lift,” explained the Doctor. “It’s broken.”
“I’m not surprised,” exclaimed the policeman, snatching the fire extinguisher from the Doctor’s grasp and placing it carefully on the floor.
The Doctor almost immediately made to pick it up again.
“Leave it alone,” commanded the young officer, pulling a riot truncheon from his belt. “I’m warning you.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened at sight of the truncheon and an even broader file covered his face. “Oh yes, that’s perfect!” he said, plucking the truncheon from the policeman’s fingers.
The young officer was aghast. “Here, you can’t do that!” he yelped. “That’s police property, that is.”
The Doctor wasn’t listening. He had jammed the end of the truncheon in the gap between the lift doors and was violently attempting to lever them open.
“Stop it!” ordered the officer with rapidly diminishing authority. “I’ll… I’ll call for backup.”
Rose watched in detached amazement as the officer pulled out his police radio and shouted desperately into it. “Bravo Oscar 9, requesting assistance immediately.”
The radio replied with nothing but static.
He repeated, “Bravo Oscar 9, requesting assistance immediately,” but there was still only loud hissing in reply.
“You’re wasting your time, mate,” said Rose in a friendly manner. “There’s a force field around this place.”
The young officer looked up to see a girl around his own age looking at him between the bars of the stair rail. Her pretty face made the rage and anxiety in him subside a little. “Oh, you’re telling me, miss,” he sighed. “I’ve been trying to get back to my van for over an hour. I can’t even get most of the doors open!”
“Come on! Open!” snarled the Doctor at the lift doors. The policeman looked round with a worried look on his face.
“My name’s Rose,” said Rose, trying to put the young officer at his ease.
“Dave,” said the young man and then suddenly remembered where he was. “Erm… I mean, PC David Carver.” He felt strangely torn; on the one hand he was really enjoying the rare experience of chatting with a pretty girl, but on the other hand there was still a mad hooligan in a leather jacket trying to jemmy open a lift with his truncheon.
“It’s mental out there, innit?” said Rose, indicating the doors, from behind which the noise of the fighting could still be heard.
“And then some,” sighed PC Dave. “I wasn’t expecting this when I signed up.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from round here,” said Rose, keeping the conversation going.
“No miss, I’m from Brighton,” he replied. “They’re drafting coppers in from all over the country to do a stint here. None of us are particularly happy about it. You don’t sound too local yourself, miss.”
“No, I’m from London,” said Rose. “Originally. By way of all kinds of different places.”
“Aha!” exclaimed the Doctor loudly, effectively putting an end to the conversation. Rose and PC Dave looked round to see the Doctor heaving open the protesting lift doors with a screech of rending metal.
“All it takes is a bit of elbow grease,” declared the Doctor proudly, standing back from his handiwork.
Dave picked up his discarded truncheon, which looked distinctly the worse for wear, and tucked it in his belt. “You can’t go in there, Mister…?”
“Doctor.”
“Doctor…?”
“Just Doctor.”
“You can’t go in there, Doctor,” said PC Dave. “It’s not safe.”
The Doctor had his head in the lift shaft. His voice echoed out at the. “Would it make you feel more comfortable if I was a qualified lift engineer?”
Dave thought about this. “Well, yeah.”
The Doctor fished around in his jacket pocket and produced a battered leather wallet. His head still in the lift shaft, he flipped open the wallet and waved it in the direction of the young policeman. “There you go, mate. I’m a qualified lift engineer.”
Rose laughed. To her the psychic paper showed a smiley face with its tongue sticking out.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” PC Dave felt a weight of responsibility lifted off his shoulders. “That makes all the difference.”
“Glad to hear it,” said the Doctor disinterested. “You got a torch, mate?”
The young policeman unhitched a torch from his belt and handed it to the Doctor.
The Doctor stuck his head back inside the lift. The darkness of the concrete shaft stretched up above him. A cool breeze drifted across his face and a soft flurry of dust rained down. He flicked on the torch and shone it into the darkness. The beam swept across the square walls like a searchlight.
At first he saw nothing but hanging cables, steel runners and bare concrete walls. But then, in an upper corner of the lift shaft, the torch beam picked out the very thing that the Doctor was expecting to find.
“So, there you are,” purred the Doctor.
“What have you found?” asked Rose, not really convinced that she wanted to know the answer.
“Come and have a look,” suggested the Doctor.
Deep down inside, looking at whatever the Doctor had found in the lift shaft was the last thing that Rose wanted to do, but she had an insatiable curiosity that forced her to do so. The young policeman held Rose’s arm as she stepped towards the lift and they both peered into the shaft.
“Mind the gap,” quipped the Doctor. “It’s a long way down.”
Rose looked down. All she could see was blackness, but there was a definite sense that she was on the brink of a substantial drop.
“Now look up,” suggested the Doctor.
Rose looked up. She couldn’t see anything but the darkened walls of the lift shaft.
“What are we looking for?” PC Dave squinted into the darkness.
“Top left hand corner,” instructed the Doctor and shone the torch to the appropriate spot.
Rose saw what at first she believed to be a hanging collection of dull grey cables, but when the torch swept over them, they suddenly twitched like a startled spider.
Rose nearly jumped out of her skin and PC Dave had to hold onto her to stop her from falling into the lift shaft, even though he himself was equally – if not more – terrified.
Crouched in the upper corner of the lift shaft, clinking to the brickwork like an insect, was a nightmare creature roughly human in size and shape, but with spindly, skeletal limbs and talon-like fingers and toes. Its impassive grey face bore a leer of pure malevolence and its yellow eyes flashed as the torch swept across them. It shook its head, rattling a mane of spiny grey tendrils.
“What the hell is that?” gasped Dave.
“It’s called the Malus,” explained the Doctor calmly. “You don’t see too many of them around but I have ran into one before.”
“Is it an animal?” the young policeman was having difficulty coming to terms with what he was seeing.
“No, an intelligent life form,” said the Doctor. “Well, semi-intelligent. Well, a form of semi-intelligence. Their technology is based on psychic energy.”
“How did it get here?” asked Rose.
“Oh, it’s probably been here centuries,” said the Doctor in an offhand manner. “Crashed here and been waiting for a build up of psychic energy big enough to get away again. All that business outside is perfect for it. All it needs to do is stir them up like a nest of ants and suck up the resulting release of psychic energy.”
“Wait a minute,” Dave was confused. “Are you trying to tell me this thing is from another planet?”
“He’s a smart one, isn’t he?” nodded the Doctor to Rose.
Dave looked again at the Malus, scuttling round the lift shaft. “So that’s what aliens look like!”
The Doctor gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “You haven’t seen the half of it, mate. That’s just the pilot. The Malus has a psychic link with its craft, which manifests itself in the form of the pilot. They never stray too far from their ship, so unless I’m very much mistaken…”
The Doctor swung the torch down into the chasm below them and Rose couldn’t help but yelp in surprise. At the bottom of the lift shaft was a massive malevolent face – exactly like that of the Malus – eyes glowing and rictus grin belching clouds of black dust. As if knowing it had been detected, the face let out an ominous low rumble.
“What the hell…?” gasped Dave. He didn’t think that things could get any weirder than the spider creature in the lift shaft, but the massive sinister face was something else again.
Rose was taking it all in her stride. She’d seen so much weird stuff in her time with the Doctor that it took more than a big face at the bottom of a lift shaft to faze her. Big alien faces? Hah! Been there, done that.
“What I don’t understand,” she began, shifting her gaze between the face and the spider-like creature; “is why this maggot thing…”
“Malus,” corrected the Doctor.
“Yeah, Malus, right,” said Rose. “Why’s it wandering around the place instead of just sitting in its spaceship all comfy like?”
“Well, it acts as a kind of living antennae for the collection of the psychic energy…” The Doctor suddenly slammed a fist into the lift door, making Rose jump and Dave almost fall into the shaft.
“Of course!” he exploded. “How could I be so daft? All we need to do to stop the Malus’ malevolent influence is to jam the signal between the ship and the pilot.”
“That easy, eh?” said Rose sarcastically.
“Sonic screwdriver should do the trick,” the Doctor fished around in the pocket of his jacket for the amazing instrument.
“What’s the sonic screwdriver?” Dave asked Rose.
“Don’t ask,” she replied.
“But how’s he gonna stop that space monster with a screwdriver?”
“No, really, don’t ask.”
The Doctor was aiming the sonic up the elevator. Its high-pitched warbling echoed around the walls of the shaft, amplifying it to an ear-splitting volume. Rose stuck her fingers in her ears.
“It’s not working,” the Doctor moaned. “The distance is too long and there’s too much psychic interference.”
He stuffed the sonic in his trouser pocket and began to struggle out of his heavy leather jacket. “I’m gonna have to get in amongst it.”
“What?” Rose was aghast. “You can’t climb up in there with that thing!”
“It’s alright,” the Doctor handed his jacket to Rose. “The Malus itself is mostly benign. Mostly.”
The Doctor leaned out into the darkened shaft and grabbed the steel hawser with one strong arm. He then stepped out into the darkness, his entire weight supported by the swaying cable.
“Mostly isn’t good enough,” said Rose, concerned. “It’s no consolation when you’re mostly dead.”
“Mostly dead is partly alive,” smiled the Doctor and started to haul himself hand over hand up the lift shaft.
“Is he always like this?” asked Dave.
“Pretty much, yeah,” nodded Rose.
The Doctor pulled himself slowly up the lift shaft. The sinewy figure of the Malus edged ever closer, twitching and fidgeting as if it sensed his approach. He’d encountered one of these creatures before, several regenerations ago. This one looked bigger than he remembered. Its stick-like limbs stretched across the full width of the shaft.
When the Doctor felt that he was close enough, he supported himself with one arm and dug the sonic out of his pocket with the other.
“Sorry to do this to you, mate,” he said softly. “I know you’re just surviving, but these are good people and I can’t let you stir them up like a bunch of ants. God knows, they’re mental enough without your help!”
The Doctor aimed the sonic with his free hand and activated it.
The effect on the Malus was immediate and violent. It started to thrash around and shake its ragged head. A long barbed tail lashed out towards the Doctor and he felt it slash sharply across his face. He felt the damp warmth of blood on his cheek.
The face of the Malus ship roared far below and black smoke drifted upward.
From the doorway several storeys down, Rose and Dave watched in concern. They couldn’t quite work out what was going on in the semi-darkness, but it didn’t look or sound good for the Doctor.
The shrill sound of the sonic screwdriver rang out again. The Doctor wasn’t about to give up just because of a little scratch on the cheek.
The Malus’ tail lashed out again but this time the Doctor was ready for it and ducked. The tail cracked like a whip in the air above his head and a roar of frustration rose from down below. Almost instantly, the tail flailed out a further time. It missed the Doctor’s head, but smacked painfully against the knuckles of the hand with which he was holding onto the steel hawser. The pain was excruciating, but the Doctor held firm. He aimed the sonic again and again at the creature; the readings on its side showed promising fluctuations in the levels of psychic energy. It was working!
The Malus wasn’t about to give up that easily, however. Wrapping its tail around a strut on the side of the lift shaft, it let go with its hands and swung suddenly out towards the Doctor. He felt on bony claw wrapped around the hand holding the sonic and another clamped firmly against his face.
The skin of the Malus was like sandpaper as its hand moved across the Doctor’s cheek. The Time Lord was face to face with beast; he smelt is foul breath wafting over him. The look in its glowing yellow eyes was one of pure hatred.
“Your breath stinks, mate. You could use a peppermint.” Almost as soon as he’s said it, the Doctor knew this was no time for levity. The Malus was squeezing hard on his hand with its coarse fingers, trying to work the sonic from his grip.
To make matters worse, with the weight of the Malus leaning against him, the Doctor could feel his other arm slipping against the steel hawser. The thick metal rope was already more than a little greasy and combined with the sweat of the Doctor’s palms, it was getting harder and harder to hold onto.
In a desperate move, the Doctor twisted his sonic arm against the grip of the Malus, poking the creature in the eye with the butt of the device. The Malus roared in pain and swiped out at the Doctor.
The hammer blow across the Doctor’s face was more than he could cope with. He lost his drip on the hawser and felt himself suddenly falling away from the Malus.
Rose barely had time to let out a gasp of horror as the Doctor came spinning towards them. His arm flailed out as he fell past the doorway and for a split-second, Rose though that her friend had gone plummeting helplessly into the maw of the giant grinning face beneath them. But, with superhuman reflexes, the Doctor had managed to catch the fingers of one hand on the lip of the doorway as he was falling past. There was a loud metallic CLANG as the Doctor’s body slammed to a stop against the side of the lift shift.
Instantly, Rose and PC Dave scrabbled to drag the Doctor up through the doorway. He sat on the floor for a moment with his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
“Well, that didn’t work,” gasped the Doctor.
“Your cheek’s bleeding,” Rose dabbed it with a hankie.
“Never mind that,” the Doctor swept Rose’s ministrations aside. “Time for Plan B.”
Rose looked surprised. “Plan B? You mean there was a Plan A? I thought you were just winging it.”
The Doctor looked genuinely affronted.
“What’s Plan B?” asked the young policeman.
“If we can’t attack from below,” explained the Doctor; “we’ll attack from above.”
Dave saw the flaw in this plan immediately. “How can we attack from above? There’s a lift in the way!”
The Doctor beamed a broad smile and his eyes sparkled in the flickering light. “Exactly!”
He leapt to his feet and with a few mammoth strides was bounding up the stairs. Rose and Dave heard a cry of “follow me!” echoing down the stairs.
Resignedly, they followed.

Twelve storeys up, the Doctor hadn’t even cracked a sweat. Rose was exhausted and had a sudden realisation of how out of shape she was, despite the amount of running that she did with the Doctor. She vowed to ask her companion if there was a gym in the TARDIS. Most exhausted of all was PC Dave, who stood with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath and looking as though he was about to throw up.
“If my calculations are correct, this is where the lift stalled,” said the Doctor, tugging his leather jacket back on.
Fortunately, the Floor 12 lift doors opened a little easier than those on the ground level and the Time Lord was able to pull then apart with his bare hands. The lift car was stuck half way into the doorway. They could see half of the empty carriage and its roof. The Doctor, Rose and Dave peered into the shaft, where they could see the massive winching system three storeys above, rusty brown and covered in dust. No wonder it broke down, thought Rose.
“But how can you reach the Malus through the lift car?” she asked.
“I don’t have to reach him,” explained the Doctor. “Only the lift car does.”
Rose smiled. “You mean…?”
The Doctor slammed his fist into his open palm. “Hammer of the Gods.”
“Oh, so you’re a God now, are you?” quipped Rose as the Doctor fished the sonic from his pocket and leaned out into the shaft.
Dave had recovered himself by now and was beginning to get a grasp on what was actually going on. “Wait a minute. Am I to understand that you intend to crash that lift car down 12 storeys of this building?”
“That’s about the size of it, mate,” the Doctor’s voice echoed from the lift shaft.
“I can’t let you do that!” exploded Dave. “You could cause no end of damage!”
The Doctor pulled his head back from the shaft and faced up to Dave. “Constable,” he began, implying a formality that neither man felt. “Any damage that I could possibly do to this building would be a drop in the ocean compared to the damage that lot out there could do under the influence of the Malus.”
“Yeah, but still…” spluttered Dave.
“You’ve see the chaos out there,” interrupted the Doctor. “Does that look like normal behaviour to you? Have you ever seen that level of violence before?”
Dave lowered his head. “No.”
“Alright,” said the Doctor calmly. “Now shut up and let me knacker the lift.”
The Doctor returned to his work. Rose felt a little sorry for the young policeman, so she went across and put her arm around him. The Doctor had this way of stripping all semblance of authority away from people. It was a good thing with pompous Tin Hitlers because it brought them down a peg, but for someone young and impressionable like Dave, it could be a real confidence crusher.
“Don’t take it personally,” said Rose. “He’s like that with everyone.”
The sound of the sonic screwdriver echoed from up the shaft, followed by the sound of the Doctor coughing as rust rained down on him from the ancient winching mechanism.
“No wonder it’s out of order,” he said, as much to himself as anyone else. “This is well seized up.”
“Do you think you can get it loose?” asked Rose.
“Oh, yeah,” replied the Doctor breezily; “Just need a higher setting.” And he adjusted the sonic accordingly before setting back to work on the lift mechanism.
“Oh, yeah,” replied the Doctor breezily; “Just need a higher setting.” And he adjusted the sonic accordingly before setting back to work on the lift mechanism.
As if it were somehow aware of the Doctor’s intentions, the Malus spacecraft let out a deep rumble several storeys below.
“That thing’s getting agitated,” commented Dave with concern. “We need to get a move on.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” snapped the Doctor. “If you think you can do any better, you come here and – “
He was cut off mid-sentence by a tremendous crash from the half-visible interior of the lift car. The Doctor stepped back and peered into the metal box, just in time to see a skeletal grey hand burst through the floor plates of the lift car.
“The Malus is breaking in through the lift!” shouted the Doctor. “It knows what we’re about!”
Two hands were visible now, tearing aside the metal plates and fighting their way into the lift car.
The Doctor set to work with the sonic again, now at a higher pitch. The lift mechanism rained down more dust and the cable began to move, slowly and laboriously.
The Malus now had a shoulder in the lift car and was attempting to heave its ragged head through the gap. It looked at Rose with burning yellow eyes and let out a malevolent hiss.
“It’s breaking through!” gasped Rose.
The Malus hissed again and swiped out at the Doctor. Its talons missed his legs by a fraction of an inch.
At that moment, there was a violent crack and a screeching of tortured metal as the lift mechanism finally gave way. The Doctor leapt back as the car lurched and then dropped suddenly downwards. The Malus screamed in frustration as it dropped away from them at increasing speed.
“Get back!” the Doctor ushered the two humans further down the corridor.
It didn’t take the lift car long to reach the bottom of the shaft. With no buffers active to slow its descent, the heavy metal box slammed into the face at the bottom of the shaft at full speed. The impact triggered a massive explosion as the Malus ship and the lift car containing the Malus probe were engulfed in flames.
The Doctor dragged Rose and Dave to the ground just in time, as flames flashed back up the shaft and roared momentarily through the lift doors before burning themselves out.
Everything fell silent as the Doctor, Rose and Dave clambered to their feet.
“Is it… is it dead?” stammered Dave.
“It was never really alive,” replied the Doctor. “It’s a machine, but I think we can be pretty certain it’s deactivated now.”
The Doctor wandered over to the lift doors, from which smoke was now starting to drift.
Suddenly, a clawed hand reached up from the lip of the lift shaft and the charred, smoking form of the Malus probe started to try and slowly heave itself up. The mask of its face was cracked and exposed circuits popped and fizzed. The Malus let out a final, pained cry of pure evil.
The Doctor put his boot against its face and pushed the unresisting abomination back into the lift shaft.
Rose heard the limp body clanging against the sides of the shaft and finally hitting the rubble at the bottom with a dull, lifeless thump.
“Okay, now it’s dead,” said the Doctor.

The sun was rising as the Doctor, Rose and PC Dave emerged from the block of flats and a curious peace had descended on the area. The streets were strewn with debris and the police van still lay on its side, but the crowds of police and miners had totally dispersed. The only people around were a few council workers in high-visibility jackets, sweeping up the broken glass and dumping discarded placards in the black of a refuse van.
The force field which had been thrown up around the flats had dispersed with the destruction of the Malus and the three unlikely companions were able to walk straight out into the fresh – if somewhat smoky – morning air.
“It’s all over,” smiled a relieved Dave. “Thank God.”
The Doctor kicked a discarded riot helmet into the gutter. “With the Malus deactivated, its malevolent influence was no longer driving people to fight. I wish I could say it was the end of the clashes, but at least they won’t be quite as violent from now on.”
A sudden realisation came over Dave. “I need to get in touch with my Chief – they’ll be wondering what happened to me.”
His radio wasn’t working and the nearest phone box was little more than a blackened shell, so he bid the Doctor and Rose a hurried farewell and rushed off in the direction of the nearest police station.
Rose watched the funny little policeman scamper away and smiled.
“So, where to next?” the Doctor asked Rose.
Rose smiled. “Definitely somewhere with no riots.”
“Well, that’s any Millwall matches out then,” shrugged the Doctor and he put his arm around Rose as they walked back in the direction of the TARDIS.