'The American Adventures'

An invisible spacecraft turns up at the Battle of New Orleans, an alien presence is detected at the 1944 D-Day landings, and ghosts take over New York’s subway tunnels in the early 1900s…

Join the Twelfth Doctor as he visits new eras, meets new people and saves new places in these awesome USA adventure.

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'All That Glitters'
by James Goss

The Doctor arrives in a frontier town in California, 1849, where he learns from the local blacksmith, Jesse Hayward, that prospector Josh Langham has been behaving oddly by stealing scrap metal, wood and leather, and how his eyes had turned solid black. The Doctor leads Jesse, Sherriff Harlan and a posse of men on horseback to find Josh; finding the prospector’s abandoned campsite by the river, they follow his trail further up into the hills. The party eventually find Josh sitting beside the trail, so the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to restore the man’s mind. When Josh explains that he found a small silver object, which clouded his mind and took control of his body, the Doctor recognises the object as a storage chamber for an alien mind; he then sends everyone back to the town, and runs off to see what the possessed Josh had been compelled to construct. The Doctor soon encounters the alien, its mind now inhabiting a crude body constructed from scrap; the creature refuses the Doctor’s offer of a lift home, telepathically explaining that it has been exiled for crimes committed against its people; the alien plans to take over the population of Earth, creating an army that will enable it to become leader of its own planet. The criminal tries to attack the Doctor, but the wily Time Lord lures it over the edge of a precipice; toppling over the edge, the creature’s body falls and smashes to pieces, the alien’s mind dissipating harmlessly into the air…

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'Off the Trail'
by David Llewellyn

In 1846, young Hattie Seymour and her parents are part of a wagon train heading for a new life in Oregon. One night, a vicious dust storm swirls up around the circled wagons…and when the Seymours wake the next morning, the other wagons have vanished, and there is no trace of their campfire. The family continue along what they think is the Oregon Trail, but still find no trace of the other wagons. After stopping for the night, they are menaced by a giant metal spider, which attacks Hattie. The creature is stopped by a man calling himself the Doctor, who destroys the spider with his metal wand. The Doctor explains that the Seymours’ wagon and his TARDIS have been teleported aboard a huge spaceship belonging to a race of aggressive colonisers called the Belamine. Using his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor removes the Belamine’s mind conditioning, allowing the Seymours to see their true surroundings, the giant hold of an alien spaceship. The Doctor notes that the ship is automated, crewed only by the robot spiders, which have brought the humans aboard for studying, an assessment that will inform the Belamines’ plan to invade Earth. With the aid of his sonic, the Doctor opens a door and leads the Seymours through several corridors towards the control centre, fighting off spider robots as they go. Reaching the control centre, the Doctor erases his presence from the ship’s systems, making it look like the humans escaped and dealt with the spiders all on their own, proving the will be too formidable for the Belamines to attack. The Doctor then reprograms the ship’s teleport system, returning the Seymours, their wagon and horses back to the Oregon Trail mere seconds after they were abducted. With the humans now safely home, and the Belamines warned away from Earth, the Doctor departs in the TARDIS…

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'Ghosts of New York'
by Jenny Colgan

While visiting New York City in 1902, the Doctor learns from a newspaper that workers digging and building a new subway tunnel have reported seeing ghosts. With the aid of his psychic paper, the Doctor convinces the subway boss that he is a renowned psychic investigator. Given access to investigate the tunnels, the Doctor takes a group of men to search the area the ghostly sightings centre upon; they soon encounter a ghost, which sends all but one of the men fleeing in terror. Continuing down the tunnel with the bravest worker, Tom, the Doctor finds the way blocked by more ghosts; however, he and Tom are able to walk through the apparitions, and quickly come to the source of the energy reading the Doctor has tracked with a small device. Tom digs away a section of the wall, revealing the hull of a spaceship, buried deep under the city; after Tom finds the opening mechanism, he follows the Doctor inside the ship, which appears both mineral and organic in structure. They discover a room full of cubicles, each containing mummified figures, the remains of alien tourists whose sleep pods have broken down over the centuries of waiting. The Doctor accesses the control system of the crashed tourist ship, intending to shut down the automated psychic defence system that is creating the ghosts from the thoughts of the construction workers in order to scare them away; but then more ghosts appear – and this time they are solid, and able to pull the Doctor away from the controls. While Tom distracts the ghosts, the Doctor manages to fix the tourist ship’s systems and set it on a course back to its home planet. As the vessel’s engines prepare for launch, the Doctor and Tom run for their lives back down the tunnels; they reach the surface just in time to watch as the ship blasts up through the waste ground above it, and fly up into the sky. With the ghostly apparitions now ended, the Doctor leaves Tom with his friends, to continue their work on the tunnels in peace…

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'Taking the Plunge'
by Justin Richards

When the Doctor visits Florida’s Adventure World theme park in 2017, his interest is piqued after he notices one family in particular, who seemed happy moments ago but who now appear utterly drained and exhausted. Learning that their instant fatigue started while on the ‘Space Plunge’ ride, the Doctor decides to investigate. After queuing for ages, the Doctor gets a go on the ride; although he is unimpressed by whizzing through a representation of space, the Time Lord is interested to see how his fellow passengers change from over-excited to total lethargy during the experience. Noting how this happens to everyone else taking the ride - eager before and exhausted afterwards - the Doctor gains access to the back of the ride through a maintenance door. Making his way up ladders and across scaffolding he reaches the section of ride for the final plunge, where he finds a device linked to the track that drains the life force of humans. The Doctor is able to reverse the machine so that it reroutes the stolen energy back to its hosts, but then he is discovered by a maintenance worker named Tunbridge, and taken at gunpoint to the man’s office. Here Tunbridge reveals that he is a businessman from the planet Bellcazario, who has been harvesting human life essence to sell to his people as a revitaliser; however, when he sees that his control system’s capacitors are now reading zero, he becomes furious at the Doctor’s interference. The Doctor manages to escape, and after locking Tunbridge in his office he returns to the ride and removes some of the alien’s equipment. Tracking down Tunbridge’s spaceship, the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to get inside, assembles the stolen kit and hides it under the pilot’s chair. The Doctor leaves the vessel just before Tunbridge arrives, and watches as the alien boards the vessel and blasts off for home. Inside, Tunbridge suddenly finds himself very sleepy, dosing off before he fully realises what the Doctor has done… Back in the park, the Doctor rewards himself with an ice cream, pleased that the family he saw earlier are back to normal again…

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'Spectator Sport'
by Justin Richards

The TARDIS’s malfunctioning systems land the Doctor in January 1815, during the Battle of in New Orleans. Using his sonic screwdriver for scanning, the Doctor attracts the attention of a woman named Guide Mellors, who mistakes him for one of the alien tourists her company has brought to watch the battle between the American and English forces. Once Mellors has taken the Doctor to her spaceship, hidden from view behind a shimmer screen, she realises her mistake – particularly when her visitor voices his displeasure at selling tickets to watch humans kill each other. The Doctor is about to storm off when there is a scream; he and Mellors rush to its source and find the Throne Lord of Cassakna lying unconscious in his room, the victim of a strangulation attempt. The Doctor agrees to help identify the would-be murderer, and lies in wait for them to return to the Throne Lord’s room to finish the job. The plan works and the killer soon comes back to the scene of the crime – but when the Doctor literally pulls the rug from under the intruder, he discovers that his opponent is a robot. The Doctor leads the automaton a merry chase through the ship and out onto the battlefield, where he manages to lure it into the path of a falling cannonball. With the robot smashed to pieces, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS to inform Guide Mellors that the menace has been dealt with. The Doctor knows that whilst he cannot get Mellor to stop using war as spectator sport, he can still do his best to prevent as much unnecessary conflict as he can…

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'Base of Operation'
by Justin Richards

The TARDIS detects an anachronistic transmat signal in use in 1944 USA, which the Doctor tracks to an army base. Posing as an inspector from General Eisenhower, the Doctor gains access to the base and meets its commander, General Hayman, quickly spotting that he is not what he seems. After a quick tour of the base confirms the Doctor’s suspicions of alien infiltration, he returns to General Hayman’s office, where he uses his sonic screwdriver to unmask the soldier’s real form, that of a giant lizard. Identifying itself as Reginta of the Valbrect race, the creature helpfully explains its plans to invade Earth, and how the soldiers the Valbrect have replaced are being kept in stasis aboard their mothership for later uses as slaves. Escaping from the lizard’s clutches, the Doctor convinces the general’s second-in-command, Colonel Preston, of the alien infiltration; the Doctor then sets his sonic screwdriver on a wide beam to unmask the rest of the disguised invaders. While Preston and his men deal with the Valbrect soldiers, the Doctor gains access to the transmat hidden in the general’s room, reprogramming its bio-scanner so that it swaps the aliens for the kidnapped soldiers. With the Valbrect banished to their mothership and the human soldiers - and the real General Hayman - returned to their base, the Doctor restores the transmat system to its original settings and then sends a huge bridge-buster bomb onto the bridge of the Valbrect mothership. Under threat of destruction if they stay, the Valbrect have no choice but to leave Earth and never return. Satisfied the aliens have gone, the Doctor destroys the transmat and leaves the Americans get on with winning their war.

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Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor

*Published by Penguin for BBC Books