DOCTOR WHO IN DETAIL

The village cursed centuries ago, but only now is the alien evil beginning to revive...

The children of Hexen Bridge are gifted and clever, but insanity and murder follow in their wake. The Doctor has a special interest in the village, but on his return to England in the early twenty-first century events seem to be escalating out of control.

Kidnapped and taken to Liverpool, the Doctor realises that developments in Hexen Bridge have horrifying repercussions for the rest of the country. Ace is left in the village, where small minded prejudices and unsettled scores are flaring into violence.

As scarecrows fashioned from the bodies of the recent and ancient dead stalk the country lanes around Hexen Bridge, a sinister dark stain is spreading over the surrounding fields. And as the fierce evil grows ever stronger, can the Doctor and Ace prevent it from engulfing the entire world?

Britain is at war. Night after night the Luftwaffe are bombing London. A serial killer dubbed the Limehouse Lurker is stalking the rubble-strewn streets. But a deadlier threat falls from the sky in the shape of a sinister silver sphere...

Cody McBride, ex-pat American private eye, sees the sphere crash-land and split open - and glimpses 'something' emerging from within. But the military dismiss his account of events - the sphere is simply a new German secret weapon that has malfunctioned in some way. What else 'could' it be?

Arriving amid the chaos, the Doctor and Ace are the only people to believe McBride. The sphere bears all the hallmarks of sophisticated alien technology - and whatever was inside is now loose in London.

Before long the Doctor and his friends have embarked on a trail that brings them face to face with hidden Nazi operatives - and some very old enemies...

'I won't fight you.'

'Oh, but you will,' the voice twisted and croaked. Fury and madness tore through it. 'You will fight me, Doctor.'

The Doctor is on the run from a faceless enemy that knows his every thought and move. He flees to his past, planning to leave Ace in safe hands in order to fight on alone. But his enemy has other plans, and the Doctor's history no longer exists.

The TARDIS is finally drawn to London in the winter of 1888, where the Doctor and Ace discover a dark secret from Gallifey's past, and the name of their unseen opponent.

It is Jack the Ripper.

'The Krill are pure rage. Pure aggression. There is nothing for me to reason with, nothing that I can appeal to. By now there must be millions of them out there, and I don't know how to stop them.'

The water world of Coralee is the showpiece planet of the colonies - two suns, unspoilt beaches and a thriving tourist culture. The Doctor and Ace arrive intending to have a proper holiday, but when the Doctor joins am archaeological expedition conducting a dig at a sunken temple, he soon realises that, beneath the surface, something is very wrong. An ancient and terrible weapon has been revived and every living creature on the planet is at risk.

Who are the aliens that wait in the asteroid field? What is the mysterious creature that stalks the shadows of the colonies? Who has unleashed the devastating power of the Krill?

Out in the deep ocean there is a storm brewing, and the Doctor is not sure if anyone will survive.

'Coming up after the break, the starts of a new series of programmes featuring the mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as - the Doctor.'

Detecting a mysterious sub-space signal in the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Ace land on the planet Blinni-Gaar. They soon discover that the native population are little more than zombies, addicted to the programmes of the dangerously powerful Channel 400. As the Doctor investigates, he finds that the television company has a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with entertainment.

Why is the Director-General of Channel 400 so interested in the Doctor? Who are the mysterious aliens who watch from the shadows of the Brago nebula? And why is a pack of Zzinbriizi Jackals stalking the streets of Blinni-Gaar?

As the Doctor is drawn deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue and deceit he discovers that he has an unexpected ally of the most dangerous kind.

'Danger is my middle name,' Ace said, 'or it would be if I had more than one. I can look after myself these days, you know.'

Freedom. Liberty. Free will. Independence. Choice. Everyone wants to be free. But at what point does freedom become irresponsibility? What happens when one person's choice causes another's oppression?

The Doctor's on a simple mission to return a communications device he borrowed years previously. Being a Time Lord he can return it before anyone misses it.

But events in the Mendeb system have moved more quickly than the Doctor estimated, and he lands in the ruins of a civilisation devastated by mysterious invaders.

'You're not the Doctor I knew.'

'Perhaps you never knew the Doctor.'

Hong Kong 1997: the handover to Chinese rule is imminent, and investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith is on the trail of corruption in the Far East.

Street gangsters lurk around every corner. And when one decides to confide in Sarah, she is thrown headlong into danger. What are UNIT doing in Hong Kong, and why are the following missing backpackers? What is causing a spate of strange and unnatural deaths? And how is Sarah's old and trusted friend the Doctor involved? More importantly, whose side is he on?

The truth can now be told, and the outcome of Sarah's investigation's revealed. But will her world ever be the same again?

'Do Time Lords get Alzheimer's disease?' asked Ace.

'Oh, we get far worse things than that, Ace. The dementias we that plague us are much, much worse.'

Collecting his mail in the London of 2012, the Doctor and Ace are called through time to south-east Scotland to help out an old friend - an old friend who's vanished. They find themselves at Graystairs, an Alzheimer's clinic and place of healing, where the patients seem to be gaining a new lease of life. But whose life is it?

Why is the Doctor so reluctant to reveal what happened in the TARDIS before their arrival? Why are cats and dogs - not to mention people - disappearing? Who is the shadowy figure stalking the Doctor and Ace? And what is the secret of the mysterious Miss Chambers, whom no-one remembers meeting?

Soon the Doctor and Ace find out the hard way that actions have consequences - and that there's more than one kind of dementia.

'Things go missing on Heritage. It's one of the hazards of living here. One of the many hazards.'

Nobody visits Heritage. Why would they? Dry, dusty and hot, it's nothing but a failed mining colony too stupid to realise that it's actually dead. No-one wants to visit, least of all Ace. But the Doctor's got his hearts set on a flying visit, just while they're in the neighbourhood. That's when he finds that Heritage wants visitors just as much as visitors want them.

So, while Ace is getting friendly with the locals, the Doctor is trying his best to convince them he's not interested in their secrets. All he wants is a few quiet days and a nice cup of tea.

Trouble is, secrets have a way of unearthing themselves when the Doctor's around. Whether he wants them to or not.

Ace is dead. Or at least she will be - soon... In a secret room deep inside the TARDIS the Doctor has been examining the body of Ace's future self. He knows how she was killed, where she was killed and when she was killed. What he doesn't know is why...

To find the truth the Doctor makes a dangerous decision and takes the unsuspecting Ace to the very time and place of death, hoping to cheat Time and find her killer before he can strike - but Time has other ideas. With Ace missing and the clock ticking the Doctor turns to old friends for help and finds that there is unfinished business for him to deal with.

What is the secret experiment being conducted by the British Rocket Group? Why are giant ants appearing in the suburbs of 1950s London? Who is the mysterious figure that is watching the Doctor's every move?

As events spiral out of control the Doctor realises that someone is manipulating time with careless disregard for the consequences to Ace - or the rest of the universe...

A genius maths nerd, a weird webzine publisher, and the Doctor's old ally, the Brigadier, find themselves helping the Doctor and Ace solve what should be a simple puzzle: the appearance of a crop circle in the Kentish countryside.

Hardly uncommon. But there are some peculiar features. It's not a circle but a series of square-sided shapes. It's filled with ice. And it draws the Doctor and Ace into a confrontation with a reality right next to zero.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1945: The Second World War is coming to its bloody conclusion, and in the American desert the race is on to build an atomic bomb.

The fate of the world is at stake - in more ways than one. Someone, or something, is trying to alter the course of history at this most delicate point. And destroy the human race. Posing as a nuclear scientist with Ace as his research assistant, the Doctor plays detective among the Manhattan Project scientists, while desperately trying to avoid falling under suspicion himself.

As the minutes tick away to the world's first atom bomb blast, the Doctor and Ace find themselves up to their necks in spies, aliens of the flying-saucer variety, and some very nasty saboteurs from another dimension...