The Doctor has traced the coin to a women called Carmen. She is working at the High Straits', a floating Casino where you can bet your future, present or past. Eventually Earth nearly gets involved in an interplanetary war and either the Doctor or Charley will have to bet their life, literally.
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The High Stakes Table in a Casino, where you can bet your past, present, or future. Charley sees someone lose their youth.
- Are We There Yet?: Played for Comedy between the Tabbalac leader and the Doctor.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: Kelsa can sense disturbances in time. Naturally Charley sets off all alarm bells.
- Blob Monster: Slishty (spelling guessed) is a sentient sludge that can learn the properties of what it's touching. The Doctor finds it on the TARDIS put there by the Tabbalacs.
- The Bus Came Back: DI Menzies from the first Doctor / Charley story The Condemned makes her return.
- Call-Back: The events of "Return of the Krotons" are mentioned at the start of the story.
- The Doctor recalls how DI Menzies accused him of murder.
- Creating Life: The Cyrox are an engineered species that spawn into life wherever the Tabbalac set out to conquer. Their true origins are unknown.
- Creepy Monotone: The Cyrox, speak exclusively in this.
- Defiant to the End: In a Villainous fashion, the Tabbalac leader is this.
- Ditto Aliens: Inverted Trope for one of the aliens who can't tell humans apart.
- Friend on the Force: DI Menzies is this not only to the Doctor, but to aliens that live on Earth as well. She sometimes asks for favours in return as payment.
- Human Aliens: DI Menzies knows several.
- The Jinx: Lish is literally this. His people effect the environment around them in different ways, he causes bad luck without intending to. Thus he works in a Casino, stopping people who are too lucky.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Before blowing up the ship with an enormous amount of liquor and a set of matches, the Doctor pauses and says: "Don't Try This at Home!"
- The Secret Gigantic Spaceship Casino Where You Can Bet Potential Futures And Pasts That Wasn't There Yesterday.
- Mistaken for Murderer: This time around it's Charley.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Brooks is a Tabbalac, but doesn't look or act like one of them and the Doctor doesn't even recognize him as one.
- Page Three Stunna: The newspaper the Doctor picks up sports one, according to DI Menzies.
- Person of Mass Destruction: The Cyrox, the enemies of the Tabbalac, want to unleash Lish upon their homeplanet amped up, and destroy their civilization.
- Power Incontinence: Lish can't control his power, and can only shield one or two people from being jinxed.
- Reality Warper: The High-Stakes table can do this.
- Shout-Out: DI Menzies says she can't tell Human Aliens apart because she's not The Hitchhiker's Guide. She later attributes her ability to understand Time-Travel Tense Trouble because she'd seen Back to the Future.
- When Lish wants to escape into Rio, Menzies says she's seen City of God and can't let him inflict worse on the city.
- Spell My Name With An S: Charley pronounces Sudoku "Sudo-KUUUU".
- Super Smoke: One of the aliens Menzies knows has a natural gaseous state but can take human form when not stressed.
- Temporal Paradox: Charley nearly sets one off.
