Things go terribly wrong for four youths, ejected from a London nightclub for rowdiness, after they decide to break into a Magic shop, where they tie up and terrorize the owner. They find to their cost that he deals in more than illusions...

To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Second Doctor uses an emergency unit. It moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void where they are menaced by white robots. Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped — until the ship explodes. They find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel, the Karkus, and Swift's Lemuel Gulliver.