SCRIPT: Gareth Roberts
ART: Mike Collins (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 368
COVER DATE: 26 April 2006
ON TV: New Earth - Tooth and Claw (Season 2)
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Mirror Image
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Betrothal of Sontar, published in November 2008.

Returning home from a night out, Mickey Smith discovers he has a new house guest in the form of the Doctor. He and Rose were paying a visit to the Powell Estate when the TARDIS jumped a time track with Rose still aboard leaving the Doctor stranded for a couple of days until his ship turns up again. Mickey is soon irritated by the Doctor’s manner, beating him in a console game shoot ‘em up without firing a single shot, retuning the TV to pick up broadcasts from the future, impressing all his friends at football and on the quiz machine in the pub, thwarting an attempted date with Gina from the flowershop and saving the Earth from a Bandrigan raiding fleet. Mickey says sometimes the world doesn’t want impressing or rescuing or saving. Sometimes the world doesn’t need the Doctor. When the TARDIS arrives, the Doctor conspires to get Mickey and Rose alone together. Finally, Mickey is impressed with the Doctor’s actions.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
A neat and unusual character piece that has since found its true place in the Doctor Who universe when Gareth Roberts adapted it into the television story of the same name. Of course, this makes it a much more fascinating strip as we compare and contrast the two, and it’s surprising just how much of it makes it to the screen, even if the amount of threat and the nature of the threat is changed completely. A charming chrysalis waiting to become a butterfly.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Emotionally complex and psychologically mature without a whiff of continuity (see my IDW reviews of Tony Lee’s work to see what I mean) but a strong emotional thread that feels genuine to the reinvented series. This is a strong strip with excellent artwork that is gorgeously coloured. It also gives Rose plenty to do that is important to understanding the motivations of the antagonist. Unusual but good.
 

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Mike Collins (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 369 - 371
COVER DATES: 24 May 2006 - 19 July 2006
ON TV: School Reunion - Doomsday (Season 2)
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Under the Volcano - Bizarre Zero
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Betrothal of Sontar, published in November 2008.

Southwest London, Craig Phillips and Trudy talk about fantasy worlds and heroes. A cowboy riding a dinosaur passes by chasing ninjas on unicorns. Craig is sure London never used to be like this. The TARDIS appears. When a Viking with a ray gun appears, the Doctor and Rose tackle him and release the three girls he has in chains. The girls are Tanya, Helen, and Anna and they take Rose and the Doctor back to their library base. Here they meet Cathryn Lloyd who used to teach at the local school. Everyone in town vanished one day and the area is now surrounded by a heat barrier. Cath tells the Doctor that Craig and Trudy walk through town with impunity. Cath, the Doctor and Rose find the two teens, but Trudy doesn’t trust the Doctor. She says he needs to be removed for his own safety. Craig seems to respond to Trudy’s orders and a dark cloud moves overhead. Cath tries to intervene but Craig makes both her and Rose vanish. Trudy tells the Doctor, ‘It’s his power, anything he wants, any question he needs answered. We can’t stop him, we just have to go with him… to the end of the world because he wants to finish it all...’

Altea Orsi from the panicking mob that flees from the light. However, futuristic skyscrapers suddenly burst from the ground separating Rose and Altea from the Doctor. The Doctor locates the source of the disturbance, a solitary old building that remains unchanged, and inside discovers Valente, barely conscious and mutting the word ‘Hajor’. Reunited with Rose and Altea, he takes Valente back to the TARDIS, but the city of futuristic skyscrapers now looks ancient and crumbling. The TARDIS’s instruments suggest that the Earth has been dead for centuries.

Taking Valente back to Third Century Wales where he came from, the Doctor, Rose and Altea are apprehended by Romans and then attacked by a local tribe called the Silurians (no relation), and while the Doctor and Valente are seized by the locals, Rose and Altea are taken away by the Romans. The Doctor hears about the local Roman encampment, the strange new buildings that are being erected and that the Roman legate Massimo has himself a new wizard. Valente regains his senses and explains that he and Giovanni were swapped in time. Giovanni has consorted with a race called the Hajor who have promised him control of the Roman Empire. Masquerading as their captor, Valente takes the Doctor and the Silurians into the Roman camp where they are taken before Massimo, but a confrontation with Giovanni ends abruptly when Giovanni transports himself, Massimo, the Doctor and Valente to the Realm of the Hajor, giant jellyfish-type creatures, the new Lords of Time.

The Doctor is known to the Hajor. They crave stability, smoothing out paradoxes created by time travellers. They found accord with Giovanni’s vision of a regulated and ordered universe. Valente attacks Giovanni and the Hajor strike him down. The Doctor declares him dead. As the Doctor shows Giovanni his dead world of the future, Rose uses the psychic paper to lead a slave rebellion in the Roman camp. Giovanni realises his mistake and returns to the camp to save Altea, but is fatally wounded by a Roman soldier. The Doctor lied about Valente’s fatality. The man gets up. If both he and Giovanni passed through the Hajor’s realm during the time switch, Valente must have similar powers over the Hajor as Giovanni. Valente uses those powers to banish the Hajor and return himself and the Doctor to the camp, but it is at the cost of his own life. Warning Altea of future wars and dark ideas to come, the Doctor and Rose take her and Giovanni’s body back to the TARDIS.

BATTLES IN TIME: Death Race Five Billion - The Glutonoid Menace
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Betrothal of Sontar, published in November 2008.

Landing aboard a Magellan-class star cruiser suffering from some sort of temporal dilation effect, the Doctor and Rose soon meet the crew - members of the greatest rock band in recorded history Pakafroon Wabster; Clifford ‘Banksy’ Banks, Sticks Rooster, Fluke, Reef Holloway, founding member Wabster, who is dead but has been animatronically reanimated, and tour manager Jacey. The Doctor convinces them they’re from the record label, but is unable to convince them to slow down so he can repair the engines: they must reach Malphapalooza or their careers are finished. When an explosion punctures the hull and destroys the engines, the Doctor heads with Jacey to the flight deck to attempt a repair, telling Rose to get to safety aboard the TARDIS, but Fluke reaches his limit, kills Clifford and threatens to do the same to Rose unless the record label promises the band a future. The Doctor’s piloting skills and Wabster save her, but the Doctor realises someone is engineering a series of accidents to kill off the band and orders an evacuation of the ship. However, as he, Rose, Jacey and Sticks Rooster run for the safety of the TARDIS, the hull rips open sucking everyone but the Doctor out into space. Then the ship explodes.

Boarding the ship for the first time, the Doctor realises the temporal dilation effect has created a time loop. Following introductions to the band, he accuses one of them of being a murderer. He is disbelieved until he predicts the explosion that punctures the hull. He prevents Fluke killing Clifford by disabling his gun then sends Wabster, who doesn’t need air, into the flight deck to reactivate the engines before they explode. He then exposes Jacey as the saboteur. By killing them in a ‘tragic accident’ they will become legends and she will become rich. Wabster tackles her and she dies in the fight while Wabster returns to his somewhat more animated pre-mortem persona. The Doctor bundles the band aboard the last escape pod before he and Rose return to the TARDIS and depart before the ship explodes.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
There are a few amusing comments about the music industry (though it’s probably a music industry that existed twenty years prior to the publication date), though nothing particularly original, and the plot owes something to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Cause and Effect’, but it’s still a diverting story that divides very neatly into two parts and has, as has become the norm, excellent artwork.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Okay, so this is lumpily plotted with a Scooby Doo resolution and rudimentary artwork. Enough said?
 

SCRIPT: Jonathan Morris
ART: Martin Geraghty (pencils), Fareed Choudhury (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Scott Gray & Clayton Hickman

REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Betrothal of Sontar, published in November 2008.

A man is running through the streets of Vanezia when he is attacked. The TARDIS lands nearby. The Doctor detects something wrong: the building he is facing is not in the guidebook. A terrible musician called Frederico Gobbo, who in the future the Doctor knows to be excellent, tells him it is an opera house. Using the psychic paper, the Doctor gets them inside and they soon slip backstage, but Rose and the Doctor are seized by robots and taken to their lair. The Doctor and Rose discover that people abducted from Vanezia are being drained of creative energy by Magrillo, owner of the Opera House. Many years ago a star fell and taught him how to build the Opera House. The Doctor tells him that it was a Rokathia Spaceship’s Black Box Recorder (a Telepathic Machine). The box has been sending out a Complex Mathematical Pattern as an SOS. Magrillo gets angry and activates his machine to drain the Doctor and Rose of creative energy. The Doctor urges Frederico to find the Black Box and give it indigestion by singing to it. This Frederico does, and the discord overloads the opera house. Rose, the Doctor and Frederico flee before it blows up, but not before the box has imbued him with the talent that will go on to make him famous.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It’s not often that a duff story is outshone by its artwork - usually the former kills any shot at greatness in the latter, but here the artwork and the colour is simply stunning, far more than the simplistic and atmosphere-free narrative rightly deserves.
 

SCRIPT: Nev Fountain
ART: Roger Langridge (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 377
COVER DATE: 13 January 2007
ON TV: The Runaway Bride
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Snow Fakes - The Hunters
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: Power of the Cybermen - Drones of Doom
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Betrothal of Sontar, published in November 2008.

Rose Tyler awakens to find herself alone in the TARDIS. She leaves the vessel to find herself in the middle of a chaotic alien TV talk show, the Vanexxa Skank Show, and she's the star. Soon, she finds herself faced with bizarre allegations about her relationship to the Doctor from none other than Mickey Smith, who suddenly has an Amazonian girlfriend named Phalia. And things get even worse when she discovers the Doctor has become her mother's boyfriend. However, it is all a plan by the Doctor as Rose has been infected with an essence-eating Iagnon grub. By glutting it on her jealousy, he knows it will expel itself from her body where he can contain it.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Although Langridge never quite captures Mickey, his Doctor, Rose and Jackie are wickedly funny, and so is the script which seems to take great delight in making a gentle but affectionate swipe at the new emotional angle of the revived television series. This strip could not have been done pre-2005. It’s fun and just a little naughty.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Although it’s good to see the Brigadier back in the strip (his first appearance since The Mark of Mandragora), this feels a bit too much like a nostalgic wallow with far too many in-jokes, and with plot development kept to an absolute minimum. Having the wrong Mike Yates (we see the real one in the final part) also feels unnecessary and just adds to the slightly stale feel. The artwork, as usual for this period in the strip, is excellent and beautifully coloured, but sadly it’s not enough to save this story from the second division.
 

commander. Soon after, the Doctor arrives and is announced as the new Warkeeper's fool. Dragons attack, killing some of the Hawk troops. The Hawk Commander flies the Doctor and the Brigadier over a battlefield where they see Trolls, Ogres, Orcs, Centaurs and Goblins fighting. After the Hawks defeat the Dragons, the Doctor and the Brigadier are taken to the Warkeeper's castle. The Warkeeper is ancient, weak and feeble. The Warkeeper tells them that he summoned the Brigadier to succeed him., but the Bridagier is not interested. Then they meet Michael Yates (not Captain Mike Yates from UNIT), a pompous and arrogant man from Upper Wardleswick, but an army of trolls break into the castle.

A siren sounds and the trolls retreat, and the Doctor, the Brigadier and Yates escape in the confusion. They are found by Tilly and taken to her field station. However, Tilly and her sisters are disguised harpies who feed on carrion fallen on the battlefield. Tilly takes Yates away, but her sisters are intent on eating the Doctor and the Brigadier. The two men are saved by the Hawk Commander. Realising that Tilly has taken Yates back to the Warkeeper to be crowned, they hurry back to the castle as the Doctor realises that the whole battlefield is a research and development laboratory recycling cloned flesh to wage an endless war. They arrive too late - Yates is crowned - and he transports the whole army to Upper Wardleswick in Kent.

Intent on avenging the battle of Hastings, Yates declares war on France, but the harpies are intent on finding carrion immediately and demand that Yates orders the Hawks to begin the slaughter. The Brigadier shoots the crown from Yates’ head, and the Doctor seizes it. However, the technology does not work for him. When the Brigadier is captured, the creatures offer him the crown, but he refuses and is killed. However, this was all part of the Doctor’s plans. He has used the Warkeeper’s cloning plants to create an army of cloned Brigadiers, with the real one safely in the pub. However, when the creatures order Yates to dissipate the clone flesh, it destroys the Hawks too leaving only Tilly and her harpie sisters. The Brigadier uses the crown to send them back to their homeworld on the Detritus Belt around the Infernal Moon of Bravo 11 Zebra. The Doctor departs.

Sweetleaf tells Martha that Sugarpea does not want to rule but she does want to save Loam. Sugarpea will make the Prime Minster resign and become the dictator of Loam. The only punishment for being a dictator is death. Martha hurries to stop her, but she, Brassneck and Sugarpea are all captured by one of the giant robots. The Doctor is arguing with Kingfish when Martha, Brassneck and Sugarpea burst through the portal. Sugarpea  shows Kingfish evidence of her coup d’etat, which means Loam is no longer in debt to the Krib as the debt is solely hers. She then has the Brassneck kill her. The Processors break out and the Doctor Martha, Mandrake and Brassneck lead them through the portal and into the giant robots, their true homes from where they were ripped centuries before. The Doctor orders Mandrake to get the parents to start evacuating their kids, but not before Kipe has crushed his own father beneath the foot of his robot. The processors reunited with their robotic bodies, the robots rebuild the city as Sweetleaf and Brassneck watch. The Doctor and Martha head for the TARDIS.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
There are excellent ideas underpinning this story, but for some reason I’ve always found it very hard to like. Maybe it’s just because, with its giant marauding robots controlled by children, space banks and mobile processors, it’s so ‘out there’ that it’s hard to relate to and only really comes together in the final instalment, until then feeling like lots of rushing about to very little effect. Maybe it’s because none of the characters are particularly likeable or even memorable. Certainly it isn’t the artwork which is as glorious as we’ve come to expect, though perhaps not as appealing as some strips. Sorry, but I just can’t warm to this one at all.
 

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - MARTHA JONES
Like Rose before her, Martha features in not one ongoing comic strip but, initially, three, this then increasing to an astonishing four when IDW began printing its Doctor Who comics in 2008. Martha’s comic strip debut is in Doctor Who Adventures’ The Skrawn Inheritance. Our first sight of Martha in Doctor Who Magazine is in the strip The Woman Who Sold the Earth and shows Martha floating in space tethered to the TARDIS, an image that would later turn up in the television series when Amy Pond does the same. If we learned very little about Rose in her comic strip exploits, we learn even less about Martha, her chief characteristics being her medical background and her enthusiasm for adventuring. She is generally portrayed in all the strips in her red leather jacket, notable exceptions being in the Battles in Time strip Minor Trouble when she dresses as a jaguar, Doctor Who Magazine’s The First where she wear an atmospheric density jacket from The Web Planet and IDW’s Agent Provocateur where she sports a snazzy pink dressing gown for part of the action. Her siblings get name checked in this latter story also. She makes her last regular appearances in Battles in Time’s strip Minor Trouble (December 2007), in Doctor Who Adventures’ A Klytode Christmas (January 2008), in Doctor Who Magazine’s Universal Monsters (April 2008), and in IDW’s The Whispering Gallery (February 2009). The Martha who features in IDW’s The Forgotten is actually the TARDIS in disguise and not Martha at all.
 

SCRIPT: Rob Davis
ART: John Ross (art), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 385
COVER DATE: 22 August 2007
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Last Soldier - Signs of Life
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: Lock, Stocks and Barrel - The Millennium Blag
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini magazine special edition The Tenth Doctor Collected Comics,

published in April 2008. then as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Widow’s Curse, published in October 2009.

Travelling by London bus, a young man is accosted by the Doctor desperate to borrow his mobile phone to contact Martha who is on Mars in the 27th Century. Time assassins are attempting to extinguish the lineage of the Mayor of London and the Doctor has created a decoy trail of DNA to lure the assassins away from the real Mayor, using a primitive time machine to jump back to 21st Century London. Martha and her allies fight to get back inside the laboratory on Mars to bring the Doctor back to the future, just as the Doctor’s bus is boarded by a mutant time assassin. The Doctor rigs the time machine to explode, which causes the assassin to vanish, but the young man, silently complaining about lunatics on public transport, barely notices.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This is a slight tale based on a slim conceit that would actually be used briefly in the television series in 2009’s Planet of the Dead. It’s diverting enough for a lighter one-part story but falls between two stools by being neither as funny as it could be nor as outright dramatic. Not a lot else to say about this one...
 

The expedition attempts to resist but are subdued by the Skith and taken down to their lair along with Martha and the Doctor. There they see the Mindcore, a device which lets the Skith communicate and which is the sum of all Skith knowledge. The Skith take the Doctor away to observe his mind. They are scientists. Martha and the expedition are tied up. The Doctor is taken to the Skith leader who probes his mind and realises he is not a native of the planet Earth. The Skith decide to take Martha away for experimentation, but Ernest appeals to the human part of Clark who sets her free. The Skith leader now has the TARDIS in his possession and, realising that they are not the first aliens on Earth, decides to eliminate the Doctor.

The Skith mission to Earth deemed a failure because they are not the first to explore there, Mindcore launches the Skith ship into space, just as Martha and the expedition burst in and rescue the Doctor. Clark explains that the Skith will destroy Earth because the experiment has failed. While Martha takes everyone to the TARDIS on a pre-programmed trip back to The Endurance, the Doctor confronts Mindcore and allows himself to be taken over. Clark, meanwhile, completes his transformation and attacks Martha. The Doctor is saved by Ernest who destroys the Skith leader and helps the Doctor set the Skith ship on a course for the sun. Clark is freed of the Skith infection. The Doctor and Ernest are rescued by Martha in the TARDIS who reverses the pre-programmed settings.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
A passable but extremely wordy plot is saddled with artwork that might be most generously described as rudimentary.
 

SCRIPT: Davey Moore
ART: John Ross (art), James Offredi (colour)

The TARDIS lands in Medieval England. Outside is a boulder-sized smelly ball. The Doctor and Martha head off through a forest and find a man whose cart is stuck in a bog. The man says he has come off the road because it is dangerous since the dragon arrived. Once they have rescued his cart, he gives them a ride while he tells his story. He is a native of the town of Bantling which lies in the foothills of a mountain, but is journeying round the mountain to the town of Kindling. For a while there were rumours of goats being snatched from the mountainside, but the thieves were never seen. The only explanation seemed to be that the goats were snatched from the air. As night approaches, the three of them set up camp. The man tells them that he never uses the mountain path because too many travellers who use it have vanished. He says that there have also been sightings at night of something in the sky big enough to block out the moon. Two armed mobs approach, one from Bantling, the other from Kindling; both intent on killing the dragon. The Doctor thinks the dragon is a lost alien baby and intends to save it. He takes Martha back to the TARDIS and tells her that the smelly boulder is a dragon dropping. They roll it down the slope into the hunting parties below while the Doctor uses the TARDIS to signal the baby’s parents by amplifying its calls for help. Just in time, the parents arrive to save their offspring. The Doctor and Martha enter the TARDIS. Martha wants to see what the dragons’ planet looks like.

SCRIPT: Davey Moore
ART: John Ross (art), James Offredi (colour)

Leaving the TARDIS, Martha and the Doctor are surrounded by an angry crowd asking what they are doing in Bug Bite and where they came from. Before things get nasty, a siren sounds and the crowd reluctantly withdraws, saying the critters will deal with the travellers. Martha wants to go back to the TARDIS but it is cut off by an approaching insect swarm. They run to a nearby town where the Doctor uses his screwdriver to get them under a metal shutter into Syd’s Convenience Store. Syd is suspicious until he realises that the travellers are not robots created the Militus company who made the swarm of nanobot bugs. He explains that they are in Bug Bite, New Colorado and that Militus has been trying to buy their land at dirt cheap prices to grow mechanically harvested transgenic crops. Syd drives the Doctor and Martha back to the TARDIS in his tractor. From there, the Doctor sends out a signal to attract the swarm to a huge bug zapper he has made. Once all the bugs are dead he tells Syd to explain everything to the other farmers because the Militus company will be sending human investigators and with all the evidence they have got they should be able to hang onto their land.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Verbose, simple and fairly unexciting with crude artwork.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Dark and surprisingly visceral with good artwork and excellent colour and extremely good characterisation of the Doctor and Martha, this is a little gem.
 

SCRIPT: Jonathan  Morris
ART: Martin Geraghty (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Widow’s Curse, published in October 2009.

The TARDIS lands on the Great Solar Shield, late in the 21st century. Orbiting Earth, it takes the heat off the planet to ease the effects of global warming. The Doctor and Martha use psychic paper to convince the crew that they have been sent from Earth as morale boosters. The crew explains that due to space radiation storms they have a life expectancy of five years; all of them expect to die on the shield. None of them were told this when they signed up, nor is there a way for them to return to Earth. A cloud of Silhouettes, winged creatures that the Doctor recognises from myths and legends, descend on the shield and start to drain the power. Ripping through the hull, the Silhouettes begin to murder the crew. The Doctor tries to speak to the intruders on the radio and they back away. Just as the crew start to celebrate, they realise that the swarm is heading for Earth. The Doctor realises that the Silhouettes did not leave because of his message; they were repelled by Martha’s brightly coloured shirt. He uses the shield’s prismatic mirrors to create a rainbow that drives the Silhouettes away. Unfortunately the realignment of the mirrors causes the shield to break up and the Doctor takes the surviving crew back to Earth in his TARDIS, telling Martha that the real solution to global warming isn’t due to be invented for a few more years.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
There is some excellent storytelling here with some great plot twists that thoroughly and enjoyably subvert the Hammer horror world that Edginton has created. Whether you really like this strip though will depend on what you think of Adrian Salmon’s artwork. I love his illustration, but when it comes to comic strips, I find his style can sometimes intrude on and obscure the actual storytelling and dampen the atmosphere. Here the storytelling is strong enough to withstand it, but I do wonder how much more memorable it might have been with art by Martin Geraghty or (dare I dream it) John Ridgway. Impressive, nonetheless.
 

SCRIPT: Ian Edginton
ART: Adrian Salmon
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 391 - 393
COVER DATES: 6 February 2008 - 2 April 2008
ON TV: Partners in Crime (Series 4)
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  Hot Metal - Every Dog Has His Day
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: Blooms of Doom! - A Suitable Showdown
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Agent Provocateur
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Widow’s Curse, published in October 2009.

Cora is pursued by a beast that seems to call her name. She passes out. The TARDIS is snagged by an energy beam and materialises nearby. Investigating the wooded surroundings, the Doctor determines that the world has been terraformed. Martha finds Cora with a round red mark on her neck. Cora wakes up, but the trio are observed by a cloaked figure who orders Viktor to follow them. They go to the Magister’s Arms pub, run by Cora’s father Gideon, who thanks them for bringing her home. Widow Margaret tells them the beast wants Cora. Gideon tells the Doctor that the beast is the hound of the Thane, a creature that takes no food or drink and that has watched over them for generations. There was a time when the Thane would visit the village on occasion, smile and ask how they were. A year ago it all changed. The Thane stopped coming, folks were snatched by the beast. Some were found dead, some just vanished. Martha observes that the victims have acute anemia, high fever, bite marks but no puncture wounds, and secondary infections. They need treatment. Viktor, a red-eyed cyborg, smashes in through the window, grabs Martha, and knocks the Doctor down. The Thane orders it to return to the Keep.

Martha tears out Viktor’s wires, stopping it in its tracks. Seeing the Keep, she goes to investigate and there meets the Thane. She warns him that the Doctor will soon arrive, but the Thane hopes this is so. The Doctor and Gideon venture to the Keep, despite the telepathic field that fills Gideon with irrational fear, where the Doctor discovers paintings through the centuries, all of the Thane. Cora, meanwhile, leads more villagers to the Keep, to help her father. The Doctor confronts the Thane and, despite Martha’s protestations, destroys his equipment - an illegal neuropathic generator, banned by the Xenhasi Treaty a thousand years ago. At once Gideon, Cora and the other villagers transform into monsters. Martha tells the Doctor that the Thane is not the monster… it’s everyone else.

As Gideon pounces on the Doctor, Viktor leaps in and wrestles him away. The Doctor stuns Gideon with one of the Thane’s chemicals. The Thane admits he is a replicant created by Cyrene technology and that Viktor is a Xhosa bio-mechanical construct. The Doctor recalls that the Cyrene and Xhosa were at war for centuries. The Thane tells him that the war ended with an accord but the legacy was terrible; the Cyrene Khamirae, unpredictable and savage shape-changers. They were mind-wiped and abandoned on this backwater planet. The neuropathic generator was meant to keep them under control until they died out, but they weren't as sterile as had been thought and began to breed. The Thane (as a series of clones) and Viktor have watched over them for fifty generations, but Viktor's systems are failing so the Thane activated the distress beacon. The Thane has taken tissue samples from the villagers to bolster his degrading DNA. The Doctor decides to fix the generator by routing it through the distress beacon to use lunar radiation as a power source. He repairs Viktor’s defective voice box and the cyborg offers to go with the Doctor to protect him from the villagers. Soon, the Doctor and Viktor are climbing a pylon with Viktor holding off the monsters swarming up the ladder behind them. Martha is busy barricading the laboratory to keep other monsters at bay. Up on the pylon, Viktor is overpowered and plunges to the ground. The Doctor swings in through the glass ceiling and orders the Thane to fire up the generator. The monsters instantly transform back into human form. Later, beside Viktor's grave, the Thane says he will carry on his job looking after the villagers. The Doctor offers to contact the Cyrene homeworld, but the villagers don't want to leave. They want to carry on with their lives of love, fear and forgiveness. They also think that they can control their Khamirae selves and the Thane promises to be there with them. He will not clone himself again so this shall be the life's work of his final incarnation. The Doctor and Martha watch as he strides off to join the villagers.

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Dan McDaid
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 394
COVER DATE: 30 April 2008
ON TV: The Fires of Pompeii - The Poison Sky (Series 4)
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  The Poison Planet - Nightmare on the Boulevard
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: The Creative Spark - Merchant of Menace
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Agent Provocateur
REPRINTS: None

January 4039: the Graxnix have invaded Earth, razed London to the ground and taken the Doctor prisoner. Boznitz, the Graxnix leader, demands the Doctor’s TARDIS on pain of death. The Doctor spots an unlikely human observer who says his name is Tony. This puzzles the Doctor as Tony has not been a human name for centuries. When Tony makes a run for it the Doctor follows, racing through a chronal interface and arriving in October 2008 inside the Hotel Historia. The Doctor learns from Tony that he won the Lottery and was sent a letter signed by Majenta Pryce. She invited him to spend his winnings at the Hotel Historia from where he could visit any point in Earth history. Bursting into Majenta Pryce's office, the Doctor uses his psychic paper to pass himself off as an Offworld Hotel Inspector. Majenta gives him a quick guided tour, culminating in the Chronexus 3000, her ‘ultimate time travel device’. The Doctor prepares to shut it down. Just then the Graxnix arrive. They have tracked the Doctor and begin a murderous rampage through the hotel. Learning that there is a time machine in the hotel, they decide to acquire it. The Doctor explains to Tony that the Graxnix were one of the lesser participants in the Time War with extremely unreliable time travel technology, hence their desire to steal better devices like the Chronexus. Returning to her office, they find Majenta and her aide Fanson preparing for a fast getaway. She plans to start a new operation on Malgan Minor or Telos and consolidate her unpaid loans into manageable payments. Fanson adds that she was one of the universe's greatest hotel entrepreneurs with a chain of Hotel Historias until the Time War made everyone too scared of time travel. She came to Earth because it is a backwater where the interstellar authorities won't mind if a disaster occurs. The Doctor says he cares and is going to shut her down. Majenta walks in on the Graxnix and gives them the Chronexus. They immediately use it to return to the 41st Century. The Doctor pops up and informs them that the Chronexus's built-in fail-safe has placed them outside of history; they can no longer tamper with events. In addition, before he gave it to Majenta to pass onto them, he locked it so that the Graxnix are doomed to stay forever in the blazing ruins of London. Boznitz pleads for mercy but the Doctor tells him that this is his mercy. He arrives back in 2008 just as cosmic bailiffs arrest Majenta. She tells the Doctor that she likes him but will wipe the smile off his face one day.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
A comic strip always lives or dies by the quality of its  artwork, and I’m afraid I really don’t like the artwork on this one. It looks scrappy, sometimes badly proportioned, often rather untidy and with a hurried look to the lines. This is a shame because, despite its frothy and apparently superficial tone, it marks an important event in the comic strip adventures of the Tenth Doctor that will ultimately lead into a story arc bringing his adventures to a close.
 

SCRIPT: Rob Davis
ART: Martin Geraghty (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 399
COVER DATE: 17 September 2008
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  By Order of the Bone Menders - Washed Away!
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: The Time Stealer
IN DOCTOR WHO US: The Forgotten
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Widow’s Curse, published in October 2009.

The Doctor and Donna land in a crater. Climbing to the lip, Donna’s vociferous complaints turn to wonder as she and the Doctor watch the courtship of the Zyglots, something that happens only once every five hundred years. Donna is fascinated by it, and accuses the Doctor of being a...

...show off. The travellers are now in a house flying over London. They are apprehended by talking dogs who have decided to rise up against their human masters. The Doctor tells Donna to get ready to...

...run, yells the Doctor, as they escape through a menacing jungle. They meet up with survivors from a survey team who explain that the swamp is a single living organism. They help the travellers ecape - but Donna wonders what would have happened if they had not reached them in...

...time?", asks Donna. The Doctor realises something is bringing time to a halt. Suddenly they are menaced by a powerful alien. Donna exclaims "Oh my...

...Bonnie lies over the ocean" is being played at a Beatles concert in The Cavern in Liverpool. After the concert, Donna asks John Lennon to sign an album for her, but the Doctor is unhappy, because the album hasn’t been written yet and certainly not released on CD.

The Doctor orders Donna back to the TARDIS while he attempts to draw off some vampires, but she refuses to go. Surrounded by the blood-suckers, Donna threatens them with a knee in the...

...Cossacks gallop into town. This is (probably) the 17th Century, but the infantry arrive armed with impulse moratars and the Doctor realises someone has been meddling in...

...History!", says Donna and she and the Doctor are indeed in a history lesson and reduced to juvenile status. The Doctor explains that Donna has been infected by a parasite that feeds off negative energy. He urges her to concentrate on the TARDIS to break the faked reality.

Donna has recorded a message on Emergency Programme One for the Doctor. She did it in case they didn't get to say a proper good bye - and tells him not to worry because it was her choice. She tells him to get someone else - not to stop him but to show off to, and to keep him going. She had the time of her life.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
No synopsis is ever going to do this story justice, but the unusual format works well here to create something truly memorable and ultimately rather poigant (especially if you read it just after watching Journey’s End). This is a great tribute to the character of Donna Noble, effectively a character piece hidden inside a cleverly structured narrative. Last seen in 1985’s Polly the Glot, the Zyglots make a return appearance in this strip.
 

Majenta Pryce is in Thinktwice prison, but does not remember how or why. While she and cellmate Zed are having breakfast, Zed is intimidated by an alien inmate called Ceecee, Majenta challenges her, but when Ceecee attacks she is restrained and taken away by the guards. Majenta is taken to the sick bay and examined by the Doctor, working incognito aboard the station. Majenta steals a scalpel. Ceecee is taken to a scientist called Jonah Gripton. Her head is linked to a machine and she lets out an agonising scream. Jonah tells security chief Flatch that Ceecee is braindead, but an alien voice in Jonah’s head says that Ceecee's mind tasted sweet. That night, Majenta kisses a sleeping Zed good bye before breaking out of her cell. The Doctor climbs into a ventilation shaft but his sonic screwdriver is shot by small robots. Majenta finds Jonah's lab, but he and Flatch are waiting. They stun her and then her memories are wiped.

The Doctor rescues Majenta. They flee into the waste tanks to get to the TARDIS, which is on the other side of the prison. Back in the lab, Jonah is telepathically contacted by the aliens, who declare, ‘We feed.’ All the guards in the lab have their minds absorbed, but the aliens have detected the Doctor’s mind aboard and that is what they yearn to feed on. The Doctor delves into Majenta’s mind, helping her to remember events that led her to Thinktwice, and his involvement in them (see here). They are confronted by the creatures, who introduce themselves as the Memeovax. But Flatch is horrified by the

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - MAJENTA PRYCE
The first comic strip companion not to come via the television series since Destrii back in 2005, Majenta Pryce was a green humanoid female from the planet Vessica. Prior to her first encounter with the Doctor, she was a member of a criminal gang called the the Crimson Hand. She betrayed Wesley Sparks and stole his fortune thus allowing her to become part of the Crimson Hand’s inner sanctum. She destroyed the Skith Home World, but became scared, so her servant, Fanson, wiped her mind of memories associated with the Crimson Hand and Wesley Sparks then went on the run with her. Together they went on to run a successful hotel chain known as Hotel Historia. Following the Time War, however, the chain faltered as people turned their backs on time travel. Retreating to 21st century Earth, Majenta established another Hotel Historia, using time travel tech of dubious provenance to send paying guests into different time zones throughout Earth history. The Tenth Doctor quickly closed the operation down and Majenta was arrested by the cosmic bailiffs (Hotel Historia) and sent to Thinktwice, an orbital penitentiary in Earth's distant future where the Doctor once more stumbled across Majenta. The harsh regime and crude psychological methods utilised by the prison left Majenta with little or no memory of the Doctor, or of her life prior to their first meeting. The Doctor restored Majenta's memory of him, but was unable to restore anything else. Together, they uncovered the truth behind Thinktwice, that it was a feeding ground for the Memeovax, but when one of the Memeovax attempted to invade

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Plot-wise, this is just about passable and manages to pack a surprising amount of story into its brief six pages and even give the story’s ‘villain’ a genuine motive, but the artwork really lets it down, looking frequently rather hastily sketched. There is also a misdirected dialogue balloon on the final page attributed to the Doctor when it should come from Donna.
 

SCRIPT: Colin Brake
ART: John Ross (art), James Offredi (colour)

Shopping on Liater, Donna is mistaken for Krystal Diva, star of 4-D movies, supermodel and author, and abducted. The Doctor investigates and discovers that Krystal was found ten years earlier with amnesia and no record of any parents. He follows a report that she was being taken into a run-down store, Leendlemaan’s I.T. Solutions. Leendlemaan denies seeing either Krystal or Donna, but when the Doctor notices a screen showing ‘Krystal’ opening a nearby store he rushes off. The store is Ryson’s Robots, but as soon as she been introduced than Donna is attacked by one of the robots. The Doctor arrives as Donna is rushed to safety. A signal is disrupting the robots’ positronic circuits. The Doctor overrides their systems with his sonic and and discovers that their microchips were designed by Mr. Leendlemaan. At that moment Ryson receives a blackmail note traceable to Leendlemaan. The Doctor and Donna accompany the police to Leendlemaan’s store where they find Krystal Diva tied to a chair. Examining her, the Doctor discovers that Krystal is an android, and androids are banned in the Nine Systems. Leendlemaan made her but he had to kidnap her because she too would have been susceptible to his positronic interference. Krystal, amazed to find that Leendlemaan is her ‘father’, offers to use her fortune to rescue his ailing store, the point of the blackmail. The Doctor predicts that when a star like Krystal is found to be an android the laws banning her kind will be overturned. He returns to the TARDIS weighed down with Donna’s shopping.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Slightly wordy with speech bubbles covering every spare inch of the page, but surprisingly decent in terms of story. Once again, it is really the artwork which lets it down, though it’s a slight step up from the preceding tale.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Alan Barnes should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. This is like something from the mind of Roger Noel Cook, perhaps one of his more way-out offerings from the 1960s. The one saving grace is a passable likeness of Bruce Forsyth as the host of Universal Dance/Off and the opening shot of Blackpool Tower in space.
 

SCRIPT: Alan Barnes
ART: John Ross (art), James Offredi (colour)

In the Cosmos Ballroom the Universal Dance/Off winners are announced. In the audience, Donna is appalled that the favourites, Boris and Elsa, have been eliminated. Just then, a mirror ball drops on the winners, Durrrin and Laliaargh, causing them to vanish. The Doctor uses his screwdriver to trace them as they are beamed through hyperspace. He gives chase in the TARDIS, back to Birmingham in 2009. Emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Donna find themselves on a nightclub dance floor. The music is alien, a Mexxonian quickstep, and the dance floor itself is alive. The dancers in the club are all zombies. When Durrrin and Laliaargh finally arrive, the Doctor realises that a Terpsivore spaceship crashed on that spot centuries earlier, killing all the crew. The ship has been utilising the power of dance to repair itself but it needed the greatest dancers in the universe to complete the process, and so it sent a mirror ball through space to abduct them. Unfortunately, the ship has gone into a self-destruct sequence and the only way to stop it is to find a Terpsivore to perform the complicated steps to cancel the self-destruct. When the Doctor tells Donna that Terpsivores are centipedes, sixty feet in length, she forms a conga line. Amazingly, this stops the self-destruct, and the ship launches, taking the zombies on an eternal dance through the universe. Returning to the Cosmos Ballroom, the Doctor sees that the fixing of the contest has triggering Space War III, which was why he was there in the first place.

SCRIPT: Jonathan Morris
ART: Rob Davis (art), Rob Davis and Geraint Ford (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITOR: Clayton Hickman

REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Widow’s Curse, published in October 2009.

Donna asks the Doctor to show her the Great Wall of China but when they get there the wall is still being built. They are in the Qin Dynasty, circa 200 B.C. and Donna’s attempt to take some photographs sees the time travellers arrested and carted to the court of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The Doctor says the mystery that surrounds the Emperor is his death and overnight disappearance. When their cart arrives near the Emperor’s palace they are tipped into a pit and attacked by a ceramic robot wielding a sword. Donna to use her mobile phone to disrupt the robot’s signal, causing it to fall lifeless. Having defeated the ‘Immortal Warrior’, they are taken to the palace where they pass the Terracotta Army. The Doctor is led to the Emperor who is half human, half terra cotta. Hearing that the Emperor is searching for the elixir of life, the Doctor tells him that he has the secret to immortality. Meanwhile Donna is led away by the Emperor’s advisor, Meng Tian, who transforms into a ferocious alien. He points a futuristic gun at her and claims that she has been sent by the Star Council to bring him to justice. The Doctor finds that the Emperor’s throne stands in front of a warp convertor from Meng Tian’s celestial chariot, which crashed to Earth decades earlier. Qin saved Meng Tian from the wreckage and was rewarded with the knowledge to unite China’s warring states and ascended to the position of emperor as a result. The alien also built him an indestructible body. Meng Tian wakes the terracotta army to begin a murderous rampage. Appalled, the Emperor attacks him, but Meng Tian simply turns the cyborg off. However, the Doctor gets Donna to use her phone again and this reawakens the Emperor in time to kill the alien as he is about to murder the two time travellers. The alien’s blaster hits the warp convertor which explodes, turning the Emperor and the terracotta army to statues and burying the palace.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Qin Shi Huang really was Emperor of China between 246 - 221 BC, really did commission the Great Wall and really did have the terracotta army  created. He was also obsessed with immortality, which caused his death when he swallowed mercury tablets. There appears to be no mystery surrounding his death at all. Meng Tian, meanwhile, was actually a fearsome general, not an alien. Quelle surprise... Because they take the same history as their inspiration, there are many similarities between this comic strip and the film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor which was released in the same year...
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It’s good to return to Stockbridge, the spiritual home of the DWM comic strip, and here it is finally revealed that we saw Stockbridge right back in The Iron Legion, where it all began, which feels very right. The actual story isn’t a patch on those previous Stockbridge excursions, but the revelation that Majenta is being hunted is an interesting twist in the arc.
 

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Mike Collins (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 403 - 405
COVER DATES: 7 January 2009 - 4 March 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  The Chromosome Connection - Good Old Days
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: Da Vinci’s Robots - The King of Earth
IN DOCTOR WHO US: The Forgotten - The Whispering Gallery
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

Heading for the planet Panacea, the TARDIS lands in Stockbridge, but the residents are celebrating something called Aurelia, rather than Christmas. Maxwell Edison appears, protesting about Khrysalis, but this only angers the villagers. The Doctor, Majenta and Max withdraw and hide in the shop. Max tells the Doctor of a terrible threat to Stockbridge. He explains that Khrysalis is a company that set up a building project, but that nothing had happened to it in over a year. Max started a protest group called the SPS to protest against the building, but over time it's members had drifted away. They go to Khrysalis. Majenta heads off to investigate the offices, while Max and the Doctor enter the compound. Inside, they realise that Khrysalis has been digging a large hole, as the Doctor notices claw marks. A withered old man named Geoffrey Lynch and several construction workers appear, startling Max. The Doctor outwits them with his psychic paper and he and Max escape. Meanwhile, Majenta is looking through the Khrysalis offices, and finds a file of suspicious information, but she is discovered by He and his wife She who hold her at gunpoint. Elsewhere, Max and the Doctor are fleeing Lynch and his workmen, when they fall through a trapdoor. There they find some decayed corpses, which Max identifies as members of the SPS. The Doctor and Max try to escape, but are cornered by Lynch and his workmen. Lynch’s workmen mutate into fearsome creatures called Wyrrmen and surround the Doctor and Max. The Wyrrmen fire beams at Max, who transforms into a glowing, white-eyed entity called the Lokhus that instructs Lynch, ‘Tell mother and father... I live!’

Majenta attempts to escape from He and She , but runs into Lokhus. He and She are Lokhus’ parents, but he kills them before asking Lynch who Majenta is. Majenta greets him enthusiastically, and tells him she proposes a partnership with him that will get him off this planet. The Doctor is being escorted by the Wyrrmen through the cave system when he comes across a large chrysalis from where he can hear Max's voice. Touching it, he suddenly finds himself elsewhere. He is with Max. Meanwhile, in Stockbridge, the villagers vie for the affection of Lokhus. Lynch explains that Lokhus emits a psychic pulse which makes people want to mother him. Lokhus sits in a throne, and demands food. Majenta wonders if he's just gonna sit there eating, but Lynch tells her that Lokhus has much bigger plans for Earth... Max tells the Doctor that Lokhus is from the After-Universe, and is a member of the race known as the Zytrgupten. Lokhus was born crippled, and was thrown into the infernal abyss. But something went wrong, and he was drawn into our universe. He fell on Stockbridge, and built himself a chrysalis to protect himself. His parents followed and located him. They have to stop Lokhus from getting out of the chrysalis, otherwise he'll destroy the world. Majenta takes Lokhus to the TARDIS, but tells him only the pilot can get through the doors, as a safety precaution. Lokhus tortures her, but finds Max psychically blocking him from killing her. Inside the chrysalis, Lokhus plays on Max’s insecurities but Max is made of stronger stuff.  Max tells the Doctor to find his body, and stop Lokhus. He holds off the Wyrrmen, while the Doctor takes a motorbike back to the town square, where Majenta has been tied to a pole. The villagers threaten him, and Lokhus tells them to kill him.

The Doctor rescues Majenta and they escape on the motorbike back to the Wyrrmen-infested compound,  Lokhus and the villagers in pursuit. The Doctor confronts Lokhus and offers him a deal - release Max and stop the birthing process and he will take Lokhus away from Earth to somewhere safe. Reject the deal and he will blow them all to pieces by igniting the gases in the compound with his sonic screwdriver. Realising the Doctor means it, Lokhus releases Max, but Lynch is unwilling to give up without a fight and attacks the Doctor, accidentally knocking the screwdriver from his hand and causing a huge explosion. The Lokhus’ spell is broken as he and his Wyrrmen are consumed in the blast. The Doctor offers Max a jaunt in the TARDIS, but Max elects to stay in Stockbridge, defending it from alien invasion. However, once the TARDIS has gone, Max is accosted by shadowy time travelling aliens who are searching for Majenta. Scanning Max’s mind they realise she is travelling with the Doctor and vow that she will not get far.

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Sean Longcroft (art), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 406 - 407
COVER DATES: 1 April 2009 - 29 April 2009
ON TV: Planet of the Dead
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  Good Old Days - The Crystal Palace
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: The Guardians of Terror - The House at the End of the World
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Majenta to a house floating on the edge of a vast galactic storm in the Proxima System. As they enter, they are almost killed by an eccentric robot known as Owl. The Doctor makes his peace with the robot and agrees to repair a projection device that it guards. Majenta heads off into the house to explore but is accosted by a mad zombie robot called Violet who tries to take Majenta to meet her master. Majenta escapes but Violet gives chase. The Doctor reactivates the machine, triggering a holographic projection of a party from long ago, in which he meets a hologram of a man called Wesley Sparks, owner of Sparktech, who reveals that the holograms are composed of Solid Engram Tachyonics (SET-forms) - and that they know that they are not real. Majenta is cornered by more robotic zombies and captured by Violet. Wesley introduces the Doctor to a SET form Majenta, young and confident and full of life as she once was. One of the SET form guests becomes violently ill. File corruption, concludes the Doctor - and it is spreading. Within seconds, all of the guests are corrupted - and they start to advance on the Doctor, Owl and Wesley. Elsewhere, Majenta is shaken to discover a range of robot simulacra all bearing her appearance. Before she can investigate further, Violet leads her to the inner sanctum - where she meets a lumbering, hissing cyborg. A wizened human head grins down from atop a rusting metal hulk. It is the real Wesley Sparks.

The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to allow he, Wesley and Owl to escape. The rusting cyborg version of Wesley, meanwhile, reminds Majenta that they were betrothed to be married, though Majenta denies this. The Doctor is confronted by Violet, who rips Owl’s legs off. The Doctor wins her trust and installs a vital update to her systems, stabilising her personality. She warns him that Majenta is in trouble. They burst in to the inner sanctum as Wesley attempts to force Majenta to marry him. Suddenly, the robotic zombified directors of Sparktech enter the church, and inform cyborg Wesley that he is fired, that the Sparktech company is to be liquidated, and that the Stormshield has been disabled, so the house  will be destroyed. The Doctor runs off to reactivate the shield. Wesley orders the robot vicar, Mr Gardener, to marry him and Majenta, or die. Wesley's SET form counterpart, though, will not allow this. He fights his cyborg version, defeating him with a Laserson probe, but is fatally shot in the process. Meanwhile, the Doctor searcges for the Stormlight shield controls. Owl's torso tells the Doctor that the controls are behind him, but that due to programmed orders, he must kill the Doctor to prevent the shields being reactivated. Owl shoots at the Doctor, but misses. The Doctor reactivates the Stormshield, and the house is returned to safety. Back at the church, Wesley's SET form is beginning to corrupt. He asks Majenta if she remembers. Majenta says she does, before Wesley's file corrupts and he begins to degrade. As the TARDIS leaves Majenta criticises the Doctor for taking her back to Stormlight house, but the Doctor tells her that, according to the co-ordinates, they should be on Panacea. Majenta is confused, but then, unseen by the Doctor, a shadowy creature appears on the TARDIS scanner, telling her to ‘Remember the Hand...’

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
I like the story here but I do feel that the artwork doesn’t really work with it. Sean Longcroft (who previously produced the superb The Fangs of Time) has a style that is just too broad and comedic to carry the dark atmosphere that this strip really requires so the end result is perhaps less memorable than it might otherwise have been. This is a shame as it is an important strip in terms of Majenta’s story arc and reveals a great deal more about her.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Solid, meaty and action-packed storytelling with strong characterisation (especially for Majenta) and excellent artwork. The Skith leader feels slightly superfluous to events, especially his brief and surprising return in the final instalment, but this is definitely one of the better strips.
 

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Martin Geraghty (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 408 - 411
COVER DATES: 27 May 2009 - 19 August 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  The Spirit of Ashgar - Photo Finish
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: The End
IN DOCTOR WHO US: The Time Machination - Silver Scream/Cold-Blooded War!
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

A passenger aircraft approaches Sydney airport. Suddenly, it is struck by a strange light. The TARDIS lands near the Opera House in Sydney where the Doctor and Majenta are soon greeted by UNIT forces led by Captain Kath Braxton. They are taken to UNIT's Underbase beneath the harbour where they meet Colonel Tom McCay and Corporal Manning, who is taken aback when he sees Majenta. In the sickbay, the Doctor examines patients from the aircraft, and is surprised to see that they are hundreds of years old. Tom says they were hit by a Chronal Wave. He then reveals that prehistoric creatures have been rampaging across the city. The Doctor sees a shard of ice recovered from the wreckage. Tom explains that it doesn't melt, and is giving off electrochemical signals. He organises a helicopter for the Doctor so that he can see the Chronal Wave for himself. They then realise that Majenta has gone. Corporal Manning has escaped, but Majenta follows and sees him communicate with an alien life form. Majenta confronts him but he pulls a gun on her. As the helicopter approaches the Chronal Wave, the ice begins talking to the Doctor, a message from a life form who have

met the him before. UNIT soldier Sergeant Talbot notes that another Chronal Wave is approaching, as hundreds of prehistoric creatures appear near the bridge. Turning off his perception filter, Corporal Manning reveals himself to be Fanson, Majenta’s one-time aide (see here). Majenta demands an explanation, and it comes when the Skith leader appears.

UNIT's helicopter is struck by the Chronal Wave, Talbot killed and the engines destroyed. The Doctor hits the eject button on his seat, and he and Tom are ejected from their seats, just as the chopper explodes. They parachute to safety. Fanson explains to Majenta what happened to him following the Hotel Historia incident. They were both teleported away by the cosmic bailiffs, but Fanson was intercepted, and brought down to a butcher's shop in Australia, where he found the injured Skith leader. To save them both, Fanson made a deal with him and used the perception filter to infiltrate UNIT. Two soldiers burst in, but the Skith leader transforms them into Skith, and commands them to spread through the Underbase. The Doctor and Tom seek refuge in a UNIT safehouse. Using the technology available, the Doctor reveals a huge crystal ship hanging over Sydney. The Skith plan to 'rebuild the world in their own image'. Tom and the Doctor head back to the Underbase,

where the Doctor complains of an ice cream headache. Thinking nothing of it, he spots Majenta, who stops, and reaches for a taser, and electrocutes him with it. Tom commands Manning to stop her, but Manning refuses, pointing out that he is no longer in charge, as newly converted Skith soldiers overrun the base. The Doctor is dragged away by the Skith and he, Fanson and Majenta are taken to The Starling, a UNIT flying base. Here the leader explains that the Skith ship came at his bidding but will not communicate and Mindcore cannot be accessed while it is phased out of time. He believes the Doctor can solve this problem. However, the ship finally communicates, and informs the Skith leader that everything is going according to plan. Hundreds of Skith fighters swarm out of the ship towards the UNIT base.

While dinosaurs terrorise the Sydney streets, the Doctor, Majenta, Fanson and Tom are taken aboard the Skith ship. Tensions between the Skith General and the Skith leader, meanwhile, are running high as the General deposes and throws the leader into the Fusion Core. The Skith scan Majenta’s mind and discover that she, like the Doctor, is a time traveller. As Tom, Majenta and Fanson escape, Skith General explains to the Doctor that the Skith Homeworld has been destroyed by what appears to be a giant hand. Now they are on a road to total war, which is why they have built a TARDIS taken from the Doctor’s memories when he melded with the Skith in their previous encounter (see here). UNIT reclaim the Underbase, but Tom, Majenta and Fanson’s attempt to rescue the Doctor does not go so smoothly. Tom is shot and Majenta transformed into the Queen on the Skith, pilot of their time ship.

The Doctor pleads with the Queen Skith, but she orders him, Fanson and Tom be thrown into the Fusion Core. She has a brief memory of four shadowy figures. As Sydney begins to freeze over, killing the dinosaurs, the Doctor confronts Mindcore, but the Skith in the chamber are killed by energy beams and the Skith leader rises out of the Fusion Core before dying. The Doctor confronts the Skith Queen, telling her the SKARDIS doesn’t work. Every time she tries to operate it a Chronal Wave devastates the city. He appeals to Majenta locked inside and she moves the Skith ship into real time where Captain Braxton’s forces attack it. The Doctor offers the Skith a chance to withdraw, but the Skith General refuses and instead attacks the Skith Queen. Fanson saves her but is struck down instead. As he dies, Fanson tells Majenta he had to wipe parts of her mind so she never knew a thing about the terrible secret she had become mixed up in. Majenta is so angry she destroys the Skith with an energy wave before the Doctor can pull her away to safety. The Doctor says the Chronal Wave should clear in a few days, but he is more interested in discovering the mystery behind Majenta Pryce.

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Rob Davis (art), James Offredi and Rob Davis (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 412
COVER DATE: 16 September 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  Photo Finish - City of Light
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Fugitive/Black Death White Life
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

On the planet New Old Detroit, fish-like alien Johnny Seaview has been shot six times. The Doctor and Majenta find him and with his dying breath he tells them that there is still time to save the city. He says he found the world bomb, but was caught. Just before he dies, he gives the Doctor his trilby. The Doctor and Majenta locate Johnny’s offices where they meet an elegant lady with the code name Winter Palace. When the Doctor reveals she was a suspect in the world bomb case, her face splits open revealing her to be an android controlled by a diminutive figure. Majenta grabs him. She knows his name is Tiny Danza. He tells her the world bomb is the biggest weapon in the city. When Seaview found the bomb, every low life wanted him. Danza thinks it was Red Morgan who killed Seaview. Elsewhere Red Morgan is with his Alpha Centaurian lawyer Hecto Shellac, but observed by the Doctor and Majenta. They follow Red Morgan but when he is shot down, they find

themselves held at gunpoint by Half Nelson, who is literally half a man. Realising that the location of the world bomb is written inside Seaview’s trilby, Half Nelson and his gang take the Doctor and Majenta  there. The world bomb is a device created long ago by the Worldsmiths. However, here they are attacked by Hecto Shellac. He wants to retire but he’s the city’s finest lawyer and the gangs won’t let him. However, with the world bomb in his control, he can keep the gangsters off his back. The Doctor struggles with Shellac, but the Doctor activates the world bomb. At once the world refashions itself into English countryside, a new start for them all as the Doctor and Majenta take their leave.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The grimy, off-kilter gumshoe world of Dick Tracy is perfectly captured not only in the storyline and the low lifes encountered along the way, but also in the superbly evocative artwork and colour. The muddied block colour genuinely recalls the pages of the detective pulps. This is a fun and well crafted interlude that will gain in significance when the arc concludes.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Okay, so having a comic strip with almost no dialogue, just sound effects - hence the title - is a neat conceit, but it does make it extremely difficult to engage with the characters. It is a little like looking at photographs or a mime act - you just can’t engage with it in the same way. Still, this is a brave experiment and, as a one off strip, is reasonably entertaining.
 

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Mike Collins (pencils), David A. Roach (inks) James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUE: 413
COVER DATE: 14 October 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  City of Light - Skydive!
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Fugitive
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

The Doctor and Majenta arrive on a planet resembling ancient Rome, where they find that the power of speech has been taken from them. They are attacked by a sonic defence system, but rescued by rat creatures. The Doctor discovers that the robots who are supposed to maintain the planet have fallen into disrepair, but before he can investigate further he, Majenta and the rat people are attacked by more sonic defences, one of which knocks out the Doctor. Majenta escapes, and discovers the perpetrator of the silence... Prospero, the planet’s guardian, who ordered the silence as a pall for the dead of this graveworld for one of the Galactic Wars. Majenta has rebooted him, so he returns speech to the planet's inhabitants.

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Paul Grist (art), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 414 - 415
COVER DATES: 11 November 2009 - 9 December 2009
ON TV: The Waters of Mars - The End of Time Part One
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  Skydive! - We Will Rock You
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Fugitive
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

A man is cleaning an underground train when a ghostly girl appears. Behind her are many more who close around him. The next day, the Doctor and Majenta Pryce are on a train in the London Underground when the train stops. Following a psychic pulse recorded on his sonic screwdriver, they head off down the tunnel where they encounter the now ghostly cleaner. After trying to attack them, he speaks about a machine before running away. The Doctor and Majenta set off in pursuit. Elsewhere on the Northern Line, another train is stopped by the ghostly girl and the passengers attacked. Following the psychic pulse, the Doctor and Majenta encounter a cybernetic creature called Mnemosyne. She says the Doctor, Majenta and all of the ghosts are part of her now, as ghosts close in around the time travellers.

Having had the Doctor and Majenta restrained, Mnemosyne tells the story of how she came to Earth one-hundred-and-seven years ago. She is a mourning device created by the Corialiths of Masma to store engrams of the dead. Her alien master stole a Mnemosyne unit, and successfully sold the technology across the galaxy, until he came to Earth where the humans battered him to death. Mnemosyne hid in the London Underground, recording psychic patterns of the dead and growing stronger. Now she has taken complete control of the Underground and, within the next hour, she will kill every living being in it as an act of revenge. Leaving Majenta to stall them, the Doctor runs off to shut down the power but he is chased by ghosts. Majenta negotiates with the ghosts, promising them a final peace and that she will remember them forever. They turn against Mnemosyne, attacking her and Majenta finishes her off. The ghosts fade away, leaving the Doctor free to yank cables from a junction box to avoid being hit by a train. However, the ghostly girl leaves him with a warning of his impending demise and he determines to take Majenta to Panacea immediately. Suddenly, a voice booms out from the sky. Intersol has the world surrounded. They demand Majenta come out with her hands up.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
As an essentially visual  medium, a comic strip, no matter how magnificent the script, lives or dies by the quality of the artwork. This  story, which has the potential to be extremely spooky and atmospheric with a doom-laden conclusion, is completely undermined by Paul Grist’s horribly amateur cartoon style, and even Offredi’s usually excellent colour work feels well below par here. It is a great shame as I think the strip had the potential to be something really special, particularly in its character development of Majenta who saves the day through her new-found compassion for the deceased.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Give or take the shoddy artwork, the story bobs along nicely until the final page, but then it just all falls apart.
 

contains - the Vortex Code, a four-dimensional co-ordinate sequence leading them to Chrone, the oldest planet in the universe. However, they have been followed by the Stellion Pirates and the Doctor realises the Vortex Code’s true function is to control the real-space access point to the Time Vortex that exists above Chrone. However, the robot is almost defunct. The Doctor repairs him but also makes adjustments to the Vortex Code so that now it leads to the top three theme parks in that sector of the galaxy.

SCRIPT: Christopher Cooper
ART: John Ross (art) James Offredi (colour)

Science Officer Flish and her Commander Amyt flee from dinosaurs after their ship crashed on Earth during the Cretaceous Period. They run into the Doctor who has also crashed. Both ships hit a gravity spike. Pursued by dinosaurs, the three head off to the source of the energy spike - a crashed spaceship with a Magneton Drive. However, here they are confronted by an automated Health and Safety hologram forbidding them entry for their own safety. Tricking the hologram, the Doctor, Flish and Amyt make it aboard the ship, but the dinosaurs are close behind. The Doctor uses the hologram projector to project a holographic dinosaur, frightening off the real thing while Flish deactivates the Mangeton Drive, ending the gravity spike. The Doctor offers her and Amyt a lift home in the TARDIS.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Dinosaurs are always going to please a young audience, and here they’re mixed with quite a bit of comic invention. It’s light and frothy and the artwork is terrible, but this is actually quite a fun little jaunt.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Now this is a strange one because strung out from a fairly ridiculous premise is a surprisingly atmospheric and dramatic adventure story helped hugely by some solid artwork. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
 

SCRIPT: Jonathan Morris
ART: Rob Davis & I.N.J. Culbard
LETTERING: Will Lucas
EDITORS: Clayton Hickman

The colony world of Lindis is attacked by marauders and its population taken as slaves, but amongst their number is the Doctor. As the Viking mothership sets sail for Asgard, a fellow slave called Bjorn tells the Doctor how the Viking raids began about four years before, kidnapping men but leaving the women and children unharmed. They took Bjorn’s brother Sven. When the ship lands on Asgard, the Doctor and Bjorn slip away and see the prisoners marched into the Halls of Valhalla. Byorn sees his brother Sven dressed as a Viking. The Doctor realises the horns on his helmet are acting as antennae controlling him externally. Bjorn rips the helmet from his head and kills him. Gaining entry to Valhalla, the Doctor and Bjorn are soon detected by a being calling himself Odin and captured. The Doctor escapes again and, realising that Valhalla is the remains of a spaceship equipped with cryogenic units, accesses the flight log. The ship belonged to an opera company who were in cryo-pods when the ship crashed. Their performances last for over a month, too long for anyone to actually remember, so the computer prompts them via wi-fi. However, the computer, Odin, was damaged in the crash and now believes the opera to be real. It is preparing for the final battle. The Doctor tries to reverse the error, but a Viking attacks, damaging the controls and causing Valhalla to explode. The Doctor gets everyone to safety and, with Odin destroyed, control his broken.

SCRIPT: Dan McDaid
ART: Martin Geraghty (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour)
LETTERING: Roger Langridge
EDITORS: Tom Spilsbury & Scott Gray

ISSUES: 416 - 420
COVER DATES: 6 January 2010 - 28 April 2010
ON TV: The Eleventh Hour - The Time of Angels (Series Five)
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES:  We Will Rock You - Lucky Heather (10th Doctor), Winning Hand (11th Doctor)
IN DOCTOR WHO US: Tessaract - Don’t Step On the Grass
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini magazine special edition The Tenth Doctor Collected Comics, published in October 2009, then in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The Crimson Hand, April 2012.

Intersol chases the TARDIS. Telepathic computer Justice orders the Doctor and Majenta to surrender or be destroyed. The TARDIS is breached by a hologram of Finn Dargo, Chief Marshall and Supreme Commander of the Intersol Fleet. He knocks the Doctor unconscious, but Majenta  escapes into the lower decks of the Intersol ship where she disguises herself as a guard. Dargo interrogates the Doctor, giving him details of Majenta’s past as a member of the most dangerous criminal organisation in the universe. Intersol thought they had caught her at ThinkTwice (see here) but Majenta escaped with the Doctor. She was then tracked to the Proxima system (see here) but they found nothing. Majenta tries to escape in a shuttle, but is apprehended by a masked woman who reveals herself to be Majenta's cell mate in ThinkTwice, Zed. She shoots Majenta.

Majenta wakes up inside the Justice computer banks/cells. She is sentenced to maximum interrogation. Zed, whose real name is Zephyr, goes to the Doctor's cell. He realises that the TARDIS has been deliberately avoiding taking them to Panacea because it knows there is something powerful and deadly locked in Majenta's mind. Zephyr has to help him stop Intersol from unlocking whatever it might be. Dargo digs deep into Majenta’s memories with a neuroscopic probe, discovering that her real name is the Lady Scaph, but then unlocking her deadly secret. It is the Crimson Hand.

Justice attempts total annihilation of the four gang members, but they beam into the real world and destroy her, but the Doctor and Zephyr have rescued Majenta and Dargo also escapes. The Doctor probes Majenta's minds and learns that she once led the Crimson Hand. To prove herself worthy, she seduced Wesley Sparks, then ran off with his fortune on the night before their wedding. Majenta explains that the Crimson Hand, Trique, Lunat, Pollox and Pi, discovered the Manus Maleficus, a device that could destroy planets, and which they used to destroy the home planet of the Skith (see here). Majenta got scared and ran, but without her the Manus Maleficus would not work as it needed five operators. Fanson found her and wiped her memory so she would be sealed away from the hand. The Crimson Hand start to kill the ship’s crew including Dargo. The Doctor tries to get into the TARDIS but finds the lock gone. Majenta has it floating in the air in front of her. She destroys it. Her voice changes as she apologises to the Doctor before tearing him to shreds, as Zed looks on in horror.

The Crimson Hand, using their power, sweep away galaxies, rebuild solar systems and erase countless races from causality. In their place are new race, better worlds. This is an age of peace and prosperity for every being in the universe. Majenta's home planet, Vessica is rebuilt into a prosperous world, and it remains that way... for a while. Majenta does not understand why there is revolt after she gave the people of Vessica everything they could have. Zephyr, now working as Majenta's servant, informs her that there is a rift in time and space above them. The Crimson hand members realise they have made a mistake about Majenta, and she is no longer trustworthy. As the presure on Majenta grows and grows, she eventually calls for the Doctor. The TARDIS appears through the rift and Majenta and Zephyr are warped inside. Majenta explains that she didn't kill the Doctor, just sent him away. The Doctor tells her that she and Zephyr must return to Vessica and protect her people, because if he fails to defeat the Crimson Hand, the people of Vessica will fall first. Majenta refuses and tells the Doctor to set the co-ordinates for the Citadel of the Crimson Hand. It's time to finish this.

Majenta gives the Doctor a little bit of her power, so that he can destroy the Manus Maleficus. Then she teleports out of the TARDIS, and rejoins the Crimson Hand as Lady Scaph. Majenta tells them that the Doctor is still alive, and they demand to know where he is now. Meanwhile, the TARDIS materialises by the Manus Maleficus. The Doctor sees its potential; with it he could bring back Rose, resurrect the Time Lords, stop Donna losing her memory... but he knows it has to be destroyed. However, he is not strong enough. The Crimson Hand appear. Majenta again apologises to the Doctor; she knew he would not be able to destroy the machine. The Crimson Hand are anxious to start killing the Doctor in order to see how many times he can die. With the gang distracted, Majenta takes her chance, enters the Manus Maleficus and destroys the Crimson Hand. Majenta is weak and dying as she tumbles from the device. She dies in the Doctor’s arms. The Manus Malificus returns to its own dimension. The Doctor jumps into it, and falls into the gap in time and space known as the Morass, where the Reapers and Chronovores dwell. The Doctor reaches out with his hands, closes his eyes, and when he opens them... he is in the lush green paradise that is New Old Destroit (see here), now renamed Redemption. The Manus Maleficus brought Majenta back to life, but the only way it could do that was by using the Doctor's brain, so Majenta is kept alive by the Doctor thinking about her. The Doctor leaves and Majenta and Zed prepare to start a new life in Redemption.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Epic, exciting and satisfying are just three words that I’d use to describe this excellent comic strip finale for the Tenth Doctor. Finally uncovering and unravelling  the troubled life of Majenta Pryce, it manages to do so in a completely coherent and consistent manner that enhances all the strips back to her debut in Hotel Historia. Characterising the Tenth Doctor’s run of strips, the artwork and colour work is of a very high standard, beautiful and detailed. I particularly like the detail of seeing Johnny Seaview’s grave and trilby in the last few panels. A magnificent conclusion to the Tenth Doctor’s travels in the comic strips.