Act 6: No Time to Waste
Meanwhile, at Grace's house, Eight weighs himself on a handy scale and watches his weight go down visibly. Concerned, he rushes down into the sunken living room, where Grace is watching the news. "Grace...Grace, I've lost twenty pounds."
"Congratulations!"
"In twenty minutes? It's starting."
Grace is not taking him seriously at all. "You could make a fortune in the weight-loss business, Doctor."
Unfazed, Eight turns back to the TV, where a news anchor is reporting flood warnings and strange weather unlike anything seen in recent history, ending with the remark "Scientists say that the freak conditions are due to subtle fluctuations in the Earth's gravitational pull--fluctuations that apparently only happen once every thousand years."
Eight grins, sitting beside Grace. "I love humans," he says. "Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there." Grace side-eyes him, not really sure what to make of him still.
Then the news anchors shift onto another story: the New Year's Eve party at the Institute of Technological Advancement and Research. But this party is not only celebrating the new year...it's also celebrating the start of "San Francisco Mean Time," using the "most accurate atomic clock in the world." Lightbulbs go off for Eight--"that must be a beryllium clock!" he gasps.
The doorbell rings; "They're here," Grace says, meaning the ambulance she called earlier.
"Excellent, they can take us straight to the Institute!" Eight replies. Now that he's got a way to fix his TARDIS, he is singularly focused on it!
Grace opens the door to find the Master standing there; Eight sees him, and the two Time Lords recognize each other, but Eight doesn't let on that he knows (most likely so he doesn't scare Grace). "We need to go to the Institute of Technological Advancement and Research--you know where that is?" he asks, as he walks past the Master.
Grace smiles at the Master, apologetic, and the Master answers calmly, "Of course I do."
They leave the house and are on their way via the ambulance, with its lights and sirens going; Lee is driving, and the Doctor, the Master, and Grace are all in the back.
"What time is it now?" Eight is agitated, ready to get to the clock, get the beryllium chip, and get off Earth ASAP. The Master watches all of Eight's impatient antics with amusement.
"Half-past ten," Grace replies. "I'm on the Board of Trustees at the Institute--they'll listen to me."
Eight gets up and looks out the front window of the ambulance. "Won't this thing go any faster? Come onnnn, come on, come on!"
"Can't you give him a sedative?" Grace whispers to the Master. Before the Master can answer, Eight interrupts with "Grace, why did you not say you had access to a beryllium clock?"
"I was more concerned about the Eye of Destruction--"
"Harmony!"
"Yes, yes, and the fact that the planet would be sucked through it at midnight!" Grace is literally just playing along with a madman, as she understands it right now. "I mean, face it, it's not every day one has a Time Lord in one's living room, Doctor." She stage-whispers to the Master, "He likes me to call him 'Doctor.'"
"Ah," the Master replies, nodding.
"Y'know, Freud had a name for that."
"Transference."
Eight is quite aware of what she's saying and doing. "Yes, very witty, Grace," he says, with a little snark in his tone. "At least Freud would have taken me seriously."
"He'd have hung up his pipe if he'd met you," Grace snarks right back.
"Actually, we did meet."
"Oh, that's right!" Grace says, laughing at the sheer unbelievability of it all. "He's a Time Lord!" She turns back to Eight. "Did you know Madame Curie, too?"
"Intimately!"
"Did she kiss as good as me?"
"As well as you," the Master corrects. Both Eight and Grace look at him, a little puzzled, and then the ambulance comes to an abrupt halt because of a giant multi-lane traffic jam ahead. The jolt dislodges the Master's sunglasses enough to reveal his eyes. Eight notices it just before the Master grabs the sunglasses and puts them back on.
"The planet's about to be destroyed, and I'm stuck in a traffic jam!" Eight exclaims. "Excuse me." He plucks the sunglasses off the Master's face; enraged, the Master hisses and spits, and the stuff strikes Grace instead of Eight, burning her arm. She screams; Eight grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall of the ambulance and sprays the Master with it, effectively incapacitating him for a moment. The Doctor takes this opportunity to kick open the back door of the ambulance and pull Grace out with him, so that they're running to escape being trapped with the Master.
Grace and Eight run along the freeway clogged with cars, blocked by the wreck of the truck that was carrying a bunch of random chickens. As they run by a policeman just getting off his motorcycle, the policeman stops them. "Hold it right there, sir, ma'am!" he calls. "Go back to your vehicle!
"Eight reaches for something in his coat; the policeman, likely thinking he's reaching for a weapon, begins to pull his gun from his holster, but Grace intervenes. "Stop! He's--um--he's British!"
"I suppose I am!" Eight reaches into the brown paper bag he's withdrawn from his coat, and holds up a little candy piece. "Jelly Baby, Officer?"
"Jelly Baby?" asks the officer, hesitant.
"Just...take it," Grace says, awkward.
The officer takes it, and after examining it for a moment, takes a bite...
"Now, will you stand aside before I shoot myself?" Eight says--he's disarmed the officer and pointed the gun at his own chest without the man even noticing.
"Don't be a fool!" the policeman says, taken aback.
"You with me, Grace?" Eight says over his shoulder.
Grace is floored by this sudden turn of events. "We don't stand a chance!"
Eight pauses a moment. "Will you excuse me, please?" he says to the officer. Then he turns to Grace, holding the gun loosely away from him as he speaks to her. "Grace, I came back to life before your eyes; I held back death. Look, I can't make your dream come true forever, but I can make it come true today!"
Grace looks back and forth between Eight and the officer, assessing. Finally she says, "Give me the gun," holding out her hand. After a moment, Eight gives it to her; the officer breathes a sigh of relief. Then Grace aims at the motorcycle controls and fires; Eight kinda ducks away from the noise, and Grace says, with a look like she can't believe what she's doing, "Okay! Give him the keys!"
The officer gladly hands the keys to the motorcycle over, dropping them into Eight's outstretched hand, and Eight says sincerely, "Thank you!"
Back at the ambulance, the Master pokes his head through the window at the back of the cab. "What are we waiting for?"
"The road's still blocked."
The Master is 1000% done with waiting. "THIS! IS! AN! AMBULANCE!"
"Right!" Lee replies, and he pulls the ambulance up partially onto the curb and starts getting around the traffic blockage. Meanwhile, Eight and Grace get on the motorcycle and drive off; Grace drops the gun behind them as they go.
Now it becomes a car chase, Lee and the Master in the ambulance pursuing Eight and Grace on the motorcycle. "Maybe I should have kept the gun!" Grace yells over Eight's shoulder.
"What?" he calls back.
"Look!" And in the rearview mirror, the ambulance chasing them can be clearly seen.
Deftly weaving around traffic, Eight approaches another blockage in the road--two trucks, one oncoming, one in their lane, moving slower. "Doctor, look out!" Grace cries.
Yet Eight heads straight for the small gap between the trucks, in the center of the road--Lee has to swerve the ambulance away, which was Eight's goal all along. "Breathe in, Grace!" he calls back over his shoulder as he drives the motorcycle through the gap, threading the needle.
While Lee is busy off-roading in the ambulance, trying to get back on the road, Eight pulls away, but soon Lee catches back up. Now getting a sense of where Eight and Grace are headed, Lee decides to take a shortcut to the Institute, and this conversation follows:
Master: (angry) What are you doing, Lee?!
Lee: This way's quicker.
Master: It better be.
Lee: Look, this is my town, I know what I'm doing--trust me.
Master: Fine. Faster!
Lee: (pauses) So what's the plan, anyway?
Master: We'll let him get to the clock, then we'll get his body.
"I think we lost them!" Grace says.
"Good! Hold on!" Eight floors it, running lights and siren to get people up ahead out of his way as he maneuvers easily through traffic.
Meanwhile, in the ambulance...
Lee: Hey man, when I get all that gold, you know what I'm gonna do?
Master: I don't wanna know.
Lee: Ha! You kill me!
Master: (confused) You want me to kill you?
Lee: No! (nervous) No, I mean, you make me laugh, man. You're a funny guy.
Master: (deadpan) I'm glad one of us is amused.
Lee: Hey, look, cheer up, man. You'll get your body back soon, and then we're a team, right?
Master: Yes, we're a...team.
Eight pulls some more crazy driving stunts to get away; soon he just gets off the road entirely, crossing a curb and driving beside railroad tracks to get around another traffic jam. "Not again!" Grace calls out as they crest the curb with a bump. Then she's like "Great! I finally meet the right guy and he's from another planet!" Eight just grins.
After getting around the blockage, Eight drives the motorcycle up the small hill back onto the road (Doctor Who's Wild Ride LOL) and the bike flies Dukes of Hazzard style over the curb back onto the road surface. "Doctor?" Grace asks.
"Yes?" "I only have one life--can you remember that?"
Eight chuckles. "I'll try!"
"Thank you!"
At last they've reached the Institute; they get off the bike, but Grace spots the ambulance, with open doors, already parked there too. This is not good...