'Short Trips': 'Destination Prague' edited by Steven Savile

Prague has its demons - a city saved from the ravages of war and the Third Reich because of its beauty, it is home to Rabi Loew's Golem, Rudolph II's obsession with finding the elixir of youth, scientific genius in the form of Kepler and Tycho Brahe, and the alchemical obsessions of Magister Kelly.

It is believed that there are magnetic energies whose lines intersect in Prague at several spots. Astronomy, astrology, numerology and magnetic forces have all played a role in building the city - but how will they influence its future?

This is the city rich in history, and full of potential - how will it adapt over the centuries to come? Will it have a glamorous rebirth or wallow in a dystopic nightmare? And what will be the role of the old superstitions in the new world?

For the Doctor and his companions, the answers to these questions are only just the start of further mysteries…

Featuring stories by Stel Pavlou, Brian Keene, Keith R. A. DeCandido, James Swallow, Sean Williams and many more!

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'Midnight in the Café of the Black Madonna' by Sean Williams

Caught in a temporal trap, the TARDIS materialises in Prague, where the Doctor is immediately captured by a military race of armoured elephant-like aliens known as the Crei Imperative. Now a prisoner of the recently-promoted pachyderm Sergeant Kandula, the Doctor learns that the Crei are searching the city for a valuable component known as the ‘Tipping Device’, a single atom of the isotope Gold-197 that was lost in a hyperspace collision with a specific section of Earth; the entire section of Prague has since been taken out of the space / time continuum and brought aboard the aliens’ gigantic spacecraft, its populace left behind so that the Crei can search unhindered. The Doctor offers to help Kan locate the component, and together they search the city; however, the Time Lord soon surmises that the device is in fact a trigger for a weapon, and her refuses to cooperate any more. After fighting off several Crei warriors with his Venusian Aikido, the Doctor holds Kan at gunpoint; but the elephantine alien reveals that he no longer wants to kill people, and goes along with his captor’s plans in order to solve the situation. The Doctor buys them both time by tricking Kan’s superior, Commander Ezredhard, into searching the city’s Astronomical Clock; as Ezredhard restarts the timepiece, the Doctor and Kan race for the safety of the TARDIS, but Kan is mortally wounded during their escape. The Doctor uses his space / time ship to reverse the Crei’s temporal field, returning Prague to its rightful place on Eart, and trapping the soldiers aboard their own vessel. A dying Kan reveals that it was he who stole the trigger; blaming its disappearance on the collision, he failed to realise how determined Ezredhard was to retrieve it, and so he later hid it inside the Doctor’s jacket. After Kan has passed away, the Doctor takes the Crei’s body and the trigger and leaves them resting in the safety of the void at the end of time…

Notes:
*Featuring the Third Doctor

*Time-placing: this story takes place immediately after the events of ‘The Green Death’

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'Room For Improvement' by James A. Moore

When the TARDIS takes the Doctor and his companions to Prague in the year 2908, the Doctor sets off with Ian to find some of the city’s famed goulash. The city is currently in a political war over evolution, and the three sides involved – the Technologist Front, the Metamorphosis Front and the Naturalist Front – are all involved in a local election. The Doctor and Ian soon discover that a ‘Blue Plague’ is sweeping the city, sending its inhabitants into a comatose state; immediately heading for a nearby hospital, the Doctor carries out his own research and learns that the plague is man-made, and uses minute nanobots designed to infect anyone not treated with a certain nanovirus. Ian succumbs to the infection, but the Doctor manages to develop a cure, and after saving his friend he then inoculates everyone in the hospital. The Doctor declares that the plague was deliberately designed to incapacitate anyone not a Technologist, thereby ensuring that the election would tip in that faction’s favour. With the truth exposed, the Doctor leaves the cure with one of the hospital’s doctors, and then sets off with Ian to find his goulash.

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor and Ian

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'Life From Lifelessness' by Keith R.A. DeCandido

Two young women, Stefnee and Jwana, leave their home on Luna to visit the old city of Prague on Earth. Entering an ancient synagogue known as the Altneuschul, they meet the elderly Rabbi Donnig, who tells them a story concerning one of his predecessors, Rabbi Bursten, at a time when the city was under occupation by a race of alien invaders called the Wronsdehj. While forced to work for her alien oppressors, Bursten met a mysterious man called the Doctor and his two companions, a woman named Romana, and K-9, a robot dog; using the Golden Golem of Prague – a creature created out of alien clay found and transformed by the Maharal in the Sixteenth Century, and originally encountered by the Doctor while in his first incarnation – Bursten and the strange trio were able to defeat the alien invaders and free the city.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9, and the First Doctor and Susan

*Time-placing: the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9 are currently looking for the Key To Time, while the First Doctor and Susan still travelling on their own, just prior to settling down on Earth in Shoreditch

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'The Long Step Backward' by Mike W. Barr

The Doctor, Vicki and Steven arrive at the Charles University in Prague in 2348, just in time for the faculty’s festivities for the one-thousandth anniversary of its founding by the Emperor Charles VI. Joining Professor Fox and his students for the celebrations, the Doctor and his friends are startled by the arrival of an escaped monkey; offering to help one of the students, Miss Childress, return the animal to its cage, Steven soon discovers that the woman is up to no good: the ape is in fact the caretaker, Jimson. However before he can act, Steven is knocked unconscious by Miss Childress, who then activates a device that causes the city’s Astronomical Clock to run backwards; as time reverses, everyone at the ceremony is devolved first into a primate, and then further back along their evolutionary chain. As the Doctor transforms into a prehistoric creature, he attempts to confront Miss Childress; it seems that the psychotic student is resentful at being passed over for promotion, and is devolving her peers so that she can become the most intelligent person at the school. After the Doctor manages to destroy the ‘devolution wave’ machine, Jimson seizes Miss Childress’ hand-held version of the device and turns her into first an ape, then a fish, a protozoa and finally a ball of light, which then vanishes. With everyone now reverted to their normal selves, the Doctor and his companions leave them to their celebrations.

Notes:
*Featuring the First Doctor, Vicki and Steven

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'Strange Attractor' by Paul Kupperberg

While peace talks take place in the city of Prague, which is now protected from the war waging outside by a huge translucent dome, the Doctor and Peri enjoy a quiet coffee at a small café. The Doctor reveals that at some point soon the city will fall into a temporary autonomous zone – a bubble in time-space. Sure enough the city is transported elsewhere, but instead of returning moments later, it remains in the TAZ, and quickly starts to decay. As the once beautiful buildings crumble the Doctor and Peri meet a man named Anarchy, who is the physical manifestation of entropy. As Prague disintegrates further into dust, the Doctor manipulates the Quantum Ley Lines that intersect the city, attracting Anarchy towards him and causing the being to succumb to entropy as well. Anarchy’s destruction annihilates the TAZ, returning Prague to its rightful place on Earth, and allowing the Doctor and Peri to finish their coffee.

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri

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'Gold and Black Ooze' by Robert Hood

Hoping to mend his broken fob watch by eliciting the service of the great watchmakers of Prague, the Doctor sets the TARDIS on course for that fabled city in the year 4240; however, on arrival, he and Peri are surprised to find that the city looks as it did in 1689, the stars overhead are different, and the river Vltava is now a strange, black ooze. The two time-travellers then meet the famed watchmaker Slobeslav Stojespal, who warns them of a nightmarish creature known as the Nockrauler, which roams the city’s streets preying on its victims. His suspicions aroused, the Doctor sends Peri to retrieve some equipment from the TARDIS. On her way back to Slobeslav’s shop, Peri is pursued by police and accidentally falls into the river; sinking into its depths, she is taken over by an intelligence, which places her within the insect-like body of the Nockrauler. Learning of Peri’s disappearance, the Doctor turns to King Edmund for help; he explains to the monarch that the city is in fact a copy of the real Prague back on Earth, and that the planet they are actually on is a ball of primordial soup, which, thanks to a serendipitous rift in time-space created when the alchemist Richthausen turned lead into gold, is slowly evolving into a copy of Prague and its inhabitants. The Nockrauler is an artificial creature that reprogrammes the population according to the designs of the intelligence inhabiting the slime in the Vltava, a creature that wants Edmund to build a version of the Great Clock of Prague so that it can reopen the fracture for its own evil ends. Although initially sceptical to the Doctor’s wild claims, the king quickly changes his mind when the Nockrauler / Peri creature smashes into the castle. By appealing to Peri’s will, the Doctor retrieves the TARDIS component quickly builds a device to emit a negative energy pulse, which deconstructs the A.I. and frees his companion. With the intelligence thwarted, the Doctor and Peri set off to find the real Prague, leaving Edmund, Slobeslav and the rest of the ersatz city’s inhabitants to continue to grow unhindered…

Notes:
*Featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri

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'The Dogs of War' by Brian Keene

Arriving in Prague in the year 2406, the Doctor and Leela are immediately captured by a race of super-evolved dogs, the descendants of genetically-altered canines that were originally created as soldiers by the Globe Corporation. While the two time-travellers find themselves imprisoned in kennels along with the rest of the subservient human inhabitants of the city, an escaped captive named Ben comes across the TARDIS and makes friends with the Doctor’s robot dog, K-9. The computerised canine encourages Ben and the rest of his people to revolt against their oppressors, and together they storm the dogs’ complex, rescue the Doctor and Leela, and overthrow the oppressive Alpha Male and his soldiers. With the rest of the human prisoners released, the Doctor, Leela and K-9 leave Ben and his people to rebuild their city.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, Leela and K-9

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'Sunday Afternoon, 848,988 AD' by Paul Crilley

A boring Sunday afternoon in the TARDIS is rudely interrupted when, flying over the city of Prague in the year 848,988, the Doctor notices that the layout of the ancient roads spells “SOS” in Gallifreyan; when he and Ace investigate, they are surprised to encounter two of the Doctor’s old acquaintances from the Sixteenth Century, John Dee and Edward Kelley. The two men explain that they are clearing the roads at the behest of an angel named Uriel, and take the Doctor and Ace to meet him; however, Uriel reveals that he is in fact a Time Lord, stranded on Earth since his arrival in 1380; he used his superior knowledge to become an influential architect to ensure that the roads of Prague be built to his design as a call for help. The Doctor offers to take Uriel home, but the old man promptly seizes control of the TARDIS, dematerialising the ship and leaving the Doctor and Ace stranded. However, when the TARDIS reappears moments later and another Doctor and Ace step out dragging Dee and Kelley’s unconscious forms, the Doctor realises that Uriel has become caught in a paradoxical time loop – in fact Uriel is not a Time Lord at all, but a long-lived alien called a Raagr’an. When the TARDIS reappears and Uriel unwittingly steps out, the Doctor and Ace leave in their ship, abandoning Uriel and dooming him to repeat his actions ever more. After making sure that all the loose ends are tidied up, the Doctor and Ace return Dee and Kelley to their proper time.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace

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'Nanomophosis' by Stephen Dedman

When the TARDIS takes the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to the Torture Museum of Prague in the Twenty-Seventh Century, they find a real corpse amongst the exhibits. Arrested by a suspicious synthetic policeman, Inspector Rychtar, the trio learn that the entire city has been steadily replaced by nanomorphs, microscopic machines capable of manipulating matter, and now is effectively alive. After viewing surveillance recordings of the museum, Rychtar confirms that the victim, university Professor Hrabal, was in fact murdered by robots, and he immediately turns to the Doctor and his friends for help. The Doctor’s investigations lead him to the realisation that Hrabal was killed in the style of the Kafka novel, ‘In the Penal colony’, while a second victim, assistant librarian Bedrich Polak is found transformed into a huge beetle as per the story ‘Metamorphosis’, and when a statue of Kafka comes alive and tries to kill Sarah and Harry, and the famous ‘Dancing Building’ stomps on Polak just as he is writing the name of his killer, it becomes apparent that the killer has somehow found a way to hack into the nanomorphs for his murderous ends. Using Polak’s final message and the fact that the Building was a bad dancer, the Doctor and Rychtar set a trap for the well-read killer by auditioning for a full-time research assistant with dancing skills. The murderer is revealed to be a disgruntled student with a grudge against his more erudite victims, and, in a piece of poetic justice, is sentenced by Rychtar for rehabilitation inside a virtual reality environment.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry

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'Spoilsport' by Paul Finch

As the Doctor returns Jo to U.N.I.T. HQ, the TARDIS is hijacked and brought to Prague in 2221. Leaving the ship, the two time-travellers find themselves in a vast necropolis, the Vysehrad Cemetery, where they encounter an old adversary of the Doctor’s: Benek Chaloupka, a mischievous showman with a predilection for debunking all forms of magic and mystery. Chaloupka explains that the cemetery is part of his latest business venture, ‘Marvels Less Mystifying’, and that he has called on the Doctor for help because he believes his exhibition has suddenly become haunted for real. Grudgingly agreeing to help investigate, the Doctor and Jo begin searching the various displays on show, which depict famous mysteries and marvels, and the secrets that explain them; they soon encounter several nightmarish phantoms, which appear to be real, despite the Doctor’s insistance that they must have a rational explanation. While Chaloupka hides in fear from the phantasms, the Doctor realises that the apparitions are due to a Psion Orb once used in the showman’s mind-reading stage act; the crystal has been picking the dreams and nightmares of street children living nearby, and has been transmitting them throughout the exhibition. After the Doctor ends the ‘hauntings’ by smashing the sphere, a grateful Chaloupka hands over the remote control he used on the TARDIS and then basks in the publicity generated from recent events.

Notes:
*Featuring the Third Doctor and Jo

*Time-placing: the Doctor and Jo have only just returned from Peladon, setting this just after the events of 'The Curse of Peladon'

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'War in a Time of Peace' by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis

Arriving in Prague on Christmas Eve, 2064, the Doctor and Charley are surprised to find the city encased in a huge protective dome. After saving a police officer, Hingis, from being shot by a looter, the Doctor and Charley are arrested as spies by the ruthless Colonel Rijzki, who has declared martial law after a war apparently broke out outside the dome. Refusing to listen to the Doctor’s claims that there should not be a war at this point in time, Rijzki prepares to use lethal force to deal with his prisoners. However, Hingis mounts a rescue attempt to save her new friends, taking Rijski hostage at gunpoint and enabling them to reach the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Doctor pilots the ship outside the dome, where it quickly becomes apparent that there is no conflict – the dome was raised after a mistake arose out of a civil-defence exercise. Rijzki pragmatically accepts the situation, releasing his prisoners and offering Hingis a job. The dome is swiftly dropped, allowing the first snow of Christmas to fall on the city…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eighth Doctor and Charley

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'The End of Now' by Chris Roberson

When the Randomiser takes the TARDIS to Thirtieth Century Prague, the Doctor and Romana find evidence of time distortion. They trace the source of the disturbance to a laboratory in the city’s Academy, where Professor Kay Jepperson is in the final stages of constructing a time machine that utilises deadly zygma radiation. Stressed from the recent murders of his two assistants, Jepperson refuses to listen to the Doctor and Romana’s warnings, and promptly throws them out of the building. However, on the street outside, the two time-travellers encounter a second Jepperson, whose body has been hideously mutated from exposure to the lethal radiation. The Doctor and Romana learn that this Jepperson is from the future, and was thrown back in time 1,400 years by the effects of his time experiment; it seems that this version of the scientist is experiencing every moment of the last fourteen centuries simultaneously. Barely lucid from this ordeal, Jepperson explains that his attempts to warn his assistants ended in disaster when they were accidentally killed whilst fleeing from him in terror. In a final effort to save himself, Jepperson tries to convince his earlier self to put an end his work; however, the Doctor realises that the time machine has already been activated, and to stop it now would result in the destruction of Prague. Realising that he has no choice, Jepperson allows his earlier self to complete the experiment; as the younger Jepperson is sent hurtling back in time, the older Jepperson dies in the explosion, finally ending his existence in the ‘eternal now’…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana

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'Suspension of Disbelief' by Mary Robinette Kowal

Arriving in Prague in the year 2181, the Doctor meets a grief-stricken woman named Káya, whose husband, Dusan, has been sentenced to death for cutting down a tree to make a puppet, thereby contravening the deforestation act. The Doctor decides to help, and, by using sympathetic vibrations created by his sonic screwdriver, links Káya’s life-size marionette with a smaller doll, enabling the movement of one to affect the other. Transporting the TARDIS into the city’s prison, the Doctor whisks Dusan to safety, leaving the marionette in his place. The following morning, the trio watch as the marionette – manipulated using the smaller puppet – is executed, allowing Káya and Dusan to live happily ever after.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor

*Working title: 'Strings of Love'

*Time-placing: the Doctor is still mourning Adric's death, so this takes story place shortly after 'Earthshock'

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'Leap Second' by Bev Vincent

The Doctor and Peri arrive in Prague on New Year’s Eve, 2099, where the TARDIS’ instruments say there may / may not be a temporal anomaly. Attending the International Chronophysics Symposium at the Univerzita Karlova, the two time-travellers meet Techu, an old acquaintance of the Doctor’s from the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey. Techu is concerned that the midnight ceremony to add a leap second to the Univerzita’s cesium fountain atomic clock will result in disaster, warning that the alteration to measured time will resonate throughout the world’s computer systems and cause a meltdown that will bring about total chaos and the breakdown of civilisation. Discovering that Professor Theodore Hoffman of the Univerzita is an impostor, and is instead an alien Vaculik from the future whose people plan to invade in the forthcoming confusion, the Doctor, Peri and Techu activate the clock’s trigger device early, demonstrating its repercussions to the world before all the other clocks on the planet can be amended. With the invaders’ plan thwarted, the Doctor teleports Hoffman back to his shuttle and sends him on his way, and leaves Techu to continue his studies on Earth.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor and Peri

*Time-placing: this story takes place immediately after the Doctor and Peri's adventure at Wembley Stadium

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'Lady of the Snows' by James Swallow

When struggling artist Yon finds an attractive, amnesiac girl lying on the snow-bound streets of Prague, he takes her back to his home and nurses her back to health. The girl, whom Yon names “Libuse”, soon becomes his muse, her dreams of strange worlds and adventures providing him with the inspiration that his work has been lacking, and over the next few months the two fall in love. However, Yon also encounters a strangely-dressed man searching for his lost friend; each time the man is attacked by the snow, before vanishing into thin air. Not wanting to lose his lover, Yon chooses to keep Libuse’s real identity from her; but when he meets the stranger for a third time, Yon is astonished to learn that he is in fact a construct, living a trillion years in the future in a copy of Prague that has been created by a race of aliens for inclusion in their art gallery. The stranger, the Doctor, asks for Yon’s help in rescuing his friend, who is under threat from the aliens’ ‘caretakers’, the nanomolecular construct that forms the snow that permanently covers the city. Realising he has no choice, Yon reveals the truth to Libuse and leads her to the Doctor’s space-time ship; as Charley enters the vessel, her memories return, and she leaves to continue her travels with the Doctor. Yon remains behind in the fake Prague, drawing the truth behind it in his pictures…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eighth Doctor and Charley

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'The Time Eater' by Lee Battersby

Arriving in Prague, the Doctor and Jamie are attacked by an alien Hallanian that the Doctor met in 1606, and then fired upon by Russian Tanks. Realising that the city is being taken out of time, the Doctor surmises that the situation is being caused by a time-eating predator known as a Doredor. Making their way across an ever-changing landscape, the two travellers eventually locate the alien creature, but when the Doctor communicates with it by linking his sonic screwdriver with his recorder, he is distressed to learn that it is dying. When the Doctor sadly admits that there is nothing he can do to save the Doredor, Jamie insists that they at least give it a proper funeral; the Doctor agrees, and uses the TARDIS to send the creature to its final resting place in the heart of the sun.

Notes:
*Featuring the Second Doctor and Jaime

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'Fable Fusion' by Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder

When the Doctor receives an encrypted transdimensional call for help via the device he once left with U.N.I.T., he and Ace head off in the TARDIS for the origin of the S.O.S. Arriving in Prague in 2050, they meet Doctor Elizabeth Holub, the granddaughter of the Doctor’s former colleague, Liz Shaw. Elizabeth explains that she and her team are working on a new type of cold fusion, but their progress has been jeopardised by electrical instability strikes across the city, which are threatening the lives of the populace; Elizabeth also reveals that there have been numerous sightings of mythical creatures and people, which have the appearance of three-dimensional drawings. The Doctor and Ace investigate and soon discover that the strange visitations are all characters from the illustrations of a 1917 edition of ‘Czech Folk Tales’; they befriend one such fictional character, Sleepy Jim, who tells them that his mistress is a young girl whose father was killed in the petrol riots fifteen years ago; it seems that child is using sunlight and electrical power to keep herself as a five year old, and is bringing the characters from her late father’s book to life to keep her company in the city’s Dalibor Tower. Braving a confrontation with a huge ogre, the Doctor and Ace confront the girl, Nápev, and manage to convince her that her misuse of electricity is harming people. With Prague now safe, the Doctor takes Nápev to his home planet of Gallifrey, where the girl can use her ability to conjure up her father and friends in safety.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace

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'Men of the Earth' by Kevin Killiany

The TARDIS transports the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to the Svarozhich Project, an underground complex located beneath Prague where a new geothermal generator is currently under construction. Here they meet Doctor Flora Abloran, whose research team has been hampered by an outbreak of mysterious mould and a plague of insects. Several members of the station staff are killed by the slime and bugs and replaced with vicious duplicates; meanwhile, creatures formed of rock and slime attempt to break into the TARDIS. The Doctor and his friends soon discover that the slime, bugs and surrounding rock are all part of an ancient race of Golems, original inhabitants of the underground world that have been awoken by the project’s drilling; the golems are attacking the humans in retaliation for the venting of the toxic gas that their people thrive on, and plan take over from mankind by flooding the base and the city above with their poisonous atmosphere. Realising that millions of people will die, Flora negotiates with the golems, offering to shut down the project by declaring it economically unfeasible if the ancient creatures end their plan of mass murder. With a truce declared, the Doctor and his friends leave in the TARDIS.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa

*Time-placing: this story leads in to the beginning of 'Snakedance'

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'Across Silent Seas' by Tim Waggoner

Responding to a call for help, the TARDIS is caught in a temporal maelstrom raging across the surface of the Earth, and the Doctor and Jamie are forced to bail out to the one area on the planet not affected: the city of Prague. Captured by android soldiers, the two travellers are taken to the Old Town Hall and brought before Kemen, the self-appointed “custodian” of Earth. The Doctor discovers that the temporally-sensitive Kemen has captured a transcendental creature known as a Moerani, and is using its chronal energy to alter Earth’s history, eradicating all mistakes in order to bring mankind to a utopian existence. By using his androids to shoot Jamie with negative temporal energy, almost aging the boy to death, Kemel forces the Doctor to work with him to complete his misguided plans. However, the Moerani, tired of its captivity, chooses to commit suicide, and channels its time energy into the Doctor as it dies, enabling the Time Lord to restore Earth’s history to its original configuration, return Jamie to normal and disable Kemen’s android army. As the Doctor and Jamie confront Kemel, the rest of the Moerani’s pod arrives, taking their comrade’s body and aging Kemel to death as they depart. With the threat to Earth ended, the Doctor and Jamie recover the TARDIS and continue their travels.

Notes:
*Featuring the Second Doctor and Jamie

*Time-placing: the desciption of Jamie's clothes matches that seen in 'The Two Doctors', placing this after that story, when he and the Doctor are working for the Time Lords

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'The Dragons of Prague' by Todd McCaffrey

The Doctor’s alarm clock reminds him of an appointment in 2012 in Prague, to take part in a contest with Drakos, champion of an ancient race of extraterrestrial dragons known as the Draco. Millennia ago, these alien invaders wiped out the dinosaurs, and would have taken over all of Earth if it wasn’t for the intervention of the Doctor, who trapped them in stasis. Every few centuries, Draco is allowed to walk in human form so that he can compete with the Doctor in a contest for the fate of the planet; the Doctor previously defeated Drako at chess, and this time must engage in a cooking competition with his opponent. Arriving in Prague, the Doctor and his friends learn that the city has been under siege from flesh-eating slugs, and that the river has been polluted by excessive use of slug repellent. The contest begins, and Drako serves up a culinary masterpiece to the Doctor and Sarah at his restaurant, ‘The Dragon and George’; he then looks forward to his opponent’s meal the following evening. The next day, Sarah frets about the Doctor’s lack of cooking expertise, while the Time Lord and Harry set in motion a secret plan of their own. That evening, Drako arrives at the TARDIS for the Doctor’s meal – just as three giant, flesh-eating snails, creatures mutated by the river’s pollutants, attack. With Sarah and Harry’s help, the Doctor serves up the creatures as a delicious three-course banquet for Drako; overwhelmed at the culinary prowess of his adversary, the dragon concedes defeat, and gracefully accepts the Doctor’s offer to allow him to remain in the city as a chef for the next ten-thousand years – a time when the dragons will be released from stasis to peacefully co-exist with mankind in a new era of gastronomic harmony.

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry

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'Omegamorphosis' by Stel Pavlou

Investigating reports of the dead walking the streets of Prague, the Doctor visits the home of Mrs Samsa and meets Callum, a young humanoid boy created from the evolutionally-accelerated corpse of a resurrected dead mouse. While the time winds flowing throughout the city continue to cause the ancient dead to return to life, the Doctor discovers that his old adversary, the Master, is to blame; with his final incarnation wearing out, the renegade Time Lord has used the time winds to create a new, durable host body for himself: Callum. The Doctor deactivates the Master’s machine, ceasing the time winds and restoring the balance of history in the city. His plan thwarted, the Master escapes, while the Doctor returns Callum to Mrs Samsa’s house, where the boy devolves back into his proper form of a dead mouse.

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor

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Publication Date:
May 2007


Notes:
*Published by Big Finish