Another adventure for everyone's favourite Time Lord. The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri arrive in the north of England during the Luddite uprisings, and discover that brilliant but amoral Time Lord the Rani is stealing the chemical which promotes sleep from the mine workers' brains. The Master is also in town, planning to use the disruptive Luddites to deprive the Doctor of his TARDIS and destroy him once and for all.

While holidaying in Barbados, widowed Foreign Office employee Judith (Julie Andrews) begins a romance with handsome Russian military attaché Feodor (Omar Sharif). However, Feodor is in reality the second-in-command of the KGB, and when Judith returns to England she finds herself under suspicion of deliberately liaising with an enemy agent.

Sumptuous period backdrops and a wildly melodramatic soundtrack add to the spooky gothic atmosphere of this classic slice of sex-fuelled gore from the Hammer House of Horror. Ingrid Pitt plays Camilla, a beautiful blood-sucking lesbian vampire with milky white skin and a thirst for the blood of pretty young virgins. When she attacks Laura (Pippa Steel), the daughter of General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing), the general enlists the help of Baron Joachim von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) to overcome the vampiress and bring an end to the terror and bloodshed.

Sylvester McCoy makes his first appearance as the venerable Doctor, coming up against his old enemy, renegade Time Lord Rani (Kate O'Mara). She forces the Tardis to crash land on Lakertya, and then masquerades as his assistant Melanie (Bonnie Langford), tricking the newly regenerated Doctor into constructing a giant time manipulator designed to drain the minds of history's greatest scientists.