Entry tags:

char: the doctor, theme: dude in distress week, title: doctor who

In honour of DiD week, I present to you the comic strip in Issue 272 of Doctor Who Magazine which, in 1998, was published around the thirty-fifth anniversary of the show, and well before it looked like anyone was going to be bringing it back. And it involves eight incarnations of the Doctor tied to... well, you'll see.

Just over 2.5 scans from an eight-page story, which unless my maths fails me, I think is okay for the page limit requirements (mods, please don't hesitate to correct me otherwise). I've also tried to trim down what were some fairly large file sizes into something a bit more manageable, but apologies in advance to any dial-up users.







It transpires that the eight Doctors have been taken out of time by a being calling himself the "Beige Guardian" --

(Quick bit of backstory for the less Who-aware among us; in the classic series, the Doctor would every so often come up against two beings calling themselves the White Guardian and the Black Guardian, who were essentially your standard 'universe balancing yet permanently opposed forces of good and evil', except they might have been the same being, or not. Also, apropos of nothing, in some of their later appearances they developed a fashion for wearing birds on their heads for some reason. Ah, classic Doctor Who, your random sense of costume design never ceases to put a smile on my face.)

-- who has brought all of him together to battle his greatest nemeses in an arena of death. Naturally, the Doctors respond to this appropriately:




They also point out the lack of logic in pitting him against foes he's already defeated several times before, but the Beige Guardian basically tells them to shut up and throws them all in the arena anyway. Once inside, there begins a narrative of such epic drama, threat and shocking revelation that it will change your view of the Doctor forever.

I refer, of course, to the Saga of the Fourth Doctor's Macadamia Nut Allergy:




Naturally, the other Doctors manage to defeat the Beige Guardian's traps with embarrassing ease as well, to which he has a bit of a wobbly moment.



(See what I mean about the bird hats?)