Omega, an ancient Time Lord made of pure anti-matter, once defeated by the Doctor, is plotting to cross over into this dimension by bonding with the Doctor. Meanwhile, the disappearance of a man in Amsterdam piques the curiosity of his cousin, Tegan, who previously left the Doctor at Heathrow Airport and now finds herself at Omega's mercy. Fearing total destruction from the collision of matter and antimatter, the Time Lords recall the Doctor to Gallifrey to undertake the only viable solution: executing him!
An Edwardian yacht in deep space races around the planets. There is a double agent in the TARDIS crew. The White Guardian warns the Fifth Doctor of great danger. Turlough must finally choose sides and at the end of the race lies the prize of Enlightenment.
"Frontios buries its own dead", or so the saying goes. The Doctor, Turlough and Tegan are forced into landing on the remote planet of Frontios, a human colony where deaths go unaccounted for. What lies beneath the surface, dragging its victims down?
The TARDIS attaches itself to a space liner after Turlough, still under the Black Guardian's influence, damages its controls. The Doctor and Nyssa meet two space pirates, Kari and Olvir, who have come on board the liner in search of plunder, while Tegan and Turlough get lost in the infrastructure. The liner docks with what appears to be a hulk floating in space. This is Terminus, which claims to offer a cure for Lazar's disease. It is crewed by armoured slave workers, the Vanir. The cure is administered by a huge, dog-like creature known as the Garm. Nyssa, who has contracted the disease from sufferers transported aboard the liner, discovers that the cure - involving exposure to radiation - does actually work.
The TARDIS materialises in Paris in the year 1572 and the Doctor decides to visit the famous apothecary Charles Preslin. Steven, meanwhile, is befriended by a group of Huguenots from the household of the Protestant Admiral de Coligny. Having rescued a young serving girl, Anne Chaplet, from some pursuing guards, the Huguenots gain their first inkling of a heinous plan being hatched at the command of the Catholic Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.
Romana fancies a proper holiday and convinces the Doctor to visit the leisure planet Argolis, where a takeover by the Argolins' historic enemy is underway.
Finding the fourth segment of the Key to Time was simple enough, but holding onto it may be another matter. The Doctor and Romana find themselves embroiled in the political games of the planet Tara, where doubles, android or otherwise, complicate the coronation of Prince Reynart.
A freak accident leaves two dangerously unstable spacecraft locked together, and a horde of monsters unleashed on their passengers.
A warp ellipse draws the TARDIS off course. The Fifth Doctor's companions are separated from him not in space, but in time, and he has to deal with a treacherous schoolboy named Turlough. But why does the Doctor's old friend, the Brigadier, not remember him at all?
The Doctor and Romana follow a distress signal which leads to the jungle planet Chloris, whose ruthless ruler Lady Adrasta harbors a deadly creature in a pit.
The Doctor and a newly-regenerated Romana arrive on Skaro to find that the Daleks, locked in a war with the robotic Movellans, have returned to retrieve their buried creator Davros.
The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough arrive in Little Hodcombe, where the townspeople's re-enactments of English Civil War battles are causing a dormant entity, the Malus, to re-awaken.
The Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough arrive on Sea Base 4, a nuclear warhead station under the sea that has some very nasty neighbours.
The final segment of the Key to Time is at the heart of a devastating war between neighbouring planets Atrios and Zeos. The Fourth Doctor discovers that a sinister entity is manipulating events and the cost of obtaining the final segment may be more personal than he imagined.
Tegan falls once more under the influence of the Mara and directs the TARDIS to the planet Manussa. There, the Federator's son Lon and his mother Tanha are preparing for a ceremony to celebrate the banishment of the Mara five hundred years earlier. The Mara takes control of Lon and uses him and Tegan to obtain from Ambril, the Director of Historical Research, the 'Great Crystal' - the large blue stone that originally brought it into being by focusing energy from the minds of the planet's one-time inhabitants. The Mara now plans to use the crystal during the ceremony to bring about its return to corporeal existence.
The Doctor and his companions arrive at a medieval joust and are surprised to be greeted warmly by King John, who calls them his demons. But when a young nobleman returns, having just left King John in London, the Doctor realises that this king must be an impostor! Then the Master makes an appearance and the Doctor's worst fears are confirmed...
The Doctor and Romana arrive on the marsh moon of Delta Magna in search of the next segment of the Key to Time. They are caught in the conflict between the native Swampies and the crew of a chemical refinery. The presence of a gun runner complicates matters; to make things worse, the Swampies intend to awaken Kroll, the giant god that lives beneath the swamps.
When the discovery of a five-thousand year old artifact of a humanoid reptile leads an investigative reporter to the Kronos Project, he uncovers an experimental device created to send humans through time, controlled by a ruthless multi-billionaire. As the Kronos experiment progresses through the Civil War era to the Jurassic age, high-tech sabotage and deceit ensue, resulting in devastating events that lead to a ripple in time, a paradox, that if not contained could change the entire course of evolution and destroy the universe as we know it.
On the lush planet Tigella, two opposing factions are divided over the usage of the Dodecahedron, an ancient and powerful artefact which provides the entire planet's energy. The Doctor is summoned to arbitrate the conflict, but the power-crazed Meglos intercepts the call and impersonates him in order to steal the Dodecahedron.