Plot
The TARDIS and its crew of the Doctor, Romana, Adric, and K-9, while traveling between E-space and the normal universe (n-space), becomes trapped in a white null space between the universes. Elsewhere in the void, another spacecraft, run by Commander Rorvik, has also become trapped. The ship is a slave vessel, using members of the leonine Tharil race as their navigators. On becoming stuck, the current navigator, Biroc, escapes the ship and makes his way to the TARDIS on the winds of time. Biroc warns the TARDIS crew of Rorvik's treachery before disappearing. K-9's memory waves are shredded by the winds of time, leaving him functional but lacking long-term memories.
The Doctor leaves on his own to explode the null space, finding a large stone gateway. Beyond it is a large banquet hall, a large mirror on one of its walls, and the corpses of several beings and the husks of primitive robots strewn about. He discovers one of the robots is still functioning, and asks it questions as he works at repairing it; the robots, called Gundans, were built by slaves and used to overthrow their masters in a violent battle.
Meanwhile, Rorvik and his crew have discovered the TARDIS. Romana leaves to talk to them. Rorvik, believing Romana to be time-sensitive like the Tharils, dupes her into returning to their ship to examine their engines. When Romana does not return, Adric and K-9 leave to recover her, but they get separated; Adric eventually makes it to the ship and hides aboard, while K-9 reunites with the Doctor and aids in repairing the Gundan. The Doctor's work is disrupted when Rorvik and several of his men arrive and hold the Doctor at gunpoint. While they stand-off, another Gundan actives and walks through the seemingly-solid mirror. Rorvik demands an explanation from the Doctor, revealing he has Romana captive, but the Doctor's only response is to walk through the mirror himself.
Aboard the slaver ship, Romana is freed by another Tharil named Lazlo, and she hides in the hull of the ship. There, she encounters Adric; the two work out that the ship is made from an incredibly dense dwarf star alloy that can contain the Tharils. K-9 arrives, and informs the two of dimensional instability in the null space, which they attribute to the alloy, causing the space to collapse in on itself. Romana rejoins Lazlo, and takes her to the gateway and through the mirror, while Adric remains aboard the slaver ship.
On the other side of the mirror, the Doctor and Romana are reunited with Biroc in a stable, time-locked universe. A repentant Biroc explains they were the slave masters, using the winds of times to ravage other planets and subjugating their people as slaves until the Gundan revolt. The Doctor and Romana are returned to the null space, and are immediately captured by Rorvik. Rorvik has come to realize that the null space is shrinking as the distances between the gateway, the TARDIS, and slaver ship continue to decrease. Rorvik has ordered the crew to try to blast through the mirrors in gateway, believing it to be the way out, but the mirrors resist any attack by their most powerful weapons. With the gateway and ship in visible distance of each other, Rorvik plans resorts to one last attempt to break the mirrors by using the exhaust of the ship's engines against them. While the Doctor warns that this action will be as doomed as the previous ones, Romana is able to regroup with Lazlo and Adric, and together they free the remaining Tharils on the slaver ship. The TARDIS crew flee to the TARDIS as Rorvik initiates his plan - the blast from the engines is reflected by the mirrors back to the ship, destroying it and its crew.
As the saved Tharils pass through the mirror, Romana announces that she will be staying with them, having become empathatic to their plight. The Doctor gives her K-9, as passing through the mirror will restore his memory but he will be unable to return. The Tharils, in exchange, provide the Doctor with information on how to leave the void back to n-space.
Read more about this topic: Warriors' Gate
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And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
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“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)