On the Road to Paris

The Doctor, Susan, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton arrive in what they believe to be England. However, it is soon clear that the TARDIS has brought the four time travellers to France in 1794 - one of the bloodiest years of the French Revolution.

They have arrived in a wood twelve kilometres from Paris. Nearby they come across a run-down farmhouse. When they venture inside they find the farmhouse contains clothes - some of which are put to good use by the travellers - and fake papers. The travellers deduce that the building is being used as a staging post in an escape chain for counter-revolutionaries who have been rescued from the guillotine.

Before long a band of revolutionary soldiers arrive and believing them to be counter-revolutionaries they capture Ian, Barbara, and Susan. They are taken to the Conciergerie Prison in Paris where they will then face the guillotine. The parting action of the soldiers is to set fire to the farmhouse – unaware that The Doctor is still inside.

A Long Walk to Paris

The Doctor having been left for dead in a burning farmhouse is rescued by a young boy who tells him his friends have been taken to the Conciergerie Prison in Paris. The Doctor sets off after them and, after a brief period press-ganged into a road mending crew for lack of papers, he eventually reaches Paris.

Things are looking grim for Ian, Barbara and Susan. They are all sentenced to death as traitors without a chance to speak in their own defence, and are all promised the guillotine for their crimes. Ian though manages to escape from the prison, much to the alarm of the incompetent jailer.

Barbara and Susan in Prison

Barbara and Susan are eventually rescued en-route to the guillotine by Jules Renan and Jean - two organisers of an escape chain. Ian however, eventually meets up with his friends at Renan's house, and later exposes one of the man's associates, Leon Colbert, as a traitor betraying escapees to the authorities.

Ian, Barbara and Susan have found themselves caught up in the machinations of an English undercover spy, James Stirling - alias Lemaitre. Meanwhile The Doctor, posing as a civic dignitary, has arrived at the Conciergerie Prison in search of his friends. Twice he is brought before the great tyrant, Robespierre himself, and has to talk himself out of trouble.

When Susan finds herself recaptured Barbara and Ian agree to assist Lemaitre in return for his help in freeing her. Ian and Barbara journey to an inn called the Sinking Ship to spy on a clandestine meeting between Robespierre's deputy and an even more ambitious man, Napoleon Bonaparte, who are plotting the tyrant's downfall.

Ian Chesterton

They subsequently report back to Stirling and as events reach their climax Robespierre is overthrown after being shot in the jaw. With his rule ended he is dragged off to prison, to await the time when he will be guillotined himself.

With Susan rescued the four travellers are all re-united at last. They then slip quietly away and return to the TARDIS in the wood.