DOCTOR WHO IN DETAIL

Five years ago, Sam Jones was just a schoolgirl from Shoreditch. Of course, that was before she met up with the Doctor and discovered that her entire life had been stage managed by a time travelling voodoo cult. Funny how things turn out, isn't it?

Now Sam's back in her own time, fighting the good fight in a world of political treachery, international subterfuge and good old-fashioned depravity. But she's about to learn the first great truth of the universe: that however corrupt and amoral your own race may be, there's always someone in the galaxy who can make you look like a beginner.

Ms Jones has just become a minor player in a million-year-old power struggle... and, as it happens, so has the Doctor.

Both of him, actually.

They call it the Dead Frontier. It's as far from home as the human race ever went, the planet where mankind dumped the waste of its thousand year empire and left its culture out in the sun to rot.

But while one Doctor faces both his past and his future on the Frontier, another finds himself on Earth in 1996, where the seeds of the empire are just being sown. The past is meeting the present, cause is meeting effect, and the TARDIS crew is about to be caught in the crossfire.

The Third Doctor. The Eighth Doctor. Sam. Fitz. Sarah Jane Smith. Soon, one of them will be dead; one of them will belong to the enemy; and one of them will be something less than human.

This is a story about Winter...

As the Doctor becomes involved in affairs aboard the Federation Starship Nepotist, his old friend Iris Wildthyme is rescuing old ladies who are being attacked by savage owls in a shopping mall.

And, in a cat's cradle of interdimensional Corridors lies the Valcean City of Glass, whose King Dedalus awaits the return of his angel son and broods over the oncoming war.

Twelve million years ago, a war touched Earth briefly. Now, in Antartica, an archeological team has discovered the detriuis of the conflict. And it's alive.

Twelve million years ago, a creature evolved that was capable of consuming all life in the universe. Now someone, or something, is desperate enough to want to revive it.

Outside the ordered universe, things move. They're hungry. And something has given them the scent of our space/time.

In the far future, the Doctor has learnt of the war and feels he must intervene - but it's more than just a local conflict of interest. One of the groups of combatants is from his own future, and the other has never, ever, existed.

What strange attraction lures people to the planet Drebnar? When the TARDIS dragged there, the Doctor determines to find out why.

He discovers that scientists from the mysterious Frontier Worlds Corporation have set up a base on the planet, and are trying to blur the distinction between people and plants. The TARDIS crew plan to prevent a biological catastrophe - but their plan goes wrong all too soon.

Compassion finds her undercover work so engrossing she risks losing her detachment. Fitz seems too distracted by the local population to keep his eye on Compassion. So when the Doctor gets trapped in a freezing wilderness, who can stop him falling victim to a lethal experiment in genetic modification?

For something else has been lured to Drebnar, something that Frontier Worlds Corporation will ruthlessly explout without care for the consequences - an ancient alien organism which threatens to snuff out Drebnar's solar system.

Fleeing a doomed space station in tiny life capsules, the Doctor and Compassion find themselves prisoners of Parallel 59, a militaristic power on the plant Skale. Meanwhile, Fitz finds himself apparently safe in Mechta, a colony for convalescents.

A space-race is in full swing on Skale, with each of the plant's many blocs desperate to be the first to reach the stars. If the Doctor;s knowledge helps Parallel 59 succeed, the consequences for the rest of the world could be devastating.

But Fitz knows nothing of his friends' predicament. Enjoying his new life, he's not even sure he wants to be rescued - which is a good thing.

Because the Doctor has no intention of going to Mechta. He's decreed that Fitz's new found utopia must be totally destroyed.

The Brigadier's wife is dead. A terrible accident. Grieving, he searches for death, and finds his way to Avalon, the other-dimensional Kingdom of Catuvelauni.

The Doctor is also in Avalon, marooned. He's lost his companions, his TARDIS... and his hope for the future.

Now it seems they'll have to make a new life for themselves with the Celts who live in the Dreamlands. Perhaps even help in the Celts' negotiations with the Unseelie, the sinister original inhabitants of Avalon, who live far to the North.

But then a gateway opens between Earth and Avalon. The British Army arrives in force. And the Brigadier negotates a treaty that will lead to war in the Land of Dreams.

With fearsome dragons duelling jet fighters, vicious Gallifreyan agents causing havoc, and Compassion fighting against her ultimate fate, can the Doctor save the world, his best friend, and himself?

Yquatine - cultural, political and economic centre of the Minerva System. A planet with a month to live.

Fitz knows. He was there when Yquatine fell. Now, trapped a month in the past, he doesn't know if the Doctor survived. He doesn't know where Compassion has gone. He doesn't know who the invaders will be.

But he does know the date and time when he will die with the millions of others.

The Doctor teams up with Lou Lombardo - part time dodgy temporal gadget salesman and full-time pie seller. Compassion is lost in time and space. And Fitz is living out his final days working in a seedy cocktail bar, where he meets Arielle, the President's runaway girlfriend. But is she really the best person to shack up with?

As the Doctor tries to talk sense into the politicians and soldiers, and Compassion tries to avert the war, Fitz is about to discover that things can only get worse.