DOCTOR WHO IN DETAIL

Sandringham Hotel, London, December 2024. Joy checks in and is shown to her room by Anita. The room is basic with an en-suite bathroom... and a locked door. As Anita goes to fetch some fresh towels the door opens a a Silurian in a suit enters via the locked door and tells Joy a cryptic message: "The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise."

Joy is confused - even more so when the Doctor appears through the locked door with a tray containing a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte.

London, December 4202: The Doctor stops off at the Time Hotel to get some milk for his coffee where he accosted by Trev who tells the Doctor that the refreshments are for hotel guests only. Using his psychic paper the Doctor convinces Trev he is Special Agent Clint Rock from Head Office, and tells Trev he is working for him now.

Earlier the Doctor subliminally noticed something odd - and when he checks he notices a man with a briefcase chained to his wrist. Trying to act casually the Doctor and Trev stroll around the reception whilst the Doctor keeps an eye on the man who is simply standing - and not doing anything. The man is asked to wait in the bar but the Doctor opts to not follow him and learns more about the Time Hotel - a hotel that has rooms in different periods in Earth's history offering them up as min-breaks. This answers the question of why there is always a locked door in hotel rooms - a way to the Time Hotel.

The Doctor orders a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte from the room service menu, and it arrives almost instantly. (Trev explains the kitchens are 30 minutes in the future so they start preparing before it is ordered to save time.) The Doctor tells Trev to be his point man and let him know when the man leaves the bar while he goes undercover to find out where the man was going.

In the bar the man asks the Barman to place his briefcase behind the bar. The briefcase recognises the Barman's superior status in the hotel and detaches from the man and attaches to the Barman. The Barman asks for Trev's help with the case, and in the bar the briefcase detaches from the Barman and attaches to Trev. As Trev watches the Barman and the man disintegrate. In a trance Trev finds the hotel manager, a Silurian, and with superior access to all the time portals the briefcase detaches and attaches to the manager.

The Doctor, with his tray, visits several different room, including The Queen's Hotel, Manchester, 1940, the Orient Express, Italy, 1962, Base Camp, Everest, 1953. He spots the manager now carrying the case and follows him to the Sandringham Hotel, London, 2024, where he finds the manager, Joy, and Anita returning with towels. The Doctor initially ignores Joy and is more interested in the briefcase. The manager tells him to take it and all would be explained. joy interrupts and the case latches onto her. Joy leads the manager to the bed and takes his key before he disintegrates.

With Joy now controlled by the briefcase the Doctor opens it to see the star seed. The briefcase starts a timer giving the Doctor 20 seconds or the current holder - Joy - will be disintegrated. Joy panics and the Doctor holds the case open, only closing it with 2 seconds to spare. But then a keypad appears - and for closure to be complete a 4 digit code needs to be entered. Neither the Doctor nor Joy know the code, and as the timer ticks down a second Doctor appears through the Time Hotel door with the code - 7214. Once the first Doctor cancels the timer the second Doctor grabs Joy and takes her to the Time Hotel;, breaking the connection so the first Doctor cannot follow and must take the slow path to the future.

The Doctor, needing a place to stay for a year, rents the room Joy stayed in. For money he offers to help Anita with the hotel, by waiting on tables and doing jobs around the hotel, and over the year the Doctor gets to know Anita better. When December 2025 comes round the Doctor says goodbye to Anita and visits the Exeter Hotel in New York where he finds a room with a connection to the Time Hotel and he is just in time to make his appearance in Joy's room in 2024 with the code.

In the Time Hotel Joy starts to look for a suitable room as the briefcase, now closed, reasserts its influence. The rooms do not got go far enough into the past and Joy says they need a room from the top floor. With Joy's help the Doctor comes to realise the star seed is a single atom from a star that is about to be born. But a star to be born and capable of supplying power would need one thing - time. But with the Time Hotel it would be possible to leave the star seed in one room and walk to another, later, room and collect.

During the trip to the target room the Doctor talks to Joy and insults her, and her mother, to make her angry. In a room Joy gets upset with the Doctor talking about her mother who died alone in a hospital on Christmas Day, 2020. Joy's strong emotional outburst causes the briefcase to detach from her, and the briefcase no longer has control over her. Using his sonic screwdriver the Doctor opens the case and finds the star seed belongs to Villengard Conflict Solutions. When Joy asks why anyone would create a star the voice activated Q & A starts.

A holographic form of the manager appears explaining that Villengard is creating a customisable energy source which is functionally infinite. The Doctor notes that if that star explodes everything will burn, and points out that the Villengard needs a lot longer than human history, which is only a few thousand years long. That 's when the dinosaur appears and swallows the briefcase. The hotel room is around 65 million years in the past.

In order for Villengard to collect the star seed it would need to leave a message with the last carrier - but as the connection was broken by the Doctor they have no way to get the message, until the sonic screwdriver beeps and a holographic version of Trev appears. Trev's consciousness is part of the star seed, but also psychically linked to the Doctor, and he is able to tell the Doctor and Joy where to find the briefcase - room 48.

Inside the room the Doctor finds a stone plinth and the briefcase is inside. To open the plinth the Doctor needs a strong force. Borrowing rope from the Everest Base camp, and the power of the Orient Express, the Doctor is able to pull a stone block from the plinth. But as the Doctor returns to room 48 he finds an empty briefcase, and a flight of steps to the outside where he finds Joy - glowing after merging with the star seed. The Doctor watches as Joy is lifted into space a - a new star visible in the night sky.