‘I feel like a pawn in a blasted chess game, Ace.’‘I know what you mean. Trouble is, they keep changing the chess-players.’ The TARDIS has died. Stranded in early twentieth-century London, Bernice can only stand and watch as it slowly disintegrates. In the East End a series of grisly murders has been committed. Is this the work of the ghostly Springheel Jack or, as Bernice suspects something even more sinister? In a tiny shop in Bloomsbury, the master of a grand order of sorcerers is nearing the end of a seven-hundred year quest for a fabled magic wand. And on a barren world in the far-distant future the Queen of a dying race pleads for the help of an oId hermit named Muldwych, while Ace leads a group of guerrillas in a desperate struggle against their alien oppressors. These events are related. Perhaps the Doctor knows how. But the Doctor has gone away.