Countdown to TV Action (short story)

Countdown to TV Action was the fifth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips and Side Steps. It was written by Gary Russell. It featured the Third Doctor under the name of "Dr Who".

Summary
The Third Doctor has been contacted by the Minister of Defence, Oswald Holland. He asks the Doctor to go to Haylock-on-Sea in Devon, where a film crew has vanished while filming archaeologists.

The Doctor arrives at the village, and comes across many people behaving strangely. Sometimes they ignore him, sometimes they repeat their actions and words, and sometimes they refer to sheets of paper they are carrying.

He finds a young boy, Timmy Drake, whose father is a local celebrity and is acting strangely along with the others. Timmy tells the Doctor that TV scientist Jeremiah Scratch is in charge of the dig. Timmy saw him carrying a strange glass globe containing a kind of moss inside.

The Doctor confronts Scratch, who wants to destroy the evil force of television and is working for aliens, specifically a Klepton parasite. The Doctor convinces Scratch that the moss lied to him, and he helps the Doctor free the villagers from hypnotism. The Doctor neutralises the polarity of the Klepton's machine, and it is reduced to dust.

Characters

 * Third Doctor
 * Timmy Drake
 * Jeremiah Scratch
 * The Klepton
 * Oswald Holland

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor stays at his cottage.

Continuity

 * This is not the first time the Doctor has been sent to investigate a missing film crew by Sir Oswald Holland. (COMIC: The Celluloid Midas)