CHRYSALIS

DALEKS IN MANHATTAN

We step out of the Tardis.

"Where are we?" Martha asks.

"Ah, smell that Atlantic breeze. Nice and cold. Lovely. Martha, have you met my friend?"
We look up to see the Statue of Liberty.

"Is that...? Oh my God! That's the Statue of Liberty!"

"Gateway to the New World. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free...'"

"That's so brilliant. I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new..."

We walk to the edge of the island with a view of the Manhattan skyline.
"Well, there's the genuine article. So good they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally. Harder to say twice. No wonder it didn't catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."
"I wonder what year it is, 'cause look, the Empire State Building's not even finished." I point at the building in question.

"Work in progress. Still got a couple floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around..."
Martha picks a newspaper out of the trash, "November 1st, 1930."

I take the paper from her, "You're getting good at this."

Martha starts talking again as I read the headline.

"I think our detour just got longer." I show them.

"'Hooverville Mystery Deepens'." Martha reads out loud, "What's Hooverville?"

We stroll through the park.

"Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the USA, came to power a year ago. Up till then, New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then..."
"The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that? 1929?"
"Yep. The whole economy was wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. The huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So they ended up here in Central Park." I tell her.

"What? They actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?"

We quickly arrive at Hooverville.

"Everyone lost their jobs. Couldn't pay rent, lost everything. There are places like this all over America. You only come to Hoovervile when there's nowhere else to go."

There's shouting from further in. Two men are fighting.

An older black man steps out of his tent and pushes the two men apart, "Cut that out! Right now!"

"He stole my bread!" The first man shouts.

"That's enough." The older man looks to the other man.

"I don't know what happened. He just went crazy."

The first man lunges at the second but is held back.

"That's enough. Now think real careful before you lie to me."
The second man hesitates, "I'm starvin' Solomon."
Solomon holds out his hand and the man reaches under his coat, pulling out the bread and handing it over.

"We're all starvin'." He breaks the bread in half, "We all got families somewhere." He hands each man a half, "No stealin' and no fightin'. You know the rules. Thirteen years ago, I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together! Now matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It's all we got."

"Come on." The Doctor motions for us to follow, "I suppose that makes you the boss around here."

"And, uh, who might you be?" Solomon asks.