CREDITS: This week, Qikiqtarjuaq! CAROLYN: Good morning, gentlemen! How are we today? Satiated with the delights of New York, all ready to go home? DOUGLAS: Yes MARTIN: Mmm, absolutely. CAROLYN: Then home we shall go. Almost straight away, pausing only for an extremely minor detour. DOUGLAS: Oh, no. MARTIN: Carolyn, I can’t! CAROLYN: To Toronto! DOUGLAS: Oh, well, that is quite close. CAROLYN: And then a quick stop to Qikiqtarjuaq and straight home! DOUGLAS: Oh, Sorry, where? CAROLYN: Qikiqtarjuaq! Q-I-K- ARTHUR: Mum! Sorry, but you forgot the U. CAROLYN: No, I did not. There isn’t a U. It’s Q-I-K-I- ARTHUR: No, Mum, there’s always a U after a Q. It’s the law. Mrs. Dimand taught me that. Eventually. CAROLYN: And you are a credit to her. Nonetheless the good people of Qikiqtarjuaq choose to spell it Q-I-K-I-Q-T- MARTIN: Another Q? CAROLYN: Yes. Q-T- ARTHUR: Q-T? Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell Mrs. Dimand! DOUGLAS: Leaving the spelling bee aside for a moment, where is this kicky tarry jack? CAROLYN: Are you referring to Qikiqtarjuaq? DOUGLAS: You’re really proud of yourself for having learnt to say that, aren’t you? CAROLYN: Yes. Also, it’s rather pleasing to say Qikiqtarjuaq. Anyway, it’s in Canada. MARTIN: Near Toronto? CAROLYN: Nearish. MARTIN: How nearish? CAROLYN: About, ooh . . . seventeen hundred miles. MARTIN: No, Carolyn, I’m sorry, I absolutely can’t, I’ve got a job on Thursday. CAROLYN: No you haven’t. MARTIN: I do! Not with MJN, I mean a delivery job, with my van. CAROLYN: Oh, well, that doesn’t matter. MARTIN: It matters to me, Carolyn! It happens to be the only thing I’m actually paid to do! DOUGLAS: Right. I’ve looked it up on my phone. It’s a tiny, isolated settlement in the Arctic Circle! Why on earth are we going there? CAROLYN: Because that is where the polar bears are. DOUGLAS: And where do the polar bears want to go? CAROLYN: The polar bears don’t want to go anywhere. The polar bears just want to be left in peace and quiet. But that is where the polar bears find themselves bang out of luck. Because we are picking up a dozen tourists from Unbeaten Track Travel and flying them past every polar bear we can find between Toronto and Qikiqtarjuaq! ARTHUR: What? Are we?!? Polar bears?!? We’re going to fly over polar bears?! And see them and look at them and be with the polar bears? CAROLYN: Yes, we are. MARTIN: No, we’re not. ARTHUR: YES WE ARE, SKIP! MARTIN: No we’re not! For one thing, Gertie’s much too fast a plane; you need a prop-engine aircraft to watch wildlife, not a jet! CAROLYN: Well, why can’t we just fly slower? ARTHUR: Yeah, we could just fly slower! MARTIN: No we can’t. DOUGLAS: Of course we can! We could come down to 100, 120 easily, as long as we watch the angle of bank. ARTHUR: Yeah, Martin! We just need to watch the angle of . . . bank, and the polar bears! We need to watch the polar bears! MARTIN: No, we can’t! She’ll be hard to manoeuvre, and likely to stall. It would be incredibly dangerous and unprofessional. DOUGLAS: Fun, though – when do we leave? CAROLYN: Straight away. MARTIN: No! DOUGLAS: Good! ARTHUR: Brilliant! CAROLYN: Oh, um, if you’re online, Douglas, look up polar bears or exploring or something. DOUGLAS: Why? CAROLYN: Because one of you will have to give a lecture on it. Unbeaten Track’s thing is that the crew are all experts on the region and they give lectures. ARTHUR: Can I give a lecture on polar bears? CAROLYN: No. DOUGLAS: What do you know about polar bears, Arthur? ARTHUR: Polar bears are brilliant. DOUGLAS: You might want to pad that out with some Power Points. DOUGLAS: Alright, Alfred Hitchcock. MARTIN: Ooh, okay. Let’s hear it. [bing-bong] DOUGLAS: Hello, my name is First Officer Douglas Richardson. On behalf of the captain and myself, a warm welcome aboard this MJN flight to Qikiqtarjuaq. Just to let you know, we will be flying out from Toronto today, roughly "North by Northwest," at the "Vertigo"-inducing height of twenty thousand feet, way above "The Birds." You will already have met your purser today, Carolyn "Rebecca" "Topaz," but now, as "The Lady Vanishes" behind the "Torn Curtain" into the galley, the steward will hold you "Spellbound" with his "Notorious" demonstration of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" to a safe evacuation, though these basically boil down to three: pull the "Rope," inflate the "Lifeboat," and escape through the "Rear Window." MARTIN: Ten? DOUGLAS: Thirteen, I think. I very nearly got "The Man Who Knew Too Much" in, but I was after all talking about Arthur. [door opens] NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: Excuse me! MARTIN: Oh, uh, hello. I-I-I’m the captain, Martin Crieff, and this is – NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: Nancy Dean Liebhart. DOUGLAS: Not quite, but what an interesting guess. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: Expedition supervisor, Unbeaten Track Travel. What was that, please? MARTIN: What was what? NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: The Hitchcock thing. DOUGLAS: Oh, you noticed that! Well done. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: "In an emergency, climb out through the rear window"? Does that strike you as a professional thing for the pilot of an aircraft to say? MARTIN: No, no, absolutely not. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: "No, absolutely not" is right, so what the hell just happened? DOUGLAS: I can assure you, madam, I am entirely professional in all – NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: No you’re not. I can tell professionalism a mile off. You don’t have it, sir. This guy has it. You don’t. MARTIN: Oh, well. Do I? I mean, yes, yes, I do, actually. Thank you, thank you for noticing. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: So, why did you let him do it? DOUGLAS: Yes, why did you let me do it? MARTIN: Yes, I-I do apologize. Rest assured I will be disciplining him. DOUGLAS: Oh, will you? MARTIN: Yes I will, and the rest of the flight will be conducted in an entirely professional atmosphere of the utmost . . . professionality that I always bring to my, my, my – DOUGLAS: Profession? MARTIN: Workplace. [door opens] CAROLYN: Hello! Everything alright in here? NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: Ah, are you Carolyn Shappey-Nappy? CAROLYN: More or less. Hello, pleased to meet you. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: Nancy Dean Liebhart, expedition supervisor. I was expecting you to meet me and the travellers at the gate. CAROLYN: Oh, yes, sorry, I was unavoidably detained in the airport, helping the steward find a book about polar bears. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: So in your absence, I had to conduct them aboard a strange aircraft – in every sense – get them seated, and then listen to your first officer squeezing Hitchcock films into the cabin address! CAROLYN: Oh, how many did you get? DOUGLAS: Thirteen. CAROLYN: Well done! NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: I would like a word with you in the galley, madam. CAROLYN: With great pleasure. DOUGLAS: Oh, before you go, how long do you want this Arctic lecture? I’ve worked up about twenty minutes’ worth – will that do? NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: That won’t be necessary, thank you. DOUGLAS: Oh, but I thought at Unbeaten Track you always – NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: At Unbeaten Track we do, because our crews are staffed by professional experts and adventurers with genuine stories to tell. What I feel I would get from you, sir, is some zany British humour, and I’ve already had about as much of that as I can take. [door opens] DOUGLAS: Well, she was a little ray of sunshine, wasn’t she? MARTIN: I thought she was quite right. DOUGLAS: Did you? MARTIN: Yes. I’m . . . sorry to say this, Douglas, but sometimes you are unprofessional. DOUGLAS: Shall we drop the subject? MARTIN: No, Douglas, this is difficult f – um, because I think we’ve become friends, and, um, and I’m glad about that, but I-I do also think I have a duty to you a-as your captain – DOUGLAS: Think very, very carefully about how you want to finish this sentence. MARTIN: - as your captain to let you know when you’re getting into bad habits. And it was unprofessional to do the film game on real, live passengers. DOUGLAS: You said, "Let’s hear it." MARTIN: And what’s worse is that you were seriously considering low-altitude, low-speed manoeuvres in the Arctic! Which would be very unsafe for us! DOUGLAS: It’ll be perfectly safe, so long as I’m the one doing it. MARTIN: Yeah, there, you see, no, you think you’re this invincible pilot, but things go wrong for everyone! And-and if you’re not professional in your assessment – DOUGLAS: And you’re the perfect professional, are you? MARTIN: No, I’m not perfect, but I am professional, I analyze risk, I make sure I’m in a position to deal with whatever is thrown at me. DOUGLAS: Of course you know what the actual definition of a professional is, don’t you? MARTIN: I’m just – DOUGLAS: What actually separates professionals from amateurs. MARTIN: I w – DOUGLAS: It’s being paid to do the job. The way Carolyn pays me and doesn’t pay you. MARTIN: [quietly] Pre-takeoff checklist, please? DOUGLAS: Certainly, Captain. NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: So you understand the issue I have around this? CAROLYN: Oh, absolutely, and I do apologize for not being there to meet you, but I assure you that, though small, MJN Air adheres to the highest standards of professionalism. ARTHUR: Mum. CAROLYN: Not now, I’m busy. ARTHUR: No, but there’s a serious problem. CAROLYN: What, really? ARTHUR: Yes, look. This book only has a polar bear on the cover - it’s actually about all kinds of bears. CAROLYN: Well, I rather set myself up for that, didn’t I? NANCY DEAN LIEBHART: It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; I’ve se...
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