The morning sun rose in a clear bright sky, making the pavements glisten with the night's rainwater.  Ace and the Doctor wandered through the streets of Blinni-Gaar, watching as the city came alive around them.

The Ductor had woken her early, while everyone else in the house was still asleep.  That had been fine with Ace, she had no wish to go through another meal where no one would look at her.  Even in the quiet of the morning she could hear the mutter of breakfast television.  It was madness; the family couldn't even be awake yet.

She had slipped a note under Gatti's door telling her that she had to go over to the studios and joined the Doctor on the street.  As always he looked fresh and relaxed.  She had never seen him looking rough in the morning, but then again, she had never managed to get up before him.

The walk into the city centre had been quite pleasant; office blocks were opening up, commuters bustling through roads already clogged with traffic.  It amazed Ace that everything could be so different and yet so familiar.  Even when the commuter was a twelve-foot-high octopus there were the obvious trappings of the office worker - briefcase, mobile phone.  She hadn't seen a bowler hat yet, but she was sure it was only a matter of time.

The local inhabitants were already beginning to congregate at monitors in cafés and squares.  All of them had the same dead-eyed look.  Ace remembered her grandmother telling her that if she watched too much television she would go goggle-eyed.  Here on Blinni-Gaar it was almost literally true.

The two of them had returned to the café where they had been the night before and the Doctor had bought them coffee and croissants, then they had hopped on a bus and taken the long sweeping road to the base of the mountains, and the Channel 400 building.

The Doctor pointed at a block of buildings with the tip of his umbrella.

'That's the place I want to get to, the studio complex.'

Ace looked up at it through the Doctor's opera glasses.  The massive concrete structure jutted out from the rock above the perimeter wall, huge signs marking Studio One, Studio Two and Studio Three.

'That's where the signal is coming from?'

The Doctor shook his head.  'No, but presumably that's where they are recording what they are transmitting.'

Ace handed the glasses back to him.

'So what's the plan?  Hypnotise the guard on the gate and sneak in for a look?'

The Doctor pursed his lips.  'No.  I tried that yesterday without much success.'

'We could wait till it's dark and climb the walls?'

The Doctor frowned at her.  'No, no, no.  I don't think we need to be quite so underhand.  I thought we'd try a more direct approach.'

He pointed at an ever-growing queue of people at the gate.

'According to the programme guide, these people will be an audience for a popular music show.  We'll simply mingle with them and then sneak away from the main group.'

Beaming at the simplicity of his plan the Doctor tucked his umbrella under his arm and set off at a trot.  'Come along, Ace!'

Shaking her head, Ace sprinted after him.


High above them, hunched over his desk, Vogol Lukos watched as the diminutive figure of the Doctor joined the ever-growing queue.  Auntie's tracking software had alerted him as soon as the Doctor had got near the studios.  Lukos was living in his office at the moment, not wanting to miss a moment of the drama as it unfolded.

'Oh, no, no, my dear Doctor.  My viewers are hardly going to be excited if we just let you walk in, are they?'