Immediately after the events of the TV film, the Eighth Doctor finishes reading The Time Machine (a book written by his old friend H. G. Wells).

There, he encounters Sam Jones, a young lady that is being accused by local drug dealers, led by Baz Bailey, of "grassing" them over to the police.

The dealers intend to force Sam into taking drugs to get her addicted, but the Doctor saves her and falls foul of the local police who promptly charge him with possession and selling the cocaine he has confiscated from the thugs.

In the confusion of Bailey's desperate attack on the local police station, the Doctor escapes and runs back into the TARDIS and it dematerialises – taking the cocaine with him to dispose of it safely.

The TARDIS lands in the year 100,000 BC, and he meets his first incarnation in the jungle and they psychically link (giving the Eighth Doctor his memories up to that point in his life).

The TARDIS then lands during the events of The War Games, where he helps his second incarnation, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot with their important mission to contact the Time Lords.

Soon he arrives in the middle of his second trial by the Time Lords; which his Sixth self seems to be losing (especially as the insidious Valeyard has just accused him of a mass genocide attack against the Vervoids).

After giving him advice and encouragement- as well as helping to begin an investigation into his past self's trial on Gallifrey-, he leaves, his memories almost completely intact.

Terrance Dicks wrote this book not only to begin this ongoing book series, but also as an attempt to rectify the various continuity problems that had emerged from the 1996 film;[citation needed] he made no secret of the fact he hated the 1996 television film, making the Doctor look back over the preceding adventure as though it was the most confusing, nonsensical time of his life (as Dicks pointed out in a 2005 edition of Doctor Who Magazine).