Suddenly the lights went on. For a moment they were both blinded. Then as their eyes became accustomed to it, they saw that they were surrounded. A ring of tall figures surrounded them, and there were clearly many more of them beyond the ring. They were all identical, six to seven feet tall, a dull grey in colour, with machinery attached to their chests, and handle-like protrusions on the sides of their mask-like faces. One of them stepped forwards, his handles a black, signifying leadership rank.

"Welcome," said the Cyberleader menacingly, "to Cyber Space!" He inspected each of his prisoners in turn, his hydraulic breath hissing loudly about them. "You are the Doctor!" If they hadn't known better, both the Doctor and Emily would have sworn there was a hint of exultation in the voice of the emotionless killer. If they hadn't know better...

"Am I?" aped the Doctor. "Gosh!" He turned to Emily in classic Williams era mickey-take routine. "Do you know, Emily, this tin gentleman here says I'm the Doctor. Does that sound right to you?"

"Well," mused Emily playing along like it was 1979, "If he says you are I suppose you must be. After all, say what you like about Cybermen, they never forget a face."

"True, true..." Suddenly the Doctor was deadly serious, as he continued in a half-whisper just to Emily: "I don't think this is a backdoor to your Message Board."

"No. I think we took a wrong turn." A cloud passed over Emily's face. "What made me say that?"

"What?"

She looked the Doctor straight in the eye. "A second Star Wars reference."

The Cyberleader interrupted their tete-a-tete with the end of his cybergun. "There will be no escape for the Doctor this time," he stated.

"And a third..."

"The trouble was that it was faulty."

Glasses had explained the meaning behind the door being labelled 'Cyber Space' - and the DG had gone off into a burst of uncharacteristic hilarity. His delight at the Doctor's virtual destruction had obviously put a little sunshine into his day. In the meantime Glasses was filling in the details to his two colleagues - there reaction was a combination of horror at his having created something so irresponsibly dangerous, and awe at it being really quite a cool idea. So far cool was winning out.

"Faulty how?" asked Beardy.

"Well..." Glasses shoved his specs back up his nose. "Somewhere at the test stage it picked up a Lucasfilm virus. Sorry, Lucasfilm™ virus I mean. I've searched for it but it seems to be embedded somewhere in the sub-routine algorithms. I can't shift it."

"Wow!" This from Rashface. His two friends turned to look at him. "Who meets Darth," he clarified simply.

"So why didn't you tell anyone about this before?" Beardy again.

"I hoped I could find it, fix it and present it as a fully-functional fait accompli." Glasses sighed. "But I couldn't, haven't and didn't."

"And is there any other way out?"

"If there is," replied Glasses gloomily, "then I don't know about it."

Back in Cyber Space the Doctor was aghast. The Cyberleader had said something so horrifying, so shocking, so unbelievably appalling that the Doctor was, well, horrified. And shocked. And in fact unbelievably appalled.

"I'm appalled!" exclaimed the Doctor. (Told you.)

"So'm I!" concurred Emily, never one to miss out when there was any aghasting going.

"How can you go around using words like 'fragmentise' and expect to be taken seriously?" asked the Doctor imperiously. "Hm? You tell me that."

"You are not here to indulge in a debate on the nature of the language you call English, Doctor," returned the Cyberleader levelly. "You are here, I repeat, to be completely fragm-- destroyed by the Cyber race." He held out a clenched fist, waved it in the faces of his prisoners. "You will be destroyed. It will be excellent."

Emily turned away, arms folded, on a wave of aghastness. "You're so 80s," she complained.

"Abuse is irrelevant," insisted the Cyberleader. "You are the Doctor and you will die."

"You seem very sure I'm this Doctor of yours," said the Doctor, "What makes you so sure?"

"Your physiognomy matches that stored in our race banks."

"Well yes but I mean I look like lots of people. That's hardly a reasonable pretext to go around fragmentising people, now is it?"

Emily suddenly interrupted, a stray thought crossing her mind... "This isn't the Timelord you're looking for," she murmured.

"Available data indicates that he is." The Cyberleader raised his gun. Rather alarmingly his gathered pantheon of Cybermen raised theirs in perfect synchronisation - clearly there was no half-measures with this lot when it came to a bit of fragmentising.

"I felt sure that would work," snapped Emily.

"Don't worry about it," the Doctor replied, "We'll be fine. They'll probably make the mistake of tying me up for a bit first."

"Fire on my signal," intoned the Cyberleader. "Fi--"

"Got it!" Emily waved her fingers in a vaguely mystical sort of fashion as she tried again: "This isn't the Timelord you're looking for."

"This is not the Timelord we are looking for," announced the Cyberleader, rather to the surprise of everyone in the room.

"He can go on about his business." Again with the finger wiggle.

"He can go on about his business."

"Move along."

"Move along. Move along."

As Emily frog-marched the Doctor back to the door through which they had entered, he gave her a quizzical look. "How did you do that?"

"Ah," she answered with a twinkle in her eye, "Anorak dialogue can be a powerful influence on the weak-minded. Now get this door open!"

The Doctor pulled the handle. Nothing happened. "It's locked."

Emily gave him a look of quiet exasperation, while at the same time keeping an eye on the Cybermen. Sooner or later they would snap out of it... "Not the door handle, Doctor," she said rather sharply, "The sonic screwdriver. Works every time."

The Doctor smote his head, but having learned at least something since emerging from the Message Board machine, he did it rather gently and therefore didn't wince. At least something was improving, he thought to himself. He rummaged in his pockets, turning over apple cores and jelly babies, a yo-yo, a catapult and a batmobile, before alighting on the sonic screwdriver. He fished it out, aimed it at the door.

"Quickly, Doctor." There was a nervy edge to Emily's voice. The Cyberleader seemed to be turning to look at them. It was hard to read anything in that mask-like face, but it certainly wasn't looking very happy.

There was a short burst of BBC sound effects, which I would credit to Dick Mills if I could find a way to work him in here. There was then a rather longer burst of non-BBC expletives, which I alas can only credit to the Doctor.

"Doctor," said Emily, "whatever you do, please don't say to me 'not even the sonic screwdriver will get me out of this one'."

"Alright," he said calmly. "I won't." There was a moment's pause. "But it won't."

The Cyberleader had clearly come to - he and a few hundred of his troopers were making their steady, determined, dramatically-accompanied, way towards the Doctor and Emily.

"What are we going to do?!" There was a hint, just a hint, of hysteria entering the Cult Leader's voice now. "Doctor?"

The Doctor looked wide-eyed at her. "There's only one thing we can do."

"What's that?!"

"Be fragmentised!"

The DG had managed to control his mirth at the likelihood of a fictional character's needless and gruesome demise, and was now making an orderly itinerary of the day's schedule of cancellations.

"So the Doctor and your female are trapped in this Cyber Space simulation?"

"Yes." Glasses, Beardy and Rashface answered as one.

"So that's certain death for them, yes?"

"Er... yes."

"Right." The DG turned to the Message Board machine. "Then I just want that switched off, and my work here is done. Do it please."

"But, but..." Glasses stammered. Beardy took up the baton. "It's not a quick job to do that!"

"I realise that," replied the DG sardonically, "I first asked for it to be done three episodes ago and yet, here it is still humming and winking. Just do it please."

Rashface's turn to try and fool the DG: "It'll take time to do it properly."

"I don't want it done properly, just done." The DG turned back to lounge again in his padded throne and have a grape or two (peeled of course). "You've got ten minutes."

"But, but, but...."

"Nine minutes fifty."

"There will be no further delay." The Cyberleader raised his weapon - once again, in eerie formation his troopers did the same. Emily clutched the Doctor's arm.

"This would be a good time to think of something," she hissed.

"Yes..." said the Doctor distantly. He seemed to come to, and looked down at her. "If I do think of anything I'll let you know."

"Yeah," she answered faintly, "I'd appreciate that..."

"Ready your weapons!"

"Wait!" The Doctor held up a hand in fine dramatic fashion. "I've thought of something!"

"Irrelevant," dismissed the Cyberleader.

"Not to me," gasped Emily. "What is it Doctor, what is it?!"

"Aim your weapons!"

The Doctor leaned over and whispered frantically to Emily. A crazed, half-smile crossed her face. "That's utterly ridiculous, you realise that, don't you," she said.

"I realise that, yes." He flashed her a wide grin. "Go on then."

Emily cleared her throat. "Oh no!" she said in a loud clear voice, rattling the door handle helplessly. "There's no way out."

"No," responded the Doctor smugly, "there is another."

And of course there was.

They were through the door with it closed behind them by the time the first volley of shots hit. They were halfway up the corridor at full-pelt by the time the second volley was fired!

The DG hopped nimbly off his throne, padded over to the Cult Boys. "Time's up gentlemen," he announced. "Is the machine deactivated?"

There was an embarrassed shuffling of feet, and a lot of coughing and spluttering. Beardy very nobly grabbed Glasses and pushed him to the fore.

"Well?" demanded the DG.

"Er, actually, erm, well, that is to say, I, um, we..." Glasses trailed off into incoherence.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Erm, no," admitted Glasses. He felt a little more was expected of him, and gamely tried his rather feeble best: "You see, the deactivation process requires circuits to be phased out in sequence and the programs and routines need to be--"

"Don't try and baffle me with scientific gobbledegook, boy," snapped the DG. He snatched a power cable from the floor, shook it in the faces of the Team. "A single recursive pulse down this cable, and the Message Boards will close forever!" He thrust the cable back to the floor in triumph. The faces of the three men had turned an ashen white, like the forests of Skaro.

"H-how could you possibly know that?" gasped Beardy.

"I'm not an ignoramus," replied the DG.

"Not the scientific facts," muttered Rashface, "the quotation - how could you-"

"A cult philistine," spat Beardy.

"-possibly know that dialogue?"

There was a moment's silence. Then the DG chuckled, a cruel, evil laugh. He returned to his throne, lounging there like some great corrupt king of old. The chuckle filled the air as the shape of the DG shifted, warped, melting away, slimming, growing taller, sleeker, darker, the face sprouting a beard, the hair turning black and tight to the scalp. The transformation complete, a far more sinister figure was ensconced in the seat of power.

"Oh my dear anoraks," chuckled the Master, "you have been naive!"