Nelvana's Doctor Who, Episode 4, Ancient Aliens
Opening scene - a fleet of saucers approaches planet earth.
Cut to scenes scenes of endless herds of bison roaming the American plain, in the arctic, wooly mammoths and rhinos look up at the shooting stars, elsewhere humans live in mud and thatch huts. The saucers descend on Egypt. The door to the lead saucer opens, and a trio of gray space aliens step out to greet the Pharaoh.
Next scene - the pyramids are being built. As the camera zooms in, diminutive gray space aliens are everywhere, pushing blocks, hauling them with ropes, wielding primitive stone tools as they struggle to build the pyramids.
In fact, everywhere on earth, from Easter Island, to Mesopotamia to Central America, gray space aliens toil as unpaid slaves to build with the most rudimentary techniques available to them, as humans plan and direct.
The Tardis materializes in the midst of the struggling aliens. The Doctor steps out, takes a look around and says "That’s not how it’s supposed to happen." He and Casey are surrounded by men with spears.
SERIES MONTAGE
The Doctor and Casey are among the grays, struggling to push a giant pyramid block up a ramp. As they work, they are talking.
"So aliens really did build the pyramids?" Casey asks.
"It appears so," the Doctor replies.
"I didn’t think that they would be doing it like this."
"Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. Earth was very thinly populated in ancient times. There wasn’t much manpower around. Suddenly, millions of aliens show up who barely eat or drink.... That creates a gigantic pool of surplus labour. So of course, people will put them to work in all sorts of ways, serving them, building monuments to each other, and so forth.
"But why do the aliens allow it?"
"As nearly as I can sort out their language, they have no choice. They’re stuck here. Their ships are drained of power and need to recharge."
"But still..."
"They’re not very big or strong, you may have noticed. And unfortunately, this is an age where the mighty enslave the weak."
"But they are aliens, why are they working in such primitive ways."
"Well, really Casey, you’re a sophisticated 22nd century Earth girl. If I set you down in the middle ages, do you think you could build a vaulted archway or a windmill?"
"What?"
"Precisely. Most of these aliens are just regular people, telephone sanitizers, manicurists, waitresses, accountants, secretaries, etc. They don’t automatically have impressive engineering or architectural skills, any more than most people."
They pause to watch one group of aliens try to push a stone which has tipped into a pothole.
"And they’re not an especially bright species."
"How is that possible, Doctor?"
"Oh easily, they may not be smart, but they’ve had a very very long time to learn how to do things like build spaceships. You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with time."
Just then a burly Egyptian guard near Casey looms menacingly, looming over her, club raised to strike her. "No talking! More working!" he cries. But before he can strike, the Doctor’s watch on the end of its chain whips around the club, binding it tight. With a yank, the Doctor jerks it out of the guard’s hand.
"I think it’s time to leave," the Doctor says cheerfully, taking Casey’s arm.
The two of them run off.
The Gray aliens look up, watching the duo run, and then return to work.
*********
Casey and the Doctor flee the Egyptian guards, ducking in doorways, running through tombs, hiding among statuary, posing as hieroglyphics. At one point, they are trapped before a chasm. But the Doctor uses his fob watch and chain to snare an overhead beam and swing across Indiana Jones style.
Eventually, hiding behind the back side of the sphinx, the Doctor and Casey lose the guards. They make their way back to where they left the Tardis, but it isn’t there.
Cut to, the Tardis on its side, being used by the Pharaoh as a couch on his pleasure barge. As he is fanned by space aliens.
Cut to, the Doctor and Casey surrounded by men with spears, once again.
"I hope this doesn’t become a habit," says the Doctor.
**********
The Doctor and Casey are chained to a dungeon wall, next to an old man in robes. It turns out that he was the Pharaoh’s advisor. The Doctor and Casey are listening sympathetically to his story of how he came to be in the dungeon.
"My device could do the work of a dozen men," he is saying, "but the Pharaoh only laughed and asked why anyone would need such a device, since any man could have a dozen slaves to do the work directly..... And here I am."
"Just as I thought," replies the Doctor, "we must get rid of these aliens, before they bring all human progress to a halt."
"How are they doing that, Doctor?" Casey asks.
"With an endless supply of slaves to do all the work, there’s no motivation to invent or create or develop anything. Indeed, we can see that even now, the Egyptians are giving up their inventions, to rely entirely upon infinite slave labour. That’s not good for them. Human civilization is going in reverse."
"And not good for the slaves either," Casey asserts.
"Very true," the Doctor replies, "I suppose we need to save humanity once again, and these aliens too."
"How do we do that?"
"Very simple," the Doctor replies. "I have K9's whistle in my pocket, all I need to do is take it out and ...."
They look at each other, all three’s hands are chained high above their heads....
*************
The Pharaoh is knocked off his couch as the Tardis doors open and K9 flies off, cruising over the pyramids and zipping into the dungeon. He finds Casey with the whistle between her teeth, the Doctor contorted upside down, with one foot resting on the equally contorted rump of the advisor. All three are twisted awkwardly like a cirque du soleil performance.
"Master?"
K9's lasers cut the chains, and the three of them ride the overburdened robot dog back to the Tardis on the Pharaoh’s barge. K9 disables the Pharaoh’s guards, while the Doctor retrieves his watch. Casey remarks sarcastically that they should have done that from the start. The Doctor responds that then they wouldn’t have seen so much of Egypt.
The Doctor orders the Pharaoh to set the slaves free. The Pharaoh, clutching his Staff of Horus, refuses.
The Doctor then tells the gray alien slaves that they are free. The slaves refuse. It turns out, they’ve signed a contract. They must serve until their ships are fully recharged and they can continue on their way.
The Doctor asks for the contract. The aliens produce a scroll, which the doctor unfurls with a flick of his wrist.... The scroll unrolls, and unrolls, and unrolls reaching the length of the barge and beyond.
"I see that the Egyptians managed to invent lawyers," the Doctor comments.
"What are lawyers?" The aliens ask.
*************************
The Tardis materializes next at Stonehenge, then at Easter Island, then Mesopotamia. In each place, the aliens are busy struggling to erect tall stones or strange conical towers. Human overseers crack whips over their head.
The Doctor, inside the Tardis turns to Casey and the Pharaoh’s former advisor and says that there’s something wrong. The aliens ships should have recharged long ago. Why haven’t they? And why are the aliens still here?
The Doctor resolves to locate the aliens motherships and examine it.
The mothership, it turns out is located in Ancient Egypt, and has been incorporated into the Pharaoh’s palace.
The Doctor talks his way and his friends way into the grounded spaceship/palace, and make their way past guards into the deep sections of the ship. They discover burly Egyptian blackmiths hammering away at the controls.
"Doctor, they’re trying to wreck the ship to make sure that the slaves will never leave!" Casey is outraged.
The Doctor is unperturbed. The alien ship’s systems are almost indestructible, and primitive savages can do no damage. After all, the ships were originally designed to be idiot proof... As K9 shoos away the glowering Egyptians, the Doctor examines the instrument panels.
It turns out that the ships are fully recharged, and have been recharged for some time. But the signal has not gone out.
The Doctor and his friends trace the machinery back to the signal generator, but the central antenna is gone. The Doctor notes that it would be a golden staff, about so long, with a power crystal at one end.
Just then, the Pharaoh comes storming in with his guards, and with his alien slaves, some of whom he has convinced to arm themselves with energy weapons. He demands that the intruders leave as these chambers are sacred to the gods. He points his staff of Horus at them, a long golden pole with a falcon’s head mounted on it.
The Doctor marches up to the Pharaoh, eyes flashing, and snatches the staff away. He smashes the head of the staff against the wall, and the Falcon’s head shatters, revealing the jewel beneath. The aliens gasp. The Doctor presents it to one of the aliens who replaces it in their ship. As the ship hums and powers up, aliens all over the world look up, drop their stone tools and begin to walk away.
"You are a very bad man," Casey tells the Pharaoh.
*********************
As the Pharaoh watches his palace fly away, he turns to his advisors and complains that the pyramids are half built. Who can they enslave to finish them? The advisors look at each other nervously.
*********************
The Tardis floats in space, as the Doctor and his companions watch the alien fleet swarm up into space and vanish among the stars.
The Doctor sighs that this experience has left its mark. Human progress probably been delayed by at least a thousand years, and all sorts of unhealthy ideas have taken root.
An alien face appears on the viewscreen, the alien leader thanking the Doctor for allowing them to continue on their journey. The Doctor asks them where they are going, what they are seeking. The alien replies that they are fleeing, fleeing to the ends of the universe.
The screen goes blank, and the ships continue to leave earth and vanish.
The Doctor remarks that the incident has given Earth such a bad reputation among spacefaring races, that it will be thousands of years before any other aliens will dare to come near the place.
Ah well, the Doctor dismisses the thought. He must return the Pharaoh’s former chief advisor. Egypt isn’t too friendly right now. Where would he like to be dropped off? Mesopotamia? The renaissance? Chichen Itza?
Casey wonders out loud what the aliens were fleeing from.
*********************
Final shots of the incomplete monuments on earth, giant upright boulders, pillars or cones, all of which are partially textured in increasingly obvious ways.
The image zooms in on ancient Sumer, city of a thousand Ziggurats. Ziggurats are steep conical structures, many partially built, some with platforms of varying states upon them. In the center of a city are a handful of gigantic stone edifices, completed ziguratts. Above the sloping sides with their rows of rounded semi-spheres, are several stories of platforms and above those a dome. From the upper corners of the dome project two bumps or horns, and from the center an eye stalk. In front of the Ziguratt’s body there are two stylized projections - a gun and a claw. They are giant stone Daleks.
*********************
ROLL CREDITS
Opening scene - a fleet of saucers approaches planet earth.
Cut to scenes scenes of endless herds of bison roaming the American plain, in the arctic, wooly mammoths and rhinos look up at the shooting stars, elsewhere humans live in mud and thatch huts. The saucers descend on Egypt. The door to the lead saucer opens, and a trio of gray space aliens step out to greet the Pharaoh.
Next scene - the pyramids are being built. As the camera zooms in, diminutive gray space aliens are everywhere, pushing blocks, hauling them with ropes, wielding primitive stone tools as they struggle to build the pyramids.
In fact, everywhere on earth, from Easter Island, to Mesopotamia to Central America, gray space aliens toil as unpaid slaves to build with the most rudimentary techniques available to them, as humans plan and direct.
The Tardis materializes in the midst of the struggling aliens. The Doctor steps out, takes a look around and says "That’s not how it’s supposed to happen." He and Casey are surrounded by men with spears.
SERIES MONTAGE
The Doctor and Casey are among the grays, struggling to push a giant pyramid block up a ramp. As they work, they are talking.
"So aliens really did build the pyramids?" Casey asks.
"It appears so," the Doctor replies.
"I didn’t think that they would be doing it like this."
"Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. Earth was very thinly populated in ancient times. There wasn’t much manpower around. Suddenly, millions of aliens show up who barely eat or drink.... That creates a gigantic pool of surplus labour. So of course, people will put them to work in all sorts of ways, serving them, building monuments to each other, and so forth.
"But why do the aliens allow it?"
"As nearly as I can sort out their language, they have no choice. They’re stuck here. Their ships are drained of power and need to recharge."
"But still..."
"They’re not very big or strong, you may have noticed. And unfortunately, this is an age where the mighty enslave the weak."
"But they are aliens, why are they working in such primitive ways."
"Well, really Casey, you’re a sophisticated 22nd century Earth girl. If I set you down in the middle ages, do you think you could build a vaulted archway or a windmill?"
"What?"
"Precisely. Most of these aliens are just regular people, telephone sanitizers, manicurists, waitresses, accountants, secretaries, etc. They don’t automatically have impressive engineering or architectural skills, any more than most people."
They pause to watch one group of aliens try to push a stone which has tipped into a pothole.
"And they’re not an especially bright species."
"How is that possible, Doctor?"
"Oh easily, they may not be smart, but they’ve had a very very long time to learn how to do things like build spaceships. You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with time."
Just then a burly Egyptian guard near Casey looms menacingly, looming over her, club raised to strike her. "No talking! More working!" he cries. But before he can strike, the Doctor’s watch on the end of its chain whips around the club, binding it tight. With a yank, the Doctor jerks it out of the guard’s hand.
"I think it’s time to leave," the Doctor says cheerfully, taking Casey’s arm.
The two of them run off.
The Gray aliens look up, watching the duo run, and then return to work.
*********
Casey and the Doctor flee the Egyptian guards, ducking in doorways, running through tombs, hiding among statuary, posing as hieroglyphics. At one point, they are trapped before a chasm. But the Doctor uses his fob watch and chain to snare an overhead beam and swing across Indiana Jones style.
Eventually, hiding behind the back side of the sphinx, the Doctor and Casey lose the guards. They make their way back to where they left the Tardis, but it isn’t there.
Cut to, the Tardis on its side, being used by the Pharaoh as a couch on his pleasure barge. As he is fanned by space aliens.
Cut to, the Doctor and Casey surrounded by men with spears, once again.
"I hope this doesn’t become a habit," says the Doctor.
**********
The Doctor and Casey are chained to a dungeon wall, next to an old man in robes. It turns out that he was the Pharaoh’s advisor. The Doctor and Casey are listening sympathetically to his story of how he came to be in the dungeon.
"My device could do the work of a dozen men," he is saying, "but the Pharaoh only laughed and asked why anyone would need such a device, since any man could have a dozen slaves to do the work directly..... And here I am."
"Just as I thought," replies the Doctor, "we must get rid of these aliens, before they bring all human progress to a halt."
"How are they doing that, Doctor?" Casey asks.
"With an endless supply of slaves to do all the work, there’s no motivation to invent or create or develop anything. Indeed, we can see that even now, the Egyptians are giving up their inventions, to rely entirely upon infinite slave labour. That’s not good for them. Human civilization is going in reverse."
"And not good for the slaves either," Casey asserts.
"Very true," the Doctor replies, "I suppose we need to save humanity once again, and these aliens too."
"How do we do that?"
"Very simple," the Doctor replies. "I have K9's whistle in my pocket, all I need to do is take it out and ...."
They look at each other, all three’s hands are chained high above their heads....
*************
The Pharaoh is knocked off his couch as the Tardis doors open and K9 flies off, cruising over the pyramids and zipping into the dungeon. He finds Casey with the whistle between her teeth, the Doctor contorted upside down, with one foot resting on the equally contorted rump of the advisor. All three are twisted awkwardly like a cirque du soleil performance.
"Master?"
K9's lasers cut the chains, and the three of them ride the overburdened robot dog back to the Tardis on the Pharaoh’s barge. K9 disables the Pharaoh’s guards, while the Doctor retrieves his watch. Casey remarks sarcastically that they should have done that from the start. The Doctor responds that then they wouldn’t have seen so much of Egypt.
The Doctor orders the Pharaoh to set the slaves free. The Pharaoh, clutching his Staff of Horus, refuses.
The Doctor then tells the gray alien slaves that they are free. The slaves refuse. It turns out, they’ve signed a contract. They must serve until their ships are fully recharged and they can continue on their way.
The Doctor asks for the contract. The aliens produce a scroll, which the doctor unfurls with a flick of his wrist.... The scroll unrolls, and unrolls, and unrolls reaching the length of the barge and beyond.
"I see that the Egyptians managed to invent lawyers," the Doctor comments.
"What are lawyers?" The aliens ask.
*************************
The Tardis materializes next at Stonehenge, then at Easter Island, then Mesopotamia. In each place, the aliens are busy struggling to erect tall stones or strange conical towers. Human overseers crack whips over their head.
The Doctor, inside the Tardis turns to Casey and the Pharaoh’s former advisor and says that there’s something wrong. The aliens ships should have recharged long ago. Why haven’t they? And why are the aliens still here?
The Doctor resolves to locate the aliens motherships and examine it.
The mothership, it turns out is located in Ancient Egypt, and has been incorporated into the Pharaoh’s palace.
The Doctor talks his way and his friends way into the grounded spaceship/palace, and make their way past guards into the deep sections of the ship. They discover burly Egyptian blackmiths hammering away at the controls.
"Doctor, they’re trying to wreck the ship to make sure that the slaves will never leave!" Casey is outraged.
The Doctor is unperturbed. The alien ship’s systems are almost indestructible, and primitive savages can do no damage. After all, the ships were originally designed to be idiot proof... As K9 shoos away the glowering Egyptians, the Doctor examines the instrument panels.
It turns out that the ships are fully recharged, and have been recharged for some time. But the signal has not gone out.
The Doctor and his friends trace the machinery back to the signal generator, but the central antenna is gone. The Doctor notes that it would be a golden staff, about so long, with a power crystal at one end.
Just then, the Pharaoh comes storming in with his guards, and with his alien slaves, some of whom he has convinced to arm themselves with energy weapons. He demands that the intruders leave as these chambers are sacred to the gods. He points his staff of Horus at them, a long golden pole with a falcon’s head mounted on it.
The Doctor marches up to the Pharaoh, eyes flashing, and snatches the staff away. He smashes the head of the staff against the wall, and the Falcon’s head shatters, revealing the jewel beneath. The aliens gasp. The Doctor presents it to one of the aliens who replaces it in their ship. As the ship hums and powers up, aliens all over the world look up, drop their stone tools and begin to walk away.
"You are a very bad man," Casey tells the Pharaoh.
*********************
As the Pharaoh watches his palace fly away, he turns to his advisors and complains that the pyramids are half built. Who can they enslave to finish them? The advisors look at each other nervously.
*********************
The Tardis floats in space, as the Doctor and his companions watch the alien fleet swarm up into space and vanish among the stars.
The Doctor sighs that this experience has left its mark. Human progress probably been delayed by at least a thousand years, and all sorts of unhealthy ideas have taken root.
An alien face appears on the viewscreen, the alien leader thanking the Doctor for allowing them to continue on their journey. The Doctor asks them where they are going, what they are seeking. The alien replies that they are fleeing, fleeing to the ends of the universe.
The screen goes blank, and the ships continue to leave earth and vanish.
The Doctor remarks that the incident has given Earth such a bad reputation among spacefaring races, that it will be thousands of years before any other aliens will dare to come near the place.
Ah well, the Doctor dismisses the thought. He must return the Pharaoh’s former chief advisor. Egypt isn’t too friendly right now. Where would he like to be dropped off? Mesopotamia? The renaissance? Chichen Itza?
Casey wonders out loud what the aliens were fleeing from.
*********************
Final shots of the incomplete monuments on earth, giant upright boulders, pillars or cones, all of which are partially textured in increasingly obvious ways.
The image zooms in on ancient Sumer, city of a thousand Ziggurats. Ziggurats are steep conical structures, many partially built, some with platforms of varying states upon them. In the center of a city are a handful of gigantic stone edifices, completed ziguratts. Above the sloping sides with their rows of rounded semi-spheres, are several stories of platforms and above those a dome. From the upper corners of the dome project two bumps or horns, and from the center an eye stalk. In front of the Ziguratt’s body there are two stylized projections - a gun and a claw. They are giant stone Daleks.
*********************
ROLL CREDITS