"Oh," said Irwin, looking very disappointed. He pressed a small button on the handle and the croc was unleashed.

[act two]

The crocodile just stood there, staring at the Master and Dame Vultan.

It then spun round and bit Irwin.

"He's got me by the testicles Krizu!" he said calmly. "Did you get that on camera?"

Krizu ran her hand over her face, shaking her head slowly as the Master and Vultan scarpered.

"Right, this calls for severe measures! Bring out the Darkguard!"

Fog seeped into the corridor, from it emerged six large figures in black armour, with beards of evil(TM) painted onto their helmets.

"Go get 'em boys!" cried Krizu, as the Darkguard stomped off after the two miscreants.

Barry, Igor, John, Norbert and Dagget followed Benny deep into the forest.

"Oh look, there's a bear wearing a silly hat!" cried Norbert.

"Ooh, ooh!" said Dagget, "Look Norbie, there's the Pope shi.....eeeeeeeek!"

"Shield your eyes young Dagget, a thing like that could warp your mind!"

Benny walked up to a tree and pressed a knot of wood on its trunk. Several dozen trees flipped down to reveal the ruins of an old monastary.

"Welcome to our secret base!" Benny grinned.

"Our?" asked Igor suspiciously.

"This is Lara, she's helping out over the summer." Benny indicated a tall woman in a green top and shorts.

"Hello," said Lara

Barry's eyes grew wide. "I love your jugs, they're huge!"

"Thanks, would you like to hold them for me?"

"Wow, these are really heavy!"

"Old too, the monks used to keep fermenting beer in them."

Barry put the jugs down on the table and had a look around.

"That's a very impressive rack."

"Sadly there were no bottles of wine left when we got here..." Benny muttered.

Meanwhile, back in the dungeon...

Krizu sat above a large pit, filled with custard. She held out a fishing rod, with a Murray Mint attached to the end of a piece of string. Splashing could be heard from within the custard. She'd left the Darkguards stomping around the castle after the Master and Vultan.

"So, you're fishing for Masters then?" said Jones.

"Oh yes!" Krizu smiled.

"Using a Murray Mint as bait?"

"Mmm hmm."

"You're just an incorrigible Master baiter aren't you?"

Krizu just stared at Jones.

Jones looked in every direction except at Krizu. "Oh look!" he said "My coat's come to get me!" He ran off quickly.

The ramshackle group of would-be rescuers sat in front of Benny and Lara, who were going over the route through the Tomb Of Doom, to the secret underground entrance to Castle Krizu.

"After all, we both have oodles of experience raiding tombs, don't we Lara?"

"True Bernice, very true."

"So," Benny said, looking at the rescuers. "We all know what we're doing?"

Muttering and mumbling emanated from the assorted individuals, most of which consisted of "I think so.", "Can we just go over it once more?" and "You know, they don't look as big in real life..."

Benny sighed, "Alright, but this is the last time, I'm almost out of vodka."

The guard stood at the tomb entrance. Despite it being eminently sensible to put a big locked door and a garrison at the entrance to stop people getting in, there was just the one guard because it's traditional.

A nondescript figure with a tray appeared.

"Sausage inna bun! Get your sausage inna bun!"

"What kind of sausage?" asked the guard.

"Just a normal, every day sausage. When it all comes down to it, a sausage is a sausage my friend."

"Hmmm."

"Being a guard's hungry work innit?"

"Well, of course it is, being stuck out here all day, on me own. I'd love a sausage inna bun, but I don't have any grotzits or drogna on me..."

"I'll tell you what mate, I'll give you a free sample, but I'm cutting my own throat here, I'm telling you."

"Thanks mate!"

The guard took a sausage inna bun. "I do hope this isn't an attempt to distract me so you can go into the Tomb Of Doom?"

"Would I do something like that? Look at this face. Isn't this the face of an honest man?"

While the guard thought this over, sniggering could be heard from behind the bushes.

The guard took a bite of the sausage. His pupils dilated. His face turned a virulent green and he began to judder randomly. He spun around for a while, before collapsing on a conveniently placed bean bag.

The rest of the team popped up from behind the bushes and sneaked into the Tomb.

"Good work Dibbler..." said Barry as he walked in.

The team walked down the ancient corridors, looking out for anything suspicious.

"Look out for trouser snakes," whispered Igor.

"I beg your pardon?"

"They're snakes that like to run up your trouser legs, once they get in there, you can't get them out again."

"Ah," said Benny, somewhat relieved. "I was getting bizarre images."

They came to a large room, the only other exit was a small door, ten feet up the opposite wall.

"Don't worry!" shouted Dag. "NinjaDag will run up the wall and open it!"

The small beaver in the ninja suit took a run up, accelerated toward the wall and...

KERSPLATCH!!!

...ran right into it.

Barry walked up to the wall, carrying a ladder.

"Where did you keep that?"

"None of your damn business, Igor," Barry replied.

Barry struggled with the ladder for a while. "Benny! I can't get it up!"

"That's always been your problem..." she muttered.

With a little help they got it up and Igor worked his way up it. Lara handed him a pole, with a symbol carved into one end.

"Well, what you need to do," explained Lara, "is grab hold of your pole and stick it in the slot. You may have to wiggle it about a bit."

"I can't get it in!" cried Igor.

"Push it in slowly and gently...don't force it."

"I think it's too big!"

"Nonsense, just position yourself carefully and it'll slide right in."

With a grunt of effort, Igor managed to slide the pole into the slot in the door, which opened with a click.

Igor loped through the door as the rest of the team began to climb the ladder. Igor showed a remarkable turn of speed for a man who walked like his arse was broken. The rest had trouble keeping up.

After more and more corridors, they found themselves in another large room. Barry turned to Lara. "Look at those amazing knockers!" Barry exclaimed.

"Barry I've warned you already..." Lara began.

"No, the ones on the doors, they're huge!"

"He's not wrong!" said Benny.

"What a wonderful pair of knockers they are..." said Barry, awestruck.

John Peel walked forward and grabbed the knockers, clattering them down. The huge doors began to open slowly, scraping along the floor.

"Lovely." he said as he walked into the darkness beyond. The rest of the team ran in after him...

...to find themselves in the dungeon, surrounded by 213 Darkguards.

"Oh bugger!" said the entire team simultaneously.

"Ha ha! You're too late!" screamed Krizu, "I've captured the other Master and his crossdressing friend and now I've got all of you! Resistance is useless!!! There's no escape!!! Nothink in ze vorld can shtop me now!!!!!!"

BWA-HAH-HAH-HAHA-HAH-HAH-HAHA!!!!!

Sadly, the tape of the last part of the panto was burned by a dopey BBC employeeburied in the Blue Peter gardenis down the back of Ian Levine's sofa, so to describe what happened, we got Rowley Birkin Q.C. to do a narration for us on the basis that he once shared a taxi with Stephen Dartnell...

"Castle Krizu......eeeeeeeeeeeee...interesting selection of devices.... ...armadillos....stick it right up......zombies....cheese board...all over the walls...dripping was....and he was completely starkers!!!....rubber gloves....albino squirrels.....went after his nuts...tables, ladder and chairs....pebble dashed....errrrr.....remarkable accuracy for a Clanger... ....Masters released.....day saved....everybody happy.....yessssssss...

............of course, they were all, very....very drunk..."

We now take you back to the closing moments of the story, which survive due to John Craven's Newsround using the clip to illustrate a news item about Maboza Ritchie, who played the third Darkguard from the left, after he was caught smuggling pinatas over the Mexican border...

"So, you'll get the Masters on a daily rotational basis, getting a different one each day, yeah?" said Igor.

"Ooh, that'll be perfect!" enthused Krizu.

And everyone cheered and everyone laughed and they all lived daftly ever after...

As everybody else walked backstage, Gordon, Saville and Yokoi remained to pick up the projection spheres and put them back in Gordon's cardboard box.

But as Gordon reached for the first sphere, there was a flash of light and a shadow fell over him. He looked up to see six Darkguards standing before them.

"Oops, must have left the program running," he said as he pressed the button to switch the sphere off.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

Nothing.

Two of the guards were slowly walking over to him. He stood up to move back and backed into a solid barrier. He looked over at Saville and Yokoi and saw that they too were pressing their hands against a barrier.

"The Gods, somehow they've accessed the spheres." He looked up. "You're cheating! You're beginning to realise you can't win so you have to turn to underhand tactics to win. You bampots!"

Saville and Yokoi both ran over to the corner with Gordon. He was muttering away to himself. "Sam Neill won't be happy, I said I'd get them back to him before he does the episode on black holes..."

The six Darkguards surrounded them. There was no way out. The Gods had somehow interfered with the spheres. They couldn't get out. No-one could come and help them.

Or could they...

Gordon looked at Yokoi and Saville then at the small cardboard box. He placed the box on the ground and pulled the Sword Of Authorial Freedom out of his pocket. He touched the hilt and it lit up, crackling in the air.

"It's time..." he said. Yokoi and Saville just nodded.

Gordon threw the blazing sword up in the air, it rose as if in slow-motion, tumbling.

Everyone was watching the sword, so nobody was exactly certain about what happened next. There was certainly some kind of flash of light involved somewhere.

What was obvious was that when the sword came back down, it wasn't a sword, but a wooden walking stick.

What was also obvious was that the man who grabbed the stick out of the air as it fell, wasn't Gordon.

Where the cardboard box had been stood the reassuring blue shape of a 1960s London Police Box.

Where Saville had stood, there was a young woman, short, with shoulder-length dark hair framing a delicate face. She had somewhat of a piercing gaze, which was only accentuated by her striking eyebrows.

Instead of Yokoi, stood a tall and pale figure, with short, almost white hair. She somehow looked like a stalking animal, waiting to strike.

The last figure, who had caught the stick was quite tall, with a high forehead, striking nose and angular face. He looked somewhat stern, but then he smiled, and it was the smile you remember from your favourite elder relative as a child, the one who told stories. But his eyes, you could see galaxies in those eyes.

The tall, pale woman suddenly ran forward, kicking the nearest Darkguard in the head before jumping over it as it fell, grabbing the sword out of its hands and neatly separating the head from the body before it had even hit the ground.

She whirled round and kicked another one of them back, relieving it of its sword as she did so. She lunged forward and skewered two more of the undead soldiers.

One Darkguard advanced on her, trying to trap her within the corner of the invisible barrier, but the woman turned round, ran up to it and jumped up, rebounding backward off the barrier and somersaulting over the guards head, stabbing it in the back as she landed.

One guard to go.

The last Darkguard threw a knife, but the newcomer actually caught it and spinning round, threw it back where it came, catching the Darkguard right between the eyes.

The man with the stick shook his head gently.

"While I am rather pleased that you managed to deal with these individuals quickly and without any harm to yourself or us, I do wish you had at least given me a chance to talk our way out of the situation..."

The woman shrugged.

He smiled and turned to look at the audience.

"I should perhaps introduce ourselves. This," he said, indicating the woman who had just taken out half-a-dozen soldiers of darkness, "is Silence, she causes things, and this," he indicated the other, "is Katherine, I promised to show her wondrous places and peoples."

He spread his arms wide...

"Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages!"

He brought his hands back down, resting them on the stick.

"I am the Doctor. I'm here to make things better."

Meanwhile, Kid Curry has just received a very unwelcome shock...