In the Trenches

The TARDIS materialises in the middle of what appears to be a First World War battlefield. As shells begin to fall, The Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot are forced to seek shelter in a bomb crater. With more shells falling around them it seems they are in danger of being seriously hurt. Rescue though comes in the form of an ambulance, driven by Lady Jennifer Buckingham, who explains that they are in no-man's land. She offers them a lift to the British lines.

The ambulance though is captured by German troops which are then overpowered by a group of British soldiers, led by a Lieutenant Carstairs. Once in the British trenches the time travellers are keen to return to the TARDIS but instead they are accused of being enemy spies and are sent to General Smythe's HQ in a nearby chateau. After a rigged court martial, General Smythe orders Jamie to be sent to the Highland regiment for a further court martial. Zoe is to be sent to a civilian prison while The Doctor is to be shot, by a firing squad, the following morning.

During the night, Zoe manages to sneak into General Smythe's empty bedroom looking for the keys to the cells so that she can rescue her friends. Instead she discovers a hidden monitor mounted on a wall hidden behind a painting. The following morning The Doctor is brought before a firing squad. His execution is interrupted by a sudden German attack. The Doctor and Zoe manage to escape so enabling them to search for Jamie, who is being held in a nearby military prison. So as to gain access The Doctor and Zoe pretend to be war office inspectors and manage to get Jamie brought to them. However, before they can escape they are caught and taken back to the chateau. There they find that Lieutenant Carstairs and Jennifer feel that the court martial was unfair. Zoe tells them about the device in General Smythe's quarters. However, when they sneak into the General's room, and Zoe reveals the monitor, Jennifer and Lieutenant Carstairs cannot see the machine at first but The Doctor urges them to look harder and the monitor slowly fades into view.

Zoe and Jamie

At first they are unaware that General Smythe is watching the events from the other end of the monitor's connection. When they realise they are being watched they flee the chateau in the ambulance and head for the edge of Lieutenant Carstairs' map. As they approach where the map ends the ambulance drives through a heavy mist and when they emerge they find themselves under attack from a Roman legion. They quickly reverse back through the mist until they are back where they started. The Doctor deduces correctly that the mist is a gateway joining different zones in time. He tells his friends that they must locate a map of all the zones so that they can find those controlling the war games. This they manage to do back at the chateau by overpowering the guards and then blowing open General Smythe's safe. They find that General Smythe's map is divided up into triangular zones with a blank triangle in the centre. The Doctor deduces that those responsible for the zones must be controlling them from there and so this is were they must get to so as to stop them.

In the central control area an alien being, known as The War Chief, learns about The Doctor and his friends and orders that they must be captured and interrogated. And so after being captured by the Germans, escaping and arriving in the American civil war zone, they discover how those controlling the war games travel between the zones. As they rest for the night in a barn a strange box suddenly appears and a large number of hypnotised American Union and Confederate soldiers disembark. The Doctor and Zoe enter the machine to investigate but without warning the box closes up and then fades away leaving Jamie and Jennifer behind. Inside the box The Doctor and Zoe find that they are in a time/space machine, just like the TARDIS, filled with hypnotised soldiers from many different Earth wars. Called a SIDRAT, The Doctor plans to stow away inside until the ship finally returns to its base - the central control area located at the centre of the map.

Jamie "The Other Leader"

The Doctor is about to discover they have arrived on a planet where a group of Aliens have been gathering soldiers from different wars in Earth's history, who are then brainwashed and put to battle with the aim of forming an invincible army from the survivors so that they can be used to take over the galaxy. Headed by The War Lord he is assisted by a Security Chief and The War Chief - the latter of whom The Doctor quickly recognises as a member of his own race. Despite providing the SIDRATs, which are essential to The War Lord’s scheme, the War Chief secretly plans to double-cross the Aliens and seize power for himself.

On learning of the War Chief's duplicity The War Lord has him shot. By this time, however, The Doctor, is aided by a band of human resistance fighters who have shaken off the Aliens' control. This enables him to put a stop to the war games. The Doctor intends to use the SIDRATs to send all the soldiers back, to where they originally came from, but he discovers that only two machines have any power left in them making this impossible. This his leaves him with a huge dilemma - he has no way of returning all the human soldiers to their proper times and places without calling for help. Help that has to come from members of his own race - the Time Lords...

This he does. And so the Time Lords throw a force-field around The War Lord and his guards. Their sentence is that their home planet will also be enclosed by a force field and cut off from the universe forever, whilst The War Lord and his accomplices are dematerialised out of existence. The Time Lords then move their attention onto The Doctor.

The War Chief

The Doctor himself has to pay the price for requesting help from his own kind. He explains to Jamie and Zoe that he has been on the run from them and that now he has revealed his position they will track him down. They try to escape in the TARDIS but they are too late. However hard he tries escape is impossible.

And so the TARDIS materialises on his home world and he is taken prisoner and placed on trial for the crime of interfering in the affairs of other races. The Doctor argues that although he is guilty of breaking the law of non-interference, the Time Lords themselves are also guilty of failing to use their powers to help others. After deliberating they accept his plea that evil needs fighting and so when they pass sentence they decided to send The Doctor to Earth in the twentieth-century with the secret of the TARDIS taken from him. His travelling companions Jamie and Zoe, meanwhile, are returned to their rightful times with their memories erased. They will only remember their first adventure with The Doctor.

Before being dispatched to begin his exile, The Doctor is told that he must again take on a new appearance. The Doctor though refuses each suggestion for his new appearance until eventually the Time Lords decide to choose his next appearance for him. And so The Doctor starts to regenerate…