AMY [OC]: Life with the Doctor was like this.

(Lots of flashes of action clips.)

AMY [OC]: Real life was like this.

[Kitchen - July]

(There are 59 messages on the telephone answerphone. Rory it putting clothes from a suitcase into the washing machine while Amy checks the fridge.)

WOMAN [answerphone]: It's Lane's Opticians. Just reminding you your reading glasses are ready for collection. Bye!

AMY: Milk two months out of date. Yogurt.

(It smells and looks so bad she drops it.)

AMY: Eek! Don't ask.

RORY: We've run out of washing tablets.

[Back garden]

RORY: We have two lives. Real life and Doctor life. Except real life doesn't get much of a look in.

AMY: What do we do?

RORY: Choose?

(The sound of a Tardis materialising.)

AMY: Not today, though.

RORY: Nah, not today.

AMY [OC]: Every time we flew away with the Doctor, we'd just become part of his life. But he never stood still long enough to become part of ours. Except once. The year of the slow invasion. The time the Doctor came to stay.

(As Rory and Amy sleep, a black box appears downstairs and floats onto a shelf.)

[Front door]

(Rory and Amy are woken by the doorbell. They look out of their bedroom window.)

RORY: Dad, it's half past six in the morning.

BRIAN: What are you doing lying around? Haven't you seen them?

(He has one of the boxes, and there are lots of them scattered around the street like three inch square black hailstones.)

RORY: What are they?

BRIAN: Nobody knows. They're everywhere.

AMY: Well, where have they come from? Wait.

(A man in a tweed jacket is sitting on top of a child's climbing frame examining a box.)

AMY: Doctor!

DOCTOR: Invasion of the very small cubes. That's new.

(The BBC News channel provides information.)

BBC NEWS: (Matthew Amroliwala) World leaders are appealing for calm.

BBC NEWS: (Joanna Gosling?) After the global appearance of millions of small cubes. Despite official warnings, people have been taking the cubes from the streets into offices and homes.

MATTHEW [on TV]: What are they?

JOANNA [on TV]: Where do they come from?

MATTHEW [on TV]: And why are they here?

PROF BRIAN COX [on TV]: Well, they're certainly not random space debris. They're too perfectly formed for that. Are they extra-terrestrial in origin? Well, you'll have to ask a better man than me.

[Tardis]

DOCTOR: All absolutely identical. Not a single molecule's difference between them. No blemishes, imperfections, individualities.

BRIAN: What if they're bombs? Billions of tiny bombs? Or transport capsules maybe, with a mini robot inside. Or deadly hard drives. Or alien eggs? Or messages needing decoding. Or they're all parts of a bigger whole. Jigsaw puzzles that need fitting together.

DOCTOR: Very thorough, Brian. Very, very thorough. Well done. Stay here. Watch these. Yell if anything happens.

AMY: Doctor, is this an alien invasion? Because that's what it feels like.

RORY: There couldn't be life-forms in every cube, could there?

DOCTOR: I don't know. And I really don't like not knowing.

[Kitchen]

(The Tardis is parked in the lounge.)

DOCTOR: Right, I need to use your kitchen as a lab. Cook up some cubes. See what happens.

RORY: Right, I'm due at work.

DOCTOR: What? You've got a job?

RORY: Of course I've got a job. What do you think we do when we're not with you?

DOCTOR: I imagined mostly kissing.

AMY: I write travel articles for magazines and Rory heals the sick.

RORY: My shift starts in an hour. You don't know where my scrubs are?

AMY: In the lounge, where you left them.

[Alleyway]

(A suburban one, not a city one. Military types pile out of 4x4s.)

MAN [OC]: Approaching site. Quite strong likeness detected. Target unconfirmed. May be hostile.

SOLDIER: Approaching source now. Area will be secure in sixty seconds. Ultimate force available.

(And run up to a certain front door.)

[Kitchen]

DOCTOR: All the Ponds, with their house and their jobs and their everyday lives. The journalist and the nurse. Long way from Leadworth.

(The Doctor is sonicking a gizmo together.)

AMY: We think it's been Amy years. Not for you or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off.

DOCTOR: Look at you now. All grown up.

(The front door is smashed down.)

MAN: Clear! Trap one, kitchen secured.

MAN 2: Trap three, back garden secured.

(The rest of the squad are outside the patio doors. Rory is marched in at gunpoint.)

RORY: There are soldiers all over my house, and I'm in my pants.

AMY: My whole life I've dreamed of saying that, and I miss it by being someone else.

(A woman enters the house.)

KATE: All these muscles, and they still don't know how to knock. Sorry about the raucous entrance. Spike in Artron energy reading at this address. In the light of the last twenty four hours, we had to check it out, and the dogs do love a run out. Hello. Kate Stewart, head of scientific research at UNIT. And with dress sense like that.

(She holds out a scanner, which shows two hearts beating in his chest.)

KATE: You must be the Doctor. I hoped it would be you.

DOCTOR: Tell me, since when did science run the military, Kate?

KATE: Since me. UNIT's been adapting. Well, I dragged them along, kicking and screaming, which made it sound like more fun than it actually was.

DOCTOR: What do we know about these cubes?

KATE: Far less than we need to. We've been freighting them in from around the world for testing. So far, we've subjected them to temperatures of plus and minus two hundred Celsius, simulated a water depth of five miles, dropped one out of a helicopter at ten thousand feet and rolled our best tank over it. Always intact.

DOCTOR: That's impressive. I don't want them to be impressive. I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles heel.

KATE: We don't know how they got here, what they're made of, or why they're here.

DOCTOR: And all around the world, people are picking them up and taking them home.

KATE: Like iPads have dropped out of the sky. Taking them to work, taking pictures, making films, posting them on Flickr and YouTube. Within three hours, the cubes had a thousand separate Twitter accounts.

DOCTOR: Twitter?

KATE: I've recommended we treat this as a hostile incursion. Gather them all up and lock them in a secure facility. But that would take massive international agreement and co-operation.

DOCTOR: We need evidence. The cubes arrived in plain sight, in vast quantities, as the sun rose. So, what does that tell us?

AMY: Maybe they wanted to be seen. Noticed.

DOCTOR: Or more than that, they want to be observed. So we observe them. Stay with them round the clock. Watch the cubes, day and night. Record absolutely everything about them. Team cube, in it together.

[Lounge]

DOCTOR: Four days. Nothing! Nothing! Not a single change in any cube anywhere in the world. Four days, and I am still in your lounge!

AMY: You were the one who wanted to observe them.

DOCTOR: Yes, well, I thought they'd do something, didn't I? Not just sit there while everyone eats endless cereal!

RORY: You said we had to be patient.

DOCTOR: Yes, you! You, not me! I hate being patient. Patience is for wimps. I can't live like this. Don't make me. I need to be busy.

AMY: Fine! Be busy! We'll watch the cubes.

(So the Doctor creosotes the garden fence, plays a little football, mows the lawn and does something to their car.)

DOCTOR: (keeping the football off the ground.) Ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred. Amy!

(He also vacuums the house.)

DOCTOR: Four million nine hundred ninety nine, five million.

(He returns to the sofa.)

DOCTOR: That's better. Nothing like a bit of activity to pass the time. How long was I gone?

RORY: Er, about an hour.

DOCTOR: I can't do it. No.

AMY: Where are you going?

[Tardis]

DOCTOR: Brian, you're still here.

BRIAN: You told me to watch the cubes.

DOCTOR: Four days ago.

BRIAN: Ah! Doesn't time fly when you're alone with your thoughts?

RORY: You can't just leave, Doctor.

DOCTOR: Yes, of course I can. Quick jaunt, restore sanity. Ooo, hey, come if you like.

BRIAN: They can't just go off like that.

DOCTOR: Can't they? Can't you? That's how it goes, isn't it?

RORY: I've got my job.

DOCTOR: Oh yes, Rory. The universe is awaiting, but you have a little job to.

RORY: It's not little. It's important to me. Look, what you do isn't all there is.

DOCTOR: I never said it was.

DOCTOR: All right. Fine. I'll be back soon. Monitor the cubes. Call me. I'll have the Tardis set to every Earth news feed.

JOANNA [on TV]: At the end of a week of cubic questions and theories, but no answers, could this be the greatest stealth marketing campaign in business history? And if it is, will those behind it ever come forward and explain exactly what it's for?

[Party - October]

AMY: I'm so pleased for you two. It's about time you made an honest woman of her.

LAURA: Amy, about bridesmaids. You've missed quite a few things the last year or two.

AMY: I'm so totally there. Whatever you need.

[Hospital]

RANJIT: : Everyone here loves you. The nurses, the doctors. You're a life-saver, mate, literally.

RORY: Ah, well, thanks.

RANJIT: But there are months when we don't see you. And we can't do without you. I want you to go full time.

RORY: Full time? Blimey. Er.

[Bedroom]

RORY: I said yes. I committed.

AMY: And I committed to being a bridesmaid. Months in advance. Like I know I'm going to be here.

RORY: So the Doctor's God knows where, the cubes aren't doing anything at all. Did real life just get started?

AMY: I like it.

RORY: So do I.

[Lounge]

(Brian is keeping a video diary.)

BRIAN: Brian's log, day sixty seven.

RORY: You, er, you can't call it that. Brian's log?

BRIAN: Brian's log, day sixty seven. Cube was quiet all night, 0nce again. Cube was quiet all day, as per previously. No movement. No change in measurements. End of entry.

RORY: You stay up and watch it all the time.

BRIAN: I film it while I'm asleep. When I wake up, I watch the footage on fast forward. I e-mail the result to UNIT. My middle name is diligence.

RORY: Wow. I can't wait to see day sixty eight.

BRIAN: Don't mock my log. I'm doing what the Doctor asked.

[Hospital - December]

(The decorations are up and Noddy Holder is singing Merry Christmas Everybody.)

RORY: That's it. Er, Mister Ryan, please.

(A young man with his foot stuck in a toilet bowl.)

RORY: Again?

(Rory wheels him away. We zoom in on a young girl. Her eyes flare blue, then so does the cube she is holding.)

[Ward]

(A old man is lying on a bed, reading a paperback. A man enters wearing a mask and draws the curtain.)

ARNOLD: I'm fine. I've been done.

ORDERLY: What seems to be the matter?

ARNOLD: I'm just waiting for a prescription.

ORDERLY: Where does it hurt?

(A second identical man enters.)

ARNOLD: I said I'm fine. Will you tell your colleague here that I. Stop!

(Arnold Underwood pulls down the orderlies masks. They have snouts with grills rather than noses and mouths. The box by his bed glows red as he screams.

In an office, the boxes are used to put post-it notes on, create targets for putting practice, and as paperweights.

In the streets, there are piles of them by waste bins.)

[Back garden - June]

(The Williams are hosting a barbeque. Amy makes a telephone call.)

AMY: Hey! Doctor, it's me. Hello. So, the UN classified the cubes as provisionally safe, whatever that means, and Banksy and Damien Hirst put out statements saying the cubes are nothing to do with them. And the cubes, well, they're just here. Still. What's it been, nine months? People are just taking them for granted. Maybe we'll never know why they came. But anyway. I got to Laura's wedding. It was great. She's here tonight, being as it's our wedding anniversary. We thought you might have dropped by. I left you messages.

(A man carries a large bouquet of flowers up behind Amy.)

DOCTOR: I know! Happy anniversary! Come with me. And bring your husband.

[Savoy Hotel]

DOCTOR: 26th of June, 1890. The recently opened Savoy Hotel. Dinner, bed and breakfast for two. Bonjour, bonjour. Merci, Auguste. You'll be back before the party's over. They won't even notice you went. No complications, I promise.

(Rory kisses the Doctor continental style.)

DOCTOR: Ooo!

[Street]

(Still dressed for 1890, and it is snowing.)

DOCTOR: Bit of a shock, Zygon ship under the Savoy, half the staff impostors. Still, it's all fixed now, eh?

[Bedchamber]

HENRY [OC]: Gentlemen, open the doors!

AMY: I thought we were going home?

DOCTOR: You can't miss a good wedding. Under the bed. Under the bed!

(The trio hide under the big four-poster.)

DOCTOR: Shush!

AMY: It wasn't my fault.

RORY: It was totally your fault!

AMY: Somebody was talking, and I just said yes.

RORY: To wedding vows! You just married Henry VIII on our anniversary.

(The monarch enters. The Doctor sneezes.)

DOCTOR: Sorry.

[Lounge - June... again]

(A party)

(Brian goes up to the Doctor.)

BRIAN: How long were they away?

DOCTOR: I don't know what you're talking about, Brian.

BRIAN: Because they're wearing totally different clothes from earlier.

DOCTOR: Seven weeks. I got side-tracked. A lot.

BRIAN: What happened to the other people who travel with you?

DOCTOR: Some left me. Some got left behind. And some, not many but, some died. Not them. Not them, Brian. Never them.

[Back garden]

DOCTOR: Can I stay here, with you and Rory, for a bit. Keep an eye on the cubes. However long that takes.

AMY: I thought it would drive you mad.

DOCTOR: No, no, no. I mean, I'll be better at it this time. I miss you.

[Brian's lounge - July]

BRIAN: Brian's log, day three hundred and sixty one. Eight fifty pm. No movement. And I am cream crackered.

(Brian falls asleep.)

[Lounge]

LORD SUGAR [on TV]: I sent you out to sell as many cubes as you could in twenty four hours. And look at you, you've made a right hash of it, haven't you. Well, Craig, you're fired.

(The Doctor, Amy and Rory are eating what looks like fish fingers and custard.)

DOCTOR: If I had a restaurant, this'd be all I'd serve.

AMY: Yeah, right. You running a restaurant.

DOCTOR: I've run restaurants. Who do you think invented the Yorkshire pudding?

RORY: You didn't.

DOCTOR: Pudding, yet savoury. Sound familiar?

[Brian's lounge]

(Something jolts Brian awake. It is the box moving. He dozes off again and reawakens when it starts to spin around.)

BRIAN: Do it again.

[Kitchen]

AMY: Good job, mister. Civilisations saved, surfaces wiped. What more could any woman ask for?

RORY: Ha, ha.

AMY: I mean it.

RORY: Where's the Doctor?

AMY: On the Wii again. I'm going for a bath.

(The cube on the work surface opens its lid and closes it again.)

[Lounge]

DOCTOR: Oh, yes! Second set, Doctor! Ha ha! Oh, if Fred Perry could see me now, eh? He'd probably ask for his shorts back.

[Bathroom]

(Amy sees the cube in here glowing. She puts her hand on it and gets stabbed by a square of 25 short needles.)

AMY: Ow!

(The needles disappear back inside the cube then a heartbeat line appears through the middle of it.

(Down in the kitchen, Rory spots the cube opening and closing. He tries to see what is inside it.)

[Lounge]

DOCTOR: Third set decider, come on, then.

(A cube flies around him and blocks his view.)

DOCTOR: Out of the way, dear, I'm trying to. Whatever you are, this planet, these people, are precious to me. And I will defend them to my last breath. Is that all you can do, hover? I had a metal dog could do that.

(The cube points a tube at him.)

DOCTOR: What's that?

(The cube fires, the Doctor dodges and a vase shatters. The Doctor escapes after two more pot shots, then the cube settles in front of the TV cum computer console and images flicker across the screen very quickly.)

[Hallway]

(The Doctor looks in round the door.)

DOCTOR: Ooo, you really have woken up.

RORY: Doctor? Hi. Er, the cube in there, it just opened.

AMY: The cube upstairs just spiked me and took my pulse!

DOCTOR: Ha! Really? Mine fired laser bolts and now it's surfing the net.

(Brian enters.)

BRIAN: You're never going to believe this. My cube just moved. It rattled.

(Rory answers his mobile phone.)

RORY: Hello?

[Hospital]

RANJIT: Rory, mate, I'm desperate for help. People are saying they've been attacked by the cubes. It's going to be a long night.

(The little girl is still sitting there with a glowing cube. Since December?)

RORY [OC]: Okay, I'm on my way.

[Hallway]

RORY: I have to get to work. They need all the help they can get.

BRIAN: Let me come, help out.

RORY: Take your dad to work night, brilliant! Okay, are you going to be all right here?

AMY: Keep away from the cubes.

RORY: Right.

(Rory and Brian leave. The Doctor is looking at his psychic paper.)

AMY: What are you grinning about?

DOCTOR: We're wanted at the Tower of London.

[Tower of London]

(They arrive by car.)

KATE: Every cube across the whole world activated at the same moment.

DOCTOR: Now we're in business. You sent me a message to my psychic paper. You know what? I'm almost impressed.

[UNIT HQ]

AMY: Secret base beneath the Tower. Hope we're not here because we know too much.

KATE: Yes, I've got officers trained in beheading. Also ravens of death.

AMY: I like her.

(They enter an area with lots of individual armoured cubicles, each containing a cube.)

KATE: There are fifty being monitored, and more coming in all the time. I don't know how useful it is. Every cube is behaving individually. There's no meaningful pattern. Some respond to proximity. Some create mood swings.

(Amy touches one cubicle and the cube produces a flames. In another, a woman weeps.)

AMY: Er, what's this one?

KATE: Try the door.

(Amy opens the door and the Birdie Song starts playing.)

KATE: On a loop!

(Amy shuts the door again quickly.)

KATE: This is the latest.

DOCTOR: Oh dear. Systems breach at the Pentagon, China, every African nation, the Middle East.

KATE: I've got governments screaming for explanations and no idea what to tell them. I'm lost, Doctor. We all are.

DOCTOR: Don't despair, Kate. Your dad never did. Kate Stewart, heading up UNIT, changing the way they work. How could you not be? Why did you drop Lethbridge?

KATE: I didn't want any favours. Though he guided me, even to the end. Science leads, he always told me. Said he'd learned that from an old friend.

DOCTOR: We don't let him down. We don't let this planet down.

RESEARCHER: They've stopped. The cubes, across the world, they just shut down.

KATE: Active for forty seven minutes, and then they just die?

DOCTOR: Not dead. Dormant, maybe.

AMY: Then why shut down?

DOCTOR: I don't know. I don't know. I need to think. I need some air. Who has an underground base? Terrible ventilation.

[By the Thames]

DOCTOR: The moment they arrived, I should have made sure they were collected and burned. That is what I should have done.

AMY: How? Nobody would have listened.

DOCTOR: You're thinking of stopping, aren't you? You and Rory.

AMY: No. I mean, we haven't made a decision.

DOCTOR: But you're considering it.

AMY: Maybe. I don't know. We don't know. Well, our lives have changed so much. But there was a time, there were years, when I couldn't live without you. When just the whole everyday thing would drive me crazy. But since you dropped us back here, since you gave us this house, you know, we've built a life. I don't know if I can have both.

DOCTOR: Why?

AMY: Because they pull at each other. Because they pull at me, and because the travelling is starting to feel like running away.

DOCTOR: That's not what it is.

AMY: Oh, come on. Look at you, four days in a lounge and you go crazy.

DOCTOR: I'm not running away. But this is one corner of one country in one continent on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I'm not running away from things, I am running to them before they flare and fade forever. And it's all right. Our lives won't run the same. They can't. One day, soon maybe, you'll stop. I've known for a while.

AMY: Then why do you keep coming back for us?

DOCTOR: Because you were the first. The first face this face saw. And you're seared onto my hearts, Amelia Pond. You always will be. I'm running to you, and Rory, before you fade from me.

AMY: Don't be nice to me. I don't want you to be nice to me.

DOCTOR: Yeah, you do, Pond, and you always get what you want. They got what they wanted.

AMY: What? Who did?

DOCTOR: The cubes. That's why they stopped. Come on.

[UNIT HQ]

DOCTOR: Kate? Before they shut down, they scanned everything, from your medical limits to your military response patterns. They made a complete assessment of Planet Earth and its inhabitants. That's what the surge of activity was.

(The power cuts off.)

DOCTOR: Problem with the power?

KATE: Not possible. We've got back-ups.

DOCTOR: Hmm.

AMY: Doctor? Look.

DOCTOR: What?

KATE: Why do they all say seven?

(Every cube is showing the same number.)

DOCTOR: Seven. Seven, what's important about seven? Seven wonders of the world, seven streams of the River Ota, seven sides of a cube.

AMY: A cube has six sides.

DOCTOR: Not if you count the inside.

(Clunk, six.)

DOCTOR: It has to be a countdown.

KATE: Not in minutes.

DOCTOR: Why would it be minutes? Kate, we have to get humanity away from those cubes. God knows what they'll do if they hit zero. Get the information out any way you can. News channels, websites, radio, text messages. People have to know that the cubes are dangerous.

AMY: Okay, but why is this starting now? I mean, the cubes arrived months ago. Why wait this long?

DOCTOR: Because they're clever. Allow people enough time to collect them, take them into their homes, their lives. Humans, the great early adopters. And then, wham! Profile every inch of Earth's existence.

KATE: Discover how best to attack us.

DOCTOR: Get that information out any way you can. Go!

KATE: Right.

(The computers are still working.)

DOCTOR: Every cube was activated. There must be signals, energy fluctuations on a colossal scale, there must be some trace. There can't not be. We need to think of all the variables, all the possibilities, okay? Go, go, go, go, go!

MATTHEW [on TV]: This is a national security alert. The Government advises that members of the public dispose of all cubes. If there are cubes inside your house, remove them immediately.

(The number drops from five to four.)

[Hospital]

RORY: We've get them out of the building. Away from here, as far as you can, and get back here before it hits zero. Dad, could you go and get me a box of tape for dressings? It's just the cupboard round the corner.

BRIAN: Yes, boss.

[Corridor]

(Brian is nearly knocked over by the twin orderlies pushing a trolley.)

BRIAN: Sorry. Er, excuse me? I'm looking for the supplies cupboard. I said, I'm looking for the supplies cupboard.

(The orderlies turn and advance towards Brian. Three.

[Hospital]

RORY: Have you seen my dad?

NURSE: No, sorry.

[Corridor]

(Rory sees the orderlies at the far end, with Brian on the trolley.)

RORY: Hey. Dad! Hey! Hey!

(The orderlies run into a goods lift with Do Not Use tape all over it. Rory presses the button, the doors open again but it is empty. He goes in and tries the floor buttons. The doors close. Rory touches the wall opposite and it wibbles. He walks through and onto a spaceship in geosyncronous orbit above an Earth surrounded by clouds..)

[UNIT HQ]

AMY: Doctor, please. You don't have to do this.

KATE: She's right. You don't have to be in there. We can do this remotely.

DOCTOR: Remotely isn't my style. See you after.

(The Doctor enters a cubicle as the number on the cube changes to two. Then it goes to one rather quickly, and finally zero. Then it switches off and opens its lid.)

DOCTOR: Geronimo.

KATE: What's happening?

AMY: Well? What's in there?

DOCTOR: There is nothing in here.

AMY: Er, well, that's good. It's not, it's not bombs, it's not aliens.

DOCTOR: Why? Why is there nothing inside? Why? It doesn't make any sense.

(The Doctor comes out of the cubicle and goes to the bespectacled Researcher.)

DOCTOR: Glasses, is it the same? Is it the same all around the world?

KATE: They're empty. We're safe, right?

DOCTOR: Ah, no, no, no, we are very far from safe. All along, every action has been deliberate. Why draw attention to the cubes if they don't contain anything?

AMY: Doctor, look.

(On the monitors, people are clutching at their chests in pain as they walk near cubes on the ground.)

RESEARCHER: They're CCTV feeds from across the world. They're showing the same.

KATE: People are dying.

DOCTOR: What? They can't be dying. How? How are they dying?

KATE: I want information on how people are being affected.

DOCTOR: The cubes brought people close together. They opened and then argh!

(The Doctor clutches his chest.)

AMY: Doctor, what's the matter?

DOCTOR: Argh. Ah, I don't know!

RESEARCHER: Hospitals are logging a global surge in heart failures. Cardiac arrests.

DOCTOR: That's it. Oh! Oh! Oh! Only one heart. Other one's not working.

AMY: Okay, I'm going to get you to the hospital!

DOCTOR: Oh, no, no, no, no. Just a short circuit. Turn around, turn around. Tell me, show me. Ten seconds after the cubes opened, show me the patterns in their electrical currents.

(A heartbeat.)

DOCTOR: See?

KATE: No!

DOCTOR: Yes, the power cut. They zapped the power and then argh! They're signal boxes. People leaning in, wham. Pure electrical surge out of the cube targeted at the nearest human heart. The heart, an organ powered by electrical currents, short-circuited. How to destroy a human? Go for the heart. Ow. Crikey Moses.

KATE: Doctor, the scan you set running. The transmitter locations. It's found them.

DOCTOR: And look at them all, pulsing bold as brass. Seven of them, all across the world. Ow! Seven stations, seven minutes. Why is that important? Argh! Ow, ow. How do you people manage? One heart, it is pitiful. A wormhole, bridging two dimensions. Seven of them hitched onto this planet, but where's the closest one? Glasses, zoom in.

AMY: It's the hospital where Rory works.

[Spaceship]

(Rory spots his father amongst the people lying on slabs here.)

RORY: Dad. Dad!

(The alien orderlies are there.)

RORY: Just get away from him.

(The orderlies draw hypodermics and advance.)

[Hospital]

DOCTOR: How many deaths have been recorded?

KATE: We don't know. We think it could be a third of the population.

DOCTOR: Kate, I have to find the wormhole, but the attacks could still happen. Tell the world. Tell them how to deal with this. The world needs your leadership right now.

KATE: I'll do my best.

DOCTOR: Of course you will. Good luck, Kate. Argh! Argh!

AMY: Okay, how long are you going to last with only one heart?

DOCTOR: Not much longer. I need to locate the wormhole portal.

(The sonic screwdriver zuzzes.)

DOCTOR: Hello. Hello!

(He finds the little girl.)

DOCTOR: You are giving off some very strange signals.

(The girl's face glows blue.)

AMY: Oh, my God.

DOCTOR: Outlier droid, monitoring everything. If I shut her down, I can.

(He does, then staggers again.)

[Corridor]

DOCTOR: Ah. It's all right, it's all right. I can't, Amy. I can't do it. I need both hearts!

(Amy grabs a portable defibrillator.)

AMY: All right. Desperate measures.

DOCTOR: What? No. No, no, no. That won't work. I'm a Time Lord.

AMY: All right, clear!

DOCTOR: Whoo! Ooo. Ooo! Welcome back, lefty! Whoa-ho! Two hearts! Woo! Back in the game. Ah. Never do that to me again.

(The goods lift bell dings.)

AMY: Ah, portal to another dimension in a goods lift?

DOCTOR: The energy signals converge here. Does seem a bit cramped, though.

(They find the wibbly wall.)

DOCTOR: Through the looking glass, Amelia?

[Spaceship]

AMY: Where are we?

DOCTOR: We're in orbit. One dimension to the left.

AMY: Rory!

(Laid out on a slab next to Brian. The Doctor produces a small vial.)

DOCTOR: Ah. Soborian smelling salts. Outlawed in seven galaxies.

(Amy waves it under Rory's nose and he sits up quickly. Someone shoots at them.)

DOCTOR: Whoa! Whoa! What kind of a welcome do you call that? Get them out of here. You too. Now!

AMY: What are you going to do?

DOCTOR: Absolutely no idea. Get him to the portal.

(Brian wakes as soon as they move his trolley. The alien shoots again.)

DOCTOR: Whoa!

SHAKRI: So many of them crawling the planet, seeping into every corner.

(Amy, Rory and Brian leave. The alien vanishes then reappears in front of a bank of monitors.)

DOCTOR: It's not possible. I thought the Shakri were a myth. A myth to keep the young of Gallifrey in their place.

SHAKRI: The Shakri exist in all of time, and none. We travel alone and together. The Seven.

DOCTOR: The Shakri craft, connected to Earth, through seven portals and seven minutes. Ah, but why?

SHAKRI: Serving the word of the Tally.

DOCTOR: Why the cubes? Why Earth?

SHAKRI: Not Earth, humanity. The Shakri will halt the human plague before the spread.

DOCTOR: Erase humanity before it colonises space. We thought the cubes were an invasion. The start of war.

SHAKRI: The human contagion only must be eliminated.

(Rory and Amy return.)

AMY: Who are you calling a contagion?

DOCTOR: Oi! Didn't I tell you two to go?

RORY: You should have learned by now.

AMY: Yeah, and what is this Tally anyway?

DOCTOR: Some people call it Judgment Day, or the Reckoning.

AMY: Don't you know?

DOCTOR: I've never wanted to find out.

SHAKRI: Before the Closure, there is the Tally. The Shakri serves the Tally.

DOCTOR: The pest controllers of the universe, that's how the tales went, isn't it?

AMY: Wow. That's some seriously weird bedtime story.

DOCTOR: You can talk. Wolf in your grandmother's nightdress? So, here you are, depositing slug pellets all over the Earth, made attractive so humans will collect them, hoping to find something beautiful inside. Because that's what they are. Not pests or plague, creatures of hope, forever building and reaching. Making mistakes, of course, every life form does. But, but they learn. And they strive for greater, and they achieve it. You want a tally. Put their achievements against their failings through the whole of time, I will back humanity against the Shakri every time.

SHAKRI: The Tally must be met. The second wave will be released.

AMY: What does that mean?

DOCTOR: It's going to release more cubes to kill more people.

[Hospital]

KATE: Tell the Secretary General it's not just hospitals and equipment, it's people. Our best hope now is each other.

[Spaceship]

SHAKRI: The human plague breeding and fighting. And when cornered, their rage to destroy. You're too late, Doctor. The Tally shall be met.

(The alien vanishes.)

AMY: He's gone?

DOCTOR: He was never really here. Just the ship's automated interface, like a talking propaganda poster. I can stop the second wave. I can disconnect all the Shakri craft from their portals, leave them drifting in the darkspace. Ah, but all those people who were near the cubes, so many of them will have died.

AMY: I restarted one of your hearts.

RORY: You'd need mass defibrillation.

DOCTOR: Of course. Ah, beautiful. But, Ponds, Ponds. We are going to go one better than that. The Shakri used the cubes to turn people's hearts off. Bingo! We're going to use them to turn them back on again.

AMY: Will that work?

DOCTOR: Well, creatures of hope. Has to.

(The Doctor finishes sonicking the alien computer.)

DOCTOR: Thirty seconds. Don't let me down, cubes, you're working for me now. Oh dear. All these cubes. There's going to be a terrible wave of energy ricocheting around here any second. Run.

RORY: I'm going to miss this.

(The spaceship goes KaBOOM! The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the corridor. All around the world, people start to get up off the ground.)

[OC]: Emergency hospitals and field units are working at full capacity around the world, as millions of survivors of cardiac arrests are nursed back to health after an unprecedented night across the globe.

[Tower of London]

KATE: You, er, you really are as remarkable as Dad said.

(She kisses the Doctor on the cheek.)

KATE: Thank you.

DOCTOR: My! A kiss from a Lethbridge Stewart. That is new. Oh dear, I'm late for dinner.

(The Doctor salutes Kate before getting into the UNIT Range Rover.

[Kitchen]

(A family meal, Chinese with chopsticks.)

DOCTOR: Dear me. I'd better get going. Things to do, worlds to save, swings to swing on. Look, I know, you both have lives here. Beautiful, messy lives. That is what makes you so fabulously human. You don't want to give them up. I understand.

BRIAN: Actually, it's you they can't give up, Doctor. And I don't think they should. Go with him. Go save every world you can find. Who else has that chance? Life will still be here.

DOCTOR: You could come, Brian.

BRIAN: Somebody's got to water the plants. Just bring them back safe.

AMY [OC]: So that was the year of the slow invasion, when the Earth got cubed, and the Doctor came to stay. It was also when we realised something the Shakri never understood. What cubed actually means. The power of three.