While attempting to get to an Ian Dury concert in Sheffield in 1979, the Tenth Doctor and Rose accidentally land in the Scottish moors 100 years earlier in 1879. They encounter a carriage carrying Queen Victoria, who has been forced to travel by roads to Balmoral Castle as a fallen tree has blocked the train line to Aberdeen, which is feared to be a potential assassination attempt. The Doctor poses as the Queen's protector using his psychic paper, and he and Rose join the Queen as she travels to the Torchwood Estate, a favourite of her late consort Prince Albert, to spend the night. The royal party is unaware that the Torchwood Estate has been captured by a group of monks led by Father Angelo, forcing its owner, Sir Robert MacLeish, to play into their ruse as they take the place of the house's servants and guards. The monks, having arranged for the fallen tree to force the Queen to the estate, have brought a man infected with a form of lycanthropy, hoping to pass its nature to the Queen and create a new "Empire of the Wolf".