The Second Doctor and Jamie

The Second Doctor and his travelling companion Jamie McCrimmon are temporarily travelling without fellow companion Victoria Waterfield, who is away studying graphology, when they decide to visit Joinson Dastari who is the Head of Projects on space station Camera in the Third Zone. The Doctor is on a mission for the Time Lords to question Dastari about some time travel experiments being carried out by Professors Kartz and Reimer. Whilst in Dastari's office they meet Chessene o' the Franzine Grig, an Androgum. The Androgums are a race of voracious gourmands who serve as cooks and menials, but Chessene has been technologically augmented nine times by Dastari, giving her increased intelligence.

Chessene though has betrayed the scientists, on the space station, to the Sontarans. She has offered Group Marshal Stike, the commander of the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, the Kartz-Reimer time module to help his race in their continuing war against the Rutans. Chessene drugs the scientists on the space station and sabotages the space station’s defences so that the Sontarans can attack in their battle cruisers. When they arrive they kill almost everyone aboard. They capture the Second Doctor, whom they intend to dissect in the hope of discovering the Time Lords secret of time travel.

One of Chessene’s fellow Androgums, Shockeye o' the Quawncing Grig, suggests that they all head for Earth. This is so he can savour the delicacy of human flesh. Chessene agrees, as Group Marshal Stike has also suggested that planet because the Sontarans are planning an attack in the Madillon Cluster and Earth is within convenient range. Therefore, taking the Second Doctor with them, Chessene, Shockeye, Dastari and Sontaran Major Varl arrive near the Spanish city of Seville. There they occupy a large hacienda owned by an old lady, the Dona Arana, who becomes Shockeye’s first human victim. While setting up their equipment they are unaware that their arrival has been observed by Oscar Botcherby, an unemployed English actor, and Anita, his Spanish girlfriend, who are in the area collecting moths.

The Sixth Doctor and Peri

Meanwhile, the Sixth Doctor and his travelling companion, Peri, are on a peaceful fishing trip. However, when they return to the TARDIS, Peri is alarmed when the Sixth Doctor undergoes a strange fainting spell - caused by his second incarnation being tortured by the Sontarans back on the space station. The Sixth Doctor soon regains his strength. Realising that he has had a vision of his second incarnation being put to death, and that since he is still alive, the Sixth Doctor is concerned that he may have died in the past and only exists now as a temporal anomaly. He therefore decides to consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can help.

Arriving at the space station, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are shocked to discover the carnage left by the Sontarans twelve days earlier. It has been made to look as if the Time Lords were responsible for the attack, a scenario which The Doctor is reluctant to accept. The space station’s computer though has its defences up, so The Doctor and Peri must find some way of getting into the control room and disabling it. They climb through the space station’s infrastructure, where Peri is attacked by a wild humanoid creature in rags. This though turns out to be Jamie who has become deranged after his narrow escape from the Sontarans’ attack and his subsequent abandonment in isolation on the space station.

Dastari

After recovering from being temporarily stunned by a defensive blast of vorum gas, The Doctor hypnotises Jamie and, restoring his sanity, learns what really happened in the attack on the space station. The Doctor then attempts to communicate telepathically with his second incarnation across space. He hears a tolling bell, identifying it as Santa Maria, the largest bell of the 25 in the Cathedral at Seville on Earth, and determines that his former self is about three miles away from it.

The TARDIS materialises near to the hacienda and the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Jamie meet Oscar and Anita. Oscar however, mistakes The Doctor’s TARDIS for a police box and so, assuming that they are plain-clothes policemen, he tells them what he and Anita have seen. The Doctor and his companions then attempt to rescue his other incarnation, who has been drugged, but each in turn is captured when Dastari, who at first appeared to be a prisoner of Chessene, turns out to be a willing conspirator.

Eager to discover the secrets of the Time Lords’ immunity to the dangers of time travel, Chessene threatens The Doctor’s companions until the Sixth Doctor is forced to reveal that all members of his race have a symbiotic print contained within their genes. In the hope that it will enable him to activate the Kartz-Reimer time module, which Group Marshal Stike has now brought to Earth in his spaceship, Dastari begins a series of operations on the Second Doctor to discern this code. He is interrupted, however, as Chessene changes her plan: she now wants the Second Doctor implanted with Androgum genes, to turn him into a consort for herself. When Dastari performs the first stage of this operation, the Second Doctor begins to transform into an Androgum and develops a huge appetite.

Peri

But Chessene has intended all along to double-cross the Sontarans, and she attacks them with canisters of coronic acid. Major Varl is killed, but a wounded Group Marshal Stike manages to escape. Mistakenly believing the briode-nebuliser within the Kartz-Reimer module to have been primed by The Doctor’s Rassilon Imprimatur, Group Marshal Stike attempts to use the device to rejoin his troops in battle. However, he is badly injured, when it severely burns him. As a result of this he tries to return to his spaceship forgetting about the self-destruct that had earlier been set by Major Varl. When the spaceship explodes Group Marshal Stike is killed in the blast. Meanwhile the Sixth Doctor, with Peri and Jamie, escape from the hacienda and they follow the Second Doctor and Shockeye into Seville, where they have gone to find a restaurant in which to sate their gargantuan appetites.

Chessene and Dastari are also searching Seville for the Androgums, but the Sixth Doctor finds them first as he is led to the restaurant due to the alien genes in his former body beginning to have an effect on him. The restaurant, Las Cadenas, is being run by Oscar, who is stabbed to death by Shockeye when he won't accept a twenty Narg note in payment for the meal. The Second Doctor collapses at the table, his body finally rejecting the Androgum genes as Dastari had not been able to perform the stabilising operation. As they leave the restaurant, both incarnations of The Doctor, Peri and Jamie are recaptured by Chessene and Dastari.

Back at the hacienda, the Sixth Doctor uses Peri to trick Chessene into believing that the briode-nebuliser has now been correctly primed. He then escapes and goes to the kitchen to save Jamie, who Shockeye has been given permission to eat. The Sixth Doctor, however, is wounded by Shockeye, and is then pursued outside by the cleaver-wielding Androgum. The Sixth Doctor is forced to kill his attacker, using a cyanide-soaked pad from Oscar’s moth-collecting kit, which he finds by a tree. Back at the hacienda Chessene sees The Doctor’s blood on the ground and starts licking it. Watching this Dastari realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene is still an Androgum. As her bestial nature resurfaces he decides to free the Second Doctor, Peri and Jamie. But when Chessene discovers this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She then attempts to escape in the time module, not realising that the Sixth Doctor had tricked her, and is killed by molecular disintegration.

With Dastari, the Androgums and the Sontarans all killed, the now-recovered Second Doctor summons his TARDIS, with a Stattenheim remote control, and he and Jamie depart. As the Sixth Doctor and Peri head off to their TARDIS, Peri hesitantly enquires if they are going fishing again and The Doctor tells her that, from now on, it is a vegetarian diet for both of them.