The opening chapter places the First Doctor with Ian, Barbara, and Vicki on nineteenth-century Earth, where a visit tied to Thomas Huxley’s famous lecture gives way to an encounter with the Zarbi and the Animus. The threat escalates into a set piece involving a sentient plant and a train, with Ian sacrificing the TARDIS to stop the collision.

That destruction does more than supply adventure spectacle; it introduces the series’ recurring ideas of sacrifice, imprisonment, and unseen manipulation. The issue closes with the hooded figure firing a beam that incapacitates the Doctor, turning a classic-era outing into the first explicit handoff to the overarching mystery.

The Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe travel to the Frenko Bazaar, where a giant alien trading post gives the story a more playful and kinetic atmosphere. Slavers called the Voraxx capture Jamie, while the Doctor and Zoe move through stalls, strange machines, and even a whimsical appearance by White Robots and holidaying Ice Warrior figures.

Although the chapter resolves cleanly with Jamie rescued and the Voraxx beaten, that temporary stability is part of the event’s design. This is the issue where the larger plot remains mostly beneath the surface, proving the comic can still function as a standalone Doctor-era adventure even while the hidden mechanism continues to turn.

The Third Doctor chapter folds Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Liz Shaw, and Sarah Jane Smith into a London conspiracy involving giant robotic imagery, staged alien panic, and a media-manipulated false invasion. The core antagonist is a Remoraxian parasite exerting mental control, especially through the Brigadier.

This chapter matters because it demonstrates how comfortably the event can shift genre. Rather than repeating the first two issues, it leans into UNIT-style investigation and expanded-lore references, then ends with the heroes safe while the cloaked observer watches without striking, adding variety to the pattern without breaking the event spine.

The Fourth Doctor lands with Leela and K-9 on Agratis, a farm world sustained by the Jewel of Fawton. The chapter balances planetary lore, museum intrigue, crystal caves, and the comic’s first major use of the Judoon as an external pressure force hunting a stolen artifact.

After the jewel is restored and the peaceful crystalline creatures are awakened, the narrative appears to close in proper Fourth Doctor fashion. Then the event pattern returns with force: the cloaked figure uses a vortex manipulator to snatch Leela and K-9, making this one of the first decisive escalations in the companion-abduction arc.

The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric are pulled into a battlefield between Rutans and Sontarans on a wasteland planet. What begins as a war-zone survival scenario becomes a more strategic Doctor story, with the Fifth Doctor persuading Commander Strock away from a suicidal assault and trying to prevent both sides from escalating.

The issue is one of the event’s most important hinge points because it strips the Doctor of nearly all support at once. Just as escape seems possible, the unseen beam drops the companions and the cloaked figure vanishes with Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric, leaving the Doctor aware that he is facing a familiar pattern of manipulation.

Set on a future authoritarian Earth in the year 7214, this chapter traps the Sixth Doctor inside a mental asylum run under the influence of the Ainley Master and an Auton social order. Peri and Frobisher infiltrate the city under assumed identities, producing one of the event’s stranger but most comic-specific combinations.

The chapter thrives on disguise and false surfaces, which is why its title feels especially apt. Even after the Doctor breaks the Auton hold, the cloaked figure appears and takes Peri, while the issue’s flashback twist reveals the Tenth Doctor’s telepathic guidance to Frobisher, subtly showing how the event has been folding future and past together.

The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive in 1830s Scotland, where mysterious illness at a manor house conceals imprisoned Aerolith energy beings, life-draining experiments, and the Master disguised as Alan Campbell. The chapter’s atmosphere is more gothic than cosmic, letting the story lean into hidden rooms, false identities, and moral rot.

This is also where the event firms up the Master’s co-involvement in the larger conspiracy. Once the Doctor disrupts the siphon device and the Aeroliths turn on the Master, the cloaked figure reappears and steals Ace, pushing the anniversary structure deeper into direct serial escalation.

The Eighth Doctor reconnects with Grace Holloway in San Francisco and draws her into a journey that lands on Brendais, an agrarian world apparently sustained by benign Overseers. The issue uses pastoral calm as misdirection, because the true story lies in the concealed infrastructure and the siphoning operation set up by the Master and Adam.

Grace’s abduction gives the chapter a melancholy edge, especially because her return to the Doctor’s orbit is framed as a tentative, wonder-filled reunion. Adam’s device also imposes a memory lapse on the Doctor, reinforcing the event’s recurring concern with fractured recall and weaponized personal history.

The Ninth Doctor and Rose visit Eleanora’s Monument, where Drake Ayelbourne’s preservation machinery briefly frames the issue as another one-off mystery about immortality and collapse. That setup exists largely to sharpen the reveal waiting outside the ruins.

Here the cloaked figure finally becomes Adam Mitchell, the Ninth Doctor’s abandoned companion, now aged and embittered by the life he believes he lost. His abduction of Rose transforms the event from broad crossover puzzle into intimate grievance narrative, one of the smartest emotional turns in the whole series.

The Tenth Doctor takes Martha Jones to 1950s Los Angeles, where a film set becomes the stage for Quarks, Dominators, and a slyly performative Doctor Who love letter to science-fiction media production. Martha is pulled into the glamour of the era, even being mistaken for a star and used in the studio machinery.

The chapter’s polished show-business texture hides one more extraction. Once the Dominators are maneuvered out of their invasion attempt, Adam strikes in the chaos and steals Martha, while a telepathic message via Frobisher points the Doctor toward the fortress where the event’s scattered threads are about to knot together.

The Eleventh Doctor enters the event’s endgame space through an Arthurian fountain and attempts to recover Martha from Adam’s extradimensional fortress. Clara appears in a memory-capacitor cell, is briefly freed, and is then immediately captured again, underlining how thoroughly Adam controls the board.

The issue strips away the anthology format almost completely and turns the comic into confrontation drama. Adam and the Ainley Master stand together, the companions’ lives become bargaining pieces, and the Doctor faces the promise of a forced “choice,” making this the chapter that converts all prior abductions into one concentrated threat.

The finale delivers the event’s central promise by uniting all eleven Doctors and the captive companions inside Adam’s fortress. Autons attack, rescue efforts split across generations, and the Master’s ambition is fully stated: he wants to use TARDIS and psychic energy to ascend into an “Eternal God.”

The chapter’s crucial turn is not merely tactical but ethical. The First Doctor persuades his later selves against destructive certainty, Adam ultimately rejects vengeance, and his self-sacrifice stops the device, defeats the Master’s scheme, and leaves behind a memorial image of a stone TARDIS grave that reframes the whole event through sorrow and release.