Ben Miller credited as playing...
James Lester
- James Lester: You spend your entire career planning for just about every crisis imaginable - up to and including alien invasion - then *this* happens. So much for thinking outside the bloody box.
- James Lester: At least the immediate crisis is over.
- Nick Cutter: Some... force out there ripped the boundaries of space and time to shreds. Maybe it's happened before, in which case every single thing we thought we knew about the universe is wrong. Or, this is the first time, in which case what changed? What happens next? Believe me: it's very, very far from over.
- Nick Cutter: The boy's experience proves that there's a concrete landscape on the other side of the anomaly. And I think it's the Earth many millions of years ago.
- James Lester: And this anomaly, as you call it, is a door between time zones in the world's history? Suppose this remarkable theory is correct, what are the immediate risks?
- Nick Cutter: Famine, war, pestilence. The end of the world as we know it. You know, the usual stuff.
- James Lester: I think I could do without the facetiousness.
- James Lester: The thought that someone was there before us is far from reassuring. And I used to think the EU Common Agricultural Policy was far-fetched.
- Nick Cutter: I could do without standing in some anaemic office in Whitehall, talking to a civil service pen pusher, when I should be exploring the most significant phenomenon in the history of science.
- James Lester: Technically, I'm not actually a civil servant. More a troubleshooter without a portfolio in the PM's office.
- Nick Cutter: You mean you're a Government hatchet man.
- James Lester: Colorful, but a surprisingly accurate.