The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the Time Lords built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, an up-and-coming would-be conqueror of the universe, needs the assistance of one of the prison’s inmates, but finds that nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to Earth, where he is masquerading as a professor at St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge (the story features some on-location filming in Cambridge, all of which was completed before the strike). Luckily for the fate of the universe, Skagra’s attempt to force the information out of Professor Chronotis coincides with a visit by the professor’s old friend the Doctor (and this is where the story really begins).
Doctor Who Season 17 Episode 5: The Horns of Nimon
In the great maze of the Power Complex dwells the dreaded Nimon, a fearsome monster with immense scientific powers. The Nimon promised to restore the Skonnan Empire to its former glory. But first it demands sacrifice — youths and maidens from the peaceful planet Aneth. The TARDIS collides with the space ship delivering the victims, and the captured Romana is condemned to be sacrificed to the Nimon. Aided by the faithful K-9, the Doctor goes to the rescue — and confronts the horned Nimon at the heart of the maze.
The TARDIS lands at the site of a hyperspatial collision between two spacecraft – as a result of which, neither ship is dimensionally stable, risking the lives of all those aboard. The Doctor, K-9 and Romana offer to help out. When a crewmember is found dead, his face lacerated by huge claws, it seems something deadly has been released by the accident. But how is the death linked to the discovery that the killer drug Vraxoin has been smuggled aboard? The answer could be the savage Mandrels, hideous swamp-creatures from the planet Eden, which soon tear through the corridors of the helpless spaceships…
Doctor Who Season 17 Episode 3: The Creature from the Pit
On the planet Chloris, metal is scarce. Making a forced landing on Chloris, the Doctor, Romana and K-9 soon find themselves caught up in a long and secret enmity between the Lady Adrasta, who rules the planet in fear, and the mysterious Creature she keeps in a Pit…
The story is set on Mars in the year 2059 where the Doctor encounters the first human colony, Bowie Base One. This is commanded by Captain Adelaide Brooke who turns out to be a pivotal character in the history of humanity. The Doctor knows that she should die at this time but ultimately decides to change history.
My thanks to sydneyawesome for finding some good links to the show.
The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that while the wormhole is still present, returning on foot is not possible, after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back, evaporating to a skeleton instantly; the passengers deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage. Seeing the driver’s skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific adviser Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole.
The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851, where he encounters a woman called Rosita Farisi and another man who calls himself ‘The Doctor’. After failing to capture a Cybershade, the two men talk, with the Tenth Doctor believing the other to be a future regeneration. Unfortunately, the other (dubbed ‘the Next Doctor’) is lacking many memories. Meanwhile, the Cybermen are planning an attack with a human ally, Miss Mercy Hartigan. The Tenth Doctor follows the Next Doctor to a house of a dead man, the Reverend Aubrey Fairchild, where they search for clues to what the Cybermen are planning. The Next Doctor begins to regain some of his lost memories; when the Tenth Doctor finds a pair of ‘infostamps’ (the Cybermen’s data storage devices) the Next Doctor remembers he was holding one the night he lost his memory. The Cybermen then attack the house, but before they can kill the ‘Doctors’, the Next Doctor kills them with an electrical charge from the infostamp.
