Doctor Who Magazine, Special Edition:

The Ninth Doctor Collected Comics

By Wolfen Moondaughter
August 1, 2006

I have, with the recent airing of his episodes on The Sci Fi Channel, become completely enamoured of Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor on Doctor Who. Thanks to that enthusiasm, I made the sizable effort to get out to my "local" comic/gaming store (it's at least 45 minutes away through perpetually-heavy traffic, I don’t drive, and there are no buses to get me there from home) in hopes of finding memorabilia featuring him, such as a toy or a novel. The clerk there didn’t know of anything, but luckily I had my eagle-eyed mother with me, who stumbled across the perfect item: the Doctor Who Magazine, Special Edition: The Ninth Doctor Collected Comics. They call it a magazine, but it might as well be called a graphic novel, despite the lack of a cardstock cover, because other than the ads on the inside cover in front and back, the table of contents, and one page with a Who-related [??], all the pages are devoted to said comics. No other ads and no articles, just five lovely comics featuring my favourite Doctor. Brilliant.

So welcome, my friends, to my Microscope on the subject. If you've never read one of our infamous articles with that word in the title, the basic premise is this: instead of giving a vague little review, I'm going to talk about it scene by scene, offering both summary and critique. In other words, it's highly spoiler-intensive. If you don’t want to be spoiled, I'll just say here that I loved it. At $11.99, it may be a little pricey for a magazine, but for a hundred-page graphic novel, I’d say it's just right. If there's someone in your life who loves comics and adores Eccleston as the Doctor, I'd say it's well worth tracking down for them.

Now, for those who want to know a bit more ....

First story up is "The Love Invasion," written by Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman, with pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by Dylan Teague (with assistance by James Offredi), and letters by Robert Langridge. In a tie-in comic, I don't generally expect the characters to look all that much like the actors — considering factors like time restraints, the artist's overall style, and weird contract clauses stating that the renderings can't look exactly like the actors (I don’t know if the Who actors have such a clause, but I know of other comics made under such guidelines). All the same, Collins does a nice job of capturing the gist of the actors' appearances, particularly Eccleston's. As for the writing, I think this story in particular, with its combination of humour, action, and just the right amount of somewhat-silly Sci-Fi elements, would have made a great episode! But let me tell you about it, and you can judge for yourself.

An old woman trips and spills her groceries; a lovely young lady helps her, then proclaims herself a part of a volunteer organization known as "Lend-a-Hand." Good intentions pave the road to hell, though; the young lady heads down an alley and has an encounter of the deadly kind, getting gassed with a chemical that turns her into a sizzling, emaciated corpse. Cue the vworp-vworp sound of the TARDIS and the arrival of the Doctor and Rose in the London of the Sixties, the one place in the universe where the TARDIS, the Doctor's time machine which looks like a police box, well and truly blends in (save for the fact that it's now parked right next to another police box, heh. The Doctor assures us that humans simply don’t notice such things).

As-yet unaware of the plight of the hapless Lend-a-Hand girl, the Doctor and Rose go on a shopping spree. (Where do they get the money? Has the Doctor taken up counterfeiting with his psychic paper?) Rose stumbles and drops her bags; another Lend-a-Hand girl appears and rushes to her "aid" (they seem to have a thing for falling packages, 'ey? Draws 'em in like vultures, it seems), then hands Rose a card for her organisation. The Doctor is skeptical of the helper, particularly as she doesn't "smell human."

The Doctor and Rose head over to the area where she would come to live in her own time, only to discover a housing development that should not be there. Someone's messing with time, but to what end? They head to a pub, and the Doctor borrows a paper. He finds that the results of the World Cup game, which he had actually been to, have changed. Then he notices a chemical smell that leads him the ladies' room just as some woman is leaving; inside, they find the smoking remains of another Lend-a-Hand girl, whom the Doctor declares to have been of alien origin and killed by the chemical compound whose scent had led into the room in the first place. He rushes out after the woman that had left just before they'd entered; she takes off on a scooter, so the Doctor "borrows" a scooter to follow, having to leave Rose behind. There's an amusing exchange between the Doctor and himself, as he tries to remember how to drive one — or indeed, whether he ever even has driven one.

Rose, meanwhile, heads over to the Lend-a-Hand headquarters to see what's what. She makes friends with a heavy-set gal named Shirley, who's waiting at the front of a long line of young women wanting to be Lend-a-Hand girls. They go in for the interview together, and it quickly becomes apparent that the "interview" isn't really an interview at all — all the organization really cares about is the prettiness of the candidates. Still, Rose puts her foot down, telling the interviewer that he has to take Shirley, too. Really, she hasn't done the girl any favours, as the next step is to be taken before an alien, who invades their minds to assess their appropriateness for the program. When it gets to Rose, it declares she has "signs of recent accelerated experience" and asks her who the Doctor is. Wary of the alien's questions, Rose grabs Shirley's arm and makes a run for it. (Although, truth be told, the alien hadn’t really said anything to provoke such a flight. I think I would have stayed a bit longer to determine its intentions.)

The Doctor, meanwhile, after a few false stops, manages to catch up to the woman from the pub, who turns out to be a scientist who works in cosmetics. Going through paperwork in her lab, he says he's a scientist too, and makes some comments on her work before finally asking why she killed the alien in the pub. She replies that she kills all aliens she finds, and promptly gasses him in the same manner we saw the first Lend-a-Hand girl killed. Bad luck for her, the Doctor is the "wrong sort of alien"; in the lab's kitchenette, he fixes himself right up by way of a sandwich of bread, chicken, and chocolate. The lab is invaded by four grinning, zombie-esque Lend-a-Hand girls; the lady scientist, whom the Doctor learns is named Charlotte Cobb, is ready to go down fighting, but the Doctor basically drags her out the window to escape, apparently thinking a jump from the second story is safer than facing the Lend-a-Hand girls. Luckily, they land in a horse-drawn cart (they still had those then?) full of mattresses. The Doctor promptly commandeers the cart for their getaway.

The whole exchange strikes me as very Nine, the characterization is spot-on! And don’t worry, the Doctor orders Rose to return the horse later, so it's not like he's become a remorseless thief. I'm sure he left the scooter somewhere the police would be sure to find it and return it to the proper owner. Or not, but the point is that it's not a stretch to believe he's done that, therefore his thieving ways here don’t really go against character. Doing Bad for the Greater Good and all that.

Back at the pub, Shirley, fearful that Rose will think she's crazy, nevertheless confesses to Rose that she thinks the thing they encountered at the Lend-a-Hand headquarters was an alien. Then she wonders aloud about what's going on outside. I love Rose's reply: "*Sigh* I'm gonna turn round and it'll be him doing something mental ...." And of course when she looks out the window, he's calling to her through said window from that horse-drawn mattress wagon. Everyone swaps stories. Charlotte's vendetta against aliens stems from her husband and several other scientists having been stalked and later murdered by Lend-a-Hand girls; she in turn created a gas that dissolves the aliens. The Doctor orders Rose to search the lab Charlotte shared with her husband to see why the aliens wanted him and his peers dead; he also tells Shirley to go home and wait for it all to be over, but she surprises him when he visits the Lend-a-Hand headquarters, and he reluctantly lets her help him with his investigation.

Charlotte and Rose find that the Lend-a-Hand invaders left a mess at Charlotte's lab. Charlotte asks about Rose and the Doctor's relationship; Rose says that it's not that kind of relationship. Charlotte asks if it's a Batman and Robin sort of thing, to which Rose replies, "No, 'cause we don’t sleep together ...."

Underground, the Doctor and Shirley discover chambers full of alien girls; the Doctor says he reckons the human girls are just recruited to "fill up the numbers." Moments later, eavesdropping on the alien mind-reader and the interviewer, they learn that the mind-reader, the mastermind behind the operation, is from the Kustollon race, which the Doctor informs Shirley will invade Earth in the year 3046 — this particular one is really early! Shirley voices her shock aloud, revealing their presence to the Kustollon and his human second-in-command. She and the Doctor are captured.

Intrigued by the Doctor, the Kustollon explains that some of his people were ashamed of the war with the humans. Though the humans won, by way of a virus they'd created that destroyed the Kustollon bio-weapons, the war devastated both sides. So that small group of Kustollons worked out a plan to prevent the war from ever happening, and give the humans world peace and an end to hunger in the process. Problem is, the plan involves blowing up the moon, effectively ending the space program and ensuring humanity never leaves the planet to get into a territory dispute with the Kustollons in the first place! So Igrix, the Kustollon, took their prototype time machine back as far as he could, to 1966, and used "genestuff" to start building his Lend-a-Hand army, giving them telepathy to aid in their mission to make people happy (and lamenting he couldn’t go further back and ensure humanity was less aggressive in the first place). He had to start small, doing things like cooking, like ensuring England won the World Cup (hey, wouldn’t that also make Germany unhappy?) and buying up real estate to ensure nice homes are made rather than tower blocks (like Rose's future home). Of course, he had to kill the scientists who would invent things that would make people unhappy. The Doctor listens, saying encouraging things now and then and pretending to be impressed, before grabbing a fistful of wiring and snapping it in two, for a distraction. He promises Shirley he'll be back for her, and runs back to the lab.

Rose remarks that the Kustollon's plan doesn't actually sound so bad; the Doctor points out that, among other things, destroying the moon will mess with the tides and devastate the earth. Basically, the intentions may be good, but the results were not very well thought-out. He tells them about the army that's about to be unleashed, and suddenly whirls on Charlotte, saying she'd found a way to kill the aliens. She says she doesn't have enough to kill that many, but that's not what the Doctor's after. He's remembered seeing a padlocked freezer in the lab's kitchen; using his sonic screwdriver to open it, he finds the corpse of one of the aliens. Rose is horrified, but the Doctor comforts her with the knowledge that the alien is nothing more than a machine made of DNA. His own words make him realise why Charlotte's husband was killed. He takes Rose aside, saying that it's her world, and what the Kustollon plans could make humans blissfully happy, that it's up to her whether they should. She replies that she doesn’t want the alien running her life for her, she wants to be free to make her own mistakes. Happy with her reply, the Doctor stabs her in the arm with a syringe. He plans to somehow combine Charlotte's work in perfume sprays with her husband's work on DNA resequencing.

The three of them return to the underground base of Igrix. Rose tosses a canister at Igrix, which breaks at his feet and releases a gas. I'm not sure if it's the telepathic connection he has with his minions or if the gas just spreads to them, but the gas "reprogrammed" the alien girls with Rose's human DNA (kind of like the episode "Dalek," yes). Outside, the Doctor explains (while the now-human girls mope) that what he did was essentially the same as what the humans did in the future, making a virus to defeat the enemy's biological technology. Rose asks where Igrix went, though and the Doctor is all "I knew I forgot something!" They ask Shirley (who is rather peeved that the Doctor took away her chance to get some happiness in her life) if she can remember anything, via the telepathic connection she shared with the alien when she was brainwashed, about where he would go, and she tells them he plans to use a spaceship parked on the Post Office Tower to destroy the moon.

When they get to the tower, Igrix discovers he can’t see the moon through the cloudy London weather. He goes to fly into space to complete his mission, but finds his ship has been infected with the virus as well, and now has a rather human-sounding mind of its own! The story ends with the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to cause the construction equipment at the building site of Rose's future home to destroy the buildings Igrix was putting up.

The next story is "Art Attack," both written and penciled by Mike Collins, inked by David A Roach, coloured by James Offredi, and lettered by Roger Langridge. It's a fun, shorter story, and the likenesses to Eccleston and Billie Piper (Rose) are even better in this one!

A sinister-seeming pair of green-skinned alien hands place a set of headphones over a guard's ears. The owner of said hands orders the man to join his fellow guards in preparing some control devices. The being's sinister teeth promise that he and his friends are going to "make art" the next day. Cue vworp-vworp. The Doctor and Rose arrive at the opening of the Oriel, a trans-dimensional art museum which, at that point in time, is home to the Mona Lisa (about which the Doctor shares some interesting historical tidbits with Rose). They meet Cazkelf the Transcendent, self-proclaimed "Artist of the Here and Now" in a spectacularly silly 17th century-inspired costume, who "creates events" (and looks to be the sinister figure from the beginning). He invites them to come share in the special event he has planned; the Doctor declines, but Caz doesn't seem to notice. A guard hands Rose a pair of headphones while the Doctor isn’t looking, and she wanders off under the influence of said headpiece.

The Doctor notes that all the humanoids seem to have taken the headphones, and they're all missing. At the Event, Caz tells his human subjects that he will use their combined psychic charge and the gravitational matrix of the Oriel to create his finest work — "The Cry"! He sends out a shockwave of pain that sends the humans to the floor, just as the Doctor arrives. The Doctor frees Rose, and they run off. The Doctor guesses that Caz is using the humans and the "weird statue" (the matrix — no, not Neo's ... and not the Autobot one either) to broadcast a signal, probably to call in an invasion. Using the sonic screwdriver (I so want one of those!!), the Doctor alters Rose's headphones so that the energy taken from the humans will return to them.

Caz insists that the Doctor is too late, that the message has been sent and his people will come. But no one does.

And then we learn the truth, in a fantastic twist! What Caz was doing wasn't calling an invasion at all — he's distressed to even be accused of it. His people are a race of artists; searching the universe for inspiration, he was stranded on earth during a war. He helped design the Oriel so that he could send out a cry for help. Of course his audience isn’t very happy with him; he, the Doctor, and Rose all hightail it to the TARDIS.

The Doctor takes Caz home, but his people are all gone and the planet is desolate, looking to have been that way for a long time. Caz is the last of his kind, something the Doctor can relate to. Caz asks to be taken back to the Oriel, where he is greeted with adulation; the audience thinks that the disappearance and reappearance was all apart of his performance art. Caz resolves to, for his next work, do something to commemorate his people.

"The Cruel Sea" was written by Robert Shearman, drawn by Micke Collins, inked by David Roach, coloured by James Offredi, and lettered by Roger Landgridge. Offredi really does a stunning job with the colours in this one! The story's a bit of a head trip; I found it a little hard to follow, particularly with its sudden scene jumps. Still, I like it, it has some great Nine/Rose moments.

The story opens at night, with a bride standing at a rail on the deck of a cruise ship. She drops her engagement ring in the water, and walks away from the rails. As she goes, a giant hand made of water rises from the surface of the ocean and goes after her. The bluish-purple water turns red within the reaching hand.

Daytime finds the Doctor lounging in a chair on deck, while he and Rose quibble over their destination; seems she was expecting barren Mars, instead of a luxury liner, and she's got some sort of space suit on. The Doctor has, once again, overshot the time mark, taking them to a period when Mars had been turned into a pleasure spot. She asks how he can be breathing, and he replies artificial air, snapping his fingers to show how it can be adjusted. The sea is all red; Rose says it's pretty, but the Doctor says it's artificial, coloured that way with what he suspects is mostly cranberry juice. (Wait, the water's supposed to be red? Why was it blue in the beginning, then?)

Rose worries about them being caught as stowaways, but the Doctor assures her that the worst that would happen is they wouldn’t get second helpings at dinner. Then he remarks that it's odd that there doesn’t seem to be anyone around on a ship that should be carrying thousands. Just as they start to worry, they're found by someone with a gun.

Elsewhere on board, an old woman talks with a younger woman about the wedding; they inject nutrients into the elderly groom, Alvar Chambers, who seems to be in some sort of stasis, and believe the bride, Susannah, to have committed suicide. There's talk of business and stocks. The old woman doesn't seem upset over the death so much as annoyed, but evinces great affection towards Alvar. We follow the younger woman into Susannah's room, where she's been ordered to search for anything that might cause a scandal and threaten the company. She seems to have more sympathy for the bride. We're shown a faucet, one from which red water, then a flesh-toned, human hand emerges.

The Doctor and Rose, meanwhile, are informed by "Ex-Wife Number Seven," the one holding them at gunpoint, that they are intruding upon a family-only wedding party, and she intends to have then thrown overboard. She's interrupted via a communicator by "Fourteen," who says something cryptic about someone being alive and not being able to stop her. She means, of course, the bride, who shows up on deck dripping red water and says that the sea is hungry.

The Doctor goes to aid the bride, and Seven learns he's a "doctor," She decides that there are better uses for the Doctor — namely helping a certain Mr. Chambers. Rose, who pretends to be a nurse to stay "useful" and not get shot, is left with the bride.

Below deck, we learn that the old woman was once Mr. Chambers' wife, and is his financial advisor. Chambers is almost 144 years old and barely alive, even with two doctors two care for him; for the sake of the company, though, his ex-wives are determined to keep him going, and they want the Doctor to help. The Doctor is disgusted, and pleads with the old woman to let her ex go with some dignity. Chambers overhears him, and apparently doesn’t agree that his life is so undignified; he orders the Doctor to be thrown out to sea.

The bride, meanwhile, finds a burst of strength and tries to throw herself overboard, saying something about being too weak and unable to hold on. Rose stops her, only to witness the bride turn into a puddle of cranberry juice.

The Doctor, despite his efforts to talk some sense into his captors, is thrown overboard; the sea reaches out for him and drags him under. Curiously, he doesn’t drown; instead, he discovers that he can speak, and finds a mirror image of himself in the water.

Rose is discovered kneeling next to the puddle by another wife, the young one who had searched Susannah's room. Before she can apprehend Rose, the puddle spells out "run" on the deck, then leaps up and hits the wife in the face before vanishing. Rose doesn't run, though. When the wife asks what that had been, Rose explains that the water had, at one time, been a girl. The wife says that the girl must have been wife 19, and introduces herself as wife 14, saying Chambers preferred the numbers because it was easier to keep track of them. It takes her a moment to recall her real name, Vikki. (Hang on, Fourteen, you encountered the bride already, you wanted Seven — why didn’t you know about her being made of water?) She asks Rose to pretend she still has her gun, which went overboard, and takes Rose into custody, delivering her to the old woman and Seven.

Rose learns that Alvar is a very wealthy man whose business is artificial air. Rather than having given Mars an entire atmosphere, the cruise liners are equipped with devices that create bubbles of air around the ship — a very hot seller. They tell her the Doctor has been offed — just before he comes strolling into the room, dripping red water. He tells the wives that the sea sent him back with a message — basically that they ruined the planet for their own pleasure, and in doing so, awoke something old and powerful. He says the sea is alive and in pain, and demands they stop the ship. The old wife in turn reveals that they knew about the thing within the sea, heard that it could replicate life, and that was why they'd brought their dying husband. The wife kisses Alvar's stasis chamber; the Doctor asks Vikki why she doesn’t do the same. She does — and promptly turns into a red puddle.

Rose is horrified; the Doctor says there is no Vikki anymore, just the sea. Rose accuses him of knowing what would happen if Vikki kissed the chamber; he doesn't deny it. (Why that happens specifically because she kissed the chamber is never explained, though one would imagine Vikki was taken over by the water on the deck already.) Instead he tells the old woman that the ship is moving through a living being, causing it pain; she must stop the ship or it will kill them all. She agrees. He orders the wives to stuff all the taps so that the water can't get on board. Rose is disgusted with him for letting Vikki die to show what the water would do. He tells her to go, and she does, angrily. The Doctor tells Chambers' caretakers to leave, but they won’t. He tells Chambers it's time to wake up; the old man, amazingly, kills one of his caretakers, while the Doctor clobbers the other. Chambers and the now very scary-looking Doctor share some maniacal laughter; in the Doctor's eyes we see another image of him, looking like he's trapped.

Rose is stuffing a faucet, still pissed, when her image in the mirror goes all funhouse, stretching and morphing into a giant mouth that pops out of the glass and attacks her. (See, I told you it was trippy!) And (very!) suddenly we see her holding Mickey, her boyfriend; it's the scene at the end of the episode "Rose," only this time when the Doctor asks her to come along, she doesn’t. (Seriously, I thought a page was missing or something when I first read it, or somehow the mag had jumped to the next story and it was a "what if" time of tale!) We see a wedding picture, with the glass broken and the groom not visible. We see Rose with a baby. The TARDIS pops up in her flat; he'd come back right after leaving in "Rose," but in this version, he's overshot the mark. He asks again if she wants to come along; she replies that she can’t as she has a daughter now, Susannah (and the warning bells should have gone off in my head the first time, but they didn't). He asks to hold the babe, then immediately suggests Rose abandon the baby, that it's insignificant compared to seeing the universe. He says he can’t face the universe alone, but she still refuses. He leaves — and she sees that her baby is gone. And I'm all "WTF?" And then we see Rose being devoured by the giant mouth from the mirror while she screams her baby's name.

The Doctor is asking Chambers — or rather, the pseudo-Doctor is asking the entity possessing Alvar's body — how he is. The entity is reveling in all the things it can feel in the dying body, but also remarks that it feels ill. The Doctor says he'll stabilise when the ship stops. (Which actually seems antithesis at this point, seeing as he likes pain, but makes sense later.)

They go to the engine room, where they find the old woman (wife number two, we finally discover) and ask her why she hasn't stopped the ship. She says if they stop too quickly, they wont be able to start again and will be stuck in the ocean forever. Alvar and the Doctor tell her it doesn’t matter, the Doctor smashes the controls for emphasis. We learn just how devoted Two is to the husband who, according to the entity within Alva, never actually loved her, when, at his command, she obediently crawls into his impossibly-stretching mouth to be eaten. (If you doubted how trippy this story was before ....)

Rose is a checkout girl at a grocer's. The Doctor mosies on in; she demands to know what he's done with her child. He refers to the child as Companion 57, saying he likes to give them numbers as it's easier to keep track of them. She tells him angrily that her child's name is Susannah ... or was it Vikki? She can’t remember! He asks her to be his 58; she tells him to get out.

We see Rose back at the sink, this time huddled beneath it. She's found by Seven. At this point we learn for certain that each person is being possessed. Seven's face is a mess; the real Seven thought she could get free by smashing the mirror. They talk about pain, and how humans take it for granted. Seven starts to strangle Rose, who apparently enjoys it.

Rose is an old lady; the Doctor asks her once last time to join him. She tells him to go to hell, throwing her walker at him and hitting the TARDIS instead, which shatters.

Rose finds the real Doctor, in a red limbo. He explains that the sea is not alive, but that there's something living in the reflections it makes, and in other reflective surfaces, like the air bubble around the ship. He says he knew she'd find him, but now that she has, the entity will know about the TARDIS and how to get off the planet and travel anywhere. He gives her the sonic screwdriver, telling her that a high-frequency blast will disrupt the image created by the bubble. She asks what that will do to him, and he replies that he trusts her, so she must trust him. (I love that bit!)

On the deck, the possessed Seven, Alvar, Rose, and the Doctor gleefully go after the TARDIS, when Rose suddenly snaps out of it. The pseudo-Doctor tells her that if she does what she's planning, she'll kill the real Doctor. He adds that the Doctor's feelings for her are readily evident, that he knows she won't hurt him. (What, did the think her plan was her own idea? Ah well, while I know you can’t really trust anything the guy is saying, I love his mention of the Doctor's feelings towards her!) Rose says she trusts the Doctor, and turns on the screwdriver. The entities flee their hosts — then all converge inside the Doctor!

We learn that the entities, like the reflection, can exist as one or many or none, but they aren’t quite real — which is why they need host bodies. But the bodies don’t last long, so they have to keep taking new hosts. The entity tries to use the reflection in the Doctor's own eyes to trap Rose again.

And suddenly we see two cartoony Doctors talking in a sunny, cartoony park. The chat seems friendly, with the Doctor offering the entity some nuts to feed a cartoony squirrel. He then asks the entity what it wants to do with his body. He seems disappointed when the thing says it just wants to live. Then he tells the entity that it's over-feeding the squirrel, which promptly explodes. The Doctor suggests the same will happen to the entity, it has so many people inside it, but it insists that it's fine, the people it's absorbed are all asleep and sort of fading away.

We see the dreams of each of the people who were absorbed. Vikki dreams of a life where she never has to grow up and marry some old geezer. Alvar dreams of marrying himself and living forever. Two dreams of wife number one, whom she apparently killed in order to become the head wife. Seven dreams of being a cat rather than a wife of a sociopath. Susannah dreams of her tombstone. Rose, having apparently been absorbed again, wakes them all up. We learn that Alvar married each wife for money, property, etc. Susannah was married for the Martian shipping lanes her family owned; she tells them that her father had been devoured by what lies in the water, and purposefully lured Alvar there. She dies. Rose literally sees a sign showing the way out for the rest of them. Alvar doesn’t want to leave; his wives finally abandon him.

The Doctor tries to make a deal with the entity, asking it to have one last hurrah with his life but to leave everyone else alone. It seems like he doesn’t want the thing to go into the TARDIS, but he can’t stop it. The entity insists that he's seen the dreams of the people, that the universe will never miss them or others like them. The face of the Doctor appears in the TARDIS wall, a hundred times larger than life. He tells the entity that if it would have been content with taking only his life, he would have let it, but since it was insistent upon taking lives all over the universe, he was going to put an end to it. He says the TARDIS is a living being, a part of him; he creates a hand from the floor, picks up his body, and devours himself.

Rose and the others come upon an arrow that says "push;" she asks, "Push what?"

We see the Doctor standing outside the TARDIS. He calls forth a tornado (supposedly), the way he called forth a breeze at the start. With a roar, everyone's souls are freed from his body and sent back where they belong. And Rose says, "Oh, push that."

The Doctor explains that the reflections were dependent on a stable image reflected in the air (that was why they needed the ship to be stopped, apparently). He thought if he could lure them all into one host and disrupt the air, they'd be able to get rid of them. (I'm not understanding what them being in one host had to do with it, but whatever.) He was able to restart the ship, and with the wind blowing well, the wives would be safe from the things in the water. There's a tender moment of friendship between our Time Lord and his companion as they leave for their next destination.

"Mr. Nobody" is a short comic written by Scott Gray, penciled and inked by John Ross, coloured by James Offredi, and lettered by Roger Langridge. Rose doesn’t really look right in this story, but Nine's decent most of the time, and I like the art overall.

The story is cute, too. It tells the story of Phil Tyson, a meek fellow who has always waited for the future to come to him, and lived a life of drudgery in the mean time. When our story opens, his boss at a fast food chicken place is berating him over misuse of the company's mop. After the manager leaves, Phil continues his cleaning; when he goes to pick up the bucket of water, he gets teleported to an alien ship.

His abductors, the Vandos Tribunal, claim he is Shogalath, the greatest criminal in their history, the one who destroyed the Vandos Imperium. Phil clutches his bucket to himself protectively. The Doctor pops in, claiming, with his psychic paper, to be of the Hyper-Temporal Magistrate Authority, acting as representation for Phil. The Vandosians protest that there is no question of Shogalath's guilt; the Doctor counters that what he intends to prove is that this man is not, in fact, Shogalath. They counter again, saying they have undeniable proof that this man is the reincarnation of Shogalath.

The Doctor says, "Well, Phil, I guess the fat's in the fire now, eh?" Then he says it again; it was a code phrase! Rose was having problems with the screwdriver, but she momentarily gets it to work, causing explosions and allowing herself, the Doctor, and Phil to make a break for it. Phil can't move quickly, though; the Doctor yells at him to drop his bucket. Remembering the reprimand he got over the mop, Phil refuses to give it up, but also is in such a state he can’t keep going. (Gracious, he couldn’t just dump the water? Surely the boss doesn’t expect him to bottle it and keep it in the closet?) The Doctor isn’t sympathetic, but Rose points out that the man is in shock and the bucket is his tie to reality. She manages to get Phil to hold her hand and run with her.

They make it to the TARDIS, but it's surrounded by strange creatures that capture Rose and the Doctor. In a sudden surge of bravery, Phil tosses the water on the monsters, which burns them like acid (yeah, okay, that's why plot-wise that he didn’t dump the water, but I’d still like a reason in the context of the story as to why the water wasn't dumped.) They get aboard the TARDIS and take off. Once the TARDIS is outside the Vandosian ship, the Doctor contacts the aliens and tells them to shove off. The Vandosians insist that if Shogalath doesn't turn himself him, they'll blow up Britain. The Doctor tells Phil they’re bluffing, but they aren’t. Problem is, the Doctor rewired their weapons systems, so when the go to fire on Britain, they blow themselves up instead. (I guess the Time War has given the Doctor a bit of a mean streak, 'ey? Granted, I'd consider it Karma, but I am a little surprised he would do something like that ....)

When Phil asks whether more Vandosians will come, the Doctor assures him that if they do, they will be much nicer, that the ones that had kidnapped Phil were not the norm. He goes on to explain that Shogalath had brought peace to Vandosia, and was like Ghandi. When the Doctor and Rose take Phil home, he's a changed man, one who no longer waits for the future to find him. He tosses the bucket away. Nice ending, I like that.

"A Groatsworth of Wit" is another shorter tale (though longer than that last one), penned by Gareth Roberts, with pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offrendi, and letters by Roger Langridge. It's another story that would have done well as an episode — and is educational!

The story starts with two unseen entities, Uncle Bloodfinger and his nephew, Woodscrape, observing the populace in Elizabethan England. They feed on anger; Woodscrape is eager to feed on everyone he sees, but Bloodfinger tells him to be patient. Their true quarry is one Robert Greene, an arrogant rival of Shakespeare who is ill and hasn't long to live. They offer to grant him his dying wish: to see how he is remembered in the future. They bring him to our time, four hundred years later. He tries to speak to the modern populace, but of course they think he's a nutter and ignore him.

The Tardis, meanwhile, is drawn down to Charing Cross Road by a dark force. They take note of Greebe when he flashes red in the crowd. (I'm not sure why exactly). Greene heads to a bookstore, and inquires of his works. He's disappointed to find only one copy in the store. He then inquires of Shakespeare, and is led to an entire wall of the man's works. The section also has images of the bard painted on part of the wall and hanging form the ceiling. The clerk informs him that the they might never have even known about Greene if not for something he'd written of Shakespeare in a pamphlet called "A Groatsworth of Wit." Greene despairs. Bloodfinger and Woodscrape feed his pain and urge him to unleash the power they are giving him. Greene vents on the bookcase, and the Doctor and Rose arrive just in time to see it. Greene runs off, but the Doctor and Rose pause to help the clerk. Finding that single copy of Greene's work on the floor, it only takes the Doctor a moment to realise who the man is.

He and Rose go off in pursuit of the Elizabethan, who is slagging everything in sight. The Doctor remarks that the man is jealous of Shakespeare; Rose suggests that the man's overreacting a bit. The Doctor muses that something powerful is driving the man. (Gee, he's human but he's melting stuff left and right; whatever made you think something besides him is behind it?)

Greene finds himself at an opening for one of Shakespeare's shows and goes ballistic(er). The Doctor and Rose arrive; Bloodfinger and Woodscrape recognise the Doctor for what he is. The Doctor pleads with Greene, telling him that something evil is feeding off him, that he should ignore it and go back. Greene points out that he's dying, he has nothing left but what the devils are giving him: a chance to take the world down with him. Rose and the Doctor can hear the entities egging Greene on. The Doctor approaches him, saying that the entities can't hurt him since he's not human. Sure enough, when Green touches him with glowing hands, nothing happens. The entitys make an appearance; ugly, winged things (are they the same sort of creatures from the episode "Father's Day", I wonder?) The Doctor tells them to get lost; they laugh him off, ask what would really upset him, and run off with Greene. (I think; it's not too clear, really.)

The Doctor is sure that isn’t the last of them. On their way back to the Tardis, he tells Rose that the beings are "Shadeys," creatures from another dimension that want to destroy ours, and strong, negative energy helps them achieve their goal. The Time Lords had kept them at bay, but now the Doctor is the only one. The Doctor conjectures, by their cryptic remarks, that they want to play with him first by messing with his favourite thing: time. And the most obvious way for them to do that with Greene is to use him to murder Shakespeare.

Cut to the Rose Theatre, where poor Shakespeare is trying to memorise lines that he wrote (sounds like my memory). The Doctor got them there before the Shadeys. He and Rose have an amusing exchange before Rose, wearing an Elizabethan gown, goes to lure Shakespeare out of harms way. All it takes is her telling the man that the Queen desires an audience with him at his house. The actors, meanwhile, anxious to begin but unable to without the star player, overhear the Doctor reciting the lines, and insist he take the part. At Shakespeare's house, upon finding that he Queen is not there, the boyo assumes that Rose lured him there for a little hanky-panky. Greene's almost a godsend when he appears on the scene. He and Shakespeare trade insults. Rose has a hell of a time pulling the man out of his house; letch he might be, but the playwright is no coward. (Or else he's just too full of himself to think he has reason to be fearful.)

They book it to the Rose Theatre, where Shakespeare is really ticked off to find the Doctor having stolen his part. Greene shows up right behind them, threatening the Bard and scaring off the audience, and all Will can do berate the Doctor. For his part, the Doctor talks Greene down from wanting to punish the world, until Shakespeare lays in on him instead. The power builds again, and this time the Doctor promises to remember him if he gives it up, not as a playwright better than Shakespeare, but as the man who saved the world. Rose promises too, and that seems to decide Greene. He sends the creatures and their power back to where they came from. He goes back to dying in his bed, but this time content. Rose expresses pity for Greene, and the Doctor responds that everyone dies and gets forgotten, supposing it will happen to him one day. Putting her arms around him in a lovely parting shot, with the Doctor looking at the "viewer," Rose says "Nobody's ever gonna forget you." Brings a tear to my eye, it does, a perfect parting shot for Nine's last comic.

Although ... I rather hope they do more comics for him at some point, 'ey? Well, for now, I'm deliriously happy that I have all the ones that do exist, and in one collection! Huzzah!

Panini Comics — Offical site of the publisher of the Doctor Who Magazine.