When a young couple moves to a sleepy village outside London, they stumble into a community with unsettling traditions it must uphold to maintain its peaceful existence.

The Nestenes have made the final connection.

Two years have passed since the Nestene creature vanished from UNIT's top secret Warehouse... Suddenly and without warning the Nestene strikes, once again using Autons as its deadly foot soldiers. As mysterious UNIT operative Lockwood struggles to unearth the Nestene plan, he finds himself drawn to remote Sentinel Island. There, the population have been caught up in a bizarre frenzy of religious activity. Lockwood is joined by Natasha Alexander, a new scientific advisor with her own, sinister agenda. To defeat the Nestene menace they must both face the terrifying power of a creature from before the dawn of Mankind...

In a top-secret UNIT warehouse Dr Sally Arnold is studying a Nestene energy unit with little success. Until she subjects it to cosmic signals that activate it and it awakens several dormant Autons stored in the facility.