Doctor was currently being marched through a tunnel that had 'access' written all over it.  There were any number of types, in his experience, ranging from the gentle dankness of the sewer to the sparce whiteness of a nuclear command bunker, and this was of the musty, exposed-pipe, trailing-electrical-lead and junction-box variety.

His practised eye, on his arrival, during the ensuing battle and now, told him that wherever he was it was the product of an old but sporadically advanced culture.  High technology did exist, but in all probability remained in the domain of the few.  One only had to look at the splendidly archaic uniforms of the soldiers who were escorting him, and then at the power weapons they carried - disguised as musical instruments for some obscure reason - to recognise that.

He recalled how the people in the splendid plaza had looked, on average, like beggars trying to live up to standards by keeping their rags neat and clean.  The vast majority of people here, he surmised, did not exactly have it easy even without squads of soldiers laying into them, with no regard for life and limb, in an attempt to eradicate sudden monsters.

Once he had seen his two young companions out of danger (without their quite ever realising how he had manoeuvred them towards the lightest area of fighting), the Doctor had busied himself trying to minimise the damage done to the crowd by the soldiery, bounding through the plasma fire to more than once pull some stupefied figure out of its way.  At last, when it seemed that he had done all he could, he had allowed himself to be captured.  He knew nothing about this place save what he could glean from direct observation, and for the moment it seemed best to follow the line of least resistance and hope for some eventual explanation.

Such explanation, however, seemed resolutely unforthcoming from the escorting soldiery.  The Doctor had tried to strike up conversation, but had been met with nothing more than a few curt threats and, though he said it himself, a number of entirely unwarranted and quite xenophobic slurs.

Ah well, he thought, at least he was being taken to someone or something - and while there are any number of terminal and horrific things one might be taken to, at least it gave one more time, and opportunity to do something in it, than simply being killed on the spot.

They were coming up in the end of the tunnel, which terminated in a narrow spiral staircase.  The soldiers held back to allow the Doctor to climb it first.  For a moment he considered making a break for it - but in the end it is physically impossible for something the size and shape of a human to go up a spiral staircase over a certain speed.  Besides, he had no idea what might be at the top - and he could instantly think of seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-two things that might be simply and instantly lethal.  It wasn't that he thought that there would be, but there was no point in taking the risk for no reason.

He emerged behind a set of finely detailed screens - at least, presumably they were finely detailed on the other side.  His first sight of them from the back showed the tied-off ends of cloth-of-gold embroidery that appeared to depict a number of some variety of peacock.  The soldiers behind him were prodding at him impatiently, so the Doctor stepped out from the screens.

A spacious living chamber with black marbled walls, hung with more cloth-of-gold in the form of tapestries.  The furnishings and fitments were very fine, built from the local equivalents of mahogany, rosewood, onyx, jade and gold-leaf gilt.  Here and there, a domesticated palm-leaf plant in an urn.