Smash Hit ( short story ) Summary . At UNIT headquarters , the Brigadier and the Third Doctor are discussing the virtues of pop music . The Brigadier dismisses the modern music to which the Doctor is listening . He expresses a preference for Bing Crosby , Frank Sinatra and Vera Lynn . The Doctor , however , chides the Brigadier for not examining the effect of music on the youth of Britain . Meanwhile , in the middle of the English countryside , a musical threesome , the Swifts , have become stranded after a gig . The sky opens up on them , and they begin to wonder why they ' ve bothered with the " pop scene " at all . Out of nowhere , a Rolls - Royce shows up and a mysterious man inside begins to have an hypnotic effect on them . The next day , at the most popular radio station in Britain , disc jockey Billy " The Kid " Kiddsley is in the midst of his top - rated show when suddenly he can ' t think of anything to say . His mind is searching desperately for something , anything , when he remembers a man who had stopped him on the way to work , a man with deep , deep eyes who had given him a new record to play . As if on auto - pilot , Billy drops the needle on the new vinyl . Out comes the music of a new group , the Four Horsemen — made up of the three members of the Swifts and a new member — the Master . The music instantly affects everyone listening to it . It compels ten million people across Britain to begin converging on Stonehenge . Back at UNIT headquarters , the Brigadier cannot help but notice the changed traffic patterns . Every organ of government is terrified by the mass migration . At the Doctor ' s suggestion , he orders the power to the radio station cut , but it is too late . The Master ' s instructions have already been implanted in the minds of the millions that have heard the " music " of the Four Horsemen . As the Doctor points out , however , the problem is that no one knows what instructions the Master has given . If the millions have been instructed to destroy Britain , then Her Majesty ' s government faces a stark choice . They may be forced to drop a nuclear weapon on Stonehenge to protect the rest of the country . While the military mobilises , scrambling fighters to a defensive position over Stonehenge , the Brigadier and the Doctor hop a helicopter to Salisbury Plain . They discover the Master has set up his own , independently - powered sound system . It continues to keep his " troops " under his control . When the Brigadier tries to rush the Master , the evil Time Lord captures Lethbridge - Stewart with his machine . Now mentally possessed by the Master , the Brigadier turns on the Doctor . He savagely attacks his scientific advisor , felling the Doctor to the ground . Believing the Doctor dead , the Brigadier attacks the next - closest target — the Master . The Master slips away , but not before the Brigadier destroys the mind control machine with his bare hands . Once this is done , the Brigadier naturally comes to his senses . Simultaneously , the Doctor rises , revealing that the Brigadier ' s attack wasn ' t " that " bad — at least , not for a Time Lord ' s physiology . The Brigadier ' s still foggy , though , and asks the Doctor to explain " what the blazes " happened . The Doctor reveals that the Master made a critical error with his murderous mind control . He told the Brigadier to " kill " , without being any more specific than that . As a result , the command backfired , when the Brigadier caught sight of the Master . The two friends notice that the crowd of three million people " also " seem to be waking up . The Doctor suggests that they get airborne in the helicopter to begin directing the effort to get all the people back home . Before they do , though , they meet up with one of the members of the Swifts . He explains that he doesn ' t know how he got here , and that the last thing he remembers is that he was about to give up on the pop scene . The Doctor considers his statement and tells the boy that getting out of pop music might be a very wise idea . References . " to be added " Notes . " to be added " Continuity . " to be added "