“Before the Flood” quotes from Doctor Who

[speaking to the audience] So, there's this man, he has a time machine. Up and down history he goes — zip, zip, zip, zip, zip — getting into scrapes. Another thing he has is a passion for the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. Then, one day, he thinks, "What's the point in having a time machine if you don't get to meet your heroes?" So, off he goes to 18th Century Germany, but he can't find Beethoven anywhere. No one's heard of him. Not even his family have any idea who the time traveller is talking about. Beethoven literally doesn't exist. This didn't happen, by the way. I've met Beethoven. Nice chap. Very intense. Loved an arm wrestle. No, this is called the bootstrap paradox. Google it. The time traveller panics. He can't bear the thought of a world without the music of Beethoven. Luckily, he'd brought all of his Beethoven sheet music for Ludwig to sign. So, he copies out all the concertos and the symphonies, and he gets them published. He becomes Beethoven. And history continues with barely a feather ruffled. [turns on his amplifier and puts on his electric guitar] My question is this: who put those notes and phrases together? Who really composed Beethoven's Fifth? [he plays the opening notes to Beethoven's Fifth on his guitar]

This isn't a potential future. This is the future now. It's already happened. The proof is right there in front of you. I have to die.

No. You can change things.

I can't. Even the tiniest change, the ramifications could be catastrophic. It could spread carnage and chaos across the universe like ripples on a pond. Oh, well, I've had a good innings. This regeneration, it's a bit of a clerical error anyway. I've got to go sometime.

Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me. You do not leave me.

Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else's.

I'm not ready yet. I don't want to think about that, not yet.

I can't change what's already happened. There are rules.

So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You've made yourself essential to me. You've given me something else to, to be. And you can't do that and then die. It's not fair. No, Doctor, I don't care about your rules or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way ... you'll come back.

Time Lords... cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most warlike race in the galaxy. But you... You! You are curious. You've seen the words, too -- I can hear them tick inside you. But, you are still locked in your history. Still slavishly protecting time. Willing to die rather than change a word of the future.

You will be a strong beacon. How many ghosts can I make of you?

You know, you've got a lot in common with the Tivolians. You'll both do anything to survive. They'll surrender to anyone. You will hijack other peoples' souls and turn them into electro-magnetic projections. That will to endure… that refusal to ever cease. It's extraordinary. And it makes a fella think! Because you know what? If all I have to do to survive is to tweak the future a bit, what's stopping me? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah: the ripple effect. Maybe it will mean that the universe will be ruled by cats or something in the future. But the way I see it, even a ghastly future is better than no future at all! You robbed those people of their deaths; made them nothing more than a message in a bottle. You violated something more important than time: you bent the rules of life and death. So I am putting things straight! Here, now, this is where your story ends!