Monday 25 June 1906. Outside the White Rabbit public house Violet is chilled, more by the previous night's horrors than the mist. Her fiancé, Richard leads her into the pub and she tells him her story. She is a servant in the London home of the Grainger family. The previous day was her master's birthday and a surprise party had been arranged by his heavily pregnant wife. During the party Violet returns to the kitchen to find two men, one old and the other handsome, demanding to see the guests. She tells the butler, Mr Peake, who brings the master to the kitchen. Immediately, another guest arrives with the mistress, his arm around her neck. He is Sir George Steer and he orders everyone into the kitchen. Sir George recognises one of the two men as the Doctor, his eyes turn green and everything goes black. When Violet wakes up she is told by the younger man that Sir George has been possessed. As Mary Grainger goes into labour Sir George announces that he will let the child be born and then kill it. As the older man tries to reason with Sir George Violet seizes her chance and attacks him with a rolling pin. A green spirit leaves his body and flies out of the window. A short while later Edward Grainger is born and the Doctor leaves with his companion.

Peggy is in the Grainger household, a guest at their party. The orphan, Helen, is upstairs in her room — she spends all her time listtening to graphaphone records. Peggy is contemplating the birth of her own brother or sister when the Doctor, who has appeared rather mysteriously in the hallway, greets her. She introduces herself a Margaret Pollard and confuses the Doctor with someone looking after her mother. The Doctor pulls out a rectangular box with flashing lights. Edward Grainger, now five years old, races down the stairs. Just as it strikes Peggy that the Doctor probably didn't come in through the front door Edward opens the hall cupboard to reveal the TARDIS. Edward's father is just about to have the Doctor thrown out of the house when Helen emerges at the top of the stairs. For the first time the Doctor seems to realise why he is there. The Doctor rebuffs Mr Grainger and makes his way up the stairs. After 45 minutes Peggy tiptoes up the stairs and is about to try Helen's door handle when Edward tells her it is still locked. The Doctor opens the door and beckons them in. He explains that he was drawn to the house while tracking some anomalies. Helen tells them that people think she is mentally unwell because she has an invisible friend, Ahnji, who wants to listen to her graphaphone records. She says he is tall with brick-coloured skin and yellow hair and that he has lost his family. The Doctor begins to surmise that there might be a microverse in the vacuum created by playing the graphaphone records and Peggy intuitively realises that Ahnji's family were lost in that vacuum. At this point they realise that they can see Ahnji, but only in the mirror. The Doctor explains that the mercury in the mirror has put Ahnji slightly out of phase, and therefore visible. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver is able to play a record backwards, releasing Ahnji's family from the grooves, but again only visible in the mirror. The Doctor asks Edward to smash the record and put it in a bin so that they are never trapped in the same way again.

It is 1915 and Edward Grainger is fighting a bigger boy and winning. Unbeknown to him he is being filmed by a cameraman from the future making a biopic, Edward Grainger: A Man for Peace. The cameraman, Jack Holbine, is told that he is actually meant to be shooting a sequence on Edward's father, Lawrence. Jack is disappointed because Captain Lawrence Grainger is overweight and ageing, a man with an honorary rank due to his political position. Jack transports himself to Grainger's cabin aboard The Queen Elizabeth, holographically disguises himself as a general and instructs him to go to Cape Helles on a mission. Grainger is suitably scared, this is one of the most dangerous battlefields of the First World War. Jack surrounds Grainger with invisible cameras for his beach landing. Despite coming under heavy fire Grainger makes the beach and kills two Turks, though he is horrified by the dead ANZAC soldiers that litter the beach. Jack is pleased with the footage he is getting but realises he will need to edit out the bullets bouncing off Grainger's force field. Jack's intention was to film Grainger in a prison camp but now, believing God is on his side, Grainger is marauding across the landscape slaughtering Turks. At this point the Doctor appears, offering Grainger a jelly baby. He identifies the force field around Grainger then causes Jack and his cameras to become visible. Jack has no option but to knock Grainger out. In the ensuing conversation it becomes apparent that the Doctor is unaware of the activities of the time-active film makers. He is, however tracking a temporal tsunami created by the misplacement of Lawrence Grainger. The aftershocks of this (which occur first) disable Grainger's force field and he is shot in the leg before being taken prisoner. Using his holographic projector Jack impersonates the Turk, Captain Kemal, at the Doctor's suggestion. Just as he is about to retrieve Grainger from the Turks Jack's disguise fails but he is rescued from being killed when the Doctor explodes all of the cameras. Jack explains that he has to rescue Grainger; if he dies Jack will have to replace him for the rest of his life so that Edward will become the peacemaker. The Doctor contradicts him, saying that Lawrence Grainger had a leg amputated, became an alcoholic, never saw his son again and died in 1924. He implores Jack to leave before the temporal tsunami hits, explaining that its effects are totally unpredictable but Jack decides to carry Grainger to safety. He returns to the war as the Australian soldier, and war hero, Jack Holbine. This is who he always was.

Edward Grainger is at boarding school where he is being bullied by Lillis and Digby from the upper sixth. The Doctor lands in a quarry in Lancashire, England. He is being pursued. He walks down a country road across a barren moor. A man called Marcus Johns stops his car and offers the Doctor a lift. As darkness falls Johns says he has a flat tyre and steps out to fix it. Instead he tries to push the car over a cliff but the Doctor escapes. Johns reveals that he knows the Doctor is a Time Lord. As a thunderstorm erupts around them the Doctor turns to face his shape-shifting pursuers. Meanwhile, Edward is sheltering from the storm and hiding from his bullies. He is surprised by a bloodied Doctor who is pretending to be a new physics teacher. Edward leads him to the headmaster's office where the Doctor explains his injuries as the result of a road accident. Edward has a realistic dream where his bullies chase him through an empty dormitory and he is rescued by the Doctor. He is perplexed to wake the next day and find that it is Sunday again. When the Doctor seems to be the only other one to have noticed this peculiarity they both say it is like being in a dream. The Doctor asks if Edward has had any unusual dreams recently. He then explains he is being chased by shape-shifting spiritual carnivores from Andromeda Galliana who want the TARDIS. As thunder closes in again they race to the shelter of the school. The Doctor explains the truth to the headmaster but in order to get his help has to pretend that he is a spy and the lights in the sky are Germans trying to get back some stolen secrets. Scaly, green, eight foot tall monsters smash their way into the school. The Doctor faces up to them and they retreat. He teaches Edward to do the same, saying these creatures read the minds of their victims and use their fears against them. The aliens return to their ships and retreat. Lillis and Digby, who had long been possessed by the aliens after the TARDIS data banks were read by them when they briefly captured it, wake from a very deep sleep.

Edward Grainger is in China near Mount Lishan, miles away from civilisation. He is with a party led by the treasure hunter, Carter, and guided by a Chinese family which includes the beautiful Mai Ling. Edward's father, a liar and drunkard, has turned out a failure and while Edward is cynical about his own motives for joining Carter's expedition he is determined not to be a failure. Despite the warnings of their peasant guides Carter's men are breaching Qui Shi Huangdi's ancient tomb. This isn't the first time they have scavenged valuable relics since Edward joined them. Inside the tomb they discover a vast chamber filled with an army of lifelike terracotta warriors. As Edward makes his way through the cavern he falls through the floor into a pit full of bones but is rescued by his companions. Outside Carter tells Edward that he plans to sell the warriors to private collectors but this depends on the tomb remaining secret. Later the four Chinese peasants are led into the trees and three shots are heard. Edward hopes that Mai Ling escaped. The men load one of the warriors into their De Havilland and Carter and Edward take off. On the flight the plane begins to disintegrate. The doctor emerges from the TARDIS, thinking he is in London, 27 July 1928. Instead he is in a jungle. Tegan notices the plane falling to earth and the pair of them rush to its crash site. The pilot is dead but Edward is unconscious in the burning wreckage. The Doctor pulls him out to safety. A Chinese warrior, bathed in a blue glow runs away through the jungle. In the TARDIS the Doctor sprays Edward with DNA foam that will help him heal perfectly. On the view screen the Doctor detects the blue ghost and recognises it as a rogue life-force heading rapidly north. Edward wakes up and is recognised by the Doctor. He tells the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough what has happened. The Doctor surmises that the warriors were a living army, sacrificed at the time of their emperor's death, their life forces bound to their terracotta prisons. Once the prison had been shattered in the crash the ghost warrior began to return to the burial chamber to reawaken the rest of the army. Edward is amazed a few minutes later not only to be coming out of a battered blue box but to be in the chamber he left earlier that day. Mai Ling runs to greet him from her hiding place just as another warrior cracks into life. Edward races to it but is flung back in an explosion of sparks. Noticing that the floor is made of clay the Doctor puts a tuning fork into the ground and uses a sonic prodder to cause it to resonate, turning the clay into a quagmire. The TARDIS begins to sink but the increasing number of freed ghosts are becoming trapped in the clay. The Doctor's companions get Edward and Mai Ling into the TARDIS and the Doctor jumps in after them. One final blue ghost passes through the closed doors and stabs at Edward. Mai Ling leaps in the way and takes the blow which absorbs the life force deep into her subconscious. The Doctor decides to drop Edward off at the wreckage of the aeroplane and take the Chinese girl somewhere safe. Tegan realises that she has met Edward before but he was older then and knows she will meet him again.

Edward has recently returned from his foreign travels to a London showing new levels of poverty. He has been called to a secret rendezvous with a member of His Majesty's government in a seedy café. He finds a man calling himself 'Professor' waiting for him. This is, of course, the Doctor. He tells Edward they are going on a mission for the Security Services and that the British Government knows nothing about it. The motive is to pre-empt the Nazi threat on behalf of Churchill who Edward considers to be little more than a boozed-up old has-been. Edward is surprised to find that the Professor intends to take him to China, not Berlin as he expected, to find out what the invading Japanese are up to. Edward's initial refusal is overcome when he is told that Mai Ling needs him to rescue her. The following morning Edward is picked up by a car and falls asleep on the journey. When he wakes he is on a train in Manchuria, accompanied by the Professor and surrounded by peasants. The Professor does not tell him how they got there but does explain that the reason why the peasants are apparently speaking English is down to a Nazi translation device. The train halts and the passengers are forced to put baskets on their heads so that they cannot see the facility where they have arrived. The Professor escapes easily from the guards and leads Edward through a part of the fortress that seems part prison part hospital. The Professor tells Edward that Mai Ling has to be rescued because if she is cut open the ghost warrior trapped within her might be released and change the course of the war. At that point they are captured by armed guards. Edward is imprisoned in a cell with a man who he later finds out is dying of bubonic plague. The intention is to see if it will be contracted by airborne infection, and the operation is ultimately successful. Severely ill, Edward is rescued by the Professor who sends him to cell 384 to rescue Mai Ling. He does this just as two men are about to cut her open with a scalpel but no anaesthetic. The three of them flee from the facility. Once again Edward has no idea how the time passes but he wakes up in London feeling significantly better. A letter from the Professor tells him Mai Ling is safe and well and with her husband but that he must not tell anyone about his adventure. A second letter offers him a role in an unofficial capacity as an operative of the British Secret Services. It names the Professor as 'the Doctor' which, among other things, leaves Edward with much to digest.

Two weeks into her time in the TARDIS Peri finds herself at the F.A. Cup Final, Wembley Stadium, 25 April 1936. The Doctor tries to explain the intricacies of the game and the relative merits of Arsenal and Sheffield United but Peri excuses herself to go to the toilet. She collides with a man who seems shocked that she is even in his way and he promptly drops a portfolio full of photographs. Because he thinks she has seen them he takes Peri prisoner and marches her into the lavatories. A well-dressed man knocks on the door and enters. He addresses the first man as 'Scanlon' and decides to take Peri with him to his employers who wish to see Scanlon's merchandise. On their way through the stadium they are intercepted by the Doctor but their guns prevent him taking Peri back. Instead he joins them on their way to the groundsman's office. Inside are four men with guns. The well-dressed man is revealed to be Edward Grainger, the men with guns are police officers and Scanlon's photographs are of King Edward and Wallis Simpson, capable of causing a scandal that will end the king's reign. Scanlon, realising his plans have gone awry, drops a flash grenade — alien technology — a” and escapes. Edward, who seems to know the stadium well, leads the Doctor back to the toilets where he discovers that one of the cubicles is a time ship similar to the TARDIS. When Scanlon finally arrives and finds a welcome party he confesses that he comes from a time two thousand years in the future and that the ship was stolen from a war-ravaged world on the other side of the galaxy. He claims it was once the property of a terrible enemy and that the photographs were an attempt to change history so that humanity would be ready when the time came to face this enemy. The Doctor accuses him of being a meddling fool no better than a child. After pointing out that if he knows where Scanlon is then others are sure to know, thereby frightening him out of misbehaving again, the Doctor lets him go. Peri asks why the Time Lords would punish Scanlon for meddling in history if they let the Doctor carry on in his own way. The Doctor answers that his role is to fix things.

The Doctor has just helped UNIT sort out a problem in Lewisham (The Terror of the Darkness) and has offered Colonel Chaudhry and Lt Hoffman a lift back to headquarters when he receives a distress call and diverts to London, 1941. The trio find themselves in the White Rabbit when an air-raid begins and they take shelter in the cellar along with three customers and the landlord. Hoffman produces a harmonica and plays the tune Memory Lane, for which he is reprimanded by Chaudhry because it is anachronistic. The Doctor assumes that one of the two men sheltering with him sent the distress call and approaches the most likely, recognising him as Edward Grainger. Grainger fails to recognise this incarnation of the Doctor and produces a gun. The two UNIT officers pounce on him but Chaudhry is shot. While the other customer, Eleanor, helps Hoffman and the Doctor with her injuries the other man flees. The Doctor and Grainger give chase through the ruins of the city. Grainger explains that he is a secret service agent tracking a strange signal which his department hopes to exploit. They eventually track down their target, who the Doctor recognises as a Mim. The Doctor offers to take the Mim home away from this savage and war torn planet. As they near the White Rabbit it is hit by a bomb but somehow remains intact. The Mim receives some wounds from diving in front of the Doctor and Grainger but heals himself. Grainger and Eleanor head off to the tube station (Grainger whistling the tune Hoffman played earlier) while the Doctor takes the Mim back to his planet and then the two soldiers back to their own time and headquarters. He accuses Chaudhry of wearing a shirt that she should not possess — the bullet hit her in the chest aand should have killed her — but she points out that UNIT personnel tend not to live long around the Doctor. He also wants to check Edward's report which ought to be in UNIT's archives to see if anything was picked up that should not have been. However, it transpires that a lot of information about the war vanished in September 1957 so the Doctor persuades the two soldiers to join him on a trip to the 1950s to find out what happened.

Edward had arranged for Eleanor's promotion within their section. She meets his friend George Tremayne and he courts her for six months before proposing marriage. After she turns him down Edward courts her more successfully and the couple are married. In 1948 George invites them to a lecture he is giving on the 'Voynich manuscript,' an ancient and untranslated document that has puzzled scholars and mystics for centuries. Edward and Eleanor meet Tremayne in the White Rabbit after the lecture and he tells them he has been recalled into service by the government to work on a project linked to the Voynich manuscript. It is obvious that George still holds deep feelings for Eleanor. Soon afterwards Edward is flown to Berlin at the time of the airlift. His rather vague orders tell him he is to locate Tremayne and his assistants and to debrief them. He is driven to a house in the suburbs where unusual things are happening. The house seems to have healed up its doors and windows and the soldiers on guard outside say they feel that it is watching them. When Edward approaches the house shadows detach from the walls and possess the three men with him, each adopting the form of Tremayne and ordering Edward to enter the house alone or all the soldiers will be killed. When he agrees the three afflicted men are returned to their real shapes. In the house nothing is normal: the perspectives have shifted, the floor appears to be alive and one of Tremayne's assistants seems to be trapped within it. Edward tracks down Tremayne himself in the library where all the books are mutating: their words constantly rearranging on the page. In the corner is the TARDIS, but its texture is more akin to flesh and blood and there is a human form trapped in its side. Tremayne tells Edward that the Nazis had got hold of the original manuscript that Voynich had discovered, and now the British want him to work on it. He explains how ancient it is and that the secret was not to try to read it but to allow it to read him. Edward realises that his friend has been possessed. In a moment of inspiration he appeals to the real Tremayne under the skin of shifting patterns of ancient letters by using Eleanor's name. This distracts him enough to allow the Doctor to escape from the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Edward that the language on Tremayne's skin was created by the Earth's previous inhabitants, a Logos that they used to shape creation. They were eventually written out of existence by its power. He knows of a self-destruct symbol, a single ancient letter that will halt the current process which threatens to rewrite the space-time continuum. While Edward distracts Tremayne again by talking about Eleanor the Doctor carves a symbol onto Tremayne's flesh. This causes Tremayne to vanish, leaving only a pile of ashes, and for the house to return to normal. The Doctor speaks incomprehensibly about being trapped in the vortex and only able to escape through he fissure created by the Logos. He thinks he is dying and possibly too weak to regenerate, at least without help. As the soldiers arrive in the house the Doctor enters the TARDIS and dematerialises to get back to Sarah and the Brigadier. Edward is left holding a piece of paper the Doctor gave him showing the ancient letter that destroyed the Logos. It looks curiously like a question mark.

An artificial intelligence has found a home in Adric's head. It uses him to land the TARDIS in 1950s England in the corridor of a maternity hospital. While the rest of the crew are trying to find out how they came to be here Tegan leaves the TARDIS to do some exploring. She eventually finds a troubled man in a waiting room. At first he thinks she has come to bring him bad news about his new born son, seriously ill due to oxygen deprivation. Tegan says she does not work there but sits with him anyway, talking about her childhood in Australia in an attempt to comfort him. A synaptic shock in the TARDIS disables Nyssa and the Doctor. While they are unconscious Adric goes into a nearby ward and steals a baby. The intelligence inhabits the baby and begins to develop its mental processes extremely quickly. The Doctor recovers consciousness and sees Adric setting the TARDIS in flight. He uses Venusian karate to knock him out then discovers the baby. It is obvious to the doctor that there is a greater intelligence within the child and he has to use mental defences to prevent it getting into his mind. Between them the Doctor and Nyssa work out what is happening and the Doctor creates an equation that lures the intelligence out of the baby and then sets course for the planet Otho where it can inhabit primordial ooze and create its own civilisation. While they are gone Tegan notices the absence of the TARDIS. When Adric wakes up the Doctor manages to land them at the moment the baby was stolen and they return it to its cot. Tegan is annoyed that they abandoned her and wonders how long they had been gone before they realised she was missing. The father of the sick baby is Edward Grainger. When he enters his wife's room the ward specialist, Mr Holland, is perplexed that the little baby, John, has made a miraculous and unexplainable recovery.

Thursday 17 May 1956. Edward is looking at the book Eleanor bought him for his 49th birthday. Feeling morose about the passage of time he is startled when the corner of the page turns by itself. He throws the book down but it glides to the floor.

Saturday 23 June 1956. The Doctor, accompanied by Gemma and Samson arrive at a country house to celebrate Edward Grainger's birthday. The doctor has just told them he is there to check up on somebody else when the front doors of the house open as if by themselves. At the party itself Edward is disgruntled, partly by the fuss and the exorbitance, but also by the nagging annoyance of his son John's new imaginary friend, Teddy. When Gemma accidentally drops her invitation it floats back to her hand, which the Doctor considers 'interesting.' In the garden John is trying to fly his kite. He lets go accidentally and is giving chase when he runs into the Doctor. The doctor asks if John's teddy can talk. John confesses that he doesn't actually think it is his teddy talking, but his old friend who went away and then returned. As the Doctor plays with John the entity begins to grow jealous. Inside the house guests begin to be jostled by invisible forces and objects start to move by themselves. Invisible voices begin to laugh as the Doctor clears the room, leaving only edward and Gemma with him. He uses a record player to allow the entity to speak. It claims to be John's guardian angel, but says that it is dying and it will take John with it when it goes. Edward races upstairs where Eleanor is trying to reach John through a maelstrom. The entity possesses samson's unconscious body (he is very, very drunk) to explain that he is the spiritual embodiment of the joie de vivre of Edward Grainger's fiftieth year. As the clock strikes midnight the Entity vanishes though enough of it remains the following day for one last check to see that Edward is looking after John. The Doctor, meanwhile, amuses himself on the swings.

Berlin. 10 October 1962. Edward Grainger is at Checkpoint Charlie waiting for an agent to cross over from East Germany. As the man does so he is called back by the Volks Polizei but elects to make a run for it instead. He is shot within yards of the border and Grainger pulls him over to the west. In the ambulance Grainger is startled by the similarity of the man (who he thinks is called Stempfer) to his friend Tremayne who died here fourteen years earlier. This man claims Stempfer is dead and that he is, in fact, the Doctor. At a British base sergeant major Munro recognises Grainger and also, he thinks, Tremayne from their previous meeting in Berlin. The Doctor is in conversation with a cockroach that he calls Ambassador Skgar and apparently is in very good health. The Doctor tries to explain that an alien race called the Jalaphron are trying to start a war by planting Russian missiles in Cuba. They incite feelings of anger and then feed on the misery when conflict results. Not believing any of this Grainger and Munro decide to torture the truth out of the Doctor. In a fit of anger Grainger stamps on the cockroach and immediately recognises, with shame, what he had been about to do. He listens to the Doctor's plan and helps him to carry it out, thus preventing the Cuban missile crisis from escalating to nuclear war. The Doctor is using the TARDIS, flown by Romana, to drag the Jalaphron hive mother and most of her brood to another destination. Grainger's task is to eradicate the remaining cockroaches. After this mission Grainger telephones Eleanor and tells her it is time he came in from the cold.

The TARDIS is drifting, its dematerialisation circuits overloaded, when it is hit by a Slarvian ship entering Earth's orbit. The Slarvians transport the TARDIS onto their own craft as they plunge through the atmosphere and into the English Channel. When the Doctor and Susan wake up after the impact of the crash they find the Slarvians, giant snail-like creatures, full of politeness. The TARDIS has also been hooked up to a power source to make good its repairs. The Doctor and susan follow a Slarvian to the bridge of the ship where they discover that they are witnessing an infestation of the Earth. A cargo of Slarvian eggs was lost in transit and ended up on Earth. Nearing the end of their gestation period they have to be slimed by the queen so that they can grow and take over the planet. It is August 16 1979 and Edward Grainger, still getting over his wife's death, has arranged to take his daughter for a visit to a small naval submarine. Just as their visit is finishing the submarine is called to investigate the giant spaceship which has crashed into the sea nearby. One of the crew of the submarine, Brandis, has been psychically possessed to obey the Slarvians. The queen's eggs are already aboard the submarine and he is taking them to dock with the sunken space ship. Susan has noticed the presence of Linda Grainger on the submarine and knows that the queen needs to feast on female flesh of the vanquished race to fertilise her eggs. She and the Doctor flee the Slarvian control room and get back to the TARDIS just in time to dematerialise, taking the vast space ship with them. They know the eggs will be spoiled within the next few days. Brandis wakes from his possession with no memory of events and the submarine returns to shore. Linda realises that her grandfather, who showed a sense of courage and unflappable authority throughout, despite being a civilian on the military vessel, is a man who she has taken for granted without knowing anything about.

Edward is in New York looking for his goddaughter Moira who has vanished. The Doctor encounters him in a café and strikes up a conversation. Edward plays him a recorded message purporting to be from Moira saying she is travelling and will be out of contact for a while. Edward does not believe in its authenticity and the doctor confirms his suspicions that the technology of 1982 is not sophisticated enough to provide such a realistic quality but it is nevertheless a fake. They are sitting opposite the New York Supplementary Education Institute, the building to which Edward could last trace Moira's movements. The Doctor has the building under surveillance, too, for his own ends. In fact Victoria and Jamie are in there enrolling Jamie on a martial arts course. (Jamie has to shamefacedly admit he cannot write so Victoria fills in the enrolment form for him.) When Victoria crosses the street to tell the Doctor Jamie has gone through to start his course the Doctor reacts with alarm and races across the street followed by Edward and Victoria. Jamie was only supposed to enrol but took it upon himself to snoop around. He passes through to a back office where he finds a portal and three large Virtors. As they try to wrestle him through the portal the Doctor arrives and a fight ensues in which the Doctor propels himself and the Virtors through the portal. Edward is about to leap through after him when the Doctor reappears. It transpires that time passes more quickly on the Virtors' home world (little more than a slave labour camp) and in the few seconds he has apparently been away he has managed to raise a revolt and overpower the slavers. From behind him a number of other people emerge, all of them much older than they were when they left, including Moira who is in her eighties now. The Doctor permanently closes the portal and leaves Edward to alert the authorities who arrive to take care of the situation in a fleet of black vans.

September 1986. Edward Grainger is invited to dinner by three of his colleagues, ostensibly to celebrate fifty years since they began working together but in fact because Sir Warwick Montfort is dying of cancer. Over the course of dinner they reminisce about their times in the service and each of them comes up with a story in which they encountered the Sixth Doctor. Guy Oliver met him in Hong Kong in December 1975 when the Doctor and Mel hijack a surveillance station so that she can play a game against The Rainbow, an intergalactic gaming cartel who are attempting to steal Earth's twentieth century. Mel wins and alerts the appropriate authorities about The Rainbow's identities and activities. Angus McCloud recalls meeting the Doctor earlier in 1986. His grandson Toby had invited him to a video shoot as part of a promotion for a health bar called Sure-to Slim. When one of the six lycra-clad lovelies fails to show up Peri is persuaded to join the shoot and spends her time strenuously working out while cameras zoom in and out of her cleavage. She is constantly distracted and looking at her watch. When the girls are instructed to eat the health bar as part of the next routine her distraction becomes terror. In the nick of time The Doctor arrives with armed police and soldiers. He apologises to Peri for being late (the answer machine was not working) and reveals the health bar as containing a blue alien telepathic creature intent on world domination. Montfort's story dates back to 1957 when he was informed there was a mole in the department and he was told to track him down. After partially decoding a message he thinks he knows the identity of the mole and sets off on a cruise ship to eradicate him. Before he can do so he is accosted by Evelyn Smythe who claims to have come back to give him the true transcript of the coded message and prevent a ghastly error. The Doctor then appears to lead her away. These stories are all recounted in a letter to 'Samantha.' Edward apologises to her for not believing her thirty years earlier when she told him she woke up one night, in bed with Edward, only to see 'Monty' with a gun in their cabin. Although Monty never mentioned their affair it ended soon afterwards.

The doctor arrives in London in 2025 and finds that nothing much has progressed technologically since the mid-1990s. Unusually, everyone seems to recognise him, several children are dressed as him and most of the residents are grateful to a minor race of aliens, the Benanki, who are the benevolent masters of the planet. After tracking down John Grainger the doctor finds that Edward Grainger published his memoirs in the nineteen-nineties. They were responsible for a change in the way society viewed itself. The awareness of the doctor's benign presence as well as the frequent alien incursions into Earth history caused much of the optimism and ambition out of the human psyche, causing the race to atrophy. In a bid to prevent this the Doctor heads back to the nineties and gains employment as Grainger's assistant. Through many and varied means he impedes the writing of the memoirs. Throughout this process Edward is coming to the realisation that many of the key moments in his life have involved the intervention of a series of men called the Doctor. Their unchanging appearance across the decades leads him to the assumption that they are either ageless or time travellers, or possibly both. In another intuitive leap he recognises 'John Smith' as the man he knew as 'The Professor' in China, realises that he, too, is another Doctor and then comes to the conclusion that they are, in fact, different manifestations of the same man. The Doctor decides to come clean, confesses everything, and warns Edward that the completion and publication of the memoirs will end in the demise of the human race. As such, Grainger elects to abandon the manuscript but begs the Doctor to enter his mind and wipe all the memories of their involvement with each other. The Doctor reluctantly agrees and takes his farewell, leaving with the weighty manuscript tucked under his coat.

Saturday June 24 2006. Sixteen years after leaving the White Rabbit and meeting the Doctor (She Won't Be Home) Linda Grainger has received a note asking her to return to the pub. Although this is a different Doctor she recognises him immediately. In a way she blames him for her father's (accidental) death, her life since meeting him (marriage, a daughter, divorce). The Doctor asks her to take him to Edward to say goodbye. In the residential home Edward is growing forgetful. He has even forgotten who Linda is, but as soon as he sees the Doctor he punches him on the nose. The doctor gets Linda's permission to take Edward on one last great adventure where he will remember everything. In the TARDIS the Doctor projects all of Edward's locked-up memories onto the ceiling. Edward falls asleep and in a dream is called by a voice into the recesses of the TARDIS to a tomb shaped like a closed eye. Leaning against a stone staff for support he accidentally releases the Master. When Edward wakes up the TARDIS is in London, 24 June 1906 and the Master has left the TARDIS. The Doctor and Edward see Lawrence Grainger drunkenly leave the Houses of Parliament and head for home. Meanwhile a serpent is forcing its way from a mirror into Sir George Steer and swallowing his soul. The Doctor and Edward enter the Grainger residence through the tradesman's entrance and save the baby Edward from the murderous intentions of The Master (in George Steer's body) with the intervention of Violet's rolling pin. As they leave Violet runs out to ask them what happened and Edward kisses her. He remembers that she died the day after he was born. They return to the TARDIS, the Doctor laughing at the most evil Time Lord in the universe beaten by a maid's rolling pin. The TARDIS cannot locate the Master and Edward breathes his last. In 2006, back in the White Rabbit, Linda Grainger hears the news from the Doctor and tells him that she intends to make a difference with her life, becoming politically activated. She points out that the first meeting with the Doctor was after coming out of this pub and he speculates on its continuous occurrence in the lives of his colleagues and companions before concluding that, 'It's just a pub.' In 1906 Violet left the same pub and headed into the fog with her fiancé, not noticing the green shimmer in his eyes.