- The Editor: Now there's an interesting point. Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?
- The Doctor: Yes.
- The Editor: Aw. I was hoping for a philosophical debate, is that all I'm gonna get: "yes"?
- The Doctor: Yes.
- The Editor: You're no fun.
- The Doctor: Let me out of these manacles and I'll show you how much fun I am.
- The Editor: Ooh, he's tough, isn't he?
- The Editor: It may interest you to know that this isn't actually the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. It's merely a place where humans happen to live...
- [a loud alien growling interrupts]
- The Editor: Sorry... It's a place where humans are allowed to live by kind permission of my client.
- [the Editor points upwards. Rose and The Doctor look up to see a gigantic mass on the ceiling, which screams, showing large pointed teeth]
- Rose Tyler: What is that?
- The Doctor: You mean that thing's in charge of Satellite Five?
- The Editor: 'That thing', as you put it, is in charge of the human race. For almost a hundred years, mankind has been shaped and guided, his knowledge and ambitions strictly controlled by its broadcast news, edited by my superior, your master and humanity's guiding light, The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe.
- [pause]
- The Editor: I call him Max.
- [last lines]
- Adam's Mum: What a surprise! Oh, let me look at you! Six months! It's like I saw you yesterday. Isn't it funny? Time goes by like that.
- [she snaps her fingers]
- The Editor: Create a climate of fear and it's easy to keep the borders closed. It's just a matter of emphasis. The right word in the right broadcast repeated often enough can destabilize an economy, invent an enemy, change a vote.
- Adam Mitchell: Maybe I could just go and sit on the observation desk. Would that be alright? Soak it in. Y'know, pretend I'm a citizen of the year two hundred thousand.
- Rose Tyler: D'you want me to come with you?
- Adam Mitchell: No, no. You stick with the Doctor.
- [pause]
- Adam Mitchell: You'd rather be with him.
- [pause]
- Adam Mitchell: It's gonna take a better man than me to get between you two.
- The Editor: Tell me who you are.
- The Doctor: Since that information is keeping us alive, I'm hardly going to tell you, am I?
- The Doctor: [to Adam] The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guide book. You've got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers - or is that just me? Stop asking questions. Go and do it!
- [to Rose]
- The Doctor: Off you go then. Your first date.
- Rose Tyler: I'll let the Doctor describe it.
- The Doctor: The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Planet Earth is at its height, covered with megacities, five moons, population 96 billion, the centre of a galactic domain that stretches across a million planets and species.
- [Adam faints]
- The Doctor: He's your boyfriend.
- Rose Tyler: Not any more.
- [first lines]
- The Doctor: So, it's two-hundred thousand, it's a spaceship - no, wait a minute - space station, and, er... go and try that gate over there. Off you go.
- The Editor: [to the Doctor and Rose] This is fascinating. Satellite Five holds every piece of information within the fourth great and bountiful human empire. Birth certificates, shopping habits, bank statements. But you two... you don't exist.
- [laughs]
- The Editor: Not a trace. No birth, no job, not the slightest kiss. How can you walk through the world and not leave a single footprint?
- The Editor: Actually, Sir, if it's all the same to you, I think I'll resign. Bye, then!
- [Suki's body grabs The Editor's foot, causing him to trip]
- The Editor: Let go of me!
- The Doctor: [the Doctor takes Adam back home to Earth] The whole of history could have changed because of you.
- Adam: I just wanted to help.
- The Doctor: You were helping yourself.
- Adam: And I'm sorry and I've said I'm sorry. And I am, I really am. But you can't just leave me like this!
- The Doctor: Yes, I can. 'Cause if you show the head to anyone, they'll dissect you in seconds. You'll have to live a very quiet life. Keep out of trouble. Be average. Unseen. Good luck.
- Cathica: And on the Bad Wolf Channel, The Face of Boe just announced he's pregnant.
- The Doctor: I get it. You broadcast the news.
- Cathica: We are the news. We're the journalists. We write it, package it and sell it. Six hundred channels, all coming out of Satellite Five, broadcasting everywhere.
- Rose Tyler: That's what comes of showing off; your history's not as good as you think.
- The Doctor: My history is perfect.
- Rose Tyler: Well, obviously not.
- The Editor: Something is wrong. I can taste it. Tiny little shift in the information. Someone down there shouldn't be here.
- Rose Tyler: Well, you're not a Jagrafess. You're human.
- The Editor: Yes, but being human doesn't pay very well.
- The Doctor: They've all got chips in their head, and the chips keep going like puppets.
- The Editor: Oh, you're full of information, but its only fair we get some information back, because apparently you're no one. It's so rare not to know something. Who are you?
- The Doctor: It doesn't matter, cause we're off. Nice to meet you.
- [to Rose]
- The Doctor: Come on!
- Cathica: Doctor, I think if there was any sort of conspiracy, Satellite Five would have seen it. We see everything.
- The Doctor: I can see better. This society's the wrong shape. Even the technology.
- Cathica: It's cutting-edge!
- The Doctor: It's backwards. There's a great big door in your head! You shoulda chucked this out years ago.
- Suki: [on floor five hundred, Suki, who has been revealed as a member of an anarchist organization, pulls a gun on The Editor] Who controls Satellite Five?
- The Editor: [the Editor begins to put his hands up, but then promptly bursts out laughing] There's the truth.
- Suki: The Freedom Foundation has been monitoring Satellite Five's transmissions. We have absolute proof that the facts are being manipulated. You are lying to the people.
- The Editor: Ooh, I love it. Say it again.
- Suki: This whole system is corrupt. Who do you represent?
- The Editor: I'm merely a humble slave. I answer to the editor-in-chief.
- Suki: Well, who is he? Where is he?
- The Editor: He's overseeing everything. Literally everything. If you don't mind, I'm going to have to refer this upwards.
- The Doctor: [the Doctor, Rose and Adam watch as news is gathered through Cathica] Compressed information. Streaming into her. Reports from every city, every country, every planet. And they all get packaged inside her head. She becomes part of the software. Her brain is the computer.
- Rose Tyler: If it all goes through her, she must be a genius.
- The Doctor: Nah, she wouldn't remember it. It's too much. Her head would blow up. The brain's the processor. As soon as it closes, she forgets.
- Rose Tyler: [indicating Suki and the others] So, what about all these people round the edge?
- The Doctor: They've all got tiny little chips in their head connecting them to her and they... transmit. Six hundred channels. Every single fact in the Empire beams out of this place. Now, that's what I call power.
- The Editor: Her information's been tampered with. There's a second biography hidden underneath.
- [to the Jagrafess]
- The Editor: Yes Sir!
- Adam: Oh my God, I'm going to be sick!
- [He heaves. His cheeks puff. Then he stops. He frowns. Puzzled. Strangely calm, he reaches into his mouth, and plucks out a sick-coloured lozenge]
- Nurse: Special offer, we installed a vomit-o-matic at the same time. Now that turbines have been installed in the lining of your throat, in the event of sickness, they freeze the waste.
- The Editor: Time Lord!
- The Doctor: What?
- The Editor: Oh yes. The last of the Time Lords, with his travelling machine. Oh, with his little human girl from long ago.
- Adam: If they're all human, what about the millions of planets, the millions of species? Where are they?
- The Doctor: Good question. Actually, that is a good question.
- Adam: Sorry. Um, Floor Sixteen? That's um, what do you cover?
- Nurse: Medical. Non Emergency.
- Adam: Right. Yeah. Wrong floor. I'm having technical difficulties. My screen keeps freezing. Blocking me out.
- Nurse: No, that's medical. There must be something wrong with your chip.
- Adam: Yes. Yeah, of course, yeah. I haven't got one.
- Nurse: No wonder you can't get a screen to work. What are you, a student?
- Adam: Yes. Yeah, I'm uh on a research project from the University of Mars.
- Nurse: The Martian Boondocks... typical.
- Adam: Yep.
- Nurse: Well, you still need chipping.
- Adam: So, does that mean like brain surgery?
- Nurse: That's the old fashioned term, but it's the same thing, yes.