DOCTOR WHO IN DETAIL

'So, that's an Ice Warrior. Brings a whole new meaning to the concept of shell suits.'

The Doctor is pursuing a master criminal. The trail leads to Peladon: a desolate world once home to a barbaric, feudal society. Now the Galactic Federation is attempting to bring prosperity and civilization to the planet. But not all Pels support the changes, and when ancient relics are stolen from their Citadel, the representatives of the Federation are blamed. The Doctor suspects the Ice Warrior delegation, but before long the Time Lord himself is arrested for the crime - and sentenced to death.

Elsewhere, interplanetary mercenaries are bringing one of the galaxy's most evil artefacts to Peladon, apparently on the Doctor's instruction. Ace is pursuing a dangerous mission on another world and Bernice is getting friendly - perhaps too friendly - with the Ice Warriors she has studied for so long.

The players are making the final moves in a devious and lethal plan - but for once it isn't the Doctor's.

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Ace stared at the Doctor. He nodded. 'Yes, Ace. We're in Elsinore. And I don't like it either.'

Five years ago, an archaeological expedition came to Menaxus to explore the ruins of an ancient theatre. All but one of the visitors died horribly, and the planet was abandoned, bathed in lethal radiation.

Now the only survivor has returned, determined to uncover the theatre's secrets whatever the cost. Among her archaeological team is a certain Professor Bernice Summerfield.

Soon the deaths begin again, while the front line of an interstellar war moves ever closer. Desperate for help, Bernice tries to summon her companions. But when the TARDIS lands on the planet, the Doctor finds himself participating in a frighteningly real performance of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. And he begins to realise that the truth about Menaxus may be far stranger than anyone imagines.

'I've been all over the universe with you, Doctor, and Earth in the nineteenth century is the most alien place I've ever seen.'

England, 1887. The secret library of St John the Beheaded has been robbed. The thief has taken forbidden books which tell of mythical beasts and gateways to other worlds. Only one team can be trusted to solve the crime: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson'.

As their investigation leads them to the dark underside of Victorian London, Holmes and Watson soon realise that someone else is following the same trail. Someone who has the power to kill with a glance. And they sense a strange, inhuman shape observing them from the shadows. Then they meet the mysterious traveller known only as the Doctor - the last person alive to read the stolen books.

While Bernice waits in nineteenth-century India, Ace is trapped on a bizarre alien world. And the Doctor finds himself unwillingly united with England's greatest consulting detective.

'Doc's peddling bootleg liquor in an illegal speakeasy. You're carrying a gun for him, Ace - which makes you no better than any other gun-moll.'

Dekker is a private eye; an honest one. But when Al Capone hires him to investigate a new joint called 'Doc's', he knows this is one job he can't refuse. And just why are the Doctor and Ace selling illegal booze in a town full of murderous gangsters?

Meanwhile, Bernice has been abandoned on a vampire-infested plonet outside normal space. There she meets a mysterious stranger called Romanadvoratrelundar - and discovers an ancient and malevolent power, linking 1929 Chicago with a lair of immortal evil.

The consequences of this story are inextricably linked to events in the Doctor's past. The full story is revealed in the first of a series of Missing Adventures - Goth Opera by Paul Cornell.

'The more the Doctor dreams,' the Quack said, 'the more real I become. He has not yet dreamed me fully, but he will.'

When the TARDIS lands in the idyllic gardens of a Victorian country house, Ace knows that something terrible is bound to happen. The Doctor disagrees. Sometimes things really are as perfect as they seem.

Then they discover a young girl whose body has-been possessed by a beautiful but lethal insect. And they meet the people of the House: innocents who have never known age, pain, or death - until now.

Now their rural paradise is turning into a world of nightmare. A world in which the familiar is being twisted into something evil and strange. A world ruled by the Quack, whose patent medicines are deadly poisons and whose aim is the total destruction of the Doctor.

Ace raised her blaster. 'You've already killed me once, girl,' Kreer said. 'Didn't you learn anything from that?'

When Bernice asks to see the dawn of the space age, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the United States of America in 1957 - and into the midst of distrust and paranoia. The Cold War is raging, bringing the world to the brink of atomic destruction.

But the threat facing America is far more deadly than Communist Russia. The militaristic Tzun Confederacy have made Earth their next target for conquest - and the aliens are already among us.

Two nuclear warheads have been stolen; there are traitors to the human species in the highest ranks of the army; and alien infiltrators have assumed human form. Only one person seems to know what's going on: the army's mysterious scientific adviser, the enigmatic Major Kreer.

'No time. They have come. They have come at last.'

The Doctor and Bernice visit Betrushia, a planet famous for its beautiful ring system. They soon discover that the rain-drenched jungles are in turmoil. A vicious, genocidal war is raging between the lizard-like natives. The ground itself is wracked by mysterious earthquakes. And an unknown force is moving inexorably forwards, devastating everything in its path.

Ace wanted out; she's resting on a neighbouring world. But from the outer reaches of space, a far greater threat is approaching Betrushia, and even Ace may find it impossible to escape.

With time running out, the Doctor must save the people of Befrushia from their own terrible legacy before the wrath of St Anthony's Fire is visited upon them all.

'We are deranged. We are psychopaths, sociopaths, up the garden path,' said Tanith. 'We are mad, and you are trapped with us.'

The TARDIS is imprisoned in a house called Shadowfell, where a man is ready to commence the next phase of an experiment that will remake the world.

A stranger dressed in grey watches from a hillside, searching for the sinister powers growing within the house. A killer appears from the surrounding forest, determined to carry out her deadly instructions. In the cellar, something lingers, observing and influencing events, waiting to take on flesh and emerge. And trapped in alien darkness, the last survivor of a doomed race mourns for the lost planet Earth.