Cold Fusion (Doctor Who) - Synopsis

Synopsis

The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa arrive on an unnamed ice planet (which goes unnamed throughout the novel), which has settlements at the equator and not anywhere else. The planet is run by the Scientifica, a technocratic society allied with the Earth Empire, but there is a more than usual presence of Adjudicators on the planet. Tegan and Nyssa get a hotel room where they run into a man who claims to be "Bruce Jovanka" with a bad Australian accent, while the Doctor and Adric enter the Scientifica's complex and encounter three very diverse characters: Whitfield, the woman who runs the Scientifica; Tertullian Medford, the primary Adjudicator on the planet; and a badly decaying woman who the Doctor subsequently learns is Gallifreyan when she regenerates and nicknames "Patience" (she was previously known as only the Patient).

While things turn sticky for the Doctor and Adric (they're ambushed by a beautiful black woman on the skitrain tracks, then arrested for being alien spies), Tegan and Nyssa run into their own troubles with the husky blond "Bruce". And all the meanwhile, a little man is elsewhere on the planet, investigating a strange machine found buried in the subterranean soil...