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.
== Notes ==
* The story's title references TV Action, a weekly magazine that hosted a long-running Doctor Who comic strip in the 1970s. At one point, the magazine was titled Countdown.
* The Klepton Parasites first appeared in the first Doctor Who story printed within TV Comic, entitled The Klepton Parasites.
* In this story, the Doctor is called "Dr Who", and Bessie is called "Betsy".
* This story takes place between Zeron Invasion and Deadly Choice.
== 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)
Category:Third Doctor short stories
Category:Stories set in 1972
Category:Short Trips and Side Steps short stories
Category:Stories set in Devon