About this episode
“We turn what scares us into stories. All those terrible supernatural creatures can’t harm us when they’re fictional.” Or so the Doctor thinks. When the TARDIS takes him to Lower Saxony in 1284, he is surprised when he comes face to face with a strange plague afflicting the young of Hamelin. Though what he initially thinks is a terrible illness turns out to be something much worse. As he faces the superstitious beliefs of the people of the town, the Doctor must turn to two men he is reluctant to trust if he is to have any chance of saving the day. But when one is a mysterious stowaway who offers more questions than answers and the other is the Pied Piper himself – a figure of folklore that the Doctor had always assumed was fictional – he knows he’s in for a tough day. And that’s before the Untimely Red step out of the shadows. That’s before the truth about the Somgalese is revealed. That’s before he finds out what the plague really is. Desperate to save the children, the Doctor will go to any length to secure a happy ending for these people. But this isn’t a fairytale. Real life has a tendency to be a lot harder.