The Man in the Velvet Mask

Manchester, 1993. The vampires of Great Britain have received a message: the long-awaited arrival of their evil messiah is imminent. It’s time for a recruitment drive. On holiday in Tasmania with Tegan and the Doctor, Nyssa is attacked by a demonic child. She escapes unharmed - except for two small wounds in her neck. Why are the descendants of the Great Vampire so desperate to obtain the bl...

'We're dicing with death on the information superhighway to hell.' A rebellion on another planet. A kidnapping in central London. The head of MI5 assassinated. A hostage siege suddenly and violently lifted by the SAS. A computer CD slipped into the Doctor's pocket by a dead man... It's 1998, and the global information superhighway is about to come on line. OffNet contr...

'Organic bugs must be purged from the system,' the screen told him. Then, more succinctly, 'You die.' The Network broadcasts entertainment to the planets of the Meson system: Death-hunt 3000, Prisoner: The Next Generation, Bloodsoak Bunny... Sixteen channels, and not one of them worth watching. but for the citizens of poverty-striken Torrok, television offers the only escape...

'The Brigadier's going to shoot you, Jo,' the Doctor said grimly, 'and then he's going to shoot me. Both of us are going to die.' The Doctor builds a machine designed to predict the future. It shows the Brigadier murdering him and Jo in cold blood. Unable to tell where or when this event is destined to occur, the Doctor and Jo decide that they must stay apart. Jo ...

Across the room, in a high-backed leather chair, Victoria saw the old man from the reading room. His face was curiously young for someone so long dead. In 1966 the Doctor defeated the Great Intelligence, but he knew it wasn't a final victory. And his companion Victoria, whose mind had once hosted the evil entity, might still fall prey to its power. Now it seems that his fears are justified. In...

'Explode the buoys? But that will destroy the Earth!' 'Oh dear, so it will. Pass on my apologies to the humans, won't you?' Earth has been invaded. Twice. Thousands of years ago by a race searching for a new power source. More recently by the galactic marauders known as the Cat-People, who intend to continue the work done by the earlier visitors, with devastating resul...

'They've been fighting this way for longer than man has been walking upright, and they don't take prisoners.' The war between the Sontarans and the Rutans has been raging for millennia. Billions have died and whole star systems have been obliterated in the conflict. Now, finally, one side may have victory within its grasp. The human colony world of Raghi is crucial to that ...

'Europa is infested by ghosts, vampires, werewolves, ghouls and other grotesques spawned from old European folklore. I think we're in a spot of bother, Sarah Jane.' Europa, designed by lunatics a thousand years in the future, is a resurrected Europe that lives in an imaginary past. In Europa, historical figures live again: Lord Byron combats Torquemada's Inquisition, Mary S...

'The Millennium, Mel: the last New Year's Eve of the twentieth century. But it's definitely not party time.' England, 1999: the Doctor and Mel have come to London to celebrate the new year with old friends - and to heal old wounds. But others are making more sinister preparations to usher in the new millennium. A software house is about to run a program that will change the ...

'There is a old Venetian saying,' the Doctor murmured. 'The council of ten send you to the torture chamber; the council of three send you to the grave.' A strange invitation brings the Doctor, Steven and Vicki to Venice in the year of our Lord 1609: a place of politics and poison, science and superstition, telescopes and terror. Galileo Galilei is there demonstrating his new...