Midnight in the Café of the Black Madonna (short story)

Midnight in the Café of the Black Madonna was the first short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Destination Prague. It was written by Sean Williams. It featured the Third Doctor.

Summary
Caught in a temporal trap, the TARDIS materialises in Prague, where the Doctor is immediately captured by a military race of armoured elephant-like aliens known as the Crei. Now a prisoner of the recently-promoted Sergeant Kandula, the Doctor learns that the Crei are searching the city for a valuable component known as the 'Tipping Device', a single atom of the isotope Gold-197 that was lost in a hyperspace collision with a specific section of Earth; the entire section of Prague has since been taken out of the space-time continuum and brought aboard the aliens' gigantic spacecraft, its populace left behind so that the Crei can search unhindered. The Doctor offers to help Kan locate the component, and together they search the city; however, the Time Lord soon surmises that the device is in fact a trigger for a weapon, and he refuses to cooperate any more.

After fighting off several Crei warriors with his Venusian aikido, the Doctor holds Kan at gunpoint; but the alien reveals that he no longer wants to kill people, and goes along with his captor's plans in order to solve the situation. The Doctor buys them both time by tricking Kan's superior, Commander Ezredhard, into searching the city's Astronomical Clock; as Ezredhard restarts the timepiece, the Doctor and Kan race for the safety of the TARDIS, but Kan is mortally wounded during their escape. The Doctor uses his space-time vessel to reverse the Crei's temporal field, returning Prague to its rightful place on Earth, and trapping the soldiers aboard their own vessel. A dying Kan reveals that it was he who stole the trigger; blaming its disappearance on the collision, he failed to realise how determined Ezredhard was to retrieve it, and so he later hid it inside the Doctor's jacket. After Kan passes away, the Doctor takes the Crei's body and the trigger and leaves them resting in the safety of the void at the end of time.

Characters

 * Third Doctor
 * Sergeant Kandula
 * Commander Ezredhard

Continuity

 * Jo Grant has recently left the Doctor. (TV: The Green Death)