The TARDIS lands in post-revolutionary France, but something is off: a futuristic structure called the New Bastille towers over a twisted version of Paris, ruled over by the tyrannical First Deputy Minski, adopted son of the infamous Marquis de Sade. An ailing Doctor is arrested as a curfew breaker, Dodo is recruited by a group of wandering players with less than decent intentions, and in the dungeons of the Bastille, one called Prisoner 6 cannot remember who he is. Outside space and time, aliens watch as their experiment begins to go wrong.

The author intended to write a direct sequel to this novel, a black comedy named Viet Cong! and set in 1916, but it was not commissioned.^{[citation needed]}